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testing

bramandintook@gmail.com

AKA just wanting confirmation on the what/where/when's of the London Gathering 2017.

I apologize if this is hard to understand. My thoughts are normally scattered, but I can't calm down. I'm shaking, and shouldn't have drove. I'm feeling suicidal.

I'm sorry to have lied to you. Keep in mind that I have been here since February of 2016.

zdimensia is a myth. That the PPC never did anything to provoke her is a lie.

Unblock my IP so that I can talk to you from home. I must be allowed to speak.

'This' being both, y'know, this, and a couple of other game threads I've made ("Congratulations, you're falling into [canon]", Gallifreyan Scrabble, and... something else? I forget).

1/ PPCers like games like this, weird one-of-a-kind threads.

2/ The more complicated things are, the fewer people will get involved. There were far more responses to the canon game than this one, with its hex grid and all.

3/ Multiple-choice is good. Multiple choice with 'or anything you like' is better.

4/ Anything which runs longer than ten turns/a week is liable to go unfinished. It's deep enough that new people don't feel like they can jump in, the people who've already taken part feel like they've explored the options enough, and I start to get tired, introducing more lag.

Which is all fine! It's good information to carry through to the next game, whenever I get an inspiration. It does mean it's unlikely we'll ever play PPC Cluedo on the Board, or PPC Munchkin, but given that it's been years since I had the idea to run a Cluedo game and I've never tried, that was inevitable anyway.

I'm still happy to play this one out if people are interested; don't read this as me closing the game. :) Just thinking about the next one...

hS

There is nothing in here that makes me care about the characters. In the first sample, they both wander into HQ, but they don't come across as upset, interested, surprised, confused... anything. There's no emotion there at all. Just he said/she said dialogue.

I can see you're aware of that being a problem and have tried to work on it. You've managed to avoid them being literal talking heads - there's a fair amount of movement in both stories. But none of that is translating into emotion. Take a look at these examples:

“What? Normally, humans just catch us in a Pokéball.” Shadow glared at Canopus. “If you try, I will make you stop.”
Canopus picked Shadow up, causing him to struggle.
“Put me down!”
“Fine.” Canopus placed him on the floor.

Why did Canopus pick Shadow up? Because he was annoying? Because she wanted to show her strength? Because she found it funny? Absolutely no idea. And why did she put him down? Again, there's no emotion there - it feels like "Verbal input 'put me down' received; executing command."

“... Shadow, the food’s worse than what I had in Tokyo and that’s saying something.” Canopus slapped the hand away. “Trust me on that one.”
Shadow frowned before focusing. A pile of toxic waste appeared in front of the door.
“Are you trying to dissuade me with that?” Canopus raised an eyebrow. “Some demons are worse than that.”
“Like what?” asked Shadow. Canopus pulled out her phone.
“Well, there’s Foul Slime, for one. Look.” She showed Shadow the picture.
“Okay. that could be worse. Anyway…” Shadow blinked and both the door and the console disappeared. “I’m not letting you go.”

This one goes even more into the no emotion. Shadow has no reason for creating the pile (I assume that was an attack? Or just an illusion?). Canopus doesn't find it amusing, or mildly disgusting, or contemptuous. Shadow has no reaction to being flatly rebuffed, nor does he find the picture she shows him disgusting, informative, horrifying... anything. "Visual input received; executing next dialogue."

Then there's the dialogue itself. It looks like you're suffering from what I usually call Cowrite Disease, where both characters try and cram as much information as possible into their dialogue, and reply to everything. Only... people don't work like that. If I walked up to you and said "Hi, my name's Huinesoron, how are you doing? Also would you like a cookie? And by the way, I've got this new story you might like to check out, what's your email address?", you'd a) think I was crazy, and b) say something like "Uh, I'd love a cookie, thanks... what's this about a story?"

What you wouldn't say is: "Hi, I'm CodeCom, I'm doing fine. A cookie sounds nice! Anyway, wow, I'd really like to read it, here's my email address. By the way, what's your favourite colour? And have you ever played any Pokemon games?"

