The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Have an object of indeterminate size and color.

I'll do my best to stick around! :D

And you're welcome! Glad to help!

I hope you stick around, because we need more PMD fans here!

And thanks for the tip! I'll give the show another attempt tonight and I'll try to watch a few after your suggestion, just to be sure.

Mostly the games. Used to love the anime when I was younger, not as much, and I intend to read the manga one day. Sun and Moon is definitely my favorite game thus far, though I have a soft spot for the Mystery Dungeon spinoffs. And that's cool!

I'd say it starts getting good and serious around Mewnipendence Day, where it starts exploring the relationship between Mewnans and Monsters. In my opinion, it really gets good around Season 2 when character development kicks in for Star's mom Moon and Ludo. It does have the drawback SU has in that if you miss one plot-critical episode, you might be lost later in the series, though.

It's very nice to have newbies show up. Normally I just lurk on the Board, so you probably won't see me here often. As for a gift, take this wand of magic missile!

I do hope you choose to stay for a while!

When you say Pokémon, do you mean the games, anime, manga, or a combination of them? I have a Luxray agent from a Nuzlocke run I did, so I'm definitely a games fan.

Also, I love Steven Universe! Tried getting into Star because I heard the two were similar, but it just seemed too... weird. I dunno. About where would you say the show gets really good? (Because it took my college roommate showing me later episodes of SU before I decided to give it a second chance, I thought I'd do the same for Star.)

Why thank you!

Ahh, okay! Thank you for clarifying that!

I have a lot of them, I tend to hop around whenever I find something particularly interesting, but the ones I'd consider to be main ones are Yokai Watch, Pokemon, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Star vs the Forces of Evil, Steven Universe, and Gravity FAlls.

Have a pile of multi-coloured pens.

Hey there, and welcome aBoard! Take this plate of SPaGhetti—it's made fresh just for you.

As to your question: Everyone has a different way of deciding things! My first agents were self-inserts of myself and my then-writing partner. Later agents were badfic recruits, or simply fell through plotholes from various continua where they had just existed quietly in the background before. Original characters are totally okay—just so long as they don't glitter. ;)

I have a question for you in return! What are some of your fandoms?

Hi! I go by Feenie/Feeni3, pronouns are she/her/hers, I'm 20 years old, and I write fanfiction. Very slowly. I hope I'm doing this right, I've never used a forum system like this before.

I found PPC while browsing the internet, looking for more stuff like Mystery Science Theater 3000 either in terms of riffing bad material or, and I stumbled upon a mission and enjoyed it thoroughly. I am going to go and read the original series once I have the time and energy, of course.

The only question I have off the top of my head, while I'm typing this out, is how do you decide what your agent/agents' canon is? Like do they need to be from badfics you wrote when you were younger, or something else? I am interested in making two of my long-time characters into agents, but I'm also hesitant because they're near and dear to my heart and am...afraid of exposing them to badfic.

Also, feel free to ask me for clarification on anything I say if I come off as unclear. I fully realize sometimes I just...mangle the english language when speaking.

"A Mary Sue has lots of techniques and powers essentially for bragging rights - you'll see a million Sues get bestowed heaps of abilities and powers which will get used once to show off and be forgotten, which aren't shown at all, or which are used but don't even affect the plot or anything."

*ahem* WinX Club.

-Twistey

The fact that there's a crossover may change some people's opinions.

-Twistey

A good way to balance out power is to think like an RPG game: there's only so much XP to be gained per level (in this case, levels are years of training), and you can spend it all on one skill or you can spend a little on each skill you've got, or any other combo. But you can't be a master of every skill you have if you're only at, say, level 2. So if you make your characters older (more levels), you can make them more powerful (more spent XP).

However, a word of caution. Since your fic is focused around battle and is a crossover between two worlds that have significant differences in what's considered normal for combat abilities, you must take extreme care with regards to this stuff, or otherwise your fic might just be doomed from the beginning. I thought about this overnight and at first I thought it was going to be doomed one hundred percent, but then I remembered that you seem to know what you're doing.

This is the only other advice that I'm really capable of giving; otherwise I'm out of ideas. It is good, however, that you started that other thread to ask for others' opinions.

-Twistey

I'm just going to be blatant here.

Being away from the PPC was supposed to give time to self-improve. What I see here is Bram throwing in the towel.

Having one's husband torn away from them is horrible. It seems like Bram is asking for support. But I have to say no, albeit a soft one.

I do believe that if anyone wants to contact Bram, do it.

I am not going to deny that we do have problems with racism, and that right-wing politicians and parties have surged; however, as far as I'm aware, this increase in their popularity has been relatively minor compared to other western countries, such as the US, Great Britain, or Austria.

that Bram disagrees with the conclusions you've drawn about her being toxic, manipulative, and so on.

(On a personal note, even though it's rather pointless to argue about these sorts of things, I think that the hypothesis that Bram is really that confused about social stuff on account of autism or some similar thing has a good amount of evidence behind it.)

- Tomash

I can't quite make all my reasons for that vote coherent, but I'll give some of them.

