The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

On the spin-off side, still writing the crossover with Ls. That fic has a lot of funny nonsense.

I submit for your attention a gorgeous set of keycaps in Quenya! There are, inevitably, two different ways to lay the tengwar across a keyboard, and this is the older of the two (the entire table laid out in line, rather than optimized by usage), but they're gorgeous keys nonetheless.

(Also, hi! Been a while. Seeing you in London was awesome, and I'm definitely going to be here with party hat on for your twentieth boardiversary.)

Since I'm pretty sure there's folks doing NaNoWriMo, and since, aside from that, we're a writing group, I figured I'd ask: what's the Board up to words-wise?

For my part, not much, or at least not with any speed. My Young Wizards/Animorphs crossover is happening, slowly. I've also started up a Finance story tho give Farah, Aulhar, and Kkukttak an excuse to hang out on the same page in canon-canon, which will probably get written on-and-off-and-off-and-off-and-on again for a good while, but I at least have a plan for how it goes. Mostly.

My most substantial completed writing project recently is actually rewriting a section of the technical manual for some of the GPUs my employer sells, because the person who was supposed to explain what the fancy "make my math go ultra-fast using the special math-go-brrr circuits on these models" instructions actually did, to the annoyance of many people both in and out of the company. I have the suspicious feeling that I'll end up taking December to do that again, because, once again, I don't think the person who did the first draft actually understood what "documenting an instruction" actually meant.

But anyway, my ranting about work aside ... what's bouncing y'all's hard drives? Or Google Docs? Or notebooks?

I got INTJ: Mastermind, which immediately feels incredibly wrong. The only things I'm "master" of is obsessing over tree branches and the order I\m allowed to read books in! The specific break-downs:
Mind: 100% introverted. That one tracks!
Energy: 53% intuitive, 47% observational. I guess an even split between reading details and imagining scenarios fits fine, though I would have thought I was more observational.
Nature: 63% thinking, 38% feeling. Would have though I was much, much heavier into thinking. Also, I guess they're rounding up fractions on some of these numbers? Because this is 101% total here.
Tactics: 66% judging, 34% prospecting. But I've never been a judge or prospector! I don't really know what this means, to be honest.
Identity: 62% assertive, 38% turbulent. Wouldn't the opposite of assertiveness be submissiveness? Whatever, either "assertive" nor "turbulent" are words I would ever associate myself with in the first place. I'm the quiet, shy boy!

"INTJs make up less than 2.1% of the population and are the third rarest personality type."
Gosh, at the start of that sentence, I was getting ready to make a joke about how rare I am, but it's only in third place at 2.1%? There must be two very common personality types, and then a bunch of little ones. Man, it's like the Safari Zones!

Reading further: okay, I do like "architect" a lot better than "mastermind." "Architect" works for both writing and decorating exhibits, in my life. I do enjoy learning as well, and have binged my way through multiple hour+ video essays on YouTube (although my actual book reading trends fictional rather than non-fictional, of course). I'm still not sure about it tagging me as more intuitive than observational; I'm more inclined to work with what I have on hand than to try to change things to suit me better, although I do dig this one paragraph about not feeling bound by tradition, too. I guess I rebel more against abstract limitations, while accepting the physical ones? It does seem to have my work ethic down pat, though. The only way to get something done is to do it, and there's nowhere to go but forwards!

Oh, a weakness section! How exciting! I definitely have a perfectionism issue; one of my coworkers has described me as "hard on myself." And I seem to have literally been born with it; my parents say that I frightened them around age 2/3 because if I made a mistake on a connect-the-dots page, i would start screaming at myself . . . Tee hee! Very normal child! Fortunately, I aim it entirely inwards, and take conscious effort not to micromanage the people around me. I vibe with the "not caring what others think of me" part as well, though I'm definitely lacking in social skills and conversational ability, too. I think I mostly dodge the overconfidence issue, both by not really thinking much of myself, and not trying to exit my own wheelhouses very often. I just do what I do, and I'm good enough at it! It also says we can be cold . . . I might come across that way, but I was heavily bullied as a kid, so it takes me a while to feel safe enough around people to start being open with them.

This next section says INTJs are good at detecting manipulation, but I think I got passed over on that point. Because I only look at the world as a series of tasks to be performed for outward good and no personal gain, I've definitely had situations where I got blindsided by ulterior motives, simply because my mind doesn't think to look for such motives. "INTJs are judges, so they like their living environment to be fairly tidy and ordered." doctorlit looks at his "filing system" covering half the office floor. Well, it's not tidy, but it is ordered! "INTJs tend to stay away from work that is purely hands-on: their love of theory, analysis, and ideas means they may get bored in a physical trade. INTJs gravitate towards jobs that give them autonomy and allow them to solve complex problems." Zookeeping fits the second sentence, but contradicts the first! "Like all introverts, INTJs do best in a quiet environment where they can really concentrate on the task at hand." Aaaaaaahhhhhhh yeeeeeeees it sings to me!

