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I hope we'll see you again one day but for now, goodbye.

This has been a long, suffered decision on my part, but in the end there's nothing I can do about it.

I haven't been feeling comfortable here at the PPC lately, especially after all the recent drama, and I am afraid that the Concillary, while a great idea, in the end didn't manage to change my feelings either.

This doesn't mean that I'll stop writing - I fully intend to finish Blank Sprite, continue Keiko's spinoff, and the final chapter of IrregularS will be published soon. Just keep an eye on the Wiki and on Fanfiction.net for the next releases, and please use the comment functions for concrit.

So, it is my time to say goodbye. Please don't answer with "don't go please" - I have already made my decision. I might be back one day, but not soon.

*picks up his sanity from the bin next the door where it had stayed for seven years, dusts it off, and waves goodbye*

Hello again, and welcome to your weekly dose of news, views, and... snooze? I dunno.

Please remember that, when it comes to the state of the world, not everyone will agree with you. You're free to state, discuss, and defend your viewpoint (provided it does not violate the Constitution), but please don't use that fact to attack others.

Fandom News


(Link 1 & Link 2)

Soooo hands up who remembered there's a new Star Trek series on the way? :D Yes, we finally have a proper trailer for Star Trek: Discovery, which is revealed as taking place ten years before TOS. Actually, we have two trailers: a 1:50 cut and a 2:24 cut which has vanished from YouTube. The only reason I'm aware of the second is that my phone popped it up on my newsfeed last night.

As a part-time Trek fan (we've been watching Voyager; for some reason it's the only one we've been able to stick with), I'm cautiously excited for this. It certainly looks very pretty, and I love that uniform design. The ship itself (as seen breaking through the clouds) doesn't look half bad from this angle, either - rather more NX-01 than NCC-1701, but maybe that's not a bad thing? (The Internet suggests that might not be Discovery, but Shenzou, Michelle Yeoh's ship. We shall see.)

On the other hand, it does look like the first episode is Invasion from the Lens-Flare Dimension, and I'm finding those Klingons pretty disturbing. We'll see, I guess.

Silly News


(The Netherlands & Japan)

There's no serious way to put this... the king of the Netherlands has a secret double life as a pilot. As in, he secretly takes the co-pilot's slot on commercial flights, without telling the passengers who he is.

He's been doing this twice a month since he became king in 2013, and for 21 years total. He, uh, is now training to fly the Boeing 737, too. So... yeah? Good for him?

Meanwhile, over in Asia (yes, Friday Forum does know of a world beyond Europe and America...!), Princess Mako of Japan is giving up her royal titles to marry a commoner, as required under Japanese law. As it happens, her aunt Sayako did the same thing back in 2005 - she went from being the daughter of the Emperor to living in a one-bedroom apartment.

Neither of them were eligable for the throne - apparently only males can inherit (which puts Mako's younger brother third in line) - but even so.

Serious News


(Link)

Ian Brady, one of a pair of serial killers known as the Moors Murderers arrested in the '60s, has died in prison (and who said Serious News had to be bad news?). He did so without ever revealing the location of the body of his one still-missing victim, though it doesn't seem like he was ever going to. The other four were buried on Saddleworth Moor, though (and have been recovered), and that's where the interesting part of this story comes in:

Christopher Sumner, the senior coroner running the inquest on his death, has refused to release the body until he's received an assurance that Brady's ashes will not be scattered on Saddleworth Moor. He says he's fully aware that he isn't legally entitled to make that request - but that he's doing it anyway, for moral/ethical reasons. I find that quite heartwarming. Good on you, Mr. Sumner.

Not News


(Link)

The Grand Canyon is a) very pretty, and b) haunted. Possibly by the ghosts of dead oceans.

hS

First, I'm sorry for thinking you were blowing me off when in truth I was basically speaking to an empty room. Thanks for the updated e-mail address.

Thanks also for the apology. I appreciate it, and having actually seen the contents of the messages, I am inclined to believe your explanation for the most part—I can certainly sympathize with not wanting to be only a foul-weather friend. I know not everyone reads you as sincere, though (Ekyl being one that I know of), so I'm gonna try to get this cleared up beyond a shadow of a doubt.

First, could you please clarify the timeline? The timestamps tell a slightly different story than you do. I believe the Board, Discord, and the screenshots I have are all on US Eastern time, so looking at the screencaps and the Board, it appears that your messages to July started right about the same time as Alleb's post went up on the Board, only about half an hour after you were in the chat saying this. If I understood you right, you said that once the drama started in Discord, you were too busy trying to get in touch with Iximaz to be thinking about July, but it's hard to see how the two things can be disconnected when they took place right on top of each other.

