The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

1) I went ahead and made a few changes. Hopefully this is a bit better.

2) Personally, I prefer AFAB (assigned female at birth) for myself and I know others do as well, but YMMV.

3) Never mind, then? :P

4) When I first came out as genderfluid, I got a heck of a lot of questions asking "Well how do you know what gender you are?" and "What does X gender even feel like?" To which I would have to say, how would you describe color to a blind person? How would you describe what your own gender feels like? My personality doesn't change with my gender; I don't suddenly love football when I'm male, and I don't get the urge to wear makeup when I'm female. It's just kind of a gut feeling to me, though sometimes it takes me a bit before I figure out which I am today. Until then, it's just this vague sense of discomfort—kind of like wearing clothes that are just a tiny bit too small. It's quite annoying to be called "young lady" when I'd prefer "young man" or vice versa.

In all honesty, I'm probably the worst person to ask this question because even I myself have no idea what gender is to me, other than a gut feeling. *shrugs* Wish I could be more helpful than ramble a lot.

Namely, when a PPCer recruits a character, they don't remain the exact same character. The badfic version and the PPC version share certain superficial traits, but the whole point, IMO, is to take the kernel of an idea that was done badly and show how it could be done well.

Ilraen, for instance, is not the same Andalite who showed up for one line in a fanfic to give some OC morphing powers. He did that thing, but that other guy was just a one-dimensional bit character without so much as a name. Ilraen is, I devoutly hope, much more than that. You couldn't say at this point that they're the same character.

Same goes for Derik. He had a bit more to his badfic origin, but Derik is not the same guy as E'rik, because he has an inner life with conflicts all his own. E'rik... doesn't. He was just there to look impressive and play backup to the main Sue of the story. Derik remembers being Weyrleader to Alanna's Weyrwoman... but he remembers a lot more about having been a harper and a generic bronzerider, none of which was actually in the fic; and he also has these strange moments where the fact that he's a Phantom photocopy seems to go further than skin-deep, and they freak him out.

Even Gall, who's the most similar to her badfic counterpart, I wouldn't say is the same character. Luga is a generic schoolyard bully who bullies for the sake of bullying with no real rhyme or reason to it. Gall is a self-centered jerk who likes to throw her weight around (such as it is), but she's also perceptive, insightful, and intelligent; she respects power, loves her dragon, and wants to jump her partner's bones if he'll ever take a hint. Her best friend is Gremlin, and they like to bond over raucous girls' nights and physical activities such as AHAIRQ and the PPC Hunger Games. They're different people.

At best, you could say these characters were inspired by their badfic counterparts. They share similar origins, but nothing more. And that, I think, is how you avoid plagiarism. Credit to the original not required.

~Neshomeh

... that's kind of where I am, too. And one possible answer to my question is 'people view men and women differently, and we should be allowed to choose which way we're viewed', which is perfectly valid, and the only one I can think of off the top of my head which I don't go 'uh what?' at.

But I'm also aware that other people can - on certain rare occasions - answer questions in ways I didn't expect. So I'm hoping for answers that fall somewhere between the above and 'well males like football and girls like flowers'.

hS

PS: Gender isn't even essential in writing, y'know...

Disclaimer: This is just my rambling opinion of the moment. I don't intend to speak for anybody else.

I've lately come to think that gender is basically, more or less, BS. It's almost entirely a social construct, and one that I personally have never really bought into. I mean... my body is female, I'm happy being female, but all the trappings of "traditional" femininity mean little and less to me. People are just people. They should be able to like what they like and be good at what they're good at regardless of their Xs and/or Ys. IMO, the sooner we all stop caring how people with certain bodies choose to express themselves through superficial fashion choices and whatnot, the happier we'll all be.

Screw gender, it's a dumb idea that's caused a lot of people a lot of heartache. Let's ditch it. {= P

~Neshomeh reserves the right to be wrong and change her mind.

Since, y'know, I gave hS interesting real ale last time, and that would be pointless for you. =]

Y'know, assuming the money comes together and all that. Which is unfortunately still a big assumption at the moment. But I can dream.

I like British pubs. I've never felt out of place in one despite not drinking.

