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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

So basically what you are saying it that having a somewhat large moveset that does not defy canon is fine if it is used in the story, not plot breaking, and relevant? Would you consider it a decrease in character relevance if some techniques overlapped in usage (such as a character having both a fire fist and lightning fist attack)?

Well I do have to make my characters outsmart opponents either way. But, if I take away the stuff that makes them powerful, many people will question how my characters are even making a scratch, outsmart or no; it's not as if my characters have access to PPC technology. I have already limited their power to the minimum required to plausibly beat a Huckebein member via smarts; and, I have given them drastic consequences to using full power. I am really stuck on what to do, any less powerful and my characters have to rely on deus ex machinas to win.

If you want a reference to how powerful the villains are, check out the Standing in the Battledome portion of this link and maybe a couple of the Huckebein pages, especially Curren, Cypha, and DeVille:
http://www.outskirtsbattledomewiki.com/index.php/14-fiction-profiles/525-magical-girl-lyrical-nanoha

What a character is supposed to be is an entirely different thing from what a character actually is in a story. Which is an important distinction to make, because delivery of a character is everything. Technicalities about what powers a character has and how they can use them and how skilled they are with them and how many flashing lights those powers can create don't mean anything when they're separated from a character, in action, in their story. You can (I mean, within reason, I suppose. There're some things that just... can't be done well,) use the bio of a Mary Sue to deliver a good character in a story, and you can use the bio of a well-written character to deliver a Mary Sue. You got to look at things like how the techniques affect or reflect their character, or things about the reason for the character having said technique in the first place.

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. They're supposed to be all skilled and have all these techniques and all, and in practice they just look like a sockpuppet being held up by a badficcer who's surreptitiously saying 'Lookit me, I'm real cool!'
A well-written character who has lots of techniques and powers will actually have those techniques and powers relevant to them, whether it's as extensions of their character and backstory and all (be a bit weird if a ninja character couldn't be sneaky or any such,) or whether those techniques and powers will actually contribute to the story at hand. It can go a lot of ways, from the ninjafellow using his sneaking to bypass some obstacle, or maybe he gets all angsty about his sneaking because his love interest has an unnecessary hatred towards sneaky things. However it's done, a well-written character's skills are directly relevant to them and their plot, and if you took away said well-written character's skills, they would be losing important aspects of their character. If you took away a Mary Sue's skills, they would be losing annoying bragging rights. And of course, the Mary Sue and the ninjafellow could very easily have the exact same skills and techniques and bio - it all comes down to how it's delivered in the story.

There is a bit of a problem with large numbers of techniques generally being associated with Mary Sue types. It, once more, goes down to the issue of how the techniques relate to the character and why they're there. An interesting character generally doesn't need that many skills or techniques to be interesting. Sometimes it's even better to have less, to put emphasis on the ones they already got. Meanwhile, a Sue, which has no interest in any of that kind of stuff, can stuff themselves with as few or as many techniques as they want, because the techniques, for all purposes, essentially don't exist.

So, lots of techniques does not equal Sue. It might imply a Sue, it might be a symptom of a Sue, but it doesn't equal a Sue. Don't get me wrong - I will be very suspicious of a character with heaps of skills as opposed to one with a more moderate amount. And I do not think that I am incorrect in being so. But, nah, doesn't outright indicate one, I don't think.

Having characters master too many abilities is a bad thing for sure. However, "know" and "can use" is not the same as mastered; assuming the author meant mastered a technique when he says that a character simply knows said technique is fallacious, unless shown in the fanfic that the OC has indeed mastered it, though this is up for interpretation. Also, many people seem to equate number of techniques with power. Although this is usually true in a Magical Girl environment, it isn't the case in many other settings.

One reason to call "Mary Sue" may be that the OC is assumed to be quite young (teenage self-insert) and cannot plausibly have the twenty years of training canon characters needed to master a similar large arsenal of techniques.

HG

"Tales in the Nursery":
Owain looked up blue eyes bright in his pudgy little face.
Punctuation is my weak point, but I’m quite sure that there should be a comma between "looked up" and "blue eyes".

"Come As You Aren’t":
PPC gatherings are very important for building morale and, and cooperation between agents and departments.
I’m not entirely sure that the double "and" is intentional, although it appears to work for me (conveying that Dawn is excited and speaks a bit faster than she can think here?).

As always, I enjoyed reading your stories.

HG

While I’m here, I spotted a tiny mistake in one of the previous interludes, "Illogic Bomb":
Ripper accidentally tipped his bowl and spilled a bit his drink onto the table.
I guess this should be "a bit of his drink".

And in the current birthday interlude:
... my author decided I was best suited to Remnant in light my characterization.
Shouldn’t this be "in light of my characterization"?

— a sectioned bo staff staff like Nami’s —
I may be wrong, but I don’t believe that a "bo staff staff" is a thing in any word world.

“Hey, good to see you again!” he said, beaming.
I guess "he" is Chris talking from the console, but using his name instead of "he" would make this clearer; there’s a confusing lot of people around.

I’m looking forward to getting the still spoilery answers to the quetions I would like to ask from your future writing.

HG

I find that a lot of OCs in action fanfics are subject to this; does having a large number of techniques and/or use a couple of canon loopholes to have a plethora of abilities really indicate a Mary Sue? I personally think that this is only the case in certain genres of action because the concept of power works differently. However, I see a lot of people hating on characters because said character has a large arsenal of techniques. I feel that this is unfair to a lot of fanfic authors who have characters with a lot of skills without warping or breaking canon, stretching canon perhaps, but definitely not breaking canon. So, I wanted to ask the PPC community for your opinions on the matter.

The current hosting for T-Board limits us to 10,000 database records (there's one per post, among other things). We're currently about halfway to the limit. However, that includes all of the random test junk from when I was showing things off initially and all of the old Other Board from 2008 to 2012. So, at the rate we're going, in about five years we'll need to clear off some of the junk and in a bit less than a decade we'll need to think about some archiving (or finding more suitable hosting).

So, tl;dr, feel free to use T-Board for RPs and such. The problem is far in the future, and we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

- Tomash

Among other things, not having the Board and backup Board on the same systems is nice.

The old Other Board is still around for historical reasons (and because I haven't archived it all yet)

- Tomash

http://imgur.com/Hn4qxjT

*collects mini-Mochi*

Is the T-Board the same as the Other Board now? I saw that on the Wiki, there used to be links to a Board, Other Board and T-Board, and they were separate, but now I just see the Board and T-Board. Have they combined? Has the original Other Board gone out of use?

-Twistey

Maybe we could put them on the T-Board for the sake of making things a bit easier. Is there anything I need to know about the T-Board?

-Twistey

Because you weren't active :P

Either way, still take my newbie gift. You can use it to take out Mary Sues very efficiently ;)

-Twistey