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Hello everyone,

I've been getting ready for a permission request but have been looking for a Beta Reader. I will need a bit of help, would anyone be willing?

Please note that because I can only access the worldwide web through Tor, I cannot use the Discord chatroom anymore. I have (Federated) XMPP and both Protonmail and Tutanota.

Thank you very much
~3DES.
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Good to see that you managed to make it past the roadblocks--and that you managed to get the upper hand in the end.

And I finally attach a face to the famous Lily Winterwood. (I vaguely remember that she mentioned in a previous World of PPC thread that she wasn't British. Speaking of which, I haven't started a World of PPC thread yet this year, have I? Better rectify that soon.)

One of these days, we should have a New York gathering. Memory serving, most of the Gatherings so far have been in Europe--and England in particular!

Faolan flicked her wand, and yards of red sequined silk flew out of the bag and laid itself neatly on the floor. Another wave and the pattern laid itself on top, held in place with magic.

"So, after you're done with the Jessica Rabbit costume, we've got a Sixth Doctor order," Charlotte said, "Can't believe how hard it was to find all those different fabrics."

"That lining had to be specially made," Faolan said, nodding. Several quick Diffindos and the sequined fabric was neatly cut into pieces. "Glad we got these when we did, though. I was worried we'd have to start looking at letting the gas bill go." She glanced at the mantle and bit her lip.

Charlotte sighed and set her folder aside. "Hon, do you often think about maybe going back to the PPC?"

Faolan paused, lowering her wand. "All the time," she said quietly. "Why?"

"Just, you don't seem very happy here," Charlotte said. "I know you were thrilled at the idea of retiring, but ever since it actually happened you keep eyeballing the beacon, waiting for it to go off."

Faolan glanced at the metal disc on the mantle again and sighed. "I'll be fine," she said. "Once I get used to the full moon again. It's been ten years since I've had to deal with them, save for the odd accident on a mission."

Charlotte nodded slowly. "And the rough startup with the shop's not helping, either," she said. It wasn't a question.

Faolan shrugged. "I mean, we're making ends meet, and that's all I can ask for," she said, but Charlotte shook her head.

"We've already had to cut electricity," she said, gesturing around at the candles flickering from the tables and mantle. "Ix—Fwai, you're scared things will go back to the way they were before."

Faolan turned to face Charlotte. "As long as we've got a roof over our heads and food on the table, I'm not going to complain," she said, "but when I married you, I promised I'd give you a good life, one that you deserved. I thought... I was foolish enough to think someone like me could do that."

Charlotte opened her mouth to protest, but what came out was a shrill, "POLLY, NO!"

There was a loud clunking noise and Faolan whirled around to see one of the candlesticks on the coffee table had been knocked over by the cat, landing on the stack of Sixth Doctor fabrics and setting it ablaze. A jet of water from Faolan's wand extinguished it, but the damage was already done.

"Oh no," Faolan whispered, staring at the mess.

"Hey. Fwai, don't worry, it'll be okay," Charlotte said, going over and wrapping an arm around her waist."You can just repair the cloth, right?"

Faolan shook her head. "If it was just torn, then yes, but it's not," she said. "And I can't conjure more, either, it would just vanish after a while."

Charlotte bit her lip. "How much would it cost to get more made?"

"Too much." Faolan slowly sat down on the floor, and Charlotte moved with her. "I—we're going to have to cut the gas now, too. Lottie, I..." She buried her face in her hands.

Charlotte rubbed her back, unsure of what else to say.

She was saved from having to say anything when the beacon on the mantle went off with a shrill [BEEEEEP!] She got up, silently cursing. If they were being called in, things were going to get ugly, and fast. Not exactly what they needed to be dealing with at that moment.

Faolan summoned her knee brace and slowly strapped it on, cursing under her breath at their rotten luck.

The PPC is the brainchild of Jay and Acacia; Ix and Charlotte belong to me. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, and Twilight to Stephenie Meyer.

Looks like I'm having to close the PTU campaign because of a lack of interest.

