The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

As most of you probably know from my writings, I have aestheticist leanings, so of course I already have at least one "flowers-type" character in my roster, as seen in that short piece up there. As for the others, Helena is definitely a flowers-type too, largely due to her job. Ones that are definitely on the cakes end of the scale would be Urato and Fáelán. Sheen is neither; he prioritizes following rules so he doesn't get kicked out over personal preferences for either aesthetics or practicality.

If you read OFUM and HFA in particular (which you should!), then cross-reference the names of students with the names of PPC agents, you'll start seeing some overlap. IRL, this is because the kind of people who enjoy OFUs are also the kind of people who enjoy the PPC, so plenty of people who submitted fanbrat versions of themselves to be OFU students also wrote versions of themselves as PPC agents. Sometimes those characters were explicitly one and the same, sometimes we've assumed so after the fact. Either way, we must then conclude that the PPC indeed accepts agents who were OFU students. {= )

In-universe, the PPC has a notoriously high turnover rate due to agents going mad or getting themselves killed, so they'll pretty much take anyone who isn't a blatant Suvian or so evil they'd do more damage to the PPC than to their assigned targets. World One teenager with no practical experience? You're in! Ancient Scythian warrior with only the barest ability to read and write in English? You're in! God-like being with semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic power? You're in, too! Just don't go glittering up the place.

This is one reason that field agents get partners, so that if one of them has a glaring weakness, the other one can make up for it enough that a mission isn't automatically doomed to failure. So, if an OFU graduate has done well enough that they know that one canon really well, but is clueless about everything else, they'd likely be paired with someone who doesn't know that canon at all, but makes up for it with knowledge and skills in other areas.

Of course, their respective ignorance will also get on each other's nerves, but that's beside the point. {= )

I don't have evidence for this to hand, but it wouldn't surprise me if a high proportion of OFU graduates became Infrastructure agents rather than Action agents, anyway. Having learned what bad writing does to canon through a year of Learning Through Pain^™ may inspire some to support the Canon Protection Initiative, but that doesn't necessarily mean it also inspires them to take up arms, whether because they can't see themselves killing even a Suvian or because they don't fancy more pain.

In summary, the PPC is a loose enough setting that you can justify pretty much anything with a bit of imagination. It's also been around long enough that someone has probably tried whatever you're thinking of at least once before, so the precedent is out there for the finding. It's worth doing your own research to see how it was done. That way you can see what about it worked and what could be done differently.

~Neshomeh

Let's see....

Sergio definitely leans towards practicality, as could expected by someone who "always ends up in the worst messes the multiverse has to offer", in his own words. So practical clothing (jackets and pants with multiple pockets being his favourites), without much regards to style. That extends to his belongings as well: despite being a Gary Stu in his early days, his most blatant Suvian artifact, the car he build himself, is... a somewhat boxy sedan. With over 900 hundred horsepower and racing suspensions, so ridicolously (and supernaturally) fast, but ne didn't give much thought to the car's styling. Oh, and it's a sedan and not a sportier coupé because it seats and carries more that way - I even considered having him build it as a estate for that very reason! So, yes, definitely a "cake" kind of person - he's the kind of guy who set up an hammock in his RC because it was quicker to set up than a bed, only switching to proper beds when he got partners.

Nikki is an interesting case. Compared to Sergio, she definitely looks at aestetics more, but only if the situation allows her to. One big example is her choice of clothing: while she was a PPC Agent she wore jeans on the daily, but it is much rarer for her to do so afterwards - between the fact she can summon her Barrier Jacket at moment's notice for dealing with anything that requires more robust clothing, and the fact she's living a more "normal" life she then began to shift more of her attention to her outfits' looks.

They're both fully aware of where they stand: for things like interior decorations Sergio defers to Nikki's choice because he admits that she has better tastes.

Corolla... is an interesting case. If you ask her yourself, she will say "Both!" and that is true - Corolla is a "have her cake and eat it too" kind of person, who wants the best of both worlds. Her abilities as a Unison Device do help, since she can summon any of her possessions from her pocket dimension at moments' notice - she can wear a sewatsuit for working on her contraptions, and then right after summon a nice dress for hanging out with friends. So, of anything she's likely to possess both the practical and the whimsical, and using whatever she feels like at the moment.