—But whatever, doctorlit doesn't put much stock in delineating personality into boxes anyway.

For your predictions, you have about 80% of it correct! I won't tell you what parts are right and what parts are wrong, though ;)

It actually comes from "enceinte", which is "pregnant" in French. Nesh came up with it!

The broomstick thing was in canon, too. I don't think Harry uses brooms for plot-relevant purposes until Goblet of Fire, yeah, when he's using it against the dragon.

Fixed, thank you!

Man, canon Snape got me too trusting of Hogwarts professors! He was good despite his meanness, but Greengrass is both mean and a baddie! So, here's my predictions for what's going down:
-Greengrass is married to Gaunt, possibly in secret, since her husband doesn't seem to be public knowledge in any case.
-She's leading Quirrell on. Probably approached him initially trying to learn about his contribution to the protections over the master potion, and discovered that he's twitterpated enough to be useful for further research.
-She's definitely going to frigging murder Quirrell at the earliest opportunity to cover up the fake-out affair, and she's going to enjoy it immensely.
-I don't think she wants the potion to use it, but to destroy the ingredients so no more Un-Ceinte can be brewed, forcing people to further conform to social strictures. (And Gaunt's interest is pretty much the same; he's just leaving this matter to his Lady because she's in a better geographic position to handle it than he is.) (And if so, what an interesting reversal of the Dumbledore's Erised trap to keep the Philosopher's Stone safe in canon: here, it's the good guys wanting the hidden thing to continue use, and the bad guys want to destroy it! Huge if true!)
(And obviously you don't have to confirm anything here as right or wrong, I'm just laying my cards out on the table. I am famously terrible at predicting where plots are going midway through reading stories . . .)

May I inquire where the name "Un-Ceinte" comes from? It feels a bit unusual for Britain, as it looks a bit like the Spanish for "percent" but with the vowels reversed. Is it a pun on "unsaintly?"

Okay, that was an excellent use of broomstick in this chapter! Broomsticks are tragically underused in canon; it's really just the multiple Harrys scene. Considering how perfect they are for long distance travel without making any noise, it was really nice seeing Harry use it for the purpose of sneaking here! And it paid off handsomely, too!

There's one sentence with an extra "if" in it:
. . . it’s a weed used in lots of medicines, but if Gran says if you’re trying to have a baby . . .

—doctorlit approves of the repurposing of sports equipment for uses of greater narrative value

I will do it in the same Google Doc, and I will post in this thread when it's done.

I may not finish it today, and if I don't, it may take a while. Thanksgiving is coming up, and I will be travelling and spending lots of time helping my family do all the cooking. I will probably be even busier than usual because I am in charge of pie, a very great responsibility indeed. I have never made a pumpkin pie before, but I have made many other pies. I will make a pumpkin pie and an apple crisp.

This is what I get for deciding that we need to have homemade pie for thanksgiving. Pie has always been the one thing we've always bought because no one on that side of the family knows how to make it. The pies we've bought over the years aren't bad, I just think homemade pie is better.

Feel free to submit the next part if your riff any time.

—Ls

I don't know much about Warcraft, but I had rather guessed the outcome of this fight. The One Ring is a major source of power, and we know well how borderline indestructible it is. Plus, the Lich King is themed heavily around cold, so I figured he wouldn't have any surprise fire spells that would reach a hot enough temperature to melt it.

I do like that the fight got rather abstract and spiritual towards the end; it feels very fitting for a matchup that involves Middle-earth. It's one thing for Warcraft to treat souls as physical matter that can be removed from living things, but Sauron's status as a fully spiritual being, and the very abstract, song-based magic of Tolkien's universe in general, are still quite unique within the fantasy genre, and I'm glad they were able to portray that (impressively!) in the battle animation.

—doctorlit enjoys Death Battle, despite how hyperbolic the concept feels

You're right that Tom Marvolo Riddle is a politician. But as for the rest...... :)

Though, considering how you're rehashing things, I wouldn't be surprised if Quirrell seduced Greengrass just as a way to get access to the roots for Voldemort Tom Marvolo Riddle, who here might be... I dunno, a particularly fanatic politician who managed to work his way into Pureblood politics despite not being a pureblood himself?

I understand they were also holding Musk to a deal he tried (illegally?) to back out of, which I more or less approve of. But it still boils down to $$$$.

And I think the whole thing speaks to the problem of companies being beholden to their shareholders over their consumers, quality standards, and moral/ethical standards. I'm sure there's a good-faith debate to be had about how much of a problem it is in general, but this particular case has undoubtedly been a disaster for anyone who didn't get a piece of Musk's money at the outset, which is a great many more people than those who did and happens to include Musk himself. I doubt if he's getting that 44 billion back, at least not from Twitter.

... I wish I remembered how to find a video I watched recently discussing how the measure of economic success has been reduced to "line goes up!" in the stock market. It was an interesting video, and I think relevant.

~Neshomeh

The question is, who's the cat and who's the mouse?

Myspace is still alive. Go figure.

