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With location being the Natural History Museum and then... just stroll around the area the entire group, eat food, have a laugh, etc.

Can I get that info confirmed?

The Shin Megami Tensei canon is not a happy place, and Apocalypse is a very appropriate subtitle. Canopus is from a world that is overrun by demons and has been sealed underground for her entire life. The canons from Apocalypse finish their training in the prologue at the age of 15, and have already seen multiple other hunters die fighting demons. Being a battle hardened veteran at 17 is quite plausible in that environment.

After years of being in this community, I think what is now clear is that we are not equipped to work with you in a productive way. I'm sorry that's the case, and I wish it weren't true. But a large number of your interactions with other Boarders have been characterized by miscommunication and confusion.

Bramandin, I don't think this community is healthy for you. I don't want to see you hurting, either emotionally or physically, because of anything that happens here. Your personal safety is far more important than anything else. That is why I would like to ask you to give this community up. Forget the PPC, forget everyone here, block the Board on your system if you don't have the will power to stop coming. Live a happy and safe life with your husband, and forget us.

I want to reiterate that my intent here is not to kick you out, or turn you away from us, as any kind of punishment or attack. I also don't want this to feel like a punishment for having autism, as I know that's not something you can help, and that you've been working hard to be a part of the community in spite of it. I want this to be a decision you make, to ensure your own continued health and life, and to leave a situation that isn't making you happy, and isn't benefiting you. Please, do this to keep yourself safe.

—with respect, goodwill, and hope for a safe future,
doctorlit

bramandintook at gmail

I'm going to try to go back to bed, though.

Did you mean for the items on that list to be interpreted narrowly and only apply in very clear cases? Because if not, the line I think you've drawn circles a lot of fuzzy gray area and is easy to cross accidentally, which seems inappropriate for a line that will trigger an automatic ban when crossed. For example, I could argue that Scape's response to Bram/zdeminsia is banworthy under your proposal as I understand it. Therefore, I vote against this proposal as written.

Now, I had an idea, which might be rather silly: If Scapegrace lashes out at someone in a way that results in apologies/amends/etc. being called for, she [should/shall] not interact with the community except to resolve that issue until the issue is fully addressed, that is, until the apologies are accepted or uninvolved parties determine that the person owed an apology is being unreasonable in refusing it. In other words, if Scape screws up, she should [act as if she's/be] banned from everything but fixing the problem until it's fixed.

This proposal would, I think, address the concern several people have about Scapegrace sometimes not seeing the whole "making amends" thing all the way through. I'll admit that this all would be a rather annoying, painful, and/or unpleasant restriction to operate under. However, unlike what you called for, I'd be comfortable with my plan being something in our general toolkit of "things we can impose on people/ask them to impose on themselves in the event that something about their behavior isn't great".

The reason some of that wording is in brackets is because, unless my mental models of people are off (which they very well might be), something like this would work better if adopted voluntarily.

- Tomash

You can email me if you'd like.

Who is ready for a trip back to the planet Thra? Netflix announced Thursday that it is producing a 10-episode TV series prequel to Jim Henson’s 1982 fantasy film, The Dark Crystal.

The series is called The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and takes place many years before the events of the much-beloved movie. According to the official synopsis, the show concerns three Gelfling who discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis’ power, and set out on an epic journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world.

The series will be shot in the U.K. and will star an ensemble of fantastical creatures created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and Brian Froud, the original feature’s conceptual designer. Filmmaker Louis Leterrier (Now You See Me, The Incredible Hulk) will executive-produce the series and direct.

The first paragraph doesn't grab me. I am interested when it starts showing that she has PTSD.

As she is examining herself in the mirror, I don't feel anything. There was a flash of sympathy when she decided not to fall back to sleep.

I'm reacting more to her having cut her hair than to her cleaning her sensitive burns. A feeling of wanting to restore a feeling of normalcy.

I feel like I should have a reaction to her eating frozen waffles. I'm a little irritated that she was watching the news, but it was unimportant.

I'm interested when she's waiting for the train, and thinking about why she takes it. The word "penance" sticks out for me, it makes me feel bad.

I'm curious about the man, but agreeing with her that it's nothing. Just the wind, nothing to worry about. I'm imagining the Randolf street L station downtown, but I know that's wrong.

I'm getting a little bit of head-hopping when she's talking to her boss. She doesn't know that there wasn't much more he could say.

Why did she feel the need to say that they're on the twelve floor? We don't know, but her boss should.

I'm feeling disoriented when she's jostled by the crowd at the light. Intrigued at how there aren't window washers.

For a moment, I was in the dark and muggy Metra electric train station underground. I have a feeling that's also the wrong place, like she's outside and not at a trains-are-parked end of the line.

Again, from memory, but I think it's June and July of 2014.

I was wrong to think that I had to interact on the board to get permission. It got worse as I felt more attacked and ignored. There was a joke about how someone couldn't understand that my character was a Mary-Sue for five minutes, and then a vampire for five centuries. It made me feel that I would be mocked for being weird, and increased the stress, which made it harder to communicate.