Keiko definitely leans more towards her father. While she will enjoy looking at things she considers cute, she's also a tomboy who rarely wears something different from jeans, T-shirts and hoodies - in fact, she hates skirts, for reasons... I have never decided, and to be fair she might be hating them for no reason at all. This does, however, fit with her backstory: Keiko is someone who never settles on anything, and in a way her plain outfits and purely practical choices of belongings are also her giving the bare minimum of thought to choosing.

...where they can tag along with agents on missions and get training in the field for working at the PPC full-time post-graduation.

So my characters also tend to skew that way. ^_^; It might also be a function of the kind of person who would do well as a PPC agent, too; the lifestyle doesn't leave much space for non-essentials like what kind of bed you collapse into between BEEPs, or what scent of shampoo you use to sluice the Sue-blood out of your hair.

Not that my characters don't have their own personal styles and preferences, but my sense is that most agents would mercilessly mock anyone who whined much about not getting exactly what they want.

Nume might be the most "flowers" of my agents. He's definitely sensitive to affronts to his aesthetics and sense of propriety, but he's also the guy who made bitching and moaning into his entire personality, so it's hard to tell his real feelings. This is a feature, not a bug. He does get mocked, but he returns it in spades and keeps on doing his thing.

I think the others have an aesthetic that more or less follows from what they spend their time doing. Jenni, as a Nurse, has a bit more time and energy to cultivate a well-ordered and nurturing presentation according to her taste for the natural and organic. It's mostly intended for the benefit of others, though.

Derik and Gall are Action agents who value durability and have learned to like blue denim. Derik collects musical instruments rescued from fics. Gall is something of an entrepreneur who will acquire anything she thinks she can trade to other agents. They also have a small child and a miniaturized dragon, though, so anything too dangerous or fragile is stuffed into storage. Derik might like better-appointed housing, but he doesn't have time for that and Gall couldn't be bothered if she did.

If Ilraen had everything his own way, he'd be a minimalist, preferring to make his space seem as big and empty as possible, keeping only what mission gear he needs and a few sentimental items. His species is claustrophobic by nature, and only the fact that he came from badfic and has spent most of his life in HQ keeps that from being a problem. I never thought about this before, but I believe he would hang a plain square of some unobtrusive color on his wall and happily contemplate it for hours, haha. He'll have adopted a tablet or e-reader over a pile of books the first chance he got. Weirdo. {= )

~Neshomeh would like a personal aesthetic, but only if it's functional and affordable.

If someone were to get sent to Official Fanfiction University would there be a chance that they could get into the PPC, after they graduated?

In whch the Skystreakers prepare themselves to act in case Kaito tries out things during Sakura's play, but might not actually be able to meaningful change things. And the Doctor decides to pop in to say hello and cook fish custard.

"Ya gotta real nice garbage bag on yer head too."

Here's hoping we all have good 2025s and don't have to scribble out the 24 too many times over the next few weeks.

...so buckle up for that. It's mostly commentary on the fics where Harry and other Muggle-raised/Muggleborn children are "blood adopted" into Pureblood families, or just straight up taken out of their families and placed with Pureblood ones. Many of those fics deliberately set up the Muggle parents to be invariably abusive just to justify child kidnapping. So I wanted to take that to its logical extreme--if you hate Muggles enough, anything a Muggle parent might do out of sheer ignorance about their child's magic could be framed as abuse.

The "Chosen One" framework was also chosen (lol) to highlight how this sort of situation gets viewed as a hero's journey fun protagonist thing in many of those fics--and in "chosen one" hero narratives in general. Emily doesn't want to be chosen; she just wants to go home.

A couple things like the Comb-a-Chameleon are canon. The Instantly-Disguising Incantation-Optional Trick Wand is actually a reference to the D.O.R.K.S. :P And you'll see more on the Muggle potions-drugs front later!

Yes, the Hallows are here! And the Malfoys are planning something! And Theo Nott is also up to something...

Maybe I typed it up and forgot to post it...

I hope your surgery recovery's been going well! Typing a lot of text on a phone isn't very fun.

To be fair, by now at least Mr Weasley only has Molly, Ron, and Ginny to support--though in 5th year it was mentioned Molly gets assistance from Muriel. But he's certainly happy about getting to work with cars!

Yeah, Fred/Tonks is the trajectory, though she's still having some hang-ups about it, of course. Remus is... going to be oblivious about someone else.

