The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

((The going plan is for the Thornbird to meet up with the convoy to assist it against the baddies))

(( I realize I was not very clear about that until the end of my post. Not that the Thornbird can't use the same tactic if it wants to, but I'm in no way presuming I know how to handle a warship in active combat. For that matter, I'm not sure why a freighter has a counselor with an officer's rank, either. {X D

~Neshomeh ))

God, that's a good game. And when I'm not doing that, I'm running around the open world of Horizon: Zero Dawn, which is also a really good game. So yeah, it's a great week for gaming.

I also found out I'm gonna be moving out of Cincinnati next Friday. I'm... not looking forward to it, because it means I'll be down in Florida, with my folks. And that's not gonna be great for me, because that means I'm going to have to deal with my parents. And God, is that thought scary, particularly in light of the recent AHCA vote. They're gonna rub that shit in my face, I just know it...

Also, something else happened to some friends recently, and all that I can really think about with what's happened with this friend is "gee, where was [i]that[/i] a couple years back?" I guess life is weird like that.

So, if I remember right (I "main" LaTeX or plain text for most of the writing I do these days) both Word and GDocs have a "track changes" feature, which (hopefully) tracks edit suggestions and comments. If so, we could demonstrate good beta reading by either having someone (and their betas) volunteer a well-beta'd document with all of its history intact or by creating a well-beta'd document for demonstration purposes. Then, people could look over the revision history to see how it's done.

Your idea of what I'm going to call "apprentice betas" seems like a good one. I think that, if I ever write anything, I'd be open to doing that (even though I don't fit the "experienced writers" part).

Well, tough luck, you aren't entitled to one.

Also, you shouldmtry not to call someone mean so soon after apologising.

You have mental health issues, fine, but they're not a get out of jail free card. You've had it explained multiple times that she dosn't want to talk to you, respect that.

I'm not the only one who has this problem?!

I think I agree with you (in my case, this is rather theoretical agreement, since I haven't really published anything) about saying something being better than saying nothing. That is, even if a small army of "I liked it (nm)" isn't very helpful (and maybe even, like you said, a bit discouraging), it's still better than silence, which is what often happens around here. In my comments, I remarked that we don't have anything like AO3's "Kudos" button for technical reasons (hm ... I should see about adding that to T-Board), so I think the next-best solution is to make less unacceptable the sort of comment you said you were ashamed to post.

I also agree that positive concrit is pretty darn hard. Figuring out why you liked something involves non-trivial inspection, and it seems to be harder to inspect the inputs to like than to dislike. (I haven't the faintest idea about whether this is actually true or why it might be the case.)

So, if anyone has useful tips on how to generate positive concrit, I (and I expect most of the rest of us) would appreciate seeing them written up for the Board.

- Tomash

The Captain, examining the grid, nodded. "Alright, I want those two Missiles Northeast of us shot down with our Lasers. Make it look like they hit us. I also that decoy back up ASAP. We'll bring up our wedge and start heading south then."

Counselor Neshomeh steps up to the command position. She is wearing a non-regulation form-fitting jumpsuit that probably helps her patients relate to her or something, and is totally not just for eyecandy.

"Since Captain Elcalion got a little overexcited back there, I've sent him to Medical to calm down," she says, then looks around nervously. "Apparently that makes me the senior officer on the bridge at the moment. So, I think we should try to throw off those enemy ships. They seem to think we'll turn straight around and make a beeline for the hyper limit. Let's not do that. Instead, we'll jog southwest this turn, try to confuse them a little. Then, with their vectors off, we'll stand a better chance of escaping."

I hope.

(( I have barely any idea what I'm doing, but I liked the idea of being Deanna Troi. ^_^ So, basically, the convoy goes as far as it can to the southwest. Unless a more suitable officer thinks I'm about to get us killed and steps in, of course. {= D

~Neshomeh, participating! ))

And it's harder than negative concrit. And I think it would be good for us to practice at it—see below comments on the desire for some way to teach good beta-reading.

Also, I know I personally sometimes hesitate to comment on anything out of a sense of shame for having nothing more to say than I liked it. Concrit is good and desirable, and should always be encouraged; and it is discouraging to get nothing but fluff; but I've come to think lately that saying something might be better than saying nothing.

That's my two cents.

~Neshomeh

The Century Trilogy. The first one covers World War I, the second one is World War II, and the third one is the Cold War. I'm on book 2.

They're really good books. The facts are well researched and characters are all very relatable, human people, even the ones you might not agree with.

That's kinda what make it scary, reading about these events at this time. I can't help but think there are some similarities to the way things are spiraling out of control now, with some of the same issues of economics, racial and religious prejudice, nationalism, and an unhinged leader who pushed his way to power by preying on the insecurities of his voters. ... I'm trying really hard to avoid running afoul of Godwin's Law here, but I don't think I can. I'm... I'm just gonna stop. Point is, it's scary. I wonder if it's ever possible to see an international crisis coming long enough ahead of time to stop it.

There are some bright spots. We got a bipartisan budget passed, with some good stuff for education, heath, and the environment, and nothing for a border wall. I think we can be happy about this.

~Neshomeh

PoorCynic was not very enamored of the idea.

hS

Email is clickable in my username. Now, heads up - I am not the perfect (or even decent) SPaG beta, but I think I can manage with the lore and coherency.

If I have time over the weekend I may add to this.