Now look at this:

“What?!” the grey demon spun on its four legs. “I’m a Pokémon, not a demon. Whatever that is.”
“Trying to lie, huh? I’m pretty sure you’re a demon, though I’ve never seen one like you.” Canopus pulled out her smartphone and flicked to the Demon Summoning App. “What happened to all my demons?! What the hell?!”
“I’m not a demon! I’m a Zorua!” the demon took a few steps back. “And there’s no need to threaten me. Everyone knows what a Pokemon is, at least.”
“Well, I don’t. And it doesn't matter what your species is, that still makes you a demon.” Canopus glared down at her smartphone. “Great, I’m also stuck with all the weak skills. Why am I telling you this anyway?”

It's not quite so blatant as my examples, but you've definitely got multi-threaded conversation there. It's a very easy trap to fall into, because that is how people talk online. A lot of my early missions do the same thing (and co-writes are particularly prone to it). But it also feels nothing like actual conversation.

Okay, so at this point I think it's clear I'm going to say Permission denied, but don't let that dissuade you! You're doing an awful lot of things right. Your spelling etc is good; you've avoided Talking Heads Disorder (well done!); you clearly know a bit about PPC HQ; you've managed to keep your characters consistent across two stories. A bit of work on getting them to talk like people and react like non-robots and you'll be set. (For the former, try reading the dialogue out, and work out what you'd say in response; if you'd like, I'll scribble down some 'faux-Shadow replies' to Canopus' dialogue in the first story, to show you what I mean.)

Moving on to some other points I noticed:

-It's standard in online writing to leave an empty line between paragraphs. If you don't want to do that (for some reason?), at least indent the first line; it makes reading much easier.

-When you fixed that line Bramandin pointed out, you left it as 'I only work with people only for a mission.' That's two 'only's in a row, which sounds super weird (read it out!); I think you were originally aiming for 'I only work with people on a mission'.

-'Shadow stalked over and punched Shadow in the face.' Shadow, I know you can make illusory copies of yourself, but don't get carried away. ;)

-Looking now at your bios (I tend to avoid them until I need to read them; I prefer to get character information from the stories):

--Both your characters are presented as being interesting primarily for their emotions, and the interplay between them - reserved Canopus (who has a hidden fun side) and playful Shadow (who can be irritating when he doesn't shut up). But... well, see previous comments about emotions in your writing. The only reason I know from your stories that Canopus is reserved is that she flat-out says it. Ditto for Shadow being a prankster. It's a really interesting dynamic you have planned, but right now it isn't coming across in your writing.

--I have no problems with the powers and backgrounds; two things, though:

a) Canopus is a trained, jaded, scarred and emotionally-battered professional at 17? Is that... common in her 'verse?

b) Do Zorua normally have names? Most Pokemon don't unless they're captured. I remember having this same conversation about Skarm's agent Falchion.

--Be aware that we have another (mute) Zorua in HQ.

--RC numbers are normally... well... numbers. Check the list. '4SMT4A' strays quite a bit further from that than normal.

-I have no issues with the badfic you've chosen.

If anyone can offer better advice than me on the emotional issue, I'd appreciate it; I'm aware that I haven't been very clear.

hS

I'll remember the thing about formatting next time, whoops. -_- All your other feedback is excellent and valid, and I'll definitely try to put a bit of work into it based off this. I've had a bit of trouble writing this lately.

I'll definitely post a link if/when we deanon- or if i ever finish it.

(Also, the... er, 'other meaning' of lemon is completely unintentional. I don't want to think about that.)

So, while I can produce a longer draft if people want it, this is the basic version of my proposal, should there be community support for it:

As per Tomash's suggestion, Scapegrace is presented an official "one last chance" to alter her behaviour. She is never to attack, insult, harass, antagonise, deride, or otherwise lash out at any other member of this community again, on pain of banning. The length of this ban is variable - I myself think a permanent ban would be extreme - but should not be under one month in duration. If this occurs, and there is no resultant improvement in behaviour afterwards, I would be much more in favour of suggesting a permanent ban.

Without a doubt, that one character whose name I always forget. They live right above America... Anyone know who I'm thinking of? I truly have forgotten.

This is a great little set-up, and I hope you can continue this and get it published someday.

Chapter 1
The bulk of this chapter is providing details about KC's car accident, and all the thought you've put into it is amazing. I love how you use the cliche of a nightmare to introduce KC's car accident and mental trauma, but then use the hard reality of her scars, and the time and effort of work she has to put into taking care of them, to bring home just how real and awful the accident was. You've really done an amazing job of thinking of all the little day-to-day details that bring her affliction to life.

