The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Howdy folks. First things first: upon his departure, Desdendelle turned over control of the Discord server to me. You may all bow before my awesome grandeur, etc.

Secondly, the Discord has two new mods! In addition to myself and Cat-on-the-Keyboard, we now have the guiding hands of Maslab and Delta Juliette! You may also bow before their awesome grandeur. Seriously though, many thanks to the both of you for stepping up and helping. It's very much appreciated.

Finally, we recently suffered through a small infestation of rather noxious trolls. Rules were flouted, people were insulted, and so banhammers were swung. As a result, we have decided that only the channel moderators will be able to issue instant invites to the Discord right now. If you're already in the channel right now, then nothing will really change. If you're NOT in the channel and want to get in, then you will need to speak with one of the people I previously mentioned.

Thanks for your time!

PC

I've always been a sucker for "Journey to the West".

https://physics.le.ac.uk/jist/index.php/JIST/article/view/51

Unfortunately, I have forgotten again how to format links.

Alone in his RC, he stared down at the wand in his hand.

This was legitimate—well, as legitimate as a Suvian wand from a badfic could be. It was undoubtedly made from some outlandish non-canon things, bear claw and eucalyptus wood or such, but a real and proper wand, nonetheless. Not one of those Muggle-use wands that any agent could use.

He tried one last time. Swish and flick. Nothing. Nothing at all.

He looked down at the Kwikspell lesson laying open on the large tabletop before him. The diagrams on wand posturing and foot stance. The basic spells that a child in the Potterverse could manage—at least, the ones who were wizards.

He batted the Kwikspell course off the table, releasing the wand at the end of the motion so that it clattered to the ground along with the paper. It joined the growing pile of magic swords, enchanted armor, cursed gems. Trinkets and baubles and refuse from across the known multiverse, all supposed to grant magical powers in their origin worlds.

And, to him, all useless.

He should have known, really. Kwikspell didn’t work for Muggles, and that is, essentially, what he was. Never mind that the line in the fanfiction from which he’d been recruited specifically named his as “wizard.”

But nothing seemed to work. Nothing in this entire, wide multiverse—no, that just couldn’t be.

He moved around the table, to the spot where he had laid out the five basic land cards of Magic: the Gathering. Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, Forest, corresponding to white, blue, black, red and green mana. In his home universe, wizards and planeswalkers fueled their spells with mana, drawn from memories of the lands they had visited in their travels and training. In the card game, the players represented this energy source, and the cost of using it, by turning the land cards ninety degrees for the rest of the turn: “tapping.”

Imagine if all worlds contained mana. A PPC agent, gaining memories of them all . . . tapping all those resources . . .

He ran his long, thin fingers over his face. He certainly looked the part of a stereotypical wizard. Robes, wrinkled skin, pointy hat, long, grey beard and mustache. The PPC at large clearly thought so—his nickname of “Pinball Wizard” had developed from his activities in the Game Center, though the others didn’t realize how mocked he felt to be called that.

But someday, it would be a true description. He would keep searching. He would keep trying the magic items he could find on missions. He would keep bartering for what he could get off HQ’s black market. He would, someday, live up to his nickname.

The Pinball Wizard lightly rested his fingertips on one of the land cards and turned it sideways.

doctorlit’s note: I have written this character once before, for PoorCynic’s very first Writing Workshop. I know I haven’t used him since then, but I do plan for him to be part of my regular cast of characters. Magic: the Gathering, mana and land cards were created by Richard Garfield and belong to Wizards of the Coast, while Muggles, Kwikspell and the Potterverse were created by and belong to J.K. Rowling. Muggle-use wands were created by Meir Brin.

July, you are the big sister I never had and I love you dearly. I hope that you will eventually return, even if that's not likely to happen. I will try to keep in touch and I hope that you know that you do have people who care about you here.

I'm trolling the tournament rules, which specifically allow Explosion except under certain circumstances. This is a team that would provoke repeated "that's not allowed"s, even though it is. ^^

Oh, and: <a href="http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Foresight(move)">Foresight. Odor Sleuth. Scrappy, though that one's rare enough that it might not pair with Explosion. Over to you.

Mega-Glalie is totes going on the team. ^_^ Iceplosion outta nowhere! (Also the image of blowing a mega-evolved, full-health Pokemon up just amuses me immensely.)

hS

I think my favourite must be BREAKING BAD: GUS FRING'S FACE BLOWN OFF, which discusses whether everyone's favourite evil meth and chicken kingpin could have calmly walked out of a hospital room, adjusted his tie and and then keeled over dead. Turns out, biology and physics are mostly on Vince Gilligan's side, but there's no way he could have walked after that.

More seriously, it's not actually possible to win a battle with just suicide mons. Leaving aside physical walls, types that resist or are immune to Normal-type moves (your exception there being Mega Glalie, which gets an Ice-type boom courtesy of Refrigerate), and moves like Protect, you can, at best, get a draw - and because you killed your own 'mon to do it, it still counts as a loss for you.

It's a nice idea, but there are much more irritating troll teams out there. Paraflinch-heavy teams, for instance. Those are the strongest arguments against the existence of a kind and loving god. =]

There's only one problem, I'm really busy. PM me the link in the Discord, and I'll get to it as soon as I can though.

If either Sergio or Nikki (or both) had died, a certain other Agent of mine would've never been born...