Novastorme

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15LUQJJ6c54vmzBUsfqSgajRdURooz3pvD5yzUmlXU0/edit?usp=sharing

So, this is copied from #recsand_plugs on the Discord, after I proceeded to go into WAYYY too much spammy detail for the channel regarding an awesome (at least I hope) crossover concept my sister and I have been working on. Compiled to a doc and presented for any who want to check it out. Feel free to leave comments here since they're disabled on the doc itself.

… and the hearth or percolator or whatever Androia may have used, are glaring plot holes and every reader would immediately ask the questions Hieronymus eventually asks. But that's obviously only me, knowing a lot I didn't actually write yet.

Your advice would be quite good if this were meant to be a stand-alone story.

But if you could read it in context of the spin-off I still have to write, even the line about never having breakfast in the RC might be unnecessary exposition (and I was actually afraid of being called out for that). You would already know that Androia and Hieronymus always try to eat on missions at Hogwarts, because they don't like to go to the cafeteria and their RC didn't come with a kitchenette and they both don't know how to cook anyway. The sudden change would probably be more obvious then.

Unfortunately, you can't read it in context, because my spin-off currently only consists of writing exercises for workshops and of other small pieces like this here, spread all over the board archives, self-consistent (I hope) but not quite canonical, because most of it was written before I got permission.

So, I will not change this right now, but I will keep in mind that, when the missions and interludes that go first are available and I make this a canonical dream, it may need some revision to adapt to what's actually published then. (Note to self: On return from their second or third mission, the agents bring some extra food back to the RC, but then they don't know how to keep it fresh – there is no fridge.)

Thank you.

HG

After speaking to SeaTurtle (excitedly and at length), I can reveal that the mysterious woman skulking around the background of this story is none other than Naya (Naya'Keegan vas Headquarters), of the DIA in the present. You may know her as Terabyte and the Guardsman's partner, or as the person the Reader was married to in a Ten Years Hence from a couple years ago. Now, however, I'm making it officially canon: Naya and the Reader will get married in the future, and will eventually retire together. Fluff all around :)

Apart from that: I'm glad the descriptions worked well! They were fun to come up with.

I have also spotted a missing word towards the beginning--the Reader was *wearing* the blinding outfit when she met a real Silurian. Whoops.

And...that's it. Pending other reviews, I think I'll probably just rework the story slightly so that Naya is present in name and description as well, at the very least.

Thanks for reviewing! :)

(I shall get to reviewing as well at some point too, just...not quite yet. I need to go find dinner and then sleep is a thing I will need more of...)

~Z

You guys are going to have to stop me from making a Gathering every month once I move to London, I swear. One of these days I'll drag everyone to Stratford-upon-Avon and we'll quote sonnets at each other or something...

(What? You posted the Globe, it seemed like the logical conclusion.)

So does this mean we can expect your London 2017 report this time next year? :P

No, not the 2017 one Iximaz did such a wonderful job of covering (though I will do that one someday...). This is the one last year, where Lily Winterwood came to London for a day, and Kaitlyn and I went out to see her.

The Report

(As for why Gathering Reports exist in the first place, that's probably my fault. Their purpose is to let you put faces to names, and to show that Gatherings Are Fun, and you should probably come along to the next one. ^_^ Also I like writing - I know, right?!? - and have all these photos that need using...)

hS

I really liked the concept of this fic. It's a pretty cool idea. And generally speaking, you executed it pretty well. The whole Inception/Groundhog Day ending was neat, and you gave us some very nice initial clues in the lead up.

The only issue I had - and this might be just me - is the precise way the ending is written. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I got to that last paragraph, and my first thought was "wait... what locker? What fridge?" They were such minor details in the early story that I didn't even remember them. I would suggest - if I may be so bold as to do so - making them more prominent or somehow unusual so that they stick in our minds better.

Well, there is not really much relating to "Friday 13th October", other than "bad day – new demon arrived" (but then we don’t know when Tom checked last, and how long the demon may already have been there). But using every opportunity to write your agents before you ask for permission is a smart move, so congrats on that. And you write them well. I don’t know the Laundryverse, or which continuum Tom’s Space Marine partner may have come from, but I still feel like I understand most of what is going on there.