I also love, right at the end of the first scene, the hint of a news report that will almost certainly factor into KC's life down the line, which she simply didn't catch. It leaves me intrigued about how much she'll regret not hearing that info, after some plot has happened to her.

Chapter 2
Picking up on the slightly off detail from the end of chapter one, and cranking it up into the realm of the supernatural makes for a great lead-in to future conflict and mystery. I like the contrast between the fairly typical sympathy expressed by Bill and the disturbing, alien behavior of the faceless man.

The one weak point here, I think is this particular sentence: "Her assurance didn’t seem to ease his concern." This is a very tell-don't-show sentence, and stands out all the more plainly for detailed and explicit you make the actions in the rest of the story. The following sentence seems to indicate that Bill paused before answering, so I think explaining a bit of his facial reaction to KC's words, or other aspects of his demeanor, would be a much more descriptive way to show this. Also, Bill's reaction should be attached to his dialogue, not to a part of KC's.

basic errors:
Chapter 1
"It would have been worse, but some bystanders has pulled her from her car and put out the flames."
"Has" should be "had" to match the verb tense of "pulled." The sentence also still works if you remove "has" entirely.

"She adjusted to temperature of the water to make it cooler, because her burns were still sensitive to heat."
"To temperature" should be "the temperature."

"Ten minutes later, KC was in the kitchen of her one bedroom apartment."
"One bedroom" should be "one-bedroom" since that's an adjectival phrase describing the apartment.

"While she waited for her breakfast, she turned on the television that she kept on her counter"
The period at the end of this sentence is missing.

Also, I may have noticed a contradiction between that sentence and the following paragraph:
"She returned to the table and, when she looked up, saw that they had moved on to sports. She wasn’t interested in that, so she turned the television off and ate her breakfast."
That first sentence says the television is on the kitchen counter. The second pair of sentences imply that she moves away from the counter to sit at a table, then turns the television off. I'm not sure if you intended for the television to be on the table in the first place, or if you meant for the reader to understand that she got up and walked to the counter again to shut it off, then returned to the table to eat. This is further muddied by the use of the phrase "returned to the table" when the narration never stated that she had been to the table at that point.

"There was no reason him to be watching her, in particular, and there were at least a half dozen people closer to the man."
You missed the "for" in the phrase "no reason for him to be."

"When she had boarded the train and found a seat, she tried to locate the man on the other platform, again."
You don't need the comma before "again." It's an adverb modifying the verb "tried," so it's a proper part of that clause and doesn't need to separated from it by punctuation.

Chapter 2
"'Hey, Bill,' she said to the balding man behind the desk. 'Mind if I take off a little early today?'"
Since all this dialogue is a single sentence, keep the entire thing together as a sentence. Replace the period after "desk" with a comma, and change the beginning of "mind" to lowercase. ("'Hey, Bill,' she said to the balding man behind the desk, 'mind if I take off a little early today?'"

"'Thought I saw someone out the window.'"
I would usually use "outside" instead of "out" here, but I don't know if this is a speaking quirk/regional dialect sort of thing.

"KC realized that the light had changed when she was jostled by the crowd moving into the cross walk."
According to wiktionary, "crosswalk" is always spelled as one word, though this could be another regional thing.

"She sat down on a bench to wait and looked around at the people on the other platfrom."
"platform"

"He had his back to her, and all she could see, in any detail, were his jeans and tee-shirt."
This one is me being anal-retentive, so feel free to ignore this. Technically, "tee-shirt" is the French word for the English word "t-shirt."

First Meeting
First off, this is not my style. Probably because I've never had a lick of interest in demon hunting 'verses and rarely enjoy magic smartphone apps and other enchanted computers. I am unlikely to become a regular reader of your spinoff. That said, I read the story, and it had a a lot of high and low points which stuck out to me.

Canopus picking Shadow up. . . feels a little abrupt (I hadn't imagined them standing close enough together that this would be easy), but it's also pretty funny -- Shadow's just been strutting around, talking about how he's powerful enough to fight Canopus off, and when he gets picked up, all he can do is struggle and beg to be put down. It might be a a little too subtle, though: I missed the joke the first time I read through the story.

“You do realise that you seem even more like a demon to me, right?” I like this line :)

Canopus is oddly upfront and casual about her issues, immediately admitting -- no, declaring -- that the reason she avoids people is too stop herself from getting hurt. I actually kind of like the idea of a character who treats typical angst-topics as no big deal -- there's a lot of potential for humor there.