~Neshomeh

I feel like any more explanation on the subject would be inappropriate for this locale, so I'll just clarify that by "slash" I specifically meant yaoi.

Drunk AU best AU. =]

Thanks for clarifying.

As to why you can't edit Board posts - if you desperately want that ability, you can post and ask the Board's opinion (it's an option that can be enabled for logged-in users, I think). But I will argue vehemently against it, on the grounds that a) we've had enough bad apples around that letting them alter their posts is asking for 'no I never said that you bully', and b) acknowledging and discussing your mistakes is far more in the PPC spirit than just deleting them. (Oh, and c) I hate the idea of losing information - any information.)

hS

Recruitment is understandable and certainly done with credit, and heck, I have an agent based on someone else's character (Rayner, based off Trotsworth's genderbent Rainbow Dash) AND have recruited someone else's OC at least once (though granted, I handed V.R. off to a fellow Boarder afterward). The difference, though, is that in all of these cases I openly cited where all these characters came from or were derived from. It's when someone uses someone else's character WITHOUT CREDITING THE ORIGINAL CREATOR that things get ugly. Replacements are of course exceptional due to being derived from a canon, but use of someone's fanmade OC without credit technically DOES qualify as plagiarism. You both are on the same tier, so to speak.

I am so sorry that I failed to clarify this from the beginning. I know I should've, and darn it, I WANTED to, but I pressed the post reply button too early and I can't edit Board posts. WHY, BOARD, WHY?! DX

Actually, two questions:

1/ Page-related, in the list you give specific descriptions by the agents' names, but most (all?) of them don't appear in the text of the article theoretically describing the phenomenon. One even shows up as an acronym, which frankly sounds like a style of computer game to me. ;) I guess this isn't really a 'question' so much as a point to be improved.

2/ Wait, there's actually three questions. #2 is: you're using 'male' and 'female' as words for gender, and say that it's incorrect to describe someone as 'male in a female body'. What word structure would you suggest to describe the biological sex of someone's body, since it's... uh, actually quite significant in lots of contexts. (Take that as either 'would you personally suggest' or 'what's the accepted standard', as appropriate.)

3/ I only discovered the third question late. ^^ ... no, never mind, I followed a link and the third question went away.

Wait, I found another, and I'm veering quite far off topic here.

4/ Agen___t's article says that they 'refused to settle on a gender without knowing more about zirself and what genders even meant'. So... what does gender even mean?

(I could add more to that question, but choose not to prejudge the potential answer/s.)

hS

I assume you mean nearby to me, not to Tolkien (who lived in Birmingham, Warwickshire, Oxford, and Bournemouth, but never as far as I know Norfolk).

It's not the only Green Dragon, either. Google tells me I can find one in Cambridge, Braintree, three in London... wow, I could design the geekiest and spaced-out-iest pub crawl ever.

Alas, there doesn't appear to be a genuine Prancing Pony (though it is the name of a brewery in Australia). Or a Forsaken Inn... anywhere. There is, interestingly, an Ivy Bush inn (it's Gaffer Gamgee's local, on the Bywater road)... in central Birmingham. So maybe Tolkien knew of that one.

hS

Is this 'ere pub, in the (to him) nearby village of Wymondham. I might be telling you something you already know, but I stumbled upon it quite by chance and thought it relevant to your interests. =]

... is that several of the articles claim the book will mostly consist of the 'original version' of the story.

I... find that unlikely. The Tale of Tinuviel is very different from the story as presented in the Silmarillion - it takes place in a wildly different (simpler) Beleriand, and notably has Beren as a Noldo(!). And that's not even mentioning the giant cat which makes Beren its slave...

So while the idea of a Readers' Version of the Book of Lost Tales is one I've liked for a while, I think it far more likely we'll get the version found in the Quenta Silmarillion draft - ie, something slightly longer than the version that made its way into the published Silm.

What I would like - and find it unlikely I'll get - is a triple combination version which presents, in reverse order of writing, the Quenta version, the Lay of Leithian (combined from the rewrite and the original), and the Tale of Tinuviel, all in 'reader' versions. Then the latter part of the book could be the analysis. That would be a gorgeous book... but it won't happen. ;)

hS

To keep word order consistent, shouldn’t the sentence read either
Transwoman/transman work well if you have to specify, but there's usually no reason not to just refer to them as simply "woman" or "man"
or
Transman/transwoman work well if you have to specify, but there's usually no reason not to just refer to them as simply "man" or "woman"?

