The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

then they're a thing.

Canon characters riffing is somewhat traditional, in fact, so I can't possibly see why anyone would object.

Out of curiosity, what were you looking to MST?

- Tomash

Well my characters generally scored in the 22-29 or 30-35 range depending on how I interpreted the questions. I mainly clicked on awesome powers, tragic past, badass clothes, strong despite being looking delicate, and slight connection to the canon characters.
Anyways, here is a link to my character profiles, they are a bit long because I went into detail regarding usage of a few made up techniques. There is a Tl;Dr at the bottom.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13rEYshBxcW4eQA1tKgmkmMNFOSW-Y4QXSmge1LStEkI/edit?usp=sharing

... And I don't even have the Ordeal set yet! 8'D Also, that reminds me: MSTs with Young Wizarsd characters? Might that become a thing?

Ahem. I'm sorry, I had to get that out of my system. What was I thinking? Ah, yes. I really need to get these. I did not know these were a thing but now I want them. A lot. I must find a way to get these into my clutches. Thank you for the information.

the story of Ronan's Ordeal is now a published thing. There's also a combined volume that collects it with Roshaun and Mamvish's Ordeal stories. A different post confirms that said combined volume will be available as a physical book, but not for another month or two.

(I, for one, pre-ordered, so I'll be reading this soon. If you hear incoherent squeeeing coming from the direction of the Board, that's just me. Nothing to worry about.)

- Tomash

My newbie gift for you is a knife and a pistol. Use them wisely until you can find better weapons.

Anyway, you say people are calling your OCs Mary Sues? Well, maybe I can help. Give me some short descriptions of your OCs, as well as their scores on the Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test (and preferably what you clicked), and maybe I can help you out. I'm good with helping people fix OCs based on short descriptions and bios.

-Twistey
Links:

The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test:
http://www.springhole.net/writing/marysue.htm

And in case you want to get the references I made with my newbie gift:
http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Wolf_3D

...because I myself was wondering if there needs to be a Department of Bad Fangames/Mods, Department of Bad Fan Animations, Department of Bad Fan Comics, etc for stuff that's fanwork but not written (like fanfic is). Or maybe even an organization different from the PPC entirely. The thing is, fangames and whatnot are a different challenge than fanfiction, because with fangames, you have to have enough skill to progress through the game, and with fan animations, there's no saving your progress, so if it's long, you have to have a lot of time on your hands. And it wouldn't really work to critique the work in writing, because then you'd have to describe things in the game, which wouldn't be quite as easy as just having a YouTube channel and doing a critique/let's play hybrid thing.

You know what? For that stuff, we need a PPC YouTube channel. I guess. Or people could refer to the PPC in the title of their video and so those would all show up in the same search. Some of us could do mod reviews, some could react to and review fan animations, some could read fan comics with fun voices, and some could just scroll through Google Images or DeviantArt looking up "[fandom here] fanart". That'd be really great. Annnnd since I'm pretty sure YouTubers get paid for views and subscribers, all the money that we get from the PPC videos could be donated to writing websites like Springhole.net and fantasynamegenerators.com.

Just kind of throwing that idea out there. Sound cool? Any thoughts? Or what?

-Twistey

...I'm going to start giving newbies their choice of souvenirs from both the iD Software 'verse, other obscure 'verses, and my own created universes.

Since Blue Pearl doesn't seem to be the type for first person shooters, and I don't have a Wattpad account yet so explanations of what stuff is in my universes aren't readily accessible, I guess I'll just give a backup gift.

Here, have your own pet history textbook. I haven't house trained him yet, and those teeth on his edges are a bit sharp, so... uh... good luck.

-Twistey

Because since I'm turning 24 today, then so is my PPC self-insert. :D

(Warning: Spoilers for some of my future PPC writing plans wherein!)

It's a fun game, not super long, and GLaDOS' sass is good stuff.

I need to beat Portal 2 and probably take another shot at Terraria one of these days.

- Tomash

I recommend Terraria, if that's part of the sale. It's sort of like Minecraft, but 2D, slightly more linear, and with way more NPCs and bosses. Word of warning; you will probably die a lot while getting used to it. And I mean A LOT, especially once you hit Hardmode. Still, it's fun, it's addictive as all get-out, and I'm really enjoying it.

Also, my 12-year-old cousin recommended A Night in the Woods after hearing that I liked Undertale (which I also highly recommend, by the way, Toby Fox is a Goddamn genius); can anyone who's played it weigh in?

I guess now's as good a time as any to finally pick up Portal 1 and 2...though I should probably be saving my money for more important stuff...aheheh.

Sorry I just got too busy to keep up with this. A couple of you were getting close, but I just can't do this any longer.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Theme was Super-Powered Evil Side.

Why can't The Witcher 3 run reasonably on five-year-old "business" laptops?

I'd like to play it, but I don't (and won't for a for months to a year more) have the hardware for it. Argh.

- Tomash

Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2
Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3
Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 2
Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
The Witcher 1 & 2
Final Fantasy 7
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Because those Assassin's Creed games are gonna eat into my pocket money. >.> But the rest of them are an absolute steal and I'm quite excited to get started!