The ending is a little abrupt, but I think it works. They've met, their relationship has been established, and I don't really need to know how they spent the rest of their search -- although I would like a story about how they realized where they were and changed their attitude from "trying to escape" to "hey, let's work here." But that can wait, I suppose!

SPaG:“What?!” the grey demon spun on its four legs. You want a capital-T The here.

Lawsuit
Is Shadow in human or Pokemon form during this story?

Did. . . did Shadow make a pile of toxic waste appear? Why? From Canopus' reaction, it seems like the pile of toxic waste was supposed to make her reconsider the idea of a lawsuit, somehow. I don't understand.

Ooooooooh, Canopus sees Shadow as a friend! Cute.

Shadow's clone spell seems out of the blue. They weren't in a fight, really. . . well, they seemed to mostly be verbally sparring. I wasn't expecting Canopus to physically lash out -- why did Shadow take precautions?

Oh, Shadow. Do not tempt the Ironic Overpower :)

The ending for this one was definitely too abrupt. Canopus' confession that she was kidding came very quickly, and then you cut the story off in the middle of Shadow's reaction -- I would like to see more of what Shadow thinks of being lied to beyond a simple, vague, "What?!" and a shocked stare. Has he lost trust in her? Does he think it's hilarious? This story doesn't feel over to me.

Verdict
Your writing is not my thing at all, but quite nice in its way. It's enjoyable, but there are spots which need quite a bit of work: my prediction is that you'll be denied Permission, but you'll get your own spinoff on your second try.

--Key

More specifically, we started an MST of a Harry Potter/Hetalia crossover badfic. Behold!

And for the morbidly curious, the fic sans our characters snarking over it is right here.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions for which Hetalia character should help us riff this next? (I'll run all your suggestions by Voyd to see what he knows about the characters.)

Thie Spikes are becoming kind of an issue, dontcha think?

Yes, I know these are unusual circumstances, and that you won't be hanging around here much.

That being said, you're a newbie (sort of), so I ought to say hi. Have two cents, so you can put them into a disc— oh wait, you already did that.

I thought we were keeping a better eye on our TARDIS fleet these days. Guess not.

- Tomash

Best of luck with your projects! And if you like superheroes, you might like my missions. ;)

The first sentence is often the most difficult, at least to me. How to get the readers' attention, and then keep it, without sparking wrong expectations? Here, I was immediately dragged in, and even when I realized that the first paragraph was a nightmare, it kept me going through Kim's morning routine.

she started toward the bathroom to shower
Right after an early start and before she started the water for her shower, this is a bit too much starting for my taste. Maybe you can find some other way to phrase this sequence.

Also, I was tempted to say that peeling the nightwear off only after starting the water for the shower is the wrong order and a waste of good water. Only when The mirror began to fog over, I realized that this may be a necessary routine to get lots of cold water out of the tubes when you live high up in a multistory apartment building and the hot water comes from a boiler in the basement. And Kim doesn't enjoy the luxury of a thermostat that would keep the water at a preset temperature as soon as enough of the hot water component is available. After that, I didn't even need the mention of a one bedroom apartment to know how Kim lives. This is a good example of showing rather than telling.

It's amazing how much we learn about Kim just from her getting up. Alas, there are two mistakes in this part of the story:
It would have been worse, but some bystanders has pulled her from her car and put out the flames. Should be "had" (plural).
She adjusted to temperature of the water to make it cooler, because her burns were still sensitive to heat. Should be "the".

Unlike J.E., I did not feel like Kim should still be early at the train station. I assumed that her alarm clock is set to give her the bare minimum of time she needs every morning, so getting an early start just allowed her to take more time on everything she otherwise would do in a haste, and still get the same train as usual. I don't know how important it is to take the usual train. Otherwise, the mysterious stranger wouldn't have found her, at least not at this day?

I imagined that Kim cannot afford to buy another car (or to rent a better apartment), but from your comment to Daniel this isn't actually true. Do we learn something about her job and how well she is payed?

The one closest to her was reading a newspaper, the other was too far down the platform for KC to tell where he were looking. Shouldn't this be "was" (singular)?

There was no reason him to be watching her ... Apparently a word ("for"?) is missing there.