Or did I get Wikipedia wrong?

HG

Are you going to start at the top, with Jay and Acacia's recruitment of Ranger? Or maybe something more recent, like my sneaking off with Arwen/Hypatia?

What's your plan for when the recruitment was done by someone other than the person who used the character? Do I get punched for Ithalond too, or are you going to be hunting down Tungsten_Monk? And who gets the blame for Ilraen - Twiggy or Neshomeh?

Please, do tell - I'm excited to hear all the plans behind your random threats of violence towards your fellow PPCers.

hS

IT'S THE NUTSHACK.

If I offended you, I apologize. I shouldn't have talked about this on the Board. I also understand the necessity of an objective critic, reason I'm not going near a badfic where I can't be objective.

Now, on futa, and that's a personal opinion, I find it involves a part of bad biology, especially if no explanations are provided, I'm not sure about why do that when strap-on exist, and for the last point... Why would male parts be needed to do femdom plus slash? I'm fan of several lesbian ships, so I'll say yes to these two points, but is the futa really necessary?

I guess my stomach isn't well habitued to the worst of fandom, and that I didn't see too much of the worst. I... guess that's a good thing?

But at the end of the day that's only a personal opinion, and there are seven billions of them here on this planet. Please don't take offense, and don't worry about this. Each people like their own thing, and, well, I guess I never saw good futa before, so there is that too, I guess.

I'm not going to argue that that scene wasn't gross. And personally, incest makes my skin crawl, and I can't comprehend why anyone would want to picture a sex scene between a pair of talking cartoon horses. But it's also important to remember that YKINMK, and that going around making blanket statements about fetishes is kind of a bad idea.

I think the article linked above makes a really good point, which is that it's really important to judge something not based on how much you like or dislike a thing, especially a potentially-sexy thing, but on how good it is, objectively speaking. Does it make sense with consideration to the setting and characters? Is it well-written? In this case, the answer is objectively no on both parts, and I doubt it would ever be true with regards to the former. But if you allow your gut reaction to a kink or a pairing dominate your response, especially as a sporker, you're not really approaching it fairly.

Also, I don't really understand what's so bad about futa. Leaving aside the issue of trans or intersex characters (because that's not relevant to this specific instance, or, to be honest, most instances, of futanari porn), it's not really that different from a strap-on, except with actual sensation involved on the wielder's end. I guess maybe I'm kind of biased, because I actually do enjoy some futa-on-male doujins. Slash plus femdom? Yes, please! And frankly, even incestuous futa cartoon horses are fairly mild next to some of the things that can be found in Bleepfic.

-No matter how much you think the Flowers deserve punishment, all Internet-enabled devices in Headquarters are and will forever be blocked from visiting Hell Correspondence. Trust us; they have more than enough problems without getting dragged into HQ.
-Minis are not acceptable forms of currency in the General Store or Rook Takes Pawnshop.
-There are no acceptable reasons for a stampede through the halls barring an actual emergency.
--Not even if freshly-baked cookies, alcohol, Elves in swimwear, or cute baby animals are involved.

/is tired

All it really is is a bit of code that can be implemented. Much like how URL's and images are put into the wiki page LaTeX allows you to put proper mathematics onto the page as well.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7MUCty-gcK0T0FNYzMtT3BVUkU

The DIA agents both made a rude gesture to the machine gun turret and drew their weapons. Naya quickly peeked inside before slowly entering the room with her pistol at the ready. The Guardsman followed close behind, surveying the new area warily.

I used someone else's fanmade Pokemon designs, with permission of course, but then I had to drop the fic later on because of college. In-universe, I returned all the fakemon species and the other person's characters to their original owner and region (partly due to the fact that he was starting to update their designs at the time, and still is), and then destroyed the fic and everything else in it.

For my taste, though, using or copying someone else's OC for use in RPs or fanfics is a very insulting gesture TBH. If I see such a move in any of the communities I'm currently participating in, including the PPC, somebody will soon be eating their own teeth.