The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

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It is more than possible to annotate ebooks, but at this moment it doesn't look like most software quickly and readily supports saving those annotations inside the books and sending them to someone else, unfortunately, which is pretty inconvenient if you ask me. I haven't seen this use case officially supported by any of the Ebook readers yet.

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The first bit of this popped into my head almost fully formed while I was in the shower a few days ago, and the second bit followed fairly easily. Then I spoke about it with a friend of mine who is a songwriter, and she's going to help me make it into an actual song next month. Apparently February is album-writing month. ^_^

First two verses on my dA. I'm holding off on sharing any more until I know what the final form is really going to be. The title (new today!) may not be the final title, either, but it's what I like right now.

Also:

- 1 active cowrite
- 3 dormant ones (one of which will become active again whenever hS can work it in; dunno about the other two)
- 1 interlude set in the near-ish future
- 1 regular mission, barely begun
- 1 epic sorta-filk
- Been thinking about working on my Skyrim stuff again. I chugged out many, many words, some of which might not suck!

All the irons. All the fires.

~Neshomeh may be slightly overextended, but doesn't care.

The term 'Legendary Badfic' is exactly that - a story that is widely known for being so bad there is little to no people saying good things about it.

(Granted, before joining the PPC, I myself only knew 2 out of 15 stories listed on our wiki...)

I'm all in for finding new gems who can be considered "oh, so terrible", but I think the Legendaries we have now are pretty much a closed chapter and a piece in our Hall o' Fame.

I think the most important bit is that lots of people have to be talking about it across the fanbase. It doesn't necessarily mean everyone will have heard of it—that's why we came up with the criteria we did, to get around the problem of most PPCers going "well, I never heard of it, it can't be that big a deal." But we don't all share fandoms, and we're not all active in fan communities outside this one, so that doesn't necessarily carry much weight. {= )

It's possible, though, that godawful badfic doesn't create the kind of buzz it did ten, fifteen, twenty(!) years ago. Perhaps fandom at large has grown jaded to that sort of thing?

~Neshomeh isn't active enough in other fan communities to know.

This came up in the chat, and seemed worth posting about here.

Most of the Legendary Badfic list is missioned or being missioned. A good portion of what's left seems to have fallen off the Internet (see, for example, Cho Chang's Desires, where almost all the Google hits lead to ... us).

Is this just because there's no more Legendary Badfic left out there, or that the criteria are a bit strict? Maybe.

However, a much more likely possibility is that we just haven't gone looking. The list hasn't been added to in years. (It probably doesn't help that fandom has moved from where it used to be years ago, and we as a community/broader movement within fandom didn't move with it all that much, IMO.)

So, what's Legendary these days? If anyone, especially some of the newer Boarders, has some insight, please do post, even if it doesn't quite meet the standards we set back in 2016.

- Tomash

It was more about how colonialist ideology in our world has impacted specfic writing, particularly colonialist ideas about race and ethnostates.

Yes, really. I know I haven't actually edited the document in over a year, but Real Life happened and then I decided to get rid of one character because they were pretty flat. I'm just trying to think of a good character to replace him, then I'll have to re-do the prompts.

I haven't been writing much lately, and nothing for here, but I'm definitely thinking about the problem and hope to have a few concepts down Soon(tm).

I liked the kill, and I get the feeling the Flowers are about to lay into Ix and Lotte for not actually charging the Sue.

The Sue exploding was a really funny bit.

The whole thought-speak/signaling scene was nice.

Charlotte seems to be having a hard time adjusting to being human. I hope she gets used to it.

Ix and Lotte being more concerned about the other dying than themselves is just kinda adorable.

[generalized supportive words at agent!Ix on account of the maybe-deathwish]

That fic was painful to read.

tl;dr I liked it.

- Tomash

The mention of an essay on SF colonialism caught my eye. I personally think there is nothing morally reprehensible about establishing settlements on uninhabited worlds. In the unlikely event that a probe found a world which already supported life, greater caution would have to be taken, we can't have Terran viruses destroying a whole ecosystem.

Congratulations on your continued survival!

The idea of a lonely scene felt rather normal to me when I started writing, and I didn't really see Marina wanting to talk that out with someone. She sees this situation as her problem, and one she cannot fix at the moment. The first version of the prompt didn't even use the line, only implying it. But Delta also pointed out it was a to short one, and once I expanded it, the line just flew in.

The additional bits I added along the photography's description also springed to mind while I was writing about her family, and were a fine way of fleshing up the prompt in my mind... once I got the sentences to be less clunky. And well, Marina has been moving away from normality from the day she discovered about magic. PPC is only taking this journey further than even the Dresdenverse could manage.

Renfield is a modern moniker for a special breed of thralls. Bottom line of that worldbuilding bit: Black Court Vampires are a breed of pretty much Stoker vampires, except they look like super zombies rather than unaturally beautiful, and naturally got hit hard when everyone could get their hands on a book describing all their tricks and weaknesses, and the White Court is a rival breed of vampires, psychic predators preying on lust, fear, despair... Renfields take their name from the madman of Dracula, and are thralls with their minds so ravaged they become crazed berserkers, and only got worst from there, not lasting long before they go on a pretty much self-destructive rampage. They're 'as good as' dead the moment their mind got shredded enough to earn that moniker.

I have to thank Desdendelle for the last point. When I asked for Permission for the first time, Marina was still a character I had designed for a Dresden Files RP settled in Philadelphia, and the setting I created wasn't quite identic to Real World, something he pointed out. Tweaking her backstory to bring it back to Real Life Philadelphia did put her somewhere between 'canon' and 'RP character' in my mind. Meaning that Butcher hadn't written anything about the situation in Dresdenverse!Philadelphia, so she doesn't contradict canon... unless Butcher does write about Philadelphia (no clue about this ever happening though).