She didn’t have much time to wonder as her train pulled up, blocking her view of the other side of the tracks. You may want to insert a comma between "wonder" and "as", but punctuation is one of my weaker points.

I'm not much into creepily being stalked by a mysterious stranger, and much of this looked just too familiar, so I started to feel like I mostly continued proofreading out of a sense of duty.

As she sat at her desk, KC’s mind wandered. This looks a bit clumsy to me. Maybe you should try "While" instead of "As", or maybe I'm just too afraid of as-eritis.

She was thinking of calling it an early day going home. I'm not sure whether something is missing near the end of this sentence.

Oh, and a warning: if you really change the time Kim was early, like you implied in the answer to J.E., don't forget that The loss of over an hour of sleep was beginning to wear on her. [Yep, folks, that's why another (and a third, and a fourth) read-through may be required.]

... she strode out of the lobby and out into the bright, afternoon sun. I'm not sure whether this comma belongs there, although I can't exactly explain why. It's probably that "afternoon" modifies "sun", but unlike "bright" is not an adjective, so you don't have a list of adjectives that should be separated by commas.

I am sure that the police will not see any danger, and that KC will have to go through this alone. How the stranger managed to appear outside of a twelfth floor window and how he may be connected to the accident are still intriguing questions and may keep me interested for a while, but generally I feel like this story is not made for me.

~Lurky

What a way to open a Board post! What a way to come back!

I'm Twistey (although I won't be called that for long, as I'll explain later), and I joined the PPC some time this year (shoot, couldn't grab the date before the post disappeared). I came here out of curiosity, then got hooked on the original idea of this place. I'm into a crud ton of fandoms (MLP being one of them, as you can see), and my interests include game design/coding, writing, drawing, crafting, and pretty much anything creative. My main thing used to be Scratch, but I'm working on getting to Newgrounds and other places (hence why the Twistey alias will soon be dropped.) It's very nice to meet you, and great to hear about both the return and the recovery. Now that you mention it, I should go read some of your missions.

Nice to meet you!

-Twistey

The main reason is probably that I know next to nothing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Since I couldn't recognize speech patterns or the general ways Buffy and her mother interact with each other, I had a hard time figuring out what happened in the first paragraphs. Joyce mimicking what her daughter should have said, I got relatively fast, but I kept wondering what Buffy was looking at when she said, "I know that face!" while her mother's new friend was out of sight. It actually took me three reads to realize that of course it is Joyce's face that gives it away. I may just be stupid.

I still wonder what Joyce was doing there, being lost in reverie in the entrance hall or living room while her friend-of-yet-undetermined-gender is sitting alone in the kitchen? But I don't know Joyce, so this may just be what she would do.

So, Hermione Granger's plan to keep her parents save backfired when she neglected to give them both the same kind of dream about living in Australia. I never thought of this possibility, and I only got the stealthy hint on second read. I would like to know why Monica moved to what's-the-place-where-Buffy-lives-again? Surfer's Paradise? Does it match what Monica initially expected when she moved to Australia? I hope we will hear more about that in coming chapters. If we do, the first foreshadowing being so stealthy that it could easily be overlooked is a good adaptation of Rowling's style.

"Hello! Yes. Sorry. Um."
This is a remarkable break from Monica's previous lines and I'm not yet sure how it is justified. Monica adapting to how Buffy speaks? Actually seeing Buffy after only having heard about her yet triggered a memory that confused Monica? If Hermione did not do something else wrong, Monica should not remember that she should have a daughter of Buffy's age. Did she remember before she met Buffy? (BTW, inserting Buffy's thoughts there didn't help to get that Monica is speaking.)

I actually have a vague idea of who Rupert Giles is (from looking through reviews on "Mark watches", to get an impression of what the show is about without watching it myself), but some references may have gone straight over my head. Anyway, there is definitely something going on with meeting Monica feeling so natural to Buffy. Will we find out that Buffy is actually Hermione-after-losing-her-memory? Since this was too easy to guess, finding out something totally different would be more interesting, but finding out what happened to Monica and Wendelll Wilkins would be interesting anyway.

This may be a good start for a BtVS x HP crossover, but currently there is not yet enough of it for me to tell.

~Lurky

Sorry I wasn't around today. House cleaning and so forth.

I'll be on showdown at some point around 11:00 Eastern Time.

I'll be online in a moment.