I've been talking with Bram for a while now. During those discussions, I was asked to make a post requesting her return. I explained to her why making a post like that (such as this one) wouldn't work and would be a bad idea in general (among other things, it makes her earlier departure look insincere).

Yet, despite that advice, which (I've been reassured) made sense and was understood, this thread is up on the Board. This means that, at this time, post-return mentorship might not actually work very well.

This, plus a general feeling that the self-improvement that Bram left to go do hasn't progressed as much as we'd like, leads me to suggest that we re-open this discussion in a few months at the earliest.

- Tomash

I only asked if you would consider redundant abilites bad even if it is plot relevant. So I will take that as a no. Don't get me wrong, I don't judge a character until I read the story; in fact, I am perfectly fine with having a lot of abilities, so long as it is consistent with canon and the character. We are actually in agreement here.

As I said earlier this year, I don't feel that the PPC is a healthy place for Bramandin.

I do hope eis husband gets through the military duty safely and soundly.

—doctorlit

But I have to disagree with you. I think it's straight-up too soon, and my conversations with Bram in the recent and not-so recent past make me think that e would not be helped by returning to the community.

And, honestly? If someone isn't stable enough that being excluded from a community that hurt them (from their perspective) is enough to cause serious issues? They need to be working on stability rather than getting back into the community that hurt them. The part where they also hurt people in this community only compounds that fact.

Bottom line is, from where I'm sitting (and from where a few others I've talked to who weren't comfortable speaking up directly), this really strikes me as being too soon, and all around a bad idea.

When they do return, I would also like to suggest some pretty strong guardrails - a mentor, or perhaps multiple mentors, with the authority to say "stop this conversation" on pain of kicking/banning if she doesn't. I think that's going to be necessary to avoid spiralling misunderstandings of the sort that have caused some of the problems in the past.

Bram is, to be frank, Hella Toxic.

They're like... I don't know... I can't put this delicately. Manipulative

Let's start at the relative beginning: Bram's first few missions. They posted it and everyone went ahead and gave their constructive criticism. Fairly par for the course. Put it is how they reacted to it that set off warning flares for me, specifically towards Iximaz. They accused Ix of completely and utterly hating them just because of some concrit.

Now Bram went ahead and disappeared shortly after this occasionally coming back to drop a mission or two, post a few messages, and leave. Ignoring any Concrit given as far as I know.

And then March happens.

We all know what happened in March.

Let's not remind ourselves about it or repeat it.

So Bram comes along and starts trying to communicate with Ix. Only Ix keeps on telling them no. Keep in mind that Ix is going through a lot of personal and mental stuff right. Eventually Ix has to go to the board... which starts this $#1+ Show.

Tl;Dr: Bram repeatedly tries to gain sympathy points, but the board looks at it and, in a broad generalization, says: "This is not somewhere where your sanity and well-being are safe. It's for your own good that we want you to leave."

So after a while, as well as some unwanted phone numbers being sent, Bram leaves for a bit.

Rounding up my thoughts on the matter: I fully and wholly believe that Bram should not be let back in. I don't want to see anyone get hurt more than what Bad Fanfiction brings, and if keeping someone out is what it takes then so be it.

I'm done with dealing with this whole Bram stuff.

Just cut me out from any of it.

What can an underage bloke do to get a drink around here.

After being cast out of the PPC, Bram contacted me and we've been talking off and on for the past month or two about various things. E has just come to me and said, to quote:

"Screw it.... I want to come back to the discussion board and the discord chat. Explain that September was just an estimate, being away is really doing more harm than good at this point.
Please? At least explain that unforseen circumstances are tearing my marriage apart."

The "unforseen circumstances" in question seem to be eis husband leaving the military a year before e anticipated (August 2017 instead of August 2018).

I really don't know the situation behind what happened in the past terribly well, but I personally think that Bram seems like a reasonable individual once you get to know eim! Again, though, I know a lot of you have major issues with Bram and I am in no position to invite eim back on my own.

You can't look at a list of powers and abilities a character has and use that, and that alone, to determine if they're poorly written or not. It's a bit of a cliche to say, perhaps, but the importance is less about what the powers are and more about the how and why of them. Why does your character have fire and lightning fist? Is it related to their character development or the plot at all? Would they be affected negatively if you took those powers away? I was talking to Mikel on the Discord thingy and he mentioned Kakashi as an example - his character is that of a prodigy and (as far as I am aware) a sort of mentor-teacher type. It would, for his character development and his role in the plot, make absolutely no sense if you took his techniques and all away.

You can't judge the powers on their own merits, essentially - there is nothing inherently wrong with a character having both a fire and a lightning fist, just as there is nothing inherently wrong with a character having omnipotence or a character being entirely made of jellybeans. When you're just looking at a character's powers, separated from an actual story or their character development, you're looking at a concept, which really can't be judged at all. It all depends on why your fellow has the fire and lightning fists and what role they have in the story and to the character.

I mean, if you take a closer look, they're still having tons of trouble getting over the country's *ahem* more violent episode...

-Twistey