The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

...if I'd written less!

*sticks tongue out*

Just slooooooooooooooow. ^_~

hS, PPC encyclopaedia long before that upstart Wiki came out

>Yes to your first question, though some agents have come from unpublished fanfics, both good and bad. The general agreement seems to be that if your homefic is unpublished, you'll have one heck of a time trying to get back to it.

>Yes to your second. My Immortal has long since been deleted from the Pit, but thanks to many, many people rehosting it, I'll be able to spork it without any problems.

>Ehhh, kind of to the third. Popping by for a few minutes to say hello to family doesn't seem to be frowned on, but if you want to stay longer, you need vacation time from the Flowers, and they don't really like to let agents have time off. And, of course, barring some circumstances, the agents have to keep the PPC a secret.

>Bleeprin's been taken in pill form, drank with a large variety of cocktails, smoked in cigarettes... basically, if it's a food, it can probably be mixed with Bleep. As for who it works on, that's entirely up to you!

>They all seem to be operated by buttons of various types. One of my agents is a Twilight vampire, so she's be in a bit of a pickle if she couldn't use any of the gear, yeah? :P

(I'm guessing you're planning on making an undead agent?)

>Absolutely! Just make sure to write the character appropriately, and not have them make rookie mistakes.

>The original fic is still available for reading, but it no longer affects the canon. (Basically, until a fic is killed, it just keeps looping over and over and repeatedly subjects the canons to their torture.)

If I got anything wrong, someone feel free to correct me. But anyway—hope this helped!

1/ Assuming multiverse theory is correct, badfic worlds come into existence and begin affecting Word Worlds the moment they're written, in any medium.

2/ Yes. Several Legendary Badfics are examples of this.

3/ That sounds like an excuse for skiving off. I don't trust it. ~The Maquis de Sod.

4/ "It comes in the form of a round white pill about the size of a chickpea (or large normal pea)." But there are numerous liquid derivatives.

4b/ Probably depends on the undead.

5/ Hahaha, you think HQ has a consistent level of technology, that's adorable. ^_^ Author's discretion.

6/ Absolutely!

7/ Under Multiverse Theory, it removes the parasitic sub-dimension that is trying to warp the nature of the Word World. It doesn't affect the written story, which becomes a record of a dead world (as it were).

8/ Always.

hS

After looking several times on the wiki, there are some things that I'm wondering about that may come into play at some point, and I'm nervous about interpreting things incorrectly.

-Does a badfic come into "existence" only once it has hit the internet, or can it be similarly entered and killed via portal into a written-on-paper badfic?

-Is a fic still sporkable if it has been deleted and reposted in its original state? IE, the original author took it down but someone else put it back up and made no changes.

-Are there rules about returning regularly to one's home dimension?

-Is Bleeprin a solid, liquid, or gas? Would it work on the undead?

-Are any of the devices operated by heat-sensing touch screens?

-Is it acceptable to write an agent as having been a part of the PPC for a while, even if the character has just been created?

-How does the killing of a fic affect the Real World outside of Headquarters? Is it purged from existence, non-sentient, or some such?

-If the above have no clear answer, do I resort to the Laws of Narrative Irony and Comedy?

That does look a lot better, but... I get the nagging feeling there must be a better way.

I mean, given your total overkill nature, I'd suggest hosting HTML on FreeNet, but I don't think FreeNet has any good gateways to the regular internet, and asking everyone to go through FreeNet is obviously unacceptable.

This is a hard problem...

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Hi Thoth,

This is just a very quick test to see what it would look like if I printed it full size on standard Letter size paper. I'm not constrained to using standard sizes of paper, but I chose Letter size since it would be easiest to print and tends to look alright if resized to A4, although A4 tends not to look so great if resized to Letter.

https://tripledes.ocloud.de/index.php/s/HDiiXy4TaIdt2u3

Let me know if you prefer it better this way, or the other way around, or you'd like me to try with a smaller paper size.