But one sentence confused me. Not being a native speaker, I’m not sure whether it’s grammatically possible that a minor demonic entity had taken up residence with a bin of electronic components or whether it should be obvious that Tom used a bin of electronic components together with the scanner app on his phone, and a working knowledge of Old Enochian (but where had the demon taken up residence then? Or should this be obvious too?) Maybe some words or some punctuation are lacking there, but I guess breaking the sentence up to make it more clear would be best.

Overall, I get a good first impression of your agents, and I can picture their RC. (Or should I imagine it? I’m not sure about that choice of word.)

HG, before reading the notes.

Yeah, my train of thought went: Turn it on top – how would this manifest to my agents – but how would this be spooky? – And although I’m afraid of having to write the drama that should ensue after "I am your creator", this easy copout should better not be canon.

Since I’m not a native speaker, grammar and word choice is actually what I need most help with; I would appreciate that. (Note: While my posts on the board are mostly American English because that’s more common here, in stories about my agents I try to follow British rules, because that’s what they do in the Harry Potter division.)

HG

Overall, this was well-done. I can't think of any particular aspect that stands out as "the thing I liked the most", just that is was pretty good.

General thought: Your characters are never going to get long-lasting happy endings, are they? (Not that that's inherently a bad thing, just something I noticed)

The one thing that's sticking out at me is the sudden transition between the talking about the gas bill and Chartotte asking about going back to the PPC. It felt like the conversation just jumped without any setup or reason for it to do that. Like, I don't think I saw enough of what was happening or what people were thinking to justify that. It was propped up by a sigh and a folder close without much else.

I'm not even sure this is all that much of a problem, given the story length and such, but it was something I thought I'd mention that I noticed.

- Tomash

Faolan flicked her wand, and yards of red sequined silk flew out of the bag and laid itself neatly on the floor. Another wave and the pattern laid itself on top, held in place with magic.

"So, after you're done with the Jessica Rabbit costume, we've got a Sixth Doctor order," Charlotte said, "Can't believe how hard it was to find all those different fabrics."

"That lining had to be specially made," Faolan said, nodding. Several quick Diffindos and the sequined fabric was neatly cut into pieces. "Glad we got these when we did, though. I was worried we'd have to start looking at letting the gas bill go."

Charlotte sighed and set her folder aside. "Hon, do you ever think about maybe going back to the PPC?"

Faolan paused, lowering her wand. "All the time," she said quietly. "Why?"

"Just, you don't seem very happy here," Charlotte said. "I know you were thrilled at the idea of retiring, but ever since it actually happened you keep eyeballing the beacon, waiting for it to go off."

Faolan glanced at the metal disc on the mantle and sighed. "I'll be fine," she said. "Once I get used to the full moon again. It's been ten years since I've had to deal with them, save for the odd accident on a mission."

Charlotte nodded slowly. "And the rough startup with the shop's not helping, either," she said. It wasn't a question.

Faolan shrugged. "I mean, we're making ends meet, and that's all I can ask for," she said, but Charlotte shook her head.

"We've already had to cut electricity," she said, gesturing around at the candles flickering from the tables and mantle. "Ix—Fwai, you're scared things will go back to the way they were before."

Faolan turned to face Charlotte. "As long as we've got a roof over our heads and food on the table, I'm not going to complain," she said, "but when I married you, I promised I'd give you a good life, one that you deserved. I thought... I was foolish enough to think someone like me could do that."

Charlotte opened her mouth to protest, but what came out was a shrill, "POLLY, NO!"

There was a loud clunking noise and Faolan whirled around to see one of the candlesticks on the coffee table had been knocked over by the cat, landing on the stack of Sixth Doctor fabrics and setting it ablaze. A jet of water from Faolan's wand extinguished it, but the damage was already done.

"Oh no," Faolan whispered, staring at the mess.

"Hey. Fwai, don't worry, it'll be okay," Charlotte said, going over and wrapping an arm around her waist."You can just repair the cloth, right?"

Faolan shook her head. "If it was just torn, then yes, but it's not," she said. "And I can't conjure more, either, it would just vanish after a while."

