The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

NY Times goes into the gritty details here.

See also: the Washington Post covers the blue-check debacle, which would be funny if it weren't so potentially damaging.

~Neshomeh

Given how big Twitter is in Japan, this is a problem of a whole country having nowhere to move to.

Last I heard - and it's been a few hours - he's tried to pull his American-style "agree to this or you're fired" thing in Europe, where that is highly illegal. The man's not going to have any employees or money left if he keeps this up.

I've been on Twitter for five years or so. It's probably my biggest online space - I don't really use Facebook, and other than that I have the Board and another, even quieter forum. I've found a lot of cool things through Twitter - two you can easily look up are "Dragons of Wales", and Oliver Darkshire's "Once Upon a Tome" [sic].

If Twitter goes, I won't be moving anywhere else; I'll just drop back into the silence I've held since the end of Livejournal. So I'd really rather it stayed a while longer.

hS

Mr Musk is doing weird things with it.

P.S: No matter your opinion on his actions, please don't flame or say mean things about him.

NPR doesn't think a complete shutdown is likely as of yesterday, but that may be cold comfort if the platform can't function effectively anymore.

I heard a rumor that Musk is trying to sell it now, but I haven't found anything to back that up; just a paywalled Boston Globe article with a headline advising him to do so.

~Neshomeh

What exactly is going on a Twitter?

Your riff is up!

—Ls

I really hope.

I'm not on it and it never appealed to me personally, but people who genuinely care for the platform and may even depend on it have my deepest sympathies. Taking a thing and destroying it in jealousy and spite is a true example of evil.

~Neshomeh

It looks like the reviews page is for, well, reviews. I don't know if it has a "sticky post" function—and even if it does, I'm not sure posting on the review page to say "this isn't actually a review, it's a link to our community forum," is a good look. We don't want to come off like we're demanding that people talk to us before they're entitled to an opinion, you know?

~Neshomeh

I’ll see if I can figure out how to do that.

I also would like to add something to the reviews page, along the lines of “ask us questions here”.

Oh, and the TOS link is old.

—Ls has not used his TV tropes account much yet

They don't stand out much, though. The Board link is labelled "HQ." It might be good to call a bit more attention to both, with additional distinction between discussion of the setting and discussion of the community. Does TVT allow section headers?

~Neshomeh

Hence, my proposition in the other reply.

Well, I also did a short internet search on this troll—and I managed to find his real name, so... yeah, not gonna share that.

However this gives me an idea—perhaps, on the TV Tropes review page or somewhere we can have a link to the Board for an “ask us more questions, we’ll try to address your concerns” sort of thing? That way maybe some of them, if they actually care to ask us, can and will?

—Ls found the PPC via TV Tropes

especially when the site is trying to cut down on bashing these days.

-Yuki, who is a troper herself.

I'd be less concerned about the future of Twitter if every Smauging Japanese fan content creator weren't on there and a host of Japanese content creator platforms (privatter, poipiku, shindanmaker, slot-maker) didn't require Twitter accounts.

Mystery. Deception. Intrigue. Kids being adorable. Cookies. A satisfying ending reminiscent of a certain Christie plot.

Ten outta ten, no notes.

It's a shame Cam didn't write more PPC fic; this is a little heavy on the "ew Sues dirty" rhetoric, but overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The agents start out a little short with each other, but they adjust into a cohesive teamwork mentality once the mission gets rolling. Plus, a gorilla is there! It . . . probably shouldn't be there, because of the whole "no pets or minis" on missions" thing, but I enjoyed King Kong Comma all the same. Actually, considering how genetically similar gorillas are to humans, I wonder if the Bonsai Monkey Puzzle Tree mistook KKC's mental activity for being similar enough to a humanoid's that it doesn't realize he isn't an agent? (Not that the BMPT existed when this was written, but you know what I mean. Flower senses go brrrrr.) I am, however, a little wigged out by that diet, man. Bacon and waffles? I know KKC is technically a manifest typo, like a mini, but he's gorilla enough to to make it feel weird for me to see him eat anything other than vegetation . . . Oh, another good moment for me is the opening, when Miss Cam hand delivered her sister a partner. Miss Cam is this imposing, powerful figure in the Canon Protection Initiative, but here she is hand-selecting a competent student to make sure her sister has a decent partner, and bringing her in person. It's really sweet and humanizing!