Since my NextCloud server has SSL/TLS with strong ciphers preferred, and this is just a very quick experiment to test formatting, I won't PGP sign this version.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iLUEARMKAB0WIQTfllUBtaeNnRzzfmVK3+74uImA+wUCWe66KgAKCRBK3+74uImA
+74nAf0eX8h+Nh6oLy+V4Fp1dSl+7AGtujD2T905znY4/nZl/6AMD4puX+KG/ETd
gd3IE5+u6s1bgJQDCJ8iBVVEuB6bAgCaLpQNOWNMcpDnjbenkJ4UoRML9HveBnBQ
JDKRs9cBZt0RXxQoNoaawx52Su60uQ/HNQ/8iL6pqekhYzuVFZrf
=4Jl9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

He craned his neck very unsubtly in an attempt to see what was going on.

The Aviator rocked back on her heels. Her face felt very hot, but she squeezed the Detective's hand in return. "Good to know," she said, looking down at Elanor. The Time Tot was more interested in trying to chew on her shoes than anything else at that moment. "We should, erm, probably head back to our partners, then?"

"Ah," he said at last, realization dawning. It had never occurred to him that someone might not be comfortable leaving things in such a nebulous state, but if something definitive was what the Aviator needed, he thought, he could adapt.

"This thing," he said, realizing that none of what he'd thought had actually traversed the conduit from brain to mouth, "As you so charmingly put it, is whatever either of us need it to be. But since that's usually the grounds for any relationship," he continued, taking her hand, "I think it definitely follows that's what this is."

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Hi Pasty Greens,

You are right and I actually agree that it's much more natural and much more organic to find a real badfic. In some cases, much more satisfying as well.

I mentioned somewhere in this thread a bit more about why, but I'll sum it here: around 2010, the PPC came under fire publicly when a writer accused them of cyberbullying other people over their Mary Sues. It was quite a lot of bad press. I am cautious by nature, so rather than try to manage the risk of accidentally stomping all over someone's ego, even by accident, I've decided to eliminate the risk entirely.

This is just something I will do on my own, since I believe that other people here may be more capable of managing that risk than me.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iLQEARMKAB0WIQTfllUBtaeNnRzzfmVK3+74uImA+wUCWe6iBwAKCRBK3+74uImA
++hcAgCiUDuatToZTdSEeAestjOnBaiSoomr81hca7xcg+L36kcdLSZhTb+OURGJ
PS96aKQB6BpYERQjLthbl7uwPc2JAfQOio6flS3VkaLx/+IzGAHii7Jw0i3PISR6
jWmE7X4nHA5niLPN449DV/qoVUj4IjfXiuTNrFfggD3d1GyJwmI=
=Kq3i
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Hi Thoth,

I thought about it and decided I'd be able to meet you halfway. I usually structure my stuff so that I can change it quickly by making template changes if I have to, so let me see about putting out two versions, one optimized for display on tablets and mobile devices, and another optimized for display on a monitor. If you guys really want, I could make a third in simple plain text as a 'low bandwidth' option, since I understand that some of us, myself included, need to be operating on limited amounts of bandwidth and slow connections.

My NextCloud provider limits the number of lines of a .txt file that I can display on the page preview, so you would have to download it (I know this won't sit right with most) and I'd have to hand-format it, but I would be happy to do this if you guys prefer it that way.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iLUEARMKAB0WIQTfllUBtaeNnRzzfmVK3+74uImA+wUCWe6dJAAKCRBK3+74uImA
+0jtAgCkpYnyDcA5wK8bexUoq+aHkrXKhwzkC6WO3DshBnqZLEf9NjjNdDKvbpD4
6vbjw4ctaEX2g3hq0bK5sP1ScPT+Af4qTbmfCvvtTeRRWJgTXRqpuUGmGS5c+Pvm
0HNKpOi1Um03X9YFtwxi22kNdwvQvgCkHBLP0/e5TvjJf/tExK8Y
=3V7c
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Hey Huinesoron,

Inline:

> Now, onto the request itself. I'm going to go through this in
> order and comment on what I see:

Thank you for having a look at my piece and approaching it with an open mind. I would really like to know what you felt about the story itself, especially with respect to John and Ayumi's chemistry and the way they interacted, since I haven't written this pair of characters before. Much of this was very off-the-cuff, so I'm eager to hear feedback on it.