Yes, the reality TV show vibe was on purpose. Yes, pregnancy can occur outside a Bond, but given that Mary and Gideon were both dosed with bond enhancers (her at an initiation, him as a baby), there's really no avoiding Bonding if you exchange sexual fluids like the act of fertilisation would require. So that's where the speculation stems from, though Ron and Ginny don't know this in quite that much detail.

I did conceive of them as glowing balloon animal like things when I was writing, haha.

And... yeah. Gaunt's effing up the Ministry. And I did originally plan to have Gaunt betroth Draco to Delphi, but we decided this was a lot more disturbing and a lot more immediate of a crisis for Draco! You're... welcome???

Yes, drink driving is the term in the UK! (At least on the police websites...)

The lion-like alien from Finance hoped he'd gotten decently close to a Santa costume, between a red baseball cap (modified to let his ears through) and a red uniform liberated from a noncanon Starfleet vessel when they weren't looking.

He looked around and waved at Midnight, his attention grabbed by the glitter.

Harry tries to talk with Draco on the train. Things get in the way.

Heh. A Horror Fridge running off of “fridge horror.” That’s cute! It has a similar vibe to the electricity generated by the authors “turning over in their graves.” And I like that you incorporated the golems from the one RP as well, giving it some narrative standing beyond the event itself.

I enjoyed the conversation about beauty as well. I like the conflict between Kaguya’s view of beauty as something to work towards to make the world a more enjoyable place to live in, and Arare’s view that beauty should have a useful benefit over others. It was a nice read, and I’m curious to see what the two remaining parts will be like!

—doctorlit doesn’t place much value on beauty; he just likes getting things done

That opening paragraph is beautiful! You have some wonderful descriptions in this story, including when the canon character and Suvian get trapped in the “snowman suits!”

It’s honestly kind of cool that you gave Arare a full “villain moment” here. I had an inkling, after the last story, that he was going to do something under-handed to the four agents, but I assumed they were going to thwart him in the end. But things went the complete opposite direction! I love how Arare interpreted all their fears and condensed them into a single theme he was able to exploit. And seeing him take on a full human form (that picture is cool, no pun intended!) and proceed to return to HQ with greater power, is a real fun twist! I’m looking forward to seeing what Arare plans in the future.

—doctorlit, readying for a busy morning tomorrow

As in, do your agents tend to prioritize aesthetics or functionality in the things they use, etc.?

This is the beginning to a new Arare-centric mini-spin-off, which will only last for 3 entries or so and not contain any missions. This entry contains:

• Some worldbuilding attempt (new HQ location)

• Inspiration taken from this board RP by Thoth

• Two dudebros doing mutual Talk no Jutsu and spouting silly philosophies like in a shōnen fighting manga. In fact, the mini-spin-off is greatly inspired by shōnen fighting manga.

• Snow White allusion laid on reaaal thick.

Been hoping to get one more out so I could feel like I accomplished something this year, in between the pokes at original fiction. and I'm glad I could finally scrape this together. It's been, what, close to five years since I started writing this pair? How time's flown by... anyway, here's my tenth mission and an interlude to go with it.

The main course is Of Scribbles and a Stu, where the console reports an 'old shame' to our local idiot duo. Funnily enough, I think this was a type of mission I wanted to tackle since I first got Permission, and after literal years I finally managed to do it. Better late than never, haha.

And for our interlude, speaking of types of writing done by past spinoffs, here's Years Hence, which is about what you'd expect. And just like almost every piece of PPC writing I finished this year, once again, it was started at least two years ago. It really does feel like most of this year for me was digging writings out of my dusty WIP pile.

This might be my last piece with Jiwon and Charlie for a bit, as with this done I've finally finished the last of my 2021-2022 ideas with enough potential to become a WIP. I still have a few more PPC stories in progress, though, such as a Cafeteria piece, short and story-centric ESAS spinoff, and another DIA one-shot. Hopefully at least one of them will be a new high for my writing career - as much as I'm proud of some of my older work (And That's Okay and We Do a Little Trolling are personal favorites), I feel like my 2024 writing quality wasn't quite up to that level. But maybe that's just my brain becoming more critical the more I write. Anyways, happy new year!

The edit could be, "Lines of Ddialogue by different speakers need to be on in different paragraphs!"

(Note also the change to the preposition; this is more usual.)

If you do change it to "Dialogue," be sure to also change the corresponding verb, need --> needs.

~Neshomeh

"Dialogue" is uncountable when referring to a conversation in fiction. It's the same thing as "rock" being both a pluralizable count noun and an uncountable substance.

--Ls

All plural.