Charlotte bit her lip. "How much would it cost to get more made?"

"Too much." Faolan slowly sat down on the floor, and Charlotte moved with her. "I—we're going to have to cut the gas now, too. Lottie, I..." She buried her face in her hands.

Charlotte rubbed her back, unsure of what else to say.

She was saved from having to say anything when the beacon on the mantle went off with a shrill [BEEEEEP!] She got up, silently cursing. If they were being called in, things were going to get ugly, and fast. Not exactly what they needed to be dealing with at that moment.

Faolan summoned her knee brace and slowly strapped it on, cursing under her breath at their rotten luck.

The PPC is the brainchild of Jay and Acacia; Ix and Charlotte belong to me. Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, and Twilight to Stephenie Meyer.

I mean, I create OCs who are in relationships with each other (I have nothing against canon-x-OCs that are done right, and indeed there are some fandoms such as Frozen where there are only one or two actually good ships that are canon-x-canon, but I don't really create OCs to ship with canons myself), but as for canon-x-canons, I don't really do much shipping. I do endorse canon ships, but you'll more likely find me tearing apart bad ships than creating good ones. (Again, most Frozen ships.) So yeah, that's my take on shipping.

-Twistey

I aim to get a Discord eventually, but I don't have one as of now. This sounds pretty cool, by the way! Sad I can't join!

-Twistey

I always forget to do this stuff...

The PPC belongs to Jay and Acacia, in custody of the board and its Mighty Permission-Givers (TM). I don't have permission, but this is considered acceptable in this case, by virtue of blanket Permission from a permission giver for this event.

The Laundry Files and the entities therein belong to Charles Stross. So does OFCUT (although I never explicitly mentioned OFCUT...).

Warhammer 40k, Adeptus Astartes/Space Marines, The Thousand Sons, The Horus Heresy, The Warp and so on belong to Games Workshop. With luck they won't sue me for anything in the future.

Thanks to Tomash for pointing out my stupid mistakes in writing this and generally helping out.

Tom Andrews was not having a good day.

Picture, if you will, the inside of RC #65536+3i - a number that Tom was certain had been designed specifically to annoy him. Given that this was HQ, it was entirely possible.

The small room was neatly partitioned. One side was fanatically clean, with a carefully organized bookshelf and a neatly organized desk taking up most of the space. Well, most of the space that wasn’t taken up by a very large form that appeared to be sleeping. Tom was about 80% sure his partner wasn’t actually sleeping, but he was equally sure that making any deliberate effort to “wake” him was a bad idea.

The other side of the room was taken up by what was seemingly a swamp composed entirely of books, which seemed to have obtained their current placement when a hurricane blew through. There was a supply of Coke in the corner, from which empty cans had been strewn about carelessly. A small desk held a laptop, two precariously-stacked monitors, and a console. Not to be confused with the RC’s console, which was prominently positioned in the center of the room. This one was monochrome, text-only, and came straight from the 80s. And it was currently showing no text at all and beeping quite loudly at Tom.

*SMACK SMACK SMACK* “Work!”

The console refused to budge, even after being hit several times - which was surprising: this technique had been fairly effective in the past. Tom sighed and opened the thing up, jiggling about any components that might be loose. However, the console was still entirely nonfunctional.

And this was how Tom came to be carrying a very heavy piece of vintage hardware through the corridors of the PPC, in a vaguely DoSAT-wards direction. Probably. It was hard not to think of your destination when you were lugging something this heavy. After his tenth break along the way, he briefly considered working out how to summon some demons to do it for him. After the twelfth, he was halfway through the equations before he remembered why this was a Bad Idea.

In the end, it took him around 15 minutes to get to DoSAT, by which time he was panting like he’d run a marathon. He looked around for the nearest tech. “I’d like… this thing… repaired please…” he gasped.

The tech looked at him with a mixture of annoyance and bafflement. “That’s an Heathkit terminal from the 1980s. It’s ancient and not particularly good. You sure you don’t want to just chuck it?”

By this point, Tom had placed the console down, and was feeling a bit less winded. “I quite like it, myself. And I would like it repaired if you can do it.”

