The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

It's geeky and sort of adorable, which basically sums up the human race as a whole. :D

Welcome back to the Friday Forum. It seemed to work last week, so let's try it again.

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)

Ah, do you remember the golden age? When you could have a film about Nazis that featured a stand in for the kookiest Republican presidential candidate, and it was taken for granted that she'd be fighting against them? Aye, them were the days.

I'm talking, of course, about the frankly hilarious 2012 movie Iron Sky. The first official teaser trailer for the sequel (Iron Sky: The Coming Race) dropped this week; it has Adolf Hitler riding a T. rex, and if we can trust the 2015 pre-teaser, features both the Hollow Earth and a race of reptile people living there. Fake!Sarah Palin is one of them, so I guess she was on Hitler's side all along after all? Alas, my golden era is already tainted...!

(I expect a full critique of Blondie the T. rex's anatomy. Come on, paleogeeks, I know you're out there.)

Silly News


(Link)

You all, I'm sure, remember the astonishing discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 star system, a small red star with seven earth-sized worlds around it. It has its own website, featuring this gorgeous NASA travel poster that accurately shows the fact that, y'know, this place has seven planets inside the orbit of Mercury, they're going to show up in each other's skies the size of our moon.

The issue with this system is that, with so much mass so close together, most models show the planets colliding and destroying each other within half a million years - which, obviously, hasn't happened. Luckily, astronomers are clever types, and a paper pre-printed this week suggests a way for them to be, y'know, still there: a "resonant chain", where the orbits of all seven worlds are gravitationally linked so they counter-balance each other. It's quite funky - but not entirely silly, and this section is called 'Silly News'.

The silliness comes with how this has been announced to the world. The image above links to the video in which the orbits of the planets have been transformed into music - a piano note for each complete orbit, a drumbeat for each time a planet passes its neighbours. It's a gloriously ridiculous way to showcase an astrophysical hypothesis; I love it.

Serious News


(America & France)

This week, FBI Director James Comey was fired by Twitter Personality & President Trump. Comey is simultaneously the man who decided to publically announce that he was once again investigating Hillary Clinton mere days before the election (prompting widespread belief, given how close the votes turned out, that he pretty much chose the next president all by himself), and the man who was still investigating Russian involvement in swinging that same election at the time he was fired. He wasn't - quite - investigating Trump himself, but "firing the man who's checking whether your administration is influenced by a foreign power" ain't looking good.

It's made worse by Trump's letter, which includes this delightful paragraph:

While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgement of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.

... which comes off an awful lot like 'you thought saying what I wanted to hear made you safe; you were wrong'.

Personally, I've never believed the way Comey handled the email reopening was innocent; he knew full well what he was doing. But firing the man who is investigating whether you were elected on false pretences was never going to look good.

Meanwhile, in Europe, France has utterly disrespected the spirit of the times by not electing its far-right candidate as President. Weirdos. They did still join in the whole 'overturn the establishment' thing, though, voting in a President from a party/movement that only formed last year.

Do we still have any French Boarders around? It'd be interesting to hear an inside view on why the traditional parties didn't do well in the first round - and why the far-right didn't end up winning after all.

Not News

My town has a WWII memorial (we don't have a WWI one, because the town didn't exist at the time), and some of the names on it are... well:



I can't make up my mind whether this is "Savage" Ivy Muriel, the brutal cricketer whose last match against Australia is the subject of both legend and three separate police reports, or "Savage Ivy", the famous masked wrestler and/or vigilante who spends her days as Muriel the children's librarian.



What kind of cruel parents name their kid "Ernest Stammers"? I mean, there's no way he's coming out of that with his psyche intact.



Finally, the untold story that takes place after the Narnia you know and love. This gritty sequel explores Peter Pevensie's conscription in 1944, his first blooding on D-Day, his meteoric rise through the ranks of the British Army - and his tragic, noble death on the Somme (because, like, there's two World Wars? Who can be bothered to remember that? Hey, one of those writers was at the Somme, wasn't he, Rowling or Tolkein or something like that. Who was the one who wrote Narnia? Let's make it him, and Peter can tell him all the stories while he's dying. Man, we're brilliant.)

... I will give prizes to anyone who writes an encounter between High King Peter, Ernest St-st-st-stammers, and either of the Muriels in the battlefields of Europe.

hS

I am not awake at 11pm. ^_^ (Well, sometimes I am, but I shouldn't be.)