I figured out it would be a good idea to reflect this with her having instable home 'verse. It would also make a good initial justification for her staying in the PPC rather than trying to go back home. Not everyone falling into a plothole want to stay, but not everyone can go back either.

Also, those sound like awesome presents!

In a less facetious sense, I've been working on stuff for my degree. My first major assignment, a 1500 word essay and accompanying 500 word critical reflection concerning how colonialist ideology affects writers of speculative fiction, was handed in a few days ago. It went well! I... think. =]

Other than that, well, I've been tidying up Trenchbreakers, working on my first actual literary book review (a compare-and-contrast article about Rivers Of London and Full Dark House), polishing a new division's introduction, hammering together the next couple of Doktor Trollenfisch und Gabrielle missions, thinking about an interlude involving Algie and Lola, and putting together a plan for my next Wobbles and Notary PPC Power Hour.

Also: would anyone be averse to me swiping teaching material from my course and posting it to the Board as writing advice? It might help people out. =]

What's everyone been writing recently?
Does anyone have questions about writing to ask the PPC?
Does anyone have unsolicited writing advice?

Post it, share it, or whatever. I figure it's high time we talked more about writing, because we haven't done a lot of writing discussion lately...

Anyway, I don't go hunting for badfic since I need my sanity for college, but I do have a list of all the stinkers I took off the Unclaimed list the last time I did an epic cleanup. Let's see what that has to offer...

https://www.quotev.com/story/2838998/No-Safe-Place-Legolas-Love-Story Classic second-daughter-of-Elrond Legomance, except this one has special powers and her dad's been keeping her hidden from the rest of Rivendell--excuse me, "Rivendale"--for presumably that reason. Also she joins the Fellowship because of course she does.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10669101/1/The-Roamer Immortal spy chick who used to be human, minis all over the place, but some bonus points for knowing that Morgoth exists.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7454917/1/Magic-by-the-Starlight Harry Potter/Star Trek TOS. I'll just include DawnFire's notes on the subject: "The language is awful. The Sue is evil in an overblown manner, and is put in Hufflepuff by the Hat for no discernible reason. The Hat itself—I can't even. Gratuitous Drarry. An overly-Scottish Scotty who says 'aye' far too often and is, of all things, the DADA teacher. Also, an absolutely enormous number of AVPM/AVPS references. May be a My Immortal parody, too. [...] After reading the two new chapters, I'm almost 100% positive that it's a parody. It's too intelligently written to be real. It's deliberately bad, references fanfic tropes, and seems to be going through a checklist of badfic traits. Also, if you look at the profile, the SPaG is perfect. That combined with a screenname containing the words 'bloody tears'... well, if it's not a parody/trollfic I'll eat my hat, that's all I'm saying."

https://www.quotev.com/story/4499505/Now-she-is-gone Ohhhhh my Lord, where do I even begin? She's Frerin's daughter--by an OC elf of all things--runs away from home after he dies (so presumably just before the Company sets out), and then finds herself in Mirkwood along the way because of course she does.

Namely because: 1) I needed an excuse for at least one of my agents to reveal knowledge of the Fire Emblem series; 2) mishandling of transgender issues is something I've been meaning to tackle at some point; and 3) oh dear god the general CRINGE. I haven't handled that many NSFW/NSFB badfics in a while, so I might as well rectify that in preparation for that big thing I'm planning for my Floaters team.

...why must I make my PPC self-insert suffer so much? X'D

Also, here are two badfics which I also plan to deal with in the future:

- "A Pirates[sic] Life For Me" - Ice Age - T-rated
A wild girl in the forest, haves an dream to became an pirate! But when she turns into one, its the worst thing she ever did! Buck is back and the pirate's survived? EllieXManny and DiegoXSiera ofcourse!
A Spellcheck Scrat right in the fic description, beige prose, poor grammar, and a human protagonist with a strange name (by tribal human standards) AND CAN TALK WITH ANIMALS! WHAT THE FLOCK?!

- Two Fractured Halves - My Hero Academia - M-rated
AU in which Izuku has a dormant quirk that only awakens when he takes a leap of bridge with the intent of ending his life after Kacchan pushed him to far and when all might said the thing he feared most and that was all it took to bring Izuku to the bridge that fateful night. Soulmate AU too, Izuku is OOC sometimes and OP. First Fanfic! Constructive Criticism is welcome.
Description says it all. The introductory chapter even gives a full list of abilities provided by Izuku's "quirk", which is way too many for a single quirk by the manga/anime's standards. Also ew. Just. Ew.

I'll give you ths black-hole chocolate cake with red berries coating, and black-hole coffee to go with it.

Well, it makes me feel awful to see them part like this. I do appreciate that both are seeking a return to Vailnor, but have entirely different and irreconcilable views on how to do so. I like that the decision feels final for both agents, that there are consequences for each stemming from the decisions on both ends, but that the agents still make their decisions and face what comes. A very strong emotional piece, showing off characters with strong wills and senses of self.

Random question that never occurred to me before: are all those plants in pots, or are they growing out of the generic surface?

—doctorlit wouldn't mind some undying lands, himself

. . . when we're providing concrit to a short story from 1844 written by an author who's been dead for a century-and-a-half-plus.

Although considering the Angel's weird speaking mannerisms and mixture of different accents within single sentences, I have to wonder: maybe the errors were intentional?

—doctorlit approves of posthumous concrit, though

I want to keep all the books I already own. So I would be a little one-sided in an "exchange."

—doctorlit is selfish and materialistic, didn't you know?