Why now... Why oh why, when I have to save munny for London Gathering!? UGHGHHHHH

Where do I even begin?

- Shadow of Mordor 80% OFF !!!!11oneoneone
- South Park: The Stick of Truth
- The Witcher 3 dropped half off...
- Ughhh and Darkest Dungeon -60%!

Talk about what (if anything) you're getting or thinking of getting, rave about games you think other people should buy, ask if X game is worth the money, and so on.

Personally, I really should be staying away from the sale because I already have a backlog in my Steam library, but I'm once again thinking about getting Kerbal Space Program. Or Stellaris.

The spacing is much better (though not perfect--generally, if one person has an action before they speak, their dialogue will be on the same line), but you're still using colons where they shouldn't be. In fact, at a glance, I'd say pretty much every colon you've used before dialogue should be a comma or a period.

Again, I recommend reading this article. It's pretty clear, and goes over just about every way there is of punctuating dialogue. It's almost definitely more clear than any explanation I can easily give.

What I can do is give some examples of how something could be written (admittedly more in my style, though I've tried to mimic a bit more of yours in the first one, since I don't seem to automatically go for putting longer introductions before the dialogue. That's more of a stylistic choice, though). I hope the examples and the article help.

Let's say I'm writing dialogue for my agents. It might look something like this:

Dawn sighed. "I don't know--it seems like a lot of effort to go to just for a bit of chocolate," she said. "I'm not sure I want to bother."

"But it'd be awesome!" Abaddon got to his feet. Picking up his mug, he added, "You know you'd have fun. Besides...I don't want to do the diving competition alone."

"But here's the thing: I don't feel like swimming." Dawn shrugged. "What can I do? I've had enough water lately."

The two agents looked at each other in silence for a bit; finally Abaddon put on his best wide-eyed expression and said, "Pleeeaase?"

Dawn snickered.

"Oh, go on, then." Abaddon dropped the expression. "How often do you get to compete for chocolate?"

"Not often enough."

Here, I've used periods and commas before lines of dialogue. I've also used a colon within a line of dialogue ("But here's the thing: I don't feel like swimming.") and used a long introductory sentence followed by a comma before the dialogue (The two agents looked at each other in silence for a bit; finally Abaddon put on his best wide-eyed expression and said, "Pleeeaase?") What I haven't done is use a colon to introduce a line of dialogue. I won't say it's never done, because for all I know there's a little-known exception somewhere, but going by grammar articles, a grammar book, and past reading experience, colons are generally not used to introduce dialogue in English fiction writing.

(I did use a colon to introduce the example itself. That works because I'm introducing a giant quote of sorts as an example in a non-fiction post, rather than a line of dialogue in a fiction story).

--

If I were writing an academic paper, I would use colons differently. I might well write something like Grimaldi continues the explanation in his 2016 paper 'Wildlife of British Columbia': "[t]he grizzly bear [...] is the fiercest of all, dwelling primarily in the far North of the province. The lack of residents enables the grizzly to refrain from eating garbage, making for a far healthier animal..."** (Or, boiled down: Grimaldi continues: "[t]he grizzly bear [...] is the fiercest of all...") The colon works here because it's introducing a quotation in an academic paper.

In fiction, however, this would look quite different. Let's take Grimaldi again and rework this into fictional dialogue...

The audience was, by now, captivated. Grimaldi smiled as he continued. "Now, take grizzly bears. They're the fiercest of the BC bears, but they mainly live in the far North. They also get to eat less garbage, since there aren't as many people around..."

That got a laugh.

Here I've used a period, though I'm fairly certain a comma would also work. As far as I'm aware, it's just a matter of nuance here. (If anyone reading can articulate the rule about when you use the comma vs the period in this sort of case, please feel free to chime in!)

Another way to write it, this time using a comma:

Sensing that his audience was now captivated, Grimaldi continued, "Now, take grizzly bears. They're the very fiercest of the BC bears, but they mainly live in the far North..."

--

I hope some part of this helps.

I do very strongly suggest reading the article I've linked (here) and looking up more articles on writing dialogue tags as well. There are a surprising (or perhaps not-so-surprising) number of grammar blogs and articles around, and most of them are pretty clear. This should help you figure out what you need to replace the colons with--because as it is, every single one of them should be a comma or period (which one depends on the context). You could also find a SPaG beta to help you out.

Your first writing sample has only one colon in it, and is a much more natural sort of read. Something along those lines (and with no colons used to introduce dialogue) is more the sort of writing I'm looking for.

As before, I'll be happy to look at a revised version; just be aware that it might take me a few days. I'm in the last couple weeks of preparing to move away for a year, so there's a lot to do some days.

~Z

**Grimaldi, his paper, and the quote are all invented by me. While I'm pretty sure northern BC has grizzly bears, I can't speak for the truthfulness of anything else in that fake quote. Although campgrounds in Canada do frequently have bear-proof garbage containers.

Also, now I rather like the guy. I wonder if he'd fit into anything I'm currently writing...