> -Your need to put PGP signatures on everything feels kind of l
> ike a lack of trust in the PPC. Okay, you use Tor - that's not
> actually banned. But assuming that we'll look at a troll claim
> ing to be you and go 'onoes we must have misjudged TripleDES a
> ll this time BANBANBAN' is... strange? Because we're not actua
> lly sitting here looking for any excuse to ban you.

The reason I put PGP signatures on everything is not because I distrust the PPC, it is because I do not trust other users on Tor.

What my worry is, may be something like a user such as Bramadin, who had previously attempted to claim my identity and pose as me, or perhaps some Internet troll coming in and misbehaving while trying to pose as me. It would be fairly difficult to ban an abusive user that also uses Tor without banning me in the process as well.

I understand the risks of using Tor to access public sites, and have come to expect that occasionally, Tor may be blacklisted on sites I visit because of abuse or spam. If that does happen, I'll understand and won't take it personally, and will return when all has settled down (although I might try to contact you by E-mail to see if everything is alright first, or I might wait for an "all-clear" from someone in the PPC before I try to come back).

The PGP signatures are a little bit of insurance. They're a technological guarantee that while someone may be able to steal my screen name, they won't be able to steal my online identity with you guys, so long as you guys have the real key that belongs to the real me. [See Footnote 1]

If you guys have my real, genuine key, you'd be able to tell immediately something is amiss if the signature verifies to another key, or if the signature fails to verify and gives a "BAD SIGNATURE from TripleDES!" error. This has the effect of being able to reduce the question of security down to two factors: the security of my computer, and the security of yours.

It's a bit overkill, but, as you guys may have noticed, senseless overkill is a bit of a pattern with me.

> -Given that people may be using either a phone or a browser, i
> t's usually better to provide something that can be read on ei
> ther. Google Docs work perfectly for this, since they adjust t
> o the screen width. Your Permission Request is very difficult
> to read on the PC. It's also hard to copy and paste quotes fro
> m, since things like linebreaks don't show up at all on the co
> py.

Sure. Thoth had a suggestion below, so I'll add another response to theirs, and I'll address this there.


> -The reason for the character bios being requested at 200 word
> s is that you shouldn't need to put much in them. The purpose
> of the bios is to check that you haven't slipped something Suv
> ian into the backstory or powers that doesn't show up in the w
> riting sample. That's it. It's not so we get their entire life
> story.

No problem, I'll try to keep things brief from this point on if asked.

> -'Because I don’t feel right bullying other people over their
> Mary Sues...' This is an immediate warning bell for me. Do you
> think the PPC is about bullying people? In your explanation to
> Iximaz, you use language such as 'taking huge amounts of flak
> and ridicule from someone anonymous', which suggests you kind
> of do.
>
> That isn't what we do. The PPC community is very clear about t
> he distinction between authors and their characters. Comment o
> n the characters doing stupid things, but never say a word abo
> ut the authors. And that's not in a 'nudge nudge, that Sue is
> so badly written she probably lived in her mother's basement i
> n a previous life, NOT TALKING ABOUT THE WRITER hehe' sense -
> it's that we recognise that writing is an art form, and one th
> at takes practice. We were all bad writers once, and many of u
> s have PPC'd our own stories for it. That doesn't say anything
> about us as people, and if anyone thinks that poking fun at ba
> dfics is a stand-in for mocking the authors, I advise them to
> think again - several times.

I understand your concern with the idea of bullying other people over their Mary Sues. I've actually followed the PPC for a little bit longer than I have let on up until now. I remember reading an article that Neshomeh had written sometime ago in response to accusations of cyberbullying. If my memory serves it was a response to a certain "Bosette" that had argued that writing Mary Sues was empowering to women. I recall it being from maybe around mid 2010 originally although I know that it may have been brought up a lot, since it's appeared several times sense.