Also, the Matt thing happened March 8-10. The drama went down over a week later. I know I am completely capable of condensing a week to a few days in my crummy memory, but since I'm putting together a timeline, I'm... well, putting together a timeline.

I also have to question what you mean by "This obviously hurt July far more deeply than I ever intended," because it reads like you did intend to hurt her at least a little. It's a pedantic reading, to be sure, but with roughly a week between deciding to cut ties and actually doing it, the hurtful bits appear quite premeditated and intentional indeed. If that's not what you meant, would you please say what you did mean?

~Neshomeh

I don't think I can eat any more virtual cake! Mmph!

-Twistey

Bios: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C05Pap1Xa31gJVgNTj2GYyzmWEJhJpNGCv1USip6q0/edit?usp=sharing

Writing samples:
<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ijyHNtjxU-gaTn73aUUPBDJGfl8JMhJNOm6o-eug8">https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ijyHNtjxU-gaTn73_aUUPBDJGfl8JMhJNOm6o-eug8
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CyB4fcXTAWGBdksPSf05aGiKGboAT9iqpbP5lV8isLs

Badfic: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6981888/1/Tormentor. It has an wangsty Harry replacement and bad spelling. It also gives Harry some Dementor powers and makes him the son of Voldemort.

Beta: Jay - Awesomeness Central

I really do need to get back on that. If nothing else, Algie and Lola haven't had a mission yet (two of their other collabs are very definitely orf) and it'd be nice to see them in a mission environment. =]

I feel I should apologise for being so slow with my writing. It's just been, y'know... stressful. And I've felt so very tired. I think it'd be productive for us to release something that can be really positive, yeah? =]

There's a bug where if you download a .SCF into your downloads folder then open the folder, it steals your login credentials.

Yeah, I'm going to try to get back into reading and reviewing missions again. >_>

Your writing style does a good job of being very succinct, and getting straight to the point without a lot of extra words cluttering up the sentences. This is especially useful in missions for getting across info from the badfic without copy-pasting huge blocks of text, and you make good use of that here. There were a couple of potentially interesting spots that I feel you could have gone into more detail on—namely, the canons initially arriving in the present, and Holmes making deductions about the profession of a woman in the restaurant, which I feel could have been good moments for the agents to look at with a critical eye, as they would especially be indicators of how out-of-character Holmes was. Then again, I don't know if the original fic presented those scenes with enough material for you to really do anything with.

I'm not sure the canons themselves were quite out-of-character enough to be treated as replacements, although I know that's a subjective thing for each PPC author. In particular, the sentence, "Without being told, Holmes easily lied and said that his last name was Jones," seems to indicate that you felt Holmes would need guidance in having to mislead someone, but (at least in the novel canon; I haven't seen the movies) Holmes is a master of disguising his clothing, voice and demeanor to hide his identity. He would certainly have no trouble coming up with a fake name, especially since the plan to fool the mothers had been thought of in advance.

I'm also a bit confused by the final charging scene. I understand Holmes and Watson being killed, since you're treating them as replacements, and I'm glad your agents neuralyze the mothers and return them to their regular lives, but where did the two daughters go? It seems to me that, if the mothers are being treated as "canons" and returned to their lives, their daughters should be, too. And I rather had the impression that the flat the daughters was living in was their actual home, before the fic started, so wouldn't they just get neuralyzed and stay there?

I do like the last line, "'Come on, we have paperwork to fill out.'" I usually think of agents writing up mission reports that resemble our missions when they report said mission, but I like the idea that these agents are just going to file ordinary paperwork when they get home, and that they both need to participate. A tiny little detail, that makes a lot of sense.

—doctorlit, hoping to have a bit more time at home from now on

Since they appear to have actually been Transdimensional Snatchers, I guess they have been despatched to their real life in World One or wherever they belong. I remember some discussion about whether we still write Despatch missions or what else to do in such cases.

HG

… both the stories and the concrit. I usually don't put this much thought into my beta-reading; I'm more the proofreader type of beta.

Unfortunately, I will probably not participate in the Blind Beta Workshop. Preparations for my surgery are much more time-consuming and tiring than I head expected.

Since I can't ever not notice these things:

It was if all other colors had been bleached out of the world.
Shouldn't this be "It was as if..."?