I think that there was no malice behind it, but it seems that having a problem with the permission process is a grave sin.

I began by being too open and honest about my plans. I revealed that my first team wasn't my main team, and then was asked to use my mains. It seems the only solution would have been to lie about who my main team was so that I could use my first team.

That team was a lot more complicated, and didn't fit the prompts. Bramandin had the flexibility to write whatever he wanted to know his characters. zdimensia was stuck trying to know them outside of the PPC, which wouldn't have identified the problem, or writing them out of character.

I wrote that "I don't want to use these characters" and got no response. A few weeks later, I wrote "my characters don't fit the prompts." Someone noted that I was getting frustrated, but I was too shy to respond.

When I noted that the permission process was confusing, someone asked me how, but I got no response when I explained things. The permission process page was adjusted later, after it would do me no good. I do feel that I was hazed by having to use characters that didn't quite fit the formula, but people just assumed that I was complaining because I couldn't write.

I admit that I didn't use a beta. It was part of how the permission process page is confusing. I've made an adjustment. I got convinced that I couldn't use a beta. I got a little bit of confusing feedback early on, and following it made things worse.

Neshome changed "my characters wouldn't do this" to "I don't like the prompts." It's the language from the FAQ, showing that she was going off of preconceptions rather than actually listening. I was too scared to correct her.

That's actually a co-write with SkarmorySilver. the other Mission is "Fear Fear Itself". And then there's the Interlude... They are all linked in my main character's page.

The game idea sounds kinda interesting...

Think it was called "KnightFail" or something. Sounds hilarious.

Funny thing, I might include a slight reference to the PPC in one of my games. The game will be called "Sue VS Sue," and it'll be like Mortal Kombat or something, a one-on-one fighting game except with Mary Sues. There'll be something about a "monster" living underneath the arena that feeds on Sues' power, and one of the possible deaths for a character will be that they're pulled underground by a vine-tentacle. (Like a captured Flower gone crazy. Or something.) It's going to be quite a funny game, I just know it. :)

-Twistey

I've seen them a few times (looks like a dude but I can't be sure without chancing that I'm wrong), but I can't remember their name! They had a swirly-looking curl, glasses, a fuzzy coat, and a pet polar bear.

Maybe we should go into Hetalia canon and ask the other countries who we're looking for?

-Twistey

I'm doing this from memory, but the archives from August of 2014 should have the truth.

Oh, she volunteered to leave for a few months. Let's take a three-month ban out of the choices because it won't be punishment anyway.

It's also where people noticed that I had trouble communicating on the board. Samuri said that I was a different person in googledocs. People lamented that I hadn't been given a big sis.

Punished for what, exactly? For not being listened to? For having a disability that makes it hard to communicate? For having trouble with the permission process? For not being told clearly what you wanted me to do?

Probably getting more into July than August here. You kept telling me to get permission, I was well beyond done with explaining that I was having a problem. (If you had listened to me and talked to me, there wouldn't have been a problem.) When I did what you told me to do, I was banned.

When you said I needed permission, I did step back and work on things that were allowed. I just didn't clearly explain what I was doing.

You said to rely on the wiki that had let me down. No one explained until later that just because it's a canonical PPC story doesn't mean it fits into PPC canon. I'm still confused on how I was supposed to know that. I think that somehow I had to guess what the PG's headcanon was.

If someone had said, "The issue is the questions" it could've been solved a lot faster. I can't read your mind, and I can't interpret subtext.

I didn't know I was supposed to vote. Even so, it wasn't 70% concensus.

If I had been allowed to voluntarily leave for a few months, or even allowed to stay, you would have seen me calm down.

What I did wrong was care what you think. What I did wrong was to try to make you happy and completely missing it.

I that post from June 2015, I can't focus to read it right now,

but I remember being called delusional, troll, unhealthy, arrogant,

Someone questioned whether I had a point, if people were villainising me. It didn't matter because the problem was gone and every person involved was happy about it.

I wasn't even aware then that I was autistic. I thought my weirdness was nurture,

but you ascribed malice where there was none. ALL THE TIME.

I think perhaps that I need a mediator and translator. It's been noticed that I communicate better off of the board.

I don't know this canon, but that largely didn't affect my reading. You said this is an excerpt from a longer fic; I'm not sure if the beginning of this passage is also the beginning of the fic, but it's an excellent beginning either way. I immediately started to get a sense of both characters' personalities from their dialogue and movement/body language, supplemented by the slightly-Hitch's-point-of-view narration. You do a great job of expressing Hitch being pulled between staying professional in a formal setting and being bored enough to want to play a game. You also get across the fact that Hitch clearly respects Ruby a good deal, despite the age difference, and trusts her enough to start playing this game in public without expecting any really terrible consequences.