With this in mind: I want to stress that I intend to homebrew my own badfic simply because I want to be able to err on the side of caution. This way, there can be **no possible way** I could ever be construed as having been engaging in cyberbullying, since there would be no perceptible target, except a fictional author, that doesn't exist.

It's overkill, but again, overkill is just in my nature.


> (Also, I realise you're into the crypto thing, but honestly? I
> t's ridiculously easy to find my name on the internet, but I'd
> still be 'anonymous to the majority of bad fic authors'. So is
> every reviewer on Fanfiction.net. Most people don't try and fi
> nd out who's 'really' talking to them.)

I tend to be a little bit cautious, that's all.

> -Your first agent is a canon character (indeed, the main prota
> gonist), albeit in a fiction canon. There go the alarm bells a
> gain. Have you read Jasper Fforde's Jurisfiction books? Becaus
> e it seems like your notion of how the world of fiction works
> is closer to that than to the PPC's model. You talk about John
> Smith has since sought work as a fictional character in other
> venues, but in the PPC multiverse, canon characters don't get
> to wander off when their series ends. They exist in closed uni
> verses - 'realised' to a greater or lesser extent, but always
> there. They don't move between them, and they don't 'notice' w
> hen new installments come out - that's just their timeline, fo
> r all it's still being written.
>
> -Your second agent is also a canon character, and has exactly
> the same issues: she exists in a world where she can wander be
> tween fiction at will, and is 'out of work' since her show's c
> ancellation.

I have actually not read Jurisfiction! I will have to.

I wanted to take the metafiction approach since I believed that taking a much more bold-facedly meta approach would allow for characters to also be show more in the way of self-awareness. It would make breaking the fourth wall a little bit easier, and I thought that having been from failed continuities themselves could also give them some idea of what happens when the creative process slides downhill. I've noticed that several other writers use redeemed or atoning Sues as agents and thought to take it to something of a next step. If this is incompatible with the current continuity though, I understand and will take this into account.

> -You also talk about 'a character shield which is powered by t
> wo AAA batteries... protects a character from all harm... only
> for the hero designated by the writers'. Again, this assumes a
> completely different worldview than that used by the PPC: one
> in which writers wander into their fiction, and are known by t
> heir creations (and can issue technology to an entire genre, s
> omehow). I'll admit it's an amusing idea, and would work pefec
> tly in Jurisfiction, but not in the PPC.

One of my major sources of inspiration for this was *The Last Action Hero.* The idea of an Action Hero and his Archnemesis winding up in the real world, where the rules aren't decided by the pen of the author and the Hero isn't going to triumph all the time just because of authorial fiat really appealed to me. I thought the same could be applied to a Mary Sue. After all, I feel that John Smith himself would, in his home continuity, be walking a very fine line himself. There are after all, many similarities between an Action Movie Hero, and a Mary Sue.

> -You wrote over 500 words on their car. Here is what you actua
> lly needed to write: 'Instead of a normal Response Centre, Joh
> n and Ayumi use an old car, to make them more like a buddy cop
> movie'. That's what I mean by overkill. :)

Sure.

> -If your agents are in the Department of Floaters, their depar
> tment head is the Floating Hyacinth, who isn't prone to yellin
> g. 'the trope of an angry, yelling police chief' may well be c
> ommon, but it would be a big change to the PPC canon.
>
> -The Department of Floaters isn't just about what canon they w
> ork in - it's about what type of missions they tackle. From th
> e All-Purpose Department wiki page:
>
> The All-Purpose Department contains agents who are willing to
> work in only one fandom but accept all types of missions. Com
> pare to the Department of Floaters, whose agents may work in
> any fandom and take any type of mission, and the DMS and DBS'
> s Freelance Divisions, whose agents may work in any fandom but
> only do assassinations or exorcisms, respectively.
>
> So if you're only intending to tackle Mary-Sues, pop them in
> DMS-Freelance instead.