Someone was behind her, pushing him along.
Who is he? Should this be either "her" (Laura) or "it" (the wheelchair)?

It was pose that might have passed without comment if could you ignore that she was sitting in a pool of blood.
Should be "a pose" (July already told you that)?
Should either be "could you" (apparently you had this initially) or "if you could", just inserting the "if" made it worse.

How is my not being as competent a combatant as you an excuse?
I think "my" should be "me", but given the situation I wouldn’t insist that Danny remembers that.

The woman frowned ever so slightly for just few seconds.
Should be "a few seconds"?

What if I ordered you to to murder someone?
I wouldn’t expect Death to stutter.

When my times comes.
Should be "time" (singular)?

She was further surprised when the receptionist sent her directly to Freedenburg’s office
His name is "Freedenberg".

Thank you coming in on such short notice. and
I summoned you down here because I believe that another agent in trouble.
Does Doc Freedenberg have a habit of leaving out words, or should these be
"Thank you for coming in" and "... that another agent is in trouble"?

HG

I don't know these characters, and they don't get a lot of description, but I am imagining Finch as looking like a Mr. Handy from Fallout 4, particularly the very fussy voice personality of the butler types. I don't know why really, that's just what I pictured.

Have you ever read Hank the Cowdog books? Bingle reminds me a lot of Drover. He's friendly and generally calm in the face of Hank's histrionics. He seems like he's only half there in the conversations. Always going on a sort of tangent that almost makes sense, but not quite. He gets Hank into some of the strangest conversations, and I imagine that Bingle gets Finch into some weird places conversationally and he seems really chill about Finch's situation, as well.

It makes for an interesting pair. The description of the noise they make in the halls is quite entertaining. It's hard to remember to include enough auditory description in stories.

I'm afraid that I don't have a lot of good input for you with this story. I enjoyed reading it. I couldn't find any grammar or general usage comments to make for this story. It reads smoothly, although the bold and dash instead of apostrophe took some getting used to.

I have to start off with saying that I really enjoyed this story. I have no idea who these characters are, though I learned a few things about them during the story. Ruby is a mischievous teenage daughter of very, very wealthy and powerful parents. Hitch is the head butler, possibly head of staff? He seems to have more of a sense of humor and less patience for formal affairs than the stereotype of that position. I never imagined that I would find a story about hiding a lemon so entertaining. It also plays on the other meaning that lemon has in fanfic circles. (Was that intentional?)

On formatting: I prefer to read on screens with a blank line between paragraphs. It's easier on the eyes.

“It’s not too bad,” he said. “I can deal.” Internally, he was hoping desperately that she’d find some way to shake things up without actually causing any sort of damage.

This is something I have been working on in my own writing recently. You have three adverbs in this one sentence, and a lot of them overall. Too many adverbs slow things down and weaken your writing. They are hard to get rid of, but it when you do it does help.

“But she won’t,” Ruby interrupted, “because we’re both excellent at this game.

This is picky, but she is supposing that he is excellent at the game. She just had to explain how it's played, so he must not have played before.

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.

I particularly liked this line. I know I am hitting you overall for adverbs, but that lemon sitting smugly on the tray is funny.

I think she must have been cheating a bit to know so quickly that he'd put the lemon in the coat pocket, but it's kind of a non-visible hiding spot so it balances out. When this is all de-anoned, I wouldn't mind a link to finish reading this.

"I know that face!"

Joyce's reverie was interrupted by her daughter's voice. She turned her head, unable to keep the smile off it. "Hello, Mom. How was your day, Mom? I'm just off to clean my room, Mom-"

This did get me the first couple of times I read it. I thought it was Buffy sucking up. That maybe she was in trouble again. So the next line was jarring. I would suggest changing said to interrupted. I know said is the most invisible dialogue tag, but in this case it might help make things smoother for your readers.

"Don't think you can get out of it that easily," Buffy said with a wink and a knowing tone to her voice. "I know that face. That right there is a grade-A, accept-no-substitutes, 100% new guy face. So c'mon, spill!"

I don't believe it is absolutely wrong to use a number here, but I would spell it out as one hundred percent.



"Oh, hello. You must be Buffy! Joyce has told me so much about you..."

Buffy looked at the mid-sized, dark-haired British woman. They were really nice eyes, now that she looked, but there was something else there -

this is an extreme nitpick, but it might read smoother as 'They really were nice eyes...'

"Your old mom's got a few surprises in her yet, you know."