“Well, I guess I could try and find someone to- wait a minute. What continuum are you from?”

Tom glanced around awkwardly. “Weeell… um… you see… I can’t actually tell you that...”
The tech grabbed his CAD and pointed it at Tom:

Tom Andrews. PPC Agent. Continuum of Origin: Laundryverse. OOC: 3.127%. Error Margin: 5%. Suggested Action: Nothing.

“I knew it!” said the Tech. He glared at Tom. “Look, I’m not touching that thing until you clear it first. I happen to value my life.”

Tom rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said, “there’s nothing in there. But if makes you feel better, I’ll run scan on the thing just to make sure.” He ran his phone over to terminal.

His phone beeped.

Tom sighed. “Of course. Just my bloody luck today. Gloves?”

And that was how Tom Andrews ended up poking around the inside of his terminal, looking for and attempting to banish whatever minor demonic entity had taken up residence with a bin of electronic components, the scanner app on his phone, and a working knowledge of Old Enochian. After a few hours of careful work, he managed to trap the thing in an improvised circuit for examination or banishment. This circuit disappeared into a ziplock, which itself disappeared into another ziplock - touching it would be a Bad Idea now. However, his terminal was clean of any sinister influences now, so he could finally hand the thing over to a technician for examination and repairs.

By the time he got back to his RC (once again lugging his terminal), it was significantly later. His partner sat at the cleaner desk, reading through the Horus Heresy novels at an alarming speed. “I trust that you have taken care of the issue with your terminal device?” he asked, gesturing at the terminal as Tom set it back down on his desk.

“Yes, Thoth,” Tom said, irritatedly. “I took it down to DoSAT and… wait a minute. How did you… You could have helped!”

Thoth shrugged, a gesture that looked strange on a Space Marine. “You should have checked to see if I was truly sleeping. Besides, I had more important things to do than aid you.”

“You- you- you- you-” at this point, Tom made a shockingly creative word choice.

“I believe that was my original job in my home continuum, was it not? I am, after all, a Thousand Son.”

Tom sighed. “I’m not even going to try and argue.” He grabbed a can of Coke. “I’m going out.”

“Where?”

Tom grabbed a his laptop and some reading material (a tattered copy of Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools) and stepped out the door. “Rudi’s!”

This slice-of-life thing gave me a good sense of the contrast between characters, I'd say - the Seventh Reader's a quiet unadventurous person (that is, I could totally see her doing the "old grandma in a rocking chair" thing), while Inbal'l is more outgoing, energetic, etc.

I also think the descriptions at the beginning gave me a good sense of what people looked like without being too detailed, if that makes sense.

Now for the potentially-bad news: one aspect of the story left me rather confused. There seems to be some unnamed third person, "she", lurking around the background of this story. I have no idea who she is, or what she's doing other than staying at this hotel, or how she's related to any of the characters in the story other than that they seem to know her. If that was intentionally meant to be vague, then it worked. If not, some exposition about what's going on near the beginning might help.

- Tomash

Ok, first off, that ending! You'd set me up for the idea that you were taking the prompt and turned it on it's head with the "day nothing can go wrong" thing (which would make sense as a PPC story) and then, dam, it might have all been a dream or something. Or not. Who knows? I don't, and that was really neat.

In retrospect, the missions were rather uncharacteristically easy for the PPC, which adds to the weirdness factor when you go back and look.

This will be a somewhat unhelpful review on the concrit side, since I'm having trouble finding something that could use work other than grammar and word choice stuff (I remember "dismissed" applied to choice of clothes jumped out at me). If you want me to go list that stuff out, let me know.

- Tomash

I suspect that happened because I was thinking in a very tech-nerd way while writing this (for one thing, those hostnames and error messages needed to be plausible, dammit), which led to me tending to use vocabulary like that more than I usually would in something I'm writing.

- Tomash

I kind of just ignored the word and read the context. It certainly made semse to me.

I guess now I know what a molly-guard is. Or rather, that that thing is called that.

One comment: I know what a Molly-guard is (because tech nerd), but it's not common vocabulary, even among the tech people I know.