Will do!

> -Surprisingly, I have no problem with the idea of a portalling
> car. I'm not sure what the 'real' effect of the travel montage
> is, though - what do John and Ayumi actually experience? Do th
> ey sit in the car and watch it play out on the screen? Do they
> get teleported from scene to scene?

The effects of travel montages and what the characters experience actually were a bit of a joke even before I thought of this series. For instance, if the travel montage is meant to represent a long period of time where the characters are boarding a flight, then why do they pick up the conversation that they were having before the trip back up immediatey from where they left off the moment they get off the plane or the montage ends? My guess is that when that happens, travel montages are very nearly instant to the characters, or take *exactly* the same time they take us, the audience, to watch them occur!

> -'Typical for police dramas, both Ayumi and John carry badges.
> ' Uh... what canon are you writing for, again? Because it does
> n't sound like you want to write for the PPC at all.
>
> -I'm looking through the 'writing sample', and... you're not w
> riting the PPC. You don't mention anything from the PPC. Other
> than 'killing badfic', your story has nothing to do with the P
> PC.
>
> So... good news! To write a buddy cop show about John and Ayum
> i, badfic police extraordinaire, their quirky old car, and the
> ir shouty Chief who wants Their Badges And Guns You're Off The
> Case, you don't need Permission! :D You can write it, post it
> somewhere (I recommend fanfiction.net, though some prefer Arch
> ive of Our Own), and let people read it! I'm sure there are pe
> ople here in the PPC who'd love to beta it for you - folks who
> se interests include the intersection of anime and action - an
> d we'd be happy for you to plug it on the Board when it's up s
> o we can take a look.

If you guys are going to be OK with me publishing here, I'd really like to, PPC spinoff or not. If need be, I'll preface my stuff with a disclaimer stating that Watanabe & Smith is not a part of PPC Continuity, so that way there can be no confusion at all. After all, if I've got a disclaimer stating that the stunt driving that I haven't written yet isn't realistic there's always room for more disclaimers or notes.

> But it's not a PPC story, so it doesn't need PPC Permission. C
> ase... closed.

Alright, I'll bear that in mind.

Thank you very much. I'll get to work immediately.

~3DES.




Footnote 1: A determined troll could create a counterfeit key, upload it to the keyserver, sign messages with it, present the counterfeit key to you guys as the real one, and if nobody bothers to check the signatures, then they might be able to pass off as me to someone who doesn't check the signatures. An even more determined attacker might upload thousands of counterfeit keys to the keyserver all with the identity "TripleDES" on them as a crude form of a denial-of-service attack. A very, VERY determined attacker could hijack the DNS (not usually something I would trust your average pissed off fanficcer to be capable of doing, but it's not hard since DNS wasn't ever meant to be secure) when you attempt to look back and see if the signing key has changed and verify it against the original fingerprint I posted with messages of their own, which would be able to trick anyone who hadn't obtained my genuine, original public key. An adversary with state-level resources could spend a lot of computing power and time to generate a key that produces a fingerprint collision since PGP uses SHA-1 for the key fingerprints, but my threat model doesn't at this moment account for that kind of an attack. Until a sufficiently powerful computer that can efficiently solve the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem or my computer's cryptographically secure random number generator suffers a nonce collision since I use ECDSA which consumes randomness to make each signature, I do not believe crypto, Tor, or protocols to be the weak link in my own security.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iLUEARMKAB0WIQTfllUBtaeNnRzzfmVK3+74uImA+wUCWe6cYQAKCRBK3+74uImA
+0zjAgCpFJkp1TCWQs+fsctG5QHdFBTSK6yQwe4grHs2dHx0ib66FdbToxnglS4w
XpgmUX3HTLOZD3VB7+Xk1fPhwESLAf9buuVnGbA3EvycsLPfFJtNJesE49IhmYbL
tUog5HFjXRWlhPrcHIPHqfWcBGWRSXHGh1ek1aTpK/iiyygL40SP
=EUWL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Zeb's tail wagged. "Like how much they can't wait to be alone later!"