"I... yeah. You, uh, you sure do, Mom! Uh... hey."

"Hello! Yes. Sorry. Um." Ah, thought Buffy, the Giles is strong with this one. Wait, why does this feel so, um, normal? "Sorry. It's just... she'd be about your age now."

I am having trouble following this bit. Monica is articulate in her greeting to Buffy. Buffy is taken aback by her mom's quite sudden announcement that she is interested in women, but she's rolling with it. Then Monica says hello for a second time, only now she is stammering. Then a thought from Buffy is inserted in the middle of Monica's dialogue. Then Monica finishes up with what I believe indicates that she remembers having Hermione, but perhaps thinks her daughter is dead. These three things should be separated out into three paragraphs, so you don't have more than one person's input in a paragraph.

Oh. That was it.

I thought the comment about Giles was directed toward his tendency to stammer a bit, but this doesn't go with that thought at all. I never managed to get through the last season and a half of Buffy, did we find out that Giles had a child that he lost? I don't remember him ever mentioning that he did. Buffy understanding that Monica has lost someone is good, but as is seems to relate to the comment about Giles.



Overall, this is a nice little story. I think Buffy's voice is right in line with canon. The story raises more questions than it answers, so if I stumbled across this on a fic site, I would hope that it was the first chapter, or the first section of a longer fic. How did Monica get to the US? Why didn't she just go home? How does she remember Hermione? Why did her husband stay under the spell that compelled them to Australia? Lots of questions, which are never a bad thing

Also should have added that Dirk usually gets where he needs to go by picking a random person who 'looks like they know where they're going' and just kinda... stalking them. Even more weirdly, this also seems to work. He gets where he needs to go quite often, I mean.

Jumping in here for information provision, hope you don't mind! Dirk Gently is a detective character created by the late Douglas Adams (who has recently got a pretty darn good TV show adaptation!) who uses the methods of 'holism' in order to solve his mysteries. Holism basically is the belief that everything is connected to everything else. He solves cases mainly by following fate, and- weirdly enough- it often does work, rather well.

*sidles off*

As far as stories go, it's not a bad one. On the one hand, I did not detect any technical errors, but on the other, the story seemed kinda flat to me. Granted, not every mission needs to be an epic adventure, but IMHO, this one seemed pretty cookie-cutter: quote badfic, cite charge, repeat. There did not seem to be any conflict between the Agents and the Sues.

Speaking of the Sues, what did the Agents do to them? If they weren't killed, were they recruited? Why?

Happy 20th, Ix! I hope you enjoyed it! And since I haven't given one of these in a while...Have a Delibird! Since you're a fellow Trainer, I don't think I need to warn you about its Presents.

That's not Buffy speaking, but Joyce. She's doing the thing that parents do when their kid asks them a question.

Read-through Notes (stream-of-consciousness-style):

- I also love wandering the hallways. Vicariously through characters, anyway.

- Daniel can memorize routes through HQ? That's very impressive, if useless enough to not be overpowered.

- I understand this superpower.

- Lighter shade of grey = clouds?

- Didn't know we had ventilation plotholes. Makes sense, though.

- The trail of sue-blood seems boring to our hero. I kinda want to know why it's there.

- Crumbling concrit? Someone needs to get Building Maintenance on that. Also, is it made of fossilized words? I don't think I've ever heard that before. More research may be necessary.

- I know I've heard of Dirk Gently, but I can't quite place the name. More research definitely necessary.

- I like the feelings that get thrown in. I can see them being very confusing to agents. "Why do I smell fudge?" "I don't even know any showtunes. Why do I want to sing them?"

- They never entered the stairwell, did they?

- "Then they then" You can cut a "then" from that sentence.

- Cafeteria worker, eh? I had wondered.


General Thoughts:

There are some very interesting things going on in this piece. The non-visual descriptions of the surroundings are not something we see often and, in this case, help to "tilt" the world a little. It makes the whole thing a little more surreal, which I liked.

As interesting as the surroundings were, though, the two characters were not. They were kind of bland and featureless. We don't get any description of them, at all. We know little about Daniel, and less about the woman. And the few times we do get any indication of what they are feeling we get "he was tired of staring at walls" and "The woman blinked dispassionately." It might work better if Daniel was openly excited about the details that only he knows about, and is disappointed when the woman is dispassionate and aloof. That, at least, would give you two levels to play off of and break up the monotony.

So, to summarize, the world building that you did was good. The characters need some fleshing out. There is potential here, I think.