The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

If you want to see what you can vote for in your district, I wholeheartedly recommend Ballotpedia.

--Ls

(Also, they misspelled ballot as "ballott" on one of the signs at the polling place, which mildly annoyed me.)

Vote like you live in a de facto two-party state. Vote like other people are people too. Vote like your right to vote depends on it.

hS

I'm sure it's hard to miss the fact that there's an election on, especially since the presidency is involved, but, just in case ... this is your reminder to go vote.

Also, a practical note: if you're voting in person, you're absolutely allowed to bring a bit of paper with the votes you're planning to cast with you into the voting booth so you don't forget who you were planning to vote for.

• Tomash

In which the Malfoys didn't realise that the leopards would come to eat THEIR faces...

And, of course, to all US Boarders: have you voted yet?

But I would advise minimizing the narrative taking it seriously.

--Ls

They'll have maybe one or two moments of serious scheming and an understandable character motivation, but outside of that, they won't make a serious impact.

An evil agent that consistently fails would definitely be funny, as long as you're not overly serious about it.

--Ls

The PPC has never been averse to having evil agents, per se, as long as they don't cause so much trouble they interfere with the Duty. Honestly, what you describe is par for the average American CEO. >.> And they won't have much luck in the PPC, which is more of a barter economy anyway since most agents aren't even paid money. It would do my heart good to see someone like that fail comically at every turn.

~Neshomeh

I plan to write a character who's genuinely deceitful, self-serving and up to no good. However, would a genuinely villainous character (not an anti-villain like Arare) work as a PPC character without going against its spirit? The character:

• Is an evil business owner-type character, but doesn't aim for things like changing PPC leadership and structure or anything of the sort. They literally just want money.

• Doesn't commit truly heinous acts like killing or abuse, and doesn't pose a massive, serious threat level like the Mysterious Somebody (and I'm aware catastrophic stories of that type are no longer allowed). They aren't the PPC Big Bad or anything, they're just a bad guy chilling among the PPC populace.

• Has most of their evil antics played for laughs.

There are even recipes included (with normal food substitutions) so you can make your own versions of the dishes. I love the spinoff and it really leans into the 'two dads with four daughters' cottage vibe. It's very sweet and fluffy which makes for a nice breather when the main story starts getting darker.

(Also, I swear that, like, half of everyone I know has been raving about this series ... and now you're on that list. I should perhaps get around to it at some point.)

• Tomash, testing in production after bumping the Board's dependency versions

In preparation for an upcoming arc, I'd like to place an adoption request for Ceil the Continuity Cat. I'm also claiming two minis discovered in my own spin-off: strawberry land the mini-Gold Sand Dollar and seimeis the mini-daruma.

His first name is Arare though 🤣

P.S: Fun fact: in the Japanese dub of the PotC movies, the Commodore and the Governor are addressed by their direct subordinates as 閣下 (kakka, "Your Excellency", "Your Honour").

-Yuki, who now also remembers that Urato's last name is a reference to The Golden Demon, a novel series explicitly warning about unchecked greed (it ain't called "the golden demon" for nothing). Also, "Reeking of Rosewater" sounds like a good name for a rock band.

Sorry for the delayed review; I’ve had a very busy couple of weeks!

Hey, been a while since Pirates of the Caribbean got a PPC mission! I’m amused by Usuasagi’s disguise, and his reaction to the equatorial climate. checks Wikipedia I mean, the . . . somewhat in the rough vicinity of near the equator climate.

Usuasagi and Urato make for an interesting pair, in regards to the former learning about fear. Urato is full of bluster and confidence, but despite his statement that he isn’t afraid of anything, he did let slip what he actually fears: his friends getting hurt, if he can’t protect them. The fear doesn’t come from a Suvian existing in a vacuum, but from the threat they pose to others, to loved ones. I just hope this isn’t giving Usuasagi any ideas about threatening any agents to instill fear in their partners . . .

Ah, more information about the Seven Wonders of PPC HQ! Looks like they occupy a nice assortment of infrastructure departments. I just hope Urato isn’t on to something with his “evil Super Sentai” observation. Are they going to gain some power from filling out the seven? Also, I wonder what department Usuasagi is looking to fill in HQ, since it seemed to me he was originally wanting to return to Japan and instill fear?

—doctorlit yar har something something buried treasure joke

If you enjoyed Dungeon Meshi, this is another manga (soon to be anime) of a similar fantasy tone. I can't talk enough about the world and the plot and characters without also discussing the art of Witch Hat, because it's so integral to telling that story. The paneling is absolutely breathtaking, and the art is so intricately detailed, it's like wood carvings of a fairy tale.

The world it's set in is one of magic, where witches live lives separate from mundane humans, working their magic to sometimes help their communities but largely keeping to themselves. Everybody kows you have to be born a witch to use magic, though, and protagonist Coco has been heartbroken by this fact her whole life. She's just an ordinary girl in a small village who will never be able to use magic, no matter how much she wishes she could.

...Until she accidentally discovers the truth for herself when she spots a witch working some magic of his own. Spells, she learns, are drawn—magic runes and magic ink to create wondrous effects. And so she decides to try drawing one of the runes in a book she bought from a witch at a festival, many years ago.

She has to be rescued by the witch she saw before, because the magic she unleashes turns her mother to stone.

And from there, Coco is given a choice—lose her memories of magic forever, or become his apprentice to uphold the secret. She choses the latter, and her new mentor promises her that one day, she might have a chance to un-petrify her mother.