I've probably said this before, but I absolutely love that you're basing this series on an old fic of yours. Even though we aren't familiar with Agent Turbo's original story, it still gives an interesting sense of history and complexity to his character, that most agents don't tend to have. I love it! I also love the contrast it provides between Turbo having reformed from his days in the old fic, and Vera remaining true to her motivations in the original story, recast through the lens of a Suvian. It's sort of like a narrative representation of your development as a writer over the years!

I also see that the thing I've been dreading isn't as bad as I thought. I was worried you were killing off your agents (sans Corolla) to account for them being missing during the future part of the Blackout, but it looks like they're just retiring instead. Guess I should have assumed the simplest explanation!

—doctorlit gushes fanboy all over the Board

Glad you liked it.

I was planning for the drabble to have the message you suggested originally, but I couldn't fit it in.

He does come from somewhere with lots of war.

If someone's interested, let me know.

Entrainment. Simple Beam. Worry Seed. Arguably Mummy, though Cofagrigus can't learn Explosion. It can pick up Destiny Bond, though, which also isn't strictly banned... though it rather makes negating Damp a bit pointless. ^_~;

Your move.

hS

Thanks for the reminder, I forgot he changed his username. -_-

(And just as a heads-up, if you do go the Explosion route, I will make a team of all Pokémon that have the Damp ability. Nyah.)

Every measure will be taken to suppress the blah blah blah. We will be targetting the Socialist and Liberal demographics for broad-scale anti-terrorism measures, which will consist of taking away everything they love and building up everything they hate.

It's gonna be great. You'll see.

hS FC

That's going to make for a seriously messed-up bracket. There is only one solution: I'm going to have to replace my entire team with Pokemon whose skill is Intimidate and force two people to drop out. >:D

... maybe not?

...so the trollish nature of that idea leads me to another, even trollishier idea: making a team where every member knows Explosion, which they will use at will. It's perfectly legal unless it forces a tie! I'm sure there's something in all of Pokedom that will prevent an Exploding Pokemon from fainting... :D :D :D

(Will not be doing this. Hilarious though it would be.)

(Reminder that there is no such PPCer as 'Storme Hawk' - what kind of ludicrous name is that?! ^_~ Does that count as a mini-Novastorme?)

hS

They're basically calculating the speed a human would have to move to deliver the same energy as a wrecking ball. Though they did raise the ball up to 60 degrees without referenced justification... still, they get the bonus points for using a song as their basis.

However: I see that excercise in pointless force-vector-based physics, and raise you...

Nobody tosses a Dwarf! – Modelling Gimli being tossed by Aragorn

... wherein we find evidence cited to 'discussion on internet forums tend [sic] to agree', the statement that Gimli 'will be treated as a point mass', and this glorious conclusion:

In conclusion, by using simple models, footage from the film and various assumptions the amount of force that it took Aragorn to toss Gimli was 2767 N. This is a significant amount of force; however it would be possible for a human to produce it. We can assume therefore, that Gimli’s weight is not the reason why nobody tosses a dwarf.

:D

hS

Do you really think 675 lembas can beat THE VIABILITY OF COMING IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL? I think not, good sir.

I approve of drabbles. ^_^ You've taken a decent stab at the concept - getting each idea across in a handful of words, setting the scene early and letting it flow from there.

I think the one suggestion I would make would be to make the realisation/hope thing be about the PPC, not about... I'm guessing Arden comes from somewhere with lots of war? At the moment, your message is 'the PPC is better than home'. I feel like a better message might be 'the PPC is a sucky job, but there are moments when it's the best thing in the worlds'.

I really do like the idea that his first experience in HQ was laughter. It makes me happy. :)

hS

This was supposed to be a thread about this weird scientific paper I found. Here's the abstract:

The Fellowship of the Ring were supposed to travel from Imraldis to the forges of Mt. Doom in order to destroy the One Ring of Sauron. For an ideal journey with all 9 members of the fellowship, using the metabolic rates for each species from [2], the total calorific consumption of the 92-day journey was found to be 1,780,214.59 kcal. If the elves of Imraldis had provided the Fellowship with lembas, this would equate to them having to carry a total of 675 pieces, or 75 pieces each. For the different species, this equates to 304 for the hobbits, 214 for Gandalf, Aragorn and Boromir; 99 for Gimli and 60 for Legolas.

I had this whole thing where I was going to point out the published mini-Balrog, query the social assumptions (lembas, from Rivendell?!), and say Look, This Is An Actual Journal!

Then I looked at the references.

So then this was supposed to be a thread about how these same nutters also published this delightfully wacky paper, which calculates the base metabolic rates of the races of Middle-earth by comparing them to various animals. Humans are calculated from foxes, because… I guess there's no data out there on human metabolisms? I'unno.

Anyway, then I was going to predict that their third paper would clearly be an attempt to work out what real-world food lembas most resembled, based on its calorific content. It was gonna be awesome.

But then I looked at the journal.

So now this is a post about how amazingly weird the University of Leicester is. The Natural Sciences/Interdisciplinary Science Department publishes the Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics. The articles are written and peer-reviewed by their undergraduates, as part of their course, and it's all published, open-access, on the internet. Amazing!

And the topics of their papers are glorious. "How many lies could Pinocchio tell before it became lethal?" "DNA Profiling: How Long is the Golden Snitch’s Flesh Memory?" "The Force Required to Stretch Elastigirl’s Arm." There's material here for a dozen threads, it's awe-inspiring!

So go find it. Pick out your favourite paper from the six volumes of the journal, and tell us what's in it! Can you top '675 lembas cakes' as a scientific result? Go at it.

hS

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