Said Twitter poll happened to be on his account, which not everyone is following (particularly anti-capitalists, people who aren't cishet white men, and people who are at risk from his selective application of freeze peach) and thus not everyone would know about until it was over. Imagine if your country held an election for mayor but didn't tell anyone so the people who knew in advance were the ones who got to choose what happened? It's like that, except Musk knowingly put the poll on an account he knows is followed by people who agree with him (instead of notifying everyone on the site about decisions that would affect them) and it's absolutely disingenuous.

...either that or he seriously thinks his Twitter audience is "the people." Which could very well be the case. He's not known for his grip on reality.

This mission has an interesting premise: if PPC staff knock a fanfiction off kilter, they first have to correct the fic's path before they can go on to undo it through proper missioning. It makes sense in universe; the fic's influence on the canon is ongoing due to the Words. If those Words get disrupted, they may not be fully present enough to address. But it feels like the execution didn't really carry through . . . reverting Dour K's intrusion onto the murder scene also, apparently, restores canon, despite all the other murder scenes that had previously happened. (Then again, Thranduil's murder was a flashback sequence. Maybe it was the chronological first murder, and stopping it stopped the others by pure accident? It didn't come across like that in the mission, though.) It feels like such a scenario should have required a two-step solution: fix the badfic, then fix the canon. But I suppose I'm overthinking an early iteration of a minor department . . .

See, this is why I don't drink caffeine! You get buzzed off the drug, and then suddenly there's beheaded corpses. Don't do drugs, kids! In seriousness, Katharine did a good job of taking the premise of gory serial killings in Middle-earth, and extracting humor from it without also trivializing what's happening. The legitimately hilarious errors with "Elrond's twin brothers" and "Gimli, son of Glóin's son" help, but mostly it's carried by how Dour K is written. She cracks jokes and carries on with the repetitiveness of her paperwork, because she knows it's ultimately fiction, and not even the "real" fiction. But she also feels uneasy and put off by the descriptions of the murders, and how wanton it is to portray a Tolkienverse elf committing such acts.

Boy, that is one over-powered CAD! It seems to be getting treated as the source of the Words here, and can therefore freeze the flow of the narrative. Not such a bad thing on an Intel mission, but boy, would that be way too strong against Suvians in the DMS! Freeze time, read charges and execute! Boring. The implication that the CAD is what brings the mission to an end by ceasing the feed is weird, too, and feels contradictory to the physical manifestation of fics in canon, generally.

—doctorlit thinks Rile X can go visit Upstairs for upgrades himself, instead of yelling at his traumatized teammate about it repeatedly. Dang.

I have heard there's a healthy Japanese community on various instances of Mastodon? Which is where a lot of Tech Twitter is going (except to different instances). American fandom seems to be moving more in the direction of tumblr (but Tumblr still has its own problems with NSFW content bans...). I dunno.

Twitter has been shedding essential technical staff, it's losing advertisers, and as a result it's probably losing more money than ever. Who knows?

The board either was (or could've reasonably thought it was) legally required to bring the deal to a vote. If the company was worth $X, and Musk had offered to pay $Y for it, with Y > X by a bunch, "no, you're a jerk, we're not even going to entertain this" could've led to shareholders arguing the company owed them their share of $(Y - X) because they refused to consider the offer.

And while, as I remember hearing, courts generally don't second-guess corporate boards on the theory that they know how to run their particular business better than the judge does, and so the old Twitter folks could've probably gotten away with "it's a bad idea to talk to you - it'll tank our company just because of the possibility and also you're sometimes not serious here" ... the possibility that shareholders would go after over them over that is a understandable reason for them to just take the money and run.

Though part of me thinks things between Greengrass and Quirrel aren't actually as it looks like, and at least one of them is fooling the other.

I think this passage is especially relevant to us:

[B]ullying is not a synonym for argument, disagreement or pejorative reactions. Bullying is not a synonym for disliking someone, or for thinking their work is rubbish. Bullying is not even a synonym for saying so, publicly and repeatedly, in a place where that person can hear it – although that’s certainly unpleasant. Bullying is when someone with a greater position of power and/or possessed of greater strength repeatedly and purposefully attacks, harasses, belittles and/or otherwise undermines someone in a position of lesser power and/or possessed of lesser strength.

I don't think the average PPCer has more power/strength than the average fic writer. We also don't campaign against them, individually or en masse, in their private spaces.

And I agree with Meadows' concern about diluting the meaning of the word "bullying."

Thanks for sharing!

~Neshomeh

Guess who's back.

I find it despicable that Musk claims he's following the will of the people (which people, I'd like to know) even though he previously stated publically that this is exactly what he would do if he bought Twitter. It's like a giant trying to hide on the wrong side of a short hedge. Who does he think he's fooling? {= /

In the spirit of fairness to Mr. Musk, I'll add that that the people who agreed to sell Twitter to him should also share the credit/blame for whatever comes of their decision. I'd be interested to hear what they were thinking (apart from, y'know, $$$$).

~Neshomeh