It starts off a very sweet slice of life story following Coco and her fellow apprentices—three other girls her age who all came to their mentor's atelier for various reasons of their own, though all of them were born into magic families and have been training most of their lives to draw the magic spells Coco now has to learn from scratch.

Her new mentor and his Watchful Eye (basically a second responsible adult assigned to the atelier) are childhood best friends and act like married dads with four daughters. They're really thoughtful mentors who encourage their students to play to their strengths while not ignoring their weaknesses, and the girls learn to work together as they grow in their magical capabilities. The magic system of drawn circular sigils is incredibly detailed and the parallels of art and magic are truly inseparable—the witches often find themselves stuck in creative ruts when they can't draw spells to achieve the effects they want.

It starts to get darker the further the story progresses. There's a counterpoint faction to the ruling law of the Pointed Cap witches; the Brimhats wish to see magic made free to all of mankind again, but often resort to less than pleasant methods as they try to undermine the Pointed Caps. It was a Brimhat that gave Coco the book of magic in the hopes she would uncover the truth, and it's (so far) heavily implied she's not the only child he was giving books out to.

The Brimhats also want all magic to be made legal again—which includes healing magic, outlawed for the horrific mutations spells cast on the body can create if cast wrong due to magic ink and blood having unpredictable effects when mixed. There's a really interesting examination of the nature of privilege and disability throughout the story, and Coco has to grapple with the fact she's now one of the people who knows the truth after she wished so long for the impossible.

(Also there's a really cute cooking spinoff called Witch Hat Kitchen and the recipes are made with really exotic fantasy ingredients that add to the worldbuilding in general. The prism lemons are my favourite.)

Anyway, I really cannot gush enough about this, because it's really one of those stories that I think is going to become a timeless classic. It's rapidly become one of my favourite fiction stories, period.

While I have no plans to reveal all of them, I will reveal 2 more outside of Oshimo.

I picked it up somewhere between ages nine and...eleven, maybe? Probably more like nine to ten, and then proceeded to reread it and reread it and reread it. I wrote a book report on one of the books (Taran Wanderer, I think). I own either all or almost all of the main five books by now (it's either all or I'm missing one). I can't remember now if I mentioned in the original post - I think I did - but I used to credit Lloyd Alexander as one of my writing influences, and picking up the Black Cauldron again, I can see why. He's just very good, and his books and author's notes did certainly shape a certain amount of my approach to writing, especially early on. I wanted to write, as he did, books that entertained and engrossed and taught the reader valuable life lessons and bits of practical skills together with the protagonist while not being preachy about it or taking you out of the story at all. I wanted to make my readers cry and laugh and walk away feeling like something in them or their lives had been enriched by the reading experience. I'd phrase it a bit differently, these days, but I wouldn't say that's no longer true.

Always glad to meet someone who's actually read those books as well (you would not believe how few I've come across irl!) and it's great that Gurgi left that kind of mark XD also, I feel like Llyan the giant housecat is a character I should bring up, because I know a whole lot of people here are cat lovers!

~Z

Hah, I liked how little attention Arare paid to the fic. The contrast between his aloofness and Urato's irritation was funny. I am curious to hear more about these "Seven Wonders" Arare is talking about, and his questioning of Urato's lack of fear.

I do think you did a pretty good job with the description at the beginning, though I think you could have used a little more of it throughout the mission. I think it was a good use of in media res, but I would also like to see some missions with more of an intro.

-

I did notice a typo in the line:

"Man, I wish I can mission with ya more often. Ya make a good personal air conditioner,"

I assume you meant to use "could" there?

--Ls

Vote here for various Asylum badfics. Some of the categories and/or fics wouldn't require reading much of our backlog, either.

--Ls

Next up in the Arare arc, get ready for a PotC mission, in which Arare goes on a mission with Urato into a place too hot for his comfort.

I have a question though: I feel that my scenery descriptions are getting rusty, so did I do a good description job in this story? I also tend to start missions in medias res, so do you find it confusing?

-Yuki, who's just remembered that ura 浦 means "bay" or "inlet", the agent is named after Urashimatarō, and his full name essentially means "bay person on a mountain of wealth", which is oddly fitting for the pirate theme.

I've quite enjoyed her work (and also "[...] Time War") and agree with the person-focused sci-fi assessment.

(I was about to let you know about Psalm and the rest of the Monk and Robot books, but it looks like Hel covered that)

I've got a copy of "To be taught, if fortunate" (a Chambers novella) on the plane travel reading list (behind most of the rest of "Guards! Guards!").

My recently completed reading has been the rest of the Murderbot Diaries (Martha Wells) which, well, I've raved about the meant-to-kill cyborg with social anxiety and massive autism vibes before so ... I'll dig up a link to it later.

Unless you count the absurd amount of badfic I read, I've been working my way through Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. It's taken a while... well, because of how incredibly long each book is.

That's about it, honestly. :/

--Ls

I was lucky enough to pull all four of what I've just learned is called her Wayfarers series out of the library... last summer, I think? Those are fantastic books; I've described them to Kaitlyn as "person-centred sci-fi", and highly recommend them.

I didn't actually know she'd written anything else. XD I checked the shelves in the bookshop literally yesterday, and they only had The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I'll need to look these two up!

(Our library system is... pretty bad. They charge for reservations; I hate it.)

I recently read This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which falls into that same space for me: it's sciffy, but it's about the people not the tech, if that makes sense. Very good book.

hS

Kaitlyn got me onto Prydain many years ago; we have a very battered hardback copy up on the shelf. I haven't read it for a while, but we do still have occasional munchings and crunchings floating through our dialogue.

hS