The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Hi

I call myself CodeCom.

I've been reading a few missions recently as well as reading some of the articles on the wiki.

I like to play video games.

I hope to get to know you and eventually write some of my own missions.

Many happy returns, generic well-wishes, etc!

Welcome to the PPC! We're all a little crazy, so... stay! We don't mind people that dig in deep as long as they're not bad folks!

As a welcome gift, have this: https://youtu.be/AZra3ydYytU

And I'm painfully ill and stuck at home. Somewhere, the Ironic Overpower has the smuggest grin on its face.

Anyways, I'm 16 now, so I'm less of a baby when compared to the rest of the Board! I'm still not 100% sure what I want to do with my career, but I hope to refine my music composition skills in the near future. For now, I plan to take it easy and nap or something.

Here's to a long and happy time with the PPC!

If you take it for granted (and are wrong) that you'll be fine, that's a perfectly massive character flaw... ^_~

It's been a while since I saw or read it, too... doesn't she pull a 'I will kill myself and ruin your plan' maneuver at one point? It's a fairly Disney approach to the situation, but (assuming she can't actually fight or escape) it is moderately proactive.

hS

I haven't played the game, nor heard anything about it for a while, but what I did pick up back when it came out makes me curl my lip. It doesn't feel like the Middle-earth we know at all. This thread on Stack Exchange should shed some light on it: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/70777/how-well-does-shadow-of-mordor-fit-into-middle-earth-canon

War in the North is a much better M-e game lore-wise, though I understand the gameplay leaves something to be desired.

~Neshomeh

I think what I meant was taking it for granted that things should go her way. A slight but important difference.

What does Buttercup actually do proactively? I ask because it's been a while and I really don't remember anything much besides "Farm Boy, polish my saddle" and "It doesn't matter. My Westley will come for me!", not because I doubt you. {= )

... Oh, wait, she does try to escape from Vizzini and them by jumping overboard and swimming for shore, doesn't she? That's one thing!

~Neshomeh

When you come down to it, I'd say most protagonists expect things to go their way (except the ones in hopeless wars, I guess). The key is that, for the realistic ones, it doesn't.

The interesting thing about The Princess Bride - book or film - is that virtually nobody actually given what they want, for vast chunks of the story. Instead, they spend their time getting captured, thwarted, stabbed in the middle of their climactic fight scenes, dying... come to think of it, even the framing characters don't get handed what they're after (such as 'people liking the Morgenstern' or 'the kid listening quietly').

What The Princess Bride does, and does exceptionally well, is take all of those 'I didn't get my way' and turn them into 'so now I'll make it happen myself'. Comedy aside, the characters are extremely proactive - even Buttercup, despite being a literal Damsel In Distress. They have to actually work to get to their goals. It's not something you see all that often, even in good literature (see: Harry "I was sneaking around for kicks and I stumbled across the Philosopher's Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone).

hS

Buttercup is sort of a Sue, isn't she? Beautiful, snobbish, expects everything her own way all the time...

I guess she learns better in the end, though. More or less.

~Neshomeh

Do you know the definition of fixfic? Basically, it's a fanfic where fans think the creator screwed up, so they address it in a fanfic.

Most often involves a Fixer Sue.

I'm gonna be honest, I've never read a bad fixfic before. Have you? Well, feel free to tell us about it!

At one point, the villains kill little girls. This is, of course, treated as horrifying. At another, a super-powered hero kills some little girls. This is not treated as horrifying.

He felt like Lirene Sedai had wrapped his chest in flows of Air, squeezing it tight. A frown tugged at the corner's of his pale lips. He felt... guilty. Lou was just sitting there, smiling, talking about the things a normal Myrddraal would do (well, it would probably kill everything in the room if it could; Jon wasn't sure about eating souls and making rugs out of human skin. He'd never done that, anyway) while Jon sat across from her, like a snake pretending to be a harmless worm. He couldn't do this. He liked Lou, and he didn't want whatever friendship (or relationship, though he hardly dared hope for that) he had with her to be founded on lies.

"Lou," he said, his voice like stone crumbling to dust, "I--I should have told you this sooner, but--" Rolling his lips together to keep them from shaking, he reached up and took off his sunglasses, revealing his smooth, eyeless face. "S-Some people call my kind Fades, but our--our proper name is 'Myrddraal.' Lou, Duane's right about me. I mean--" he added, hastily, "not me specifically, but all other Myrddraal are evil. They'd do all the things Duane is afraid of. I, um, got lucky. A bad parody fic gave me a personality, and instead of killing me, the agents that missioned it recruited me." He looked down at his hands, toying with the tablecloth. "I, um, I'd understand if you want to--I don't know--punch me or something." That was a normal response to being lied to, wasn't it? Jon wasn't sure. In any case, he braced himself.

((dramatic reveal music plays

-Alleb))

She breathed the air in, felt it down her throat, reveled in it, appreciated it thoroughly. 'He's angry,' she said. 'He's enraged,' she added. 'He's horrified,' she concluded.

