But if everyone disagrees with me on that, then sure, go ahead. It's not going to hurt anything. I might even help out, if needed.
--Ls
Welcome, fans of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum and supporters of the Canon Protection Initiative! If you've got a story to plug, an opinion to share, or a discussion you want to join in, this is the place!
If you're looking for PPC stories to read, why not start with The Original Series – the missions of the famous assassins Jay and Acacia, the very first stories in PPC history. Once you've finished them, check out the list of Killed Badfic to find a mission you like the look of, or The Complete List of PPC Fiction to look up specific agents or departments.
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But if everyone disagrees with me on that, then sure, go ahead. It's not going to hurt anything. I might even help out, if needed.
--Ls
I'd put Laduquac and Ave in both Male and Female. Because there's no law that says we can't. {= )
For Sam and Alex, you could go wild and put them in all three; they are Schrodinger's Gender, each and all and none at once.
Most of the Glossary lot have associated pronouns, I think. I'm sure some don't, but I would be fine failing to capture 100% of all named characters. Not like the wiki captures 100% of everything else anyway, but we try. Sometimes. (♪ And if you try sometimes, you might find~~ ♪)
But nah, this is purely academic; I'm not mad about not going ahead with it. Just felt it worth pointing out that solutions exist if we wanted them. {= )
~Neshomeh
I really thought hS at least might be interested in the data, though. >.>
I strongly disagree with getting rid of any category that highlights minorities that are historically underrepresented in Western media. You can read it as "everyone else defaults to [insert assumption]" if you choose to, but a) you can choose to read unspecified as unspecified instead (plenty of people do this to add diversity to their fanfic [hi Lily]), and b) how else are you gonna find the characters explicitly written as not white, straight, human, whatever? And yes, for the record, I am rather in favor of adding more categories for non-straight, non-cis, non-human, and other minority agents so you don't have to hunt through all the unspecifieds to find them. {= )
Definitely agree with getting rid of the "Inactive Agents" category, though. It's not serving a useful purpose.
~Neshomeh
And one thing I may add: any transgender characters, or such would be easy to find linked in that very article on the subject. Not sure we need a separate category for it.
Other than that, I'm really not sure there'd be any particular benefit to having a category for male and female agents. Sure, other wikis do it, but it's not as though we're obligated to use any particular categories simply because other wikis have them, and as hS said, it just doesn't seem all that likely to be useful, at least in comparison to the workload it would give us. Consider the number of pages this would require an edit of: we've got around 900 Agent pages, 200 Staff pages, and 100 Flower pages--editing all that just to add redundant information (whether via infobox or category) easily obtainable already seems entirely unnecessary to me.
Oh, and speaking of unnecessary categories, I don't even like the "agents of color" category, because it rather implies (at least to me?) that agents are by default white (and human!), which is... not great. I also think we should axe the "inactive agents" category because it's not consistently applied, and I think the "retired agents" category works better in-universe. Of course, these are just my opinions, so take them as they are.
So, yeah, don't think it's worth it.
--Ls, having a bit more to say now that it's not really late at night
I only learned Doctor Who existed after joining the PPC, so to me, it feels like characters like Harkness have just always existed . . .
Also, your phrasing about Umbridge has made me picture:
Madam Umbridge lowered her wand, the Respecting Ancient Houses Policy now properly affixed to the take-notice board. "This isn't even my—" she grinned and giggled sweetly to herself— "final form." She picked up her briefcase and patted it fondly. "No, there are many other forms I can fill out, too! But I've another class to sit in on right now." And she skipped merrily away.
—doctorlit is positive Umbridge skips like a schoolgirl when no one is looking
Hi, everyone! It's been a... not ideal few months for me writing-wise (long story short, my fanwriting adventures are slowly coming to an end in my current main fandom, and I'm a bit sad about that), so I decided to go back to my roots and write something just for the hell of it. I first wrote a time travel story in the summer of 2021, and after being hit with an idea for a story within the same setting a few weeks ago, I decided to go back and expand that first story into a cycle of short stories within the same universe. As of right now, I have two out of the seven planned stories completed, but they both work as standalones as well, so if this falls through like my other longer writing ventures before, the current stories can still be read on their own.
As for the premise, this collection is about a secret agency whose goal is to keep the spacetime continuum intact. If that sounds a little familiar: I'm aware, but these stories aren't metafictional parodies. The main premises all center