Hm. Grammar glasses? Must be a device from OFUM, since PPC agents can normally see the Words on their own. Interesting that this seems to imply agents had to be specially trained to do so, and a far cry from the modern version of telling a new agent to unfocus their eyes and there, training done! That special neuralyzer is interesting as well, since it didn't affect the PPC characters, despite their lack of eyewear. They must be exceedingly difficult to produce, considering they haven't caught on in twenty years! Maybe they can only be coded for a specific canon, which doesn't lend itself well to most agents' workloads. I really, really like interpreting point-of-view shifts as physical relocations being forced on the agents. It's a more elegant interpretation than the little critters we've invented in the modern day, and I will likely be stealing it for my spin-off once I. You know. Have time to write again.

Names! I totally didn't get the "Agent Orange" joke until it was explicitly spelled out during the charging scene. Embarrassing! It's clever, and it also means their surnames make a pair as a manmade chemical poison, and a naturally occurring biological venom. (Taipans are venomous snakes.) The soda-constructed names are also hilarious, very PPC vibe on-the-spot constructions. But most hilarious name here goes to the badfic author for naming a background elf "Pergolas," and then abbreviating that to "Perry" as a nickname. "It is I, Perry, of Middle-earth."

—doctorlit sees the Boarders of two decades past did not want him to have much free time this week!

James Earl Jones removed his headset slowly, a frown creasing his brow. "This was . . . a very strange recording session."

Sir David Attenborough removed his as well. "Yes . . ." he said slowly. "Did they really hire you just to make door knocking sound effects?"

"So it seems." Jones shrugged. "A paycheck is a paycheck, I suppose. At one point, it seemed as though you were supposed to have a line, but you didn't."

"I caught that as well," said Attenborough. "Perhaps they forgot to send me the line?"

Jones sighed. "George still hasn't gotten back to me about whether he needs any voice work for the last film of the prequel trilogy."

"That's a shame. On my end, nature hasn't run out of nature for me to narrate!"

Jones chuckled. "Well, shall we go for some Cool Voice Smoothies at the Cool Voice Smoothie Shack?"

"As always, dear friend, as always."

I could've sworn I've seen at least the third one in one of those self-published "insults for kids" books from a decade ago. I think I've seen the first two somewhere as well, even if the first one seems poorly formatted. ("No? Good," might have worked better than "No. Good." But that's just me.) The last one's just bad, though. It flows poorly, the answer's long enough it drains the punch from the punchline, and it's redundant with the IQ one above (not to mention intelligence jokes are pretty sad to see in 2022). Shameful, they really can do better. At least Y'gatha Mesome had some effort put into it. And was actually kinda neat.

Also, judging by this account's editing history, they seem to believe all agents are self-inserts - which does clarify why they seem to view attacking OC's as some grand, masterful Take That towards the PPC as a whole. After all, from their perspective, if they think all Agents are the authors, then by attacking the Agents they also get to insult (and make some goofy little internet 'you'd be better off dead' comments towards) the authors as well. Which is kinda ironic considering how the PPC's shifted over the years and how writing characters works, but eh. According to a quick Google search, they're from TV Tropes. Which does explain the lack of research, among other things. It does seem at least some of their gripes are towards older, kinda weird passages like the bit at the bottom of the 'Snape' article, judging by their edits there, but still, geez.

It is, to me at least, genuinely quite annoying that these folk (mostly TV Tropers, because of course) still don't bother actually checking out the source of the strawman they love so much. I really would like to see someone just. Address their concerns directly, you know? It's petty and almost cowardly, this. Not fun to think about, and things like this always end up clinging in my brain the wrong way.

Maybe looking through a troll's edit history was a mistake.

-OrangeFox, wondering if they can mold this into Interlude material out of spite

Just caught some more all by myself! The perp going by Kahran042 was a repeat offender and they've now been blocked indefinitely.

I admit the latest "contribution" (now reverted) made me laugh, though. Who says juvenile insults can't be funny?

~Neshomeh

That's just adorable. And quite funny.

Somehow I managed to catch the ao3 version before its official posting.

I’ll get to the investigation one Soon©️.

—Ls