She sighed, joyful. 'He thinks you're going to steal our souls and eat us and make rugs from our skins. He's going mad, now I've told you this.' She sighed, again. 'He thinks you're going to enter a state of beserk-rage and tear the entire room and everyone in it apart.'

She drew her eyes off Jon, and glanced around the room. There was a very conspicuous lack of 'everyone' around to get torn apart. The night hadn't ended, but it was on its last legs. The final few people shuffled and moved about like the last few leaves in a gust of wind. 'There's not many people for you to tear apart, though,' she said. And then she sunk lower on her hand, and sighed again, smiling. 'Gosh. It's late. I think.'

I can't be the only one who immediately thought of W. Goldman's abridgment of the classic Morgenstern novel, can I?

hS

Well, I've never heard of it!

So it probably is old news. Older than three months or so, at least, which is about as far as my memory extends before everything gets all cloudy and wobbly and half-existent.

And I'm pretty sure it's not a faux pas, but maybe I've forgotten that, too. I dunno. If we have torches and pitchforks and we're throwing them at you and screaming 'And stay away from our daughters!' then it was probably a faux pas.
But that won't happen, because, not only is everybody here incredibly nice and accepting, but everybody here is too poor to throw expensive pitchforks and torches at people!

Looks an interesting book! I'll keep an eye on it, and probably not get to buying it until a decade or so, given my massive reading list!

Also, welcome!

I remember I was bone-shatteringly nervous when I made my first post (a year ago). I revised it about ten times before hitting the "post" button.

Bribery to encourage you to stay and talk to us My gift to you, in congratulations on your first post:



The book looks super cool. I haven't been around long enough to know if the author's a PPCer, but I'm sure they've heard of us, if they've done thorough research into those who fight against "the Mary-Sue Disease." After all, we're a well-known group. Practically famous. Aren't we? We're probably not. Still.

--Key, and a Tubecat

'Cuz they sound pretty cool to me. Check out the summary of that book, it seems like our cup of tea.

Thanks for dropping this by, RPB. Do come again. {= )

~Neshomeh

((Yes, I know it's not exact, or his name of subtle foreshadowing is Talion. The plot remains... doubtful.))

"She has a mind for it." Jon leaned to the side, trying to catch a glimpse of Duane. "Isn't he angry down there?"

((We should probably start winding it up soon. Maybe let it come to a bit of a natural close, have their cards fizz soonish.

-Alleb))

Because the latter it's pretty darn sweet - the combat is simple, the open world is really neat and the Nemesis System is arguably the best element the studio had done: it ranks the Uruks in sections, each led by a Warchief or a Captain and if you take one out an Uruk of lower status will be promoted to the spot if you take too long or die.

As far as I know, some criticism was aimed at the story and boss battles. I know one Grump here (coughDescough) who is not the fan of the game's story connecting to the lore.

eg here

Which raises an important question:



What do the Tengwar say?

(What, you thought there was any question more important?)

The text on the anvil is fairly predictable - it's the Ring inscription. The lower-right segment is readable as 'ashnazggimbatul', which... yeah.

The ring itself, though... (oh, btw, that's a New Ring of Power - where does that come on the charge lists? ^^ But if there's one person allowed to make one...) well, it's not part of the Ring text, and it's not even written in the same mode. Note the lack of vowel-signs over any of the letters.

Instead, it looks like the Mode of Beleriand - the mode used for the inscription on the Doors of Moria, so points there. It says:

... mmof cwch hw(?) (?)occh...

... which you may note is gibberish.

Okay, so maybe it's upside-down? Except it can't be, because there's a very clear hwesta sindarinwa in there - it's the one that looks like a lowercase d with a tail.

It's not a portion of the inscription on the Doors of Durin, clever though that would be. So let's try the next theory: that it's actually English text typed using a Tengwar font. This is an unfortunately common problem: Tengwar fonts are laid out differently (so the series 1 't-p-c-q' runs along the first column of the keyboard, '1-q-a-z'), so it's worth a stab:

...em the and of Shad...

Dingdingding! There it is. It's pretty clear that last word is 'Shadow' (capital included - it's the weird both-up-and-down letter on the last word visible). Hilariously, this means the word front-and-centre is actually 'and' - nice symbolism there, guys!

Looking through the trailer again, there's another shot that shows a little of the word at the start - I see '... deem', and while it's not legible in its own right, the word 'redeem' would fit the letter-forms. (Suddenly I know how Christopher Tolkien feels trying to interpret his father's writing!) I think that 'and' is supposed to be 'Land' - capital-L gives a dot on the font I'm using, so they could've cut it out.

Going back a bit earlier in the trailer, we can get a decent read during the next-to-last strike of the hammer - it actually shows the same side of the ring, and confirms the 'Shadow' reading. There might be an extra letter on the end, but it's definitely not 's'; I'm guessing it's just a flourish. It also shows us the inside of the ring, which sadly seems to be mirrored.

So! The New Ring is inscribed to 'redeem the land of Shadow', by someone who doesn't read very well. So now we know. ^^

hS

PS: Oh, yeah, was the first game any good?