Though Saturday might actually be difficult... um, I'll post something on the day.

hS

I mean, I absolutely agree with the idea that the "middlebies" should realise that their voices are not only able to be heard, but needed.

But...

I've read several posts here where people are saying that they're generally happy with how things have been handled so far and they they don't have anything to add. If that's genuinely the case for most of the people here, then it looks like those of us who've been participating can congratulate ourselves on a job (mostly) well done.

At the time I posted my rant, one week after the second part of this thread started, only three of us had commented. Of the six people/groups named, the only ones that had comments from all three were Ekyl (which you could maybe consider settled, if you consider three people a consensus, which... you shouldn't) and Nord-Herr (which absolutely wasn't, and I'd retracted my comments by that time).

Of the others, Neshomeh and I had received no comments, so unless the people saying that were happy with 'let's leave them hanging, tee hee', that wasn't in any way addressed. The Multiple Discord Users had two. Granz had one - mine - which was in direct opposition to the consensus from the first half of the thread. And Scapegrace had two.

I don't mind people posting to literally just say "I agree with hS" if that's all they feel they need to say - oddly enough, I tend to think my opinions are correct anyway, so I'm not going to say everyone has to disagree with them. But not even saying that - treating both me(/you/Nesh) and the people under discussion as if 'hS Has Spoken, No More Need Be Said' was how things work... is unfair to everyone involved. I don't want that kind of authority, and the people who are being discussed want closure. They want to know that, if someone gets upset in six months' time, they won't have the issue they thought was settled here thrown back in their face.

This community only works if people get involved. If they don't, it's not fair to anyone.

hS

1/ I am not in charge of the PPC.

2/ I do not want to be in charge of the PPC.

Please, please try to understand those, because half the time it feels like if I'm not being lauded for the one, I'm being lambasted for the other.

I do so, so much around here for the simple reason that there's no-one else left who will. Most of you don't remember that I didn't create the Shipfest (that was bjam and BiD) or the Badfic Games; I didn't invent Fill the Plothole or the PPC Hunger Games (well, you might remember that one). I just took them on when their creators left or lost interest.

And I will keep on doing so. If Neshomeh or Iximaz leave (gods forbid!), I'll probably end up taking over the Christmas Filking and Pokemon Tournaments, because I don't want to see them go away, and most of the time no-one else steps in to do it.

But it doesn't mean I'm in charge. It doesn't mean I want to be. It doesn't mean you should look to me to fix everything and/or be the cause of all problems, because I can't and I'm not.

And I am so very tired.

hS

But this really is one of the recruitment stories I've seen that are not immediately followed by a mission, which is a thing I enjoy. I much prefer them being interludes than a pre-mission thing.

Hence why, I'm suggesting Iximaz's "Tooth and Claw"

Have a cake.

Heck yeah I'll be rad!

Ix birfday?!

Ix birfday!

Ix.
Birfday.

Happy birfdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
My gift upon you is: four skateboards! One for each limb! You'll be the most radical kid on the street!

HAPPY BIRFDAY ENJOY YOUR CAKE

...two USAF captains met on an airplane and fell in love. A year later, they were married.

And twenty years ago, they decided to have me.

And... I still have no idea what I'm gonna do with my life even though I just realized it's like a quarter over already.

Eh, whatever. I'm gonna have a party and eat birthday cake. Life is good.

*showers the Board with cakefetti* Happy birthday, me!

When you said "oldbies", I thought of what I'm now going to call the "disputes group". The disputes group are the PPCers who tend to non-trivially (more than casting a quick "yeah, that seems good" on other people's votes etc.) participate in calling people out, discussions about community standards like this one, and so on. (To give an example, you and Scapegrace are both rather squarely in the disputes group from what I can remember). My post was encouraging more people to join that group, since there seems to be a general perception that it's a bit small.

Also, by what I think your standards are, the latest date you can put on when I became an "oldbie" was June 2012, when I started working on T-Board.

Oh, and, hey middlebies! Small suggestion. Those PPC traditions that happen every once in a while, like the Pokemon tournament or holiday RPs? You can start one! You can revive an old one that's lapsed because the last person to do it isn't around anymore!

More generally, take something that's missing around here and make it happen, lest we start coasting on the old folks' memories of the glory days! Join us in keeping this a place you want to hang out in!

Also, Phobos (and others who've been around longer that I have):

- When do you think (vaguely) we started having a distinct group of middlebies?

