The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Can you send me a link to the discord server? I want to join! Simple as that.

I kid, but fudge pie sounds amazing!

Maybe DAVD is a separate universe from the DMFF, while DOGA missions are actually spread across both, thus explaining any inconsistencies between them. It makes sense, right?

But it's more fun to treat them as all sharing the same setting, and working to make the inconsistencies go away.

There's a fair number of early stories which include "a fan used magic to transport themselves to the canon" as a thing which really happens. World One =/= our world, and so magical Powers That Be are entirely possible (whether from one canon or outside them). They don't even have to be gods - just the Wizard that Did It.

hS

The bickering was hilarious, just...I loved it so much. That has got to be one of the best missions you’ve ever written.

—Ls

It would definitely make for a unique mission.

—Ls

Andy, feel free to correct me here, but: What if Rincewind, Kira, and Kate are not from World One, but just a similar universe, with its own version of the PPC, and with some sort of “Powers that Be”? Perhaps it’s LOTRCanon!Earth?

It would solve a lot of the issues we’re coming up with here. Thoughts?

—Ls

With Fáelán absent, the other two fairies aren't hanging around doing nothing either.

I had completely forgotten about that prologue scene while I was reading chapter 2, but you're unquestionably right: that scene depicted Rincewind's original kidnapping. Which means even without the "repeated reincarnations" thing in Middle-earth itself, she's actually lost thirty-two years of her life in the real world. Yuck! I like the idea of Maiar being the ones doing this to protect Middle-earth, although it feels a bit weird they could reach the real world to get her in the first place. Then again, Tolkien did intend Middle-earth to be a legendary past for contemporary earth, so maybe LotR canon Earth and World One are similar enough that they were able to reach across somehow?

I'll have to read through those early fics when I get the time, that's fascinating! Thank you!

Also, I don't have time to spend on it now, but I do have "Ashes to Glory" saved here, so that will be up . . . at some point . . .

—doctorlit

As much as I agree that Arwen shouldn't be thought of as a weak character and devotion and loyalty in women aren't weak traits (I'm a sucker for samurai-like loyalty regardless of gender; there's a reason I write Momoka the way she is), that they glorify being unable to move on from male objects of affection is a bit disturbing and once again shows lack of self-awareness – the same Smauging article praises Éowyn, who successfully moves on from her first love to marry someone else.

I'm very picky about the stuffing because most of the ones I've had, people made it to be served stuffed up the turkey and that just makes it gummy and unpleasant. My family makes it in a giant Dutch oven so the breading is still very crisp and the butter keeps it delightfully toasted...

...That, and the mashed potatoes my brother has insisted on taking charge of ever since he decided my parents don't make them nearly as creamy as he likes. (And I'll admit, he makes much better mashed potatoes than they do!)

Tonight's dinner was leftover stuffing, mash, and gravy all mixed together and I feel like I basically had a second round of feasting... but next year I hope I'll be bringing my fudge pie with oreo crust around to share with everyone.

...the 'He's a gentleman' part had me wheezing. xD I always say hey, hate Twilight, but hate it for the right reasons - not because it did something weird with vampire mythology or because it's a sappy teen romance that young girls and women liked, but because it's badly written, full of cultural appropriation and Unfortunate Implications, and the relationship dynamics are anything but healthy.

Seriously, Edward is a modern Jane Austen love interest?! Poor Miss Austen just turned over in her grave.

Here’s Why Edward Cullen Is Still A Teen Heartthrob In 2021. This line jumps out at me in particular:

Women have let men get away with the most terrible behavior imaginable, so it's no wonder that many of us are secretly hankering for a simpler, more chivalrous world.

Man, if this isn't a parody article, then the lack of self-awareness is golden.

Hagrid's pet dragon causes problems.

We had a small Thanksgiving here, just me, Phobos, and Phobos' brother. None of us especially loves turkey, so we had a pork roast, dry-brined, with hand-blended poultry seasoning instead. It came out great! It got a nice crust on the outside, and with it not being attached to disgusting poultry skin, I got to enjoy it. ^_^

In addition, we had Jiffy cornbread, Phobos made mac & cheese with colby-jack and smoked gouda, Phobos' brother made sweet potatoes topped with pineapple and marshmallows, and I made pecan custard pie a la Max Miller. All darn good!

It's hard to pick a favorite, but the thing I'm most looking forward to having again as leftovers is the sweet potato dish. I love sweet potatoes pretty much any way, and the marshmallows on this were some special brand, and they got super-crispy on top while staying soft, almost gelatinous, in the middle. Subtly different flavor from the usual, too. It'll be interesting to see how they hold up to reheating.

~Neshomeh thinks her pie came out fine, but perhaps overcooked.

It always warms my heart, though I'm not sure why, to be reminded that fanworks are not a new invention. People have been making fanworks for as long as we've been making works.

Bit of a tangent, but I'm raising my eyebrow at the authors who compare writing fanfic to theft of physical objects. I'm pretty sure there is a difference between the two. See, if you take someone's car, that prevents the owner from using it. But writing a fanfic does not, in and of itself, prevent an author from continuing to "use" their IP.

