The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

By heavens!

By Steve Irwin!

By Jim Johnson!

I forgot to give you a gift!

I gift upon you: a robotic copy of myself, designed specifically to give you gifts on your command.

This will never happen again, I assure you.
Just don't get water in his joints. Or on his skin. Or within 5 metres of him. Don't take him out on humid days, too. And don't spit around him, either. If you need to drink, do it in a completely different house away from him. Don't even say the word 'water' around him.

But, other than that: this will never happen again.

I created an account for the first time tonight and am clueless about a lot of things on Twitter .
Anyway , while I was making my list of people to follow , my account was locked ! I didn't get to use Twitter for more than five minutes total and that happened .
So now I can't get back on without sending a ( mobile ) phone number ( I have no phone right now to use , btw and don't like sending strangers my number ) for them to text me back to unlock the account .
Idk what to do and I absolutely can't stand Twitter .
I just want to delete the account and I can't even do that . :(

2017, this had better not be the start of your attempts to top last year.

"Would you rather discuss price before or after I do something about my lack of a proper weapon?"

:)

8D

From what I understand, you prefer clear and blunt feedback, and I will attempt to provide it. If, from your perspective, I am being vague or unclear, please tell me what you were uncertain about so that I can clarify it. If something I write below appears rude, that is not my intention.

One of my main concerns is that your expressed attitude towards constructive criticism and feedback is not the attitude expected of PPCers. Several people have provided you with critical feedback on your PPC writing, which included suggestions for improvement and often indicated that your stories had significant structural problems that required revision.

You have not (from what I can see) responded to this this concrit in the matter expected of you as a PPCer. There are (speaking generally) several possible responses to concrit we consider appropriate. (This is not written down anywhere, as far as I know. I'm attempting to imprecisely write down my view of social consensus.)

The first is to use the feedback by making edits and improvements to the work being commented on. This is effectively obligatory for unintentional typos and other minor errors. If you use someone's concrit, it is expected that you leave a message indicating this and thanking them for their efforts. If the concrit indicates a major structural issue, and you intend to resolve this issue through heavy editing, you are expected to take your story down until you have completed your changes. As a specific point, if you are told that something is unclear from the text, responding with a clarifying comment (but not changing the story) is not sufficient.

A second option is to discuss and possibly disagree with the concrit. Since writing is a somewhat subjective exercise, there will be times that you will receive concrit that you do not think you should implement, or which you will otherwise disagree with. When this occurs, you should still respond to the criticism and explain (to a reasonable extent) why you disagree with it, ask for clarification, or otherwise discuss the feedback you received.

A third option, which generally applies to large-scale issues that would be difficult to resolve but that are only minor problems (such as being slightly over/under-descriptive) is to acknowledge the feedback and apply it to future work. However, this would not be a reasonable response to the comments you have received on your previous mission, which point out much more serious structural issues.

(In addition, if a response includes multiple items of criticism, you should make some response to all of them.)

The main reason for these expectations is that the PPC is a community dedicated to good writing and improvement. You are expected to engage with the feedback you receive, and to make edits and revisions even after publication. (For example, in this mission, Neshomeh resolved a canon error four years after publication.) This expectation does not generally extend to full rewrites long after the fact, although they may be advised in your case. Your apparent refusal to do this ("the two linked stories are dead and I won't be working on them") is not an expected response. (If this was a highly abbreviated way to withdraw those stories from the PPC universe, please indicate that you are doing this.) Similarly, replying to concrit by simply indicating you have read it is not a correct response.

There have also been concerns about your interactions with your beta readers. In general, you are expected to engage with your betas' feedback like you would with concrit. You are also expected not to publish work until you have resolved your betas' concerns (or reached a state of mutual reasonable disagreement). Not doing this indicates an apparent lack of interest in cultivating good writing skills on your part, which is something I am concerned about.

Furthermore, you have displayed (though you seem to not be doing this as much recently) a pattern of posting on the Board for a day or two and then disappearing for a long period of time. While hiatuses are a normal part of PPC life, you should at least keep an eye on your own threads, and respond to those who reply to you as appropriate. This is especially the case with mission and interlude threads. Posting a mission and then (from out perspective) ignoring the replies is not the behavior we want you to exhibit. It shows that you are not acting as a member of the PPC community, and the PPC is fundamentally a community that writes in a shared universe, not a shared universe with an attached community.

There are no formal consequences if you keep acting this way. However, there are likely to be informal social consequences. That is, people will become annoyed with you because you are not respecting community norms. You may begin finding it more difficult to find beta readers if you continue to develop a reputation as being difficult to work with. Your work may go unread. You may stop receiving feedback because people will not want to waste their time giving concrit that will not be applied. This is not inevitable, and will (almost certainly) not occur if you change your behavior to better align with our expectations.