- Has the PPC gotten bigger, membership-wise? (I think it might've grown slightly, but not by much)

- Tomash

I mean, come on, it's hS' stuff and he's one of my favorites. And, well, it's hard for anything C*l*b**an to not stand out.

Derik's was quite heart-wrenching, and the mission itself wasn't exactly anything to sneeze at, either. What can I say, I'm a sucker for characters getting everything they love ripped away from them.

Dann's can be summed up in two words: Fangirl. Stampede. That is all. :)

...I should really go and give all of those a reread, it's been far too long.

That is pretty much what happens to recruited character replacements. As replacements, they explicitly are not the canon character they've replaced, just someone who might kinda sorta maybe look like them and share a couple things in common.

But if I understand you right, no, I don't think that makes them more unique or "non-standard" than a completely original character. Even characters you made up yourself are going to draw on inspiration from somewhere—more likely multiple somewheres.

Nume, for instance, largely draws on Dr. House, another cantankerous but very intelligent misanthrope with a substance dependency and, maybe, a heart of gold. He's also a little bit based on my dad and a big bit on your archetypal `70s nerd, with a weird memory and some weird hangups about sexuality for spice.

Derik, while looking like the Phantom of the Opera, sharing a passion for music, and being a little bit off his rocker, is mostly an ex-dragonrider with all the selfless devotion to duty and protecting others that entails. He's a product of his badfic, but he's even more a product of my love for both canons, and dragons, and music, and seriousface hero types wrestling with their dark side.

Make sense?

~Neshomeh

I'm on Eastern Time, so I think 5 hours behind you. So I think the best day will be Saturday. I'm available most of the day. I can do 18:00 Eastern on Weekdays.

Because I've begun adding some examples of recruitment to the Recruit page, and a wide variety of examples is always good. Mostly what I've added are the stories of people from World One, with the exceptions of Ranger, Surhat Roac, and Roger Walters.

The last two might be my favorite recruitment stories, because they showcase a pair of original characters finding their way to the PPC from original universes in unique ways. The stories do a great job of introducing the characters and the worlds they come from, which makes them even better. At the very least, they stuck with me enough that I thought to look them up six years later.

What are your favorites? What do you like about them, and what makes them stand out from the crowd? (Please don't nominate your own writing, that's cheating.)

~Neshomeh

(Since I wanted to see if this would pass muster as a character. Although there are a few points:)

1-2. Actually, the character I came up with wasn't a canon originally, but rather a character replacement. Altered by the Suethor (if that's how they come to be) and then convinced of a different backstory by a different person (probably outside of the PPC, as this'd have to be someone who isn't out to kill him.)

3. Yep. In this story, the agents (whoever they are) intended to kill him, but when he had the incident that gave him the burns and the memory loss, they probably either got distracted or thought he'd died/thought he was going to die soon and left him for dead.

4. Definitely. I seriously can't consciously write a Mary Sue without it being a joke. This idea was mainly to generate some interesting plots due to administration having to keep him from finding out his identity and also due to the actual canon also probably being out to kill him.

5. That is a good point. I think I've decided against the idea for using a canon as an agent (as I clarified, this idea was separate from the canon question, and the canon I thought of using had pretty much nothing to do with it.) But still a good idea.

-Twistey

In the words of The Who:
YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

(Attempted to make it as long as it is in the song. Somehow. Hope you enjoyed my really long "yeah". Happy Boardaversary.)

-Twistey

I don't think we're talking about the same thing. If I have parsed what you said correctly, you have a character who is the canon that has been injured and then lied to about his identity. His entire personality is based on lies that have been imposed on him by those that recruited him.

If that is what you were saying then it isn't what I was trying to say. The main distinction I am trying to make with Kelok is the Suethor did the altering, not the agents who recruited him. He's also fully aware of where he came from.

He wasn't a Stu as written in his story. I'd always recommend killing a Sue/Stu or exorcising/deglittering/memory wiping a canon that hasn't been replaced. His was a pretty specific situation with a canon replacement who isn't a Sue/Stu.

Agents aren't meant to the coolest or most super powered either (which the main characters often are in their own canons). I think it actually makes it more difficult to write good, interesting PPC missions with a highly powered agent than one who has to scrape by on ingenuity.

One final comment. If the agent is meant to be the actual canon, then it really limits what you can do with them. You have to constantly think about keeping them in-character with the canon material. There isn't much room for growth and change while respecting that. With a character who is your own (however they came to the PPC or your general fiction) you get to direct their development and decide what is in-character for them. It is relaxing in a lot of ways to be fully in charge of that as an author.