There IS a scenario where that could happen: someone writes a fanfic, the author writes their next work using similar ideas, and the fanwriter sues the author for plagiarism. This is why authors avoid reading fanfic even if they don't ban it, so they have plausible deniability if such a case comes up. But, as far as I know, it rarely comes up, and the fear of it assumes the lawyers involved would side with the creator of a derivative work over the creator of the original work. It could happen, I guess, but it seems ridiculous.

I suppose it's also possible that some authors are afraid people will read fanfic instead of buying their books, thus depriving them of revenue. It's even harder to see the logic of that, though. Most people engaging in fanworks have already read the books, and the ones who haven't yet are likely to be inspired to seek them out (unless all the fanworks are total garbage?). Fanworks might be more of a threat to small authors than big franchises, but that assumes, contradictorily, that the small author has a large enough fanbase to pose a threat. With apologies to the authors' egos, that's unlikely.

~Neshomeh

According to Fanlore, the earliest known Tolkien fanfic was published in 1960: Departure in Peace, a Sauron-POV summary of the Legendarium. The same zine included a pair Arwen stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Jewel of Arwen & The Parting of Arwen. Apparently she wrote quite a lot: this was hers too, published in '62.

...

...

... okay, no, Rincewind can't be MZB: chapter 1 establishes that she was a girl in 1970, when MZB was 40. We're okay. ^_^

hS

Wanting to respond to your commentary reminds me to read the thing myself. ^_^

The "home continuum" thing sounds like it's probably inspired by the DMFF, and says something about the timeline of... one of the two stories. The first firm date for Suedom is chapter 13, next May; the first firm date for the DMFF is chapter 2, next June. It seems logical that the first DMFF story would cluster with the others (which were all written in about a month), but it's possible that DMFF 1 was much earlier - or, indeed, that Elvea suggested the idea on the Board.

Alternately, this is after J&A started doing Crossovers, right? They're Assassins in the story, but they'd already started writing the sort of missions where they drop the characters off back home.

Rincewind... given how little LotR fanfic there was prior to the movies, I think we have to treat her claim to have written one "a few decades ago" (ie, the 70s or earlier) with a bucket of salt. Most likely, she was in the Trek fandom, but her memory has been affected over the centuries and she only remembers the many lives she's had in the year since the Movies started. Or, she means that she wrote the first LotR Suvian, and the "Powers That Be" are specifically responsible for Middle-earth. There are Maiar who guard the Doors of Night against Morgoth's return; something like that could guard more ethereal boundaries.

(For best entertainment value: maybe her badfic was of the 1977 Rankin-Bass Hobbit or the 1978 Bakshi LotR!)

(Incidentally, the now lost "Ashes to Glory" starred a group of renegade Suvians on a Trek-style starship, so at least some of the early PPC were aware of the term's origin.)

For the sake of the PPC's mission, we also have to assume that "real girls are being pulled in unwillingly" wasn't an ongoing thing, but was specifically the effect of the Bridge in 2002. Otherwise the PPC were and are mass-murderers. Vemi and I deliberately ignored that concept when we created the Suvian Factory, pretty much for that reason.

hS

We're used to seeing badfic quotes interspersed throughout missions. That's what the agents are there to observe, after all. And while they can lead to all kinds of weird or bad imagery, there's a disconnect in reading them. We know the agents are going to correct the problems by the end, and we're only experiencing the reality warping third-hand, through the agents' perspective, which makes the badfic quotes a neutral element nearly all of the time. In this story though, it's the focal characters getting warped by the inserted-from-another-story quotes, and it gives them a much more chilling and threatening vibe. After all these years of reading PPC missions, that sequence where Kate and Kira's appearances got changed, was quite a slap in the face. And unlike canon characters, who get drawn into the fic's narrative and wouldn't notice such changes, Kate and Kira are fully aware of what happened to them. Horrifying.

Rincewind's backstory is more fascinating than I even anticipated! I like that the authors don't cast her initial writing as villainous, but instead reflect (one of) the real world source of writing Mary Sues: women wanting to see more of themselves in male-dominant published canon. That said, it does feel a little weird to erase the Star Trek fandom's known historical status as the origin of Mary Sues. I know the Canon Protection Initiative started out in Tolkien and had a heavy presence in that fandom for most of its early existence, but it still feels weird to shoehorn a different backstory for the phenomenon of Suvians in the fictional setting, when the setting has always been so dependent on real world fanfiction trends. I'm currently assuming that Rincewind is an Inheritance Cycle dragon, due to the telepathy, and the somewhat aloof and predatory attitude, which reminds me quite a bit of Saphira. Eragon's original self-publishing occurred in 2002, so the timeline checks out. The reference to "Powers That Be" and "Music of the Spheres" is surprisingly uncomfortable to me; I'm used to the canons having their own native gods, but implying that the real world has one within the PPC mythology feels out of place. But then again, I don't know what/who else would have the power to force Rincewind into this Quantum Leapesque plotline, otherwise. Legal? It feels too broad in scope, even for them.

It's interesting that Rincewind assumes the PPC will find a home continuum for Odorf, when we've seen throughout the PPC + 20 project that the general tendency was to kill Cute Animals Friends, even if they could clearly be integrated into canon. I like that Andy and Saphie had a more reformist viewpoint on that than most of the community seemed to!

—doctorlit sees that Legolas has arrived at last

🥥 clop 🥥 clop 🥥 clop 🥥

We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked.

It was nice.