I've realized I've been a bit negative in this thread, so I'm glad that you, and Tomash, and anyone I've missed, are making an effort to be positive.

I like what you said about building trust, and I agree that's something we really need. I've been thinking about proposing a "positive comments only" writing thread to help do exactly that, when this is all wrapped up. I'm not sure I should be the one to run it, since my follow-through on running things is fairly terrible, but would that interest people?

~Neshomeh

@writers: There is only one rule in the Riding of Sittorese, and the inherent punishment for disregarding its first part should be obvious.

@overperforming beta readers: There is only one rule in the Riding of Sittorese, but it comes in two parts, and you are not a ruler.

@underperforming beta readers: If you just want access so that you can learn from watching what the other beta readers do, please say so. It doesn’t work if the others came with the same intent.

Since beta reading is not public and thus usually cannot be learned from watching, I wonder how we could have learning opportunities:

Should experienced writers choose beta readers they know they can work with, but also admit a Newbie who may make surprising contributions, but is mostly there to watch and learn?

Should we have public demonstrations of beta reading, performed by betas who know their job, on a story deliberately written for the purpose?

Also, giving betas feedback on their feedback – doctorlit’s suggestion – may help.

HG

You load it ahead of time and it allows you to put bullets in a revolver more quickly. And he has a lot of them, by the look of his belt. It is possible that the bullets are even locked in to the ring and able to be fired from it, so the casings come out still attached.

-Phobos, maybe knows a thing or two about guns?

They have a dark band of some kind holding them together. Could be a metal 6-holed circle? The gun drops out of shot as they hit it, so there's no way of seeing how it comes off, but this seems within the laws of physics. You'd have to throw it very precisely - the holes can't be very tight, or else it wouldn't come off when you load! - but this is Roland we're talking about. He's a Gunslinger. They kind of train for that.

The fact that the filmmakers actually thought of this says good things to me.

hS

Stephen King on Twitter, last year.

(Should I put a spoiler block in here? I feel like I should, and that I should do it with Dark Tower-specific text, but I can't think of any at the moment. "See the TURTLE of enormous girth/On his shell he carries the whole earth", or however that went? I dunno, but the Guardians were pretty cool. Almost as cool as Maerlyn's Rainbow; in fact I really liked the whole idea that the safety of the universes relied on a bunch of stuff that actually wasn't very nice. Oh, hey, that should about do it.)

This isn't an adaptation of The Gunslinger. It's something far more exciting - a continuation of the story after book 7. It starts in the same place - "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" - but it's under no obligation to hit the same story beats.

Will the Ka-Tet all make their appearances? I certainly hope so, and there's a certain element of fate involved there, so it seems likely (Oyoy?). But they won't go to the same places, they won't meet the same people, they may not even start out identical to how we know them, nor end the same way (in both meanings of the phrase).

I agree that it would be great to see a direct adaptation of the series (maaaaybe with fewer lobstrosities, though). But that's not what this is, and the fact that it's titled only "The Dark Tower" is a huge indication that it's not going to be anything like what we know. And I find that exciting.

(Also it lets them step neatly around the usual adaptation complaints of "why was Roland's coat blue in this scene instead of turquoise?!?!?!" - and it lets them have actual suspense, since we don't know what's going to happen.)

As to your Hollywood comments - maybe; I don't know. I'm notoriously bad at recognising film quality. This is a first trailer, though, and they've deliberately chosen stuff that looks Action Movie-y. I have no doubt that they could equally have made a Horror trailer, a Fantasy one, and a Quiet Talky Movie one - and I'm guessing we'll see at least one of these before the film comes out.

hS, in memory of Gilead

I'm actually a bit less excited about the movie, now that I've seen the trailer. I know the series had issues towards the end, but I did think the early novels were going to see fairly straightforward adaptations. There are a lot of scenes here that don't seem to have any real analogue in the first novel. (The end sequence seems to be Roland and Jake battling the slow mutants, but that should be happening in an abandoned mine tunnel, not above ground.) But beyond adaptational nitpicking, a lot of scenes just seem so shallowly Hollywood. I especially hate Roland somehow reloading his gun by throwing them in the air, and catching them in the chambers without them moving apart from each other. What? And a lot of the gun fight choreography seems terribly ostentatious . . .

As a fan of King's works in a broader sense, I do hope the house where Jake finds the portal is the same one used to film the house on Niebolt Street in the upcoming It movie, since the two are supposed to be "twins." It will also be interesting to see if future adaptations of King's works where the man in Black appears will re-use the same actor to portray him.

—doctorlit darkles and tincts

There is a general feel that trying to create your own personal PPC chatroom should be viewed as a perhaps-misguided reaction to some other cause, and that the cause is what we should be looking at, rather than the act itself. Luckily for me, I'm under no obligation to agree with that consensus.

I feel that what you did was deliberately try to circumvent a potential community decision, and that the way you did that was absolutely terrible. I say this as someone who did exactly this, many years ago: creating a new not-called-the-PPC-Board for the people I felt were 'proper' PPCers. When GreyLadyBast found out, she quite rightly smacked us down hard.

That said, you have apologised, and acknowledged that it was a bad idea. It's clear you understand that. So I'm happy for that to be the end of things, assuming you don't (for some bizarre reason) try to do it again.

hS

Double-checked just to be on the safe side and they're a crisis-center only, which means my only other option would be the abusive 'wellness center'.

So I'll still be reachable by email or PM but I will be staying off the Board for a few days.