I find myself unable to move on to write a fluffy interlude while I just let this simmer unresolved.

Herr Wozzeck, I don't think you have been singled out for unfair treatment. I see how difficult it is to talk about a complaint when we can only talk in such vague words. But disclosing information that violates privacy was a bad move, especially when we just had this big crisis about that and all agreed that it shouldn't happen ever again.

Nord, why are you furious? You used what-I-don't-know-because-it-was-redacted-before-I-could-see-it as an excuse, so you depended on it being known; otherwise, how would that excuse have worked? I've actually not seen you doing this, but I have not seen you denying it here, so it happened and I don't need further evidence that would reveal personal information. Maybe you didn't intend to use this excuse here and thus didn't want us to know (which would show actual progress from the olden times), so being disappointed or even angra I might understand, but furious is a strong word. Anyway, I hope we have made sufficiently clear that we try to be considerate, if we are in the know, but that whatever-may-be-applicable is no excuse for not even trying.

Both of you, from what I can see, we are looking at the fallout of a friendship that may have been forced and turned out to be unhealthy years ago. I don't know what we can do about that, other than strongly recommend that you continue to ignore each other, like you already started to do. I sincerely hope we don't need to emphasize our dislike of having this blow up in our faces by adding an "or else", like we did for Bramandin.

Actually, it would be nice if you, before continuing the ignoring, could consider Tomash's suggestion of simultaneous apologies, made below.

HG

As promised! Posted below are the notes that JulyFlame gave me back in 2012 for my AU interlude "Five Stages". Yes, I hung onto them for several years because I thought they were that good.

I'm not suggesting that every time you beta, you need to do something like this. I would argue, however, that aiming for something like this would be a good goal.

The notes themselves.

If anyone else has old beta notes they think are particularly good, you are more then welcome to post them here (just make sure to get your beta's permission first).

There used to not be a gap, as I see it. You kinda graduated straight from "newbie" to "oldbie" when you decided you weren't a "newbie" anymore. And that's actually why I use the quotation marks around those terms. There is no concrete rule for what makes someone an "oldbie". It's all perception.

My general thinking on what each term means is this (and not at all a thing anyone needs to take as gospel truth):

Newbies are members of the community that preface posts with things like "I know I haven't been here very long, but..." or some such. They aren't yet comfortable interacting in the community on their own merits.

Oldbies are members of the community that take some responsibility for the community. PGs and Discord Mods are, kinda by definition, almost always Oldbies. There are, however, Oldbies who don't have any title but try to set a good example of how things are done.

Middlebies are people who are comfortable interacting in the community and posting on their own merits, but who maybe don't take an active role. (Technically, I think my previous post is asking the Middlebies to choose to become Oldbies?)

You'll note that there is no designation of time in these definitions. I've seen, in my time, people jump straight to Middlebie in a week. I've seen Newbies of 2 years, and I've seen Oldbies of 1.

But these are just my definitions. And there is nothing wrong with being at any point on this scale. It's just a convenient way of talking about things.


As for you, Tomash, I'd say you qualify as an Oldbie. You take some responsibility for the community and, with the one notable exception, set an good example.

-Phobos

Unless I'm misremembering, the pile of middlebies who hang out here but stay away from the big stuff has been a feature of the PPC for ... about as long as I've been here.

I'm pretty sure you could have made this post in, say, September 2011, and all you would've needed to do is use different names such as Tomash and Shoe.

So, this seems to be a long-standing problem. I worry this might just be something fundamental about how humans act in groups, and I'd gladly be proven wrong. I think it would help the community if people wouldn't do what I did back in the day and stay far back, only tossing in a quick vote on any concrete proposals once the dust has settled. Then again, I've read several posts here where people are saying that they're generally happy with how things have been handled so far and they they don't have anything to add. If that's genuinely the case for most of the people here, then it looks like those of us who've been participating can congratulate ourselves on a job (mostly) well done.

To those of you who've said you're staying out of here for various reasons (you don't trust your judgment, you think you'll make things worse, etc.), please don't take that last paragraph as some sort of "you must participate even though you feel uncomfortable" thing, and thank you for being open about your motivations.

On a personal note, am I generally considered an "oldbie" now? I've been around for six-ish years, so I'm pretty sure I qualify by that standard. But it seems like that's not how everyone uses the word "oldbie" these days.

- Tomash

I would suggest a third, intermediate stage showing the communication between the betas and the authors that comes between the initial comments and the polished product.