I hope that my attempt at writing down the unspoken conventions of the PPC will help you work with us better, and I look forward to reading your future writing.

- Tomash

Here are seven clear indications that it's Nume, not Ilraen, before the glasses come into it:

1. The whole story has been from Nume's POV. There's no reason for anyone to assume a switch to Ilraen's POV without notice.

2. The last sentence of the paragraph previous to "He woke slowly" tells of Nume going to sleep, therefore it follows that Nume is the one waking up. Again, if I had meant to switch to Ilraen, I should have given notice.

3. The reader should know from the previous paragraph that Ilraen has returned to his Andalite form, therefore he has no hair on his scalp; only fur.

4. Since Ilraen is in his Andalite form, his speech would be set off with <angle brackets,> not "quotation marks."

5. Ilraen's speech patterns are markedly different from Nume's: he would never say "knock it off."

6. Ilraen has no mouth and therefore no need for a toothbrush.

7. Nume was the one who struck his head against the gates at the Ministry, and anyway, Ilraen has no eyebrows.

Given all that, I feel I've done more than enough to convey the fact that it's Nume we're dealing with, not Ilraen. I'll grant you that it's easier to spot all the clues if you know what an Andalite looks like, but a) that problem is more easily solved by a new reader using Google than by me wasting words describing it over and over in every episode of my spin-off; b) clues 1 and 2 alone should be indication enough; and c) most readers should be able to grasp 4, 5, 7, and possibly even 6 just from this story whether they know anything about Andalites or not.

~Neshomeh

That is a good thing, because there's no way I would share a glitter gel pen with my agents, especially a purple one. I'm keeping this for myself.

Thank you for the gift! I'm sure I'll love it.

On the other hand I spent around two hours searching through four different dictionaries trying to figure out what Dalechoth translated to. Then I noticed it started with Dalek and right now I'm assuming you're talking about "The Daleks" which just so happens to be my favorite Hartnell episode.

Since the last time I counted, we got another large group of votes, which has resulted in a clearer picture of community consensus. In several days (probably around the middle of next week), I plan to make a hopefully final count that will summarize our decision and include a final call for votes and objections (if there are many of those, we'll have final count 2, and final count 3, and so on, but I would prefer we not go there).

This means that, if you would like your opinion to be fully heard, please speak up now.

Now, here's the next count of votes.

To make things clearer, I'm counting support for a long ban after the last chance as support for shorter lengths of ban as well. That is, if you voted for option 1 but with a permaban if Glarn violates the Constitution again, that also counts as voting for option 1 as proposed.

Number of people who get a little "I Voted" sticker: 18 (Tomash, Tira, Good Mod Addict, Desdendelle, SkarmorySilver, Granz, Neshomeh, Akrinor, Delta Juliette, VixenMage, Mattman The Comet, eatplaylove, Hardic, Sergio Turbo, Storme Hawk, doctorlit, Matt Cipher, Aegis)

Option 1, as written: 83% (everyone except eatpraylove, Mattman, and Akrinor)

Option 1, but with a permaban: 11% (Tira and doctorlit)

Option 1, but with a 3 month ban: 94% (everyone but Mattman)

Option 1, but with a 1 month ban, and then a permaban if it happens again: 6% (Mattman). If the "and then" is removed, I could interpret this passing unanimously.

Short, symbolic ban: 11% (Tomash and Akrinor)

Chat probation on return: 6% (Tira)

Abstained: A lot fewer people. By my count, there's around 50 people who posted on the Board or in the chat recently. If we take that to be the number of active PPCers (which is probably isn't because that's a slippery term), we have around 36% turnout. This seems pretty good, especially since that percentage counts newbies and people who basically lurk as abstaining, which makes it an underestimate of the actual turnout.

I already have two people looking at it, so I'm good for now.
But thank you for the offer!

I'm slowly working on Welcome to the Future from the unclaimed list. Sherlock Holmes.

I finished reading it when I got home. Where he wakes up in the medical ward, you should mention that it's Nume earlier.

I was thinking that it was Ilrean until he reached for his glasses, and then I got confused.

I'll try better next time, but both of the two linked sotires are dead and I won't be working on them.

Have a purple glitter gel pen. Agents aren't allowed to use them on reports.

You can directly email a volunteer. I can take a look at it late next week.

Have a purple glitter gel pen. Your agents aren't allowed to use it on reports.

I have conflicting information on whether initial d- from Primitive Quendian d is subject to the soft mutation or not.

Oh, and also have a Sindarin dub (recorded by Elven and Dunadan Agents) of I Dalechoth (all seven episodes).

First coffee, now a McMuffin - is this a conspiracy to make me eat breakfast?

Thanks a lot!