"We've really got to figure out what we're doing," the Aviator said once she and the Detective were out of earshot. "Because this, this thing we're keeping up? Where we try to not let our partners know what's up but everyone knows? I just wanted to enjoy this party... maybe with you, but not with this hanging over my head."

who neatly sidestepped Jack's lunging index finger.

"Sure," he said, turning to the Aviator mid-step without missing a beat and making for the food tables, gesturing for the Aviator to step alongside him.

"Wonder what she wants to talk about," Jack said, leaning conspiratorially toward Zeb.

Perhaps the Imperials could use an upgrade? I propse the Empire brings the this time around?

Specifications:
19,000 meters
5,000+ Turbolasers and Ion Cannons.
Crew Complement approximately 280,000

Or for variety:

Geth Dreadnought
1190 meters
Weapons: Approximately 10.456 Kilotons from the Broadsides, Approximately 93.32 Kilotons from the Main Gun
Complement: As many platforms and fighters as can be built (Can't find anything that gives close to an estimate)

"Ix didn't want to go, so we stayed in the RC," Charlotte said. "It's nice, though, isn't it?"

"Sure is," Ix agreed. "Kinda wish we'd come, but..." The unmasked half of her face reddened. "I don't get out much."

"Peace be with you," he said in a deeper voice. He then looked at his hands holding a few bone-shaped biscuits.

"Mine!" Izzy appeared on her partner's left. She already had half of the treat sticking out of her mind. She then looked at the ladies.

"Shoo... Fou fuyyz wheer ere lassht dime?" She asked, still crunching on the biscuit.

Matt swiped away some crumbs from his shoulder. "She asks if you were here last year."

Charlotte waved, then seemed to remember she was in costume and executed a perfect curtsey. "Pretty cool party, isn't it? Last year they had a band of live skeletons! Or, uh, undead skeletons? It was cool. What've you got there?" she asked, nodding at Matt's goodies.

Then, in what seems like a messy blend of red-and-black blur, she snatched the food from her partner's hands.

Matt flinched slightly, and glanced at Izzy. "I'll never get used to this..." He then cleared his throat, and looked at the newly-arrived. "Um... hey."

said Tom. "A full glass of Mjød can kill the average man. The stuff is strong enough to get Space Marines drunk: That's why Thoth here drinks it. Which means the toxins in it are potent enough to shut down or override an organ specifically designed to prevent such toxins from having an effect."

Thoth turned to Tom. "You've drunken it before..."

Tom glared. "I've had sips. I had half a glass once and the next thing I knew it was three days later and I was in the medbay being fed Klatchian Coffee." He shrugged. "But you're welcome to try if you've got an exceptionally high tolerance."

Theo asked, aware he'd probably butchered how the drink was meant to be said. "It sounds like a decent drink for this competition. Regular ale may be good enough for one like you," he tilted his head towards Tom, "but I've got a few tricks of my own up my sleeve."

Yeah, her story is pretty awful. What kind of mental state do you have to be in to name one of your kids "Mourning"? I stand corrected, and I take it back.

I think Húrin probably loved her for more than her beauty, though. We don't see much of them interacting, but I feel like they probably made good foils for each other, him lifting her out of perpetual solemnity and her bringing him down to earth a bit. She certainly loved him enough to wait around for him even when the sensible thing would have been to run away, small child or no. She wasn't doing anyone else any good by staying.

It certainly would have helped matters if Húrin had been around more, though. Can we pin the blame on the absentee father? {; P

~

Wait, is Beleg/Mablung an established fandom thing? I was not aware of this.

And yeah, nothing changes the fact that Túrin is a big heel. He has his moments of goodness, but I think they're overbalanced by pride and stubbornness and anger issues.

~Neshomeh

It's a daemonsword that saps the life from those it kills. It's why Farsight has lived so long. Fortunately for him, his lack of warp presence means the blade can't do what it's been trying to do ever since he got it, which is possessing him.