Despite the very excellent characterization right at the opening, I do think the setting needs a bit more description early on. Knowing that the party is so packed that Ruby has to squeeze between people to move away from Hitch colors the conversation about playing the lemon game, as it implies that it will be harder to move the lemon around without being seen—but we don't know it's that busy until the end of that scene. Knowing more of the party's layout would also be useful for mentally visualizing the lemon's different locations. In particular, the sentence, "It took him nearly ten minutes and a momentary false alarm with somebody’s brightly-colored yellow handbag to track down the lemon, which was almost smugly resting on a drinks tray carried by a tuxedo-clad waiter," feels rather empty, and like a bit of a cop-out, as it's too hard to see in my mind's eye what Hitch could have been doing in that time without knowing the layout of the party. However, I recognize that this may just be the result of this sequence being removed from a larger story, so I may simply be missing information here that is supplied in the final version.

A couple of formatting notes:
Firstly, on the internet, it's typically easier to read multiple paragraphs when there's a line between each one (double spacing), rather than simply indenting. I know this may have been copied and pasted from another format, but it does make the words from different sentences run together in some spots here on the Board.

Secondly, you typically want to use different lengths of line for hyphens and dashes. You use hyphens correctly already between the words in adjective phrases ("Hitch corrected half-heartedly"). For the dash that separates parts of sentences or represents an interruption, you need a longer line. "'My gosh, sir, I’m so sorry- I didn’t see where I was going!'" should look like "'My gosh, sir, I’m so sorry—I didn’t see where I was going!'" That long dash doesn't exist as a key on most keyboards, but there are two easy ways to do it. My preference is to use the html code "& mdash;" without the space which creates "—". You can also hold down the "alt" key while typing in "0151" in the square number pad on the right side of the keyboard, which produces "—" . Which is actually a lot better, because you can see it right on the page as you type, so that might be my new preference.

Also, some multiple-word adjective phrases don't need the hyphen in between the words—namely, the ones that have adverbs ending in "-ly." So "cleverly-hidden lemon" can just be "cleverly hidden lemon."

I went to the hospital that day. I scared my husband and he was released from work to come get me. I was talking about taking his gun and shooting myself.

For years, I've been shouting at the walls, "Why won't you say that you're not proud of that?"

It's not a secret anymore. You can talk about it.

http://technodann.github.io/PPC-board-2.0/archive/

Keep in mind that I'm autistic and can't do tone. Pay attention to what I am trying to say, not how I am saying it.

http://technodann.github.io/PPC-board-2.0/archive/2015/06b.html#post-122507

I have always felt like I wasn't listened to. There is so much to go through that it will take time. I can't do this quickly.

I feel like no amount of self-reflection will make your mistakes my fault. I feel like I can't even imply that boarders make mistakes without being attacked.

I have so much more to say.

So, just getting this out of the way: Even though I've seen the names of these characters in the #Rudi's RP room, I didn't bother to memorize their author, so I may be the only person here who has no idea who you are.

This also means I don't really know Finch and Bingle going in to this, either by description, origin canons, or established personalities. However, I found that doesn't really hurt this piece at all. You write both agents to have immediately identifiable voices, even without Finch's dialogue being always bolded. I also gleaned the two most critical details needed to understand this story (Finch is a robot and floats) very early on. (We get Bingle's identity as a bald wizard later on, too, but since that doesn't directly impact the story, its lateness is immaterial.) The personalities and speaking styles of the two agents are as close to being perfect foils to each other as one could ever expect, and it makes for very enjoyable dialogue.

In fact, this story is driven almost entirely by dialogue, with narration being used in just the right amounts to get across necessary information (Finch's "species", the travel). It makes for an incredibly fast-paced read, which matches the whimsical, light-hearted tone in a great way. I quite enjoyed the overall tone, for the most part; the one part that I disliked is the use of sound effects in text, as I'm the type to mentally read them all out, and it does get a bit silly in places. That said, it again matches the tone, so I'm willing to write that off as not jiving with my personal preferences, rather than something that needs fixing. (And I certainly couldn't argue that textual sound effects have no place in the PPC. [BEEEEEEP!])

My one complaint—again, a subjective one—is that more isn't done with the "seeing everything backwards" gag. That's quite an original and clever idea, but we only see it applied to Bingle's hands and hair. I realize the shortness of this piece restricts you a bit, but it still would have been fun to see more of the malfunction explored. Perhaps we'll see another follow-up story in DoSAT?

And again, I really liked the interplay between your agents, and I do hope you get permission some day so we can enjoy them in missions.

Hmmm. Given her mental problems, is she capable of improving her behavior. There are chances that she may slip.

Does the board need to protect itself from Scape? Yes.

One month at a time is not unreasonable. We should at least be able to see her putting effort in improving.

(This seemed like the best place to say so.)

I was busy hanging out with my in-laws and having an important choir performance, so I haven't been online all weekend. Just in case anyone was wondering. I'll try to get back on track this week. I know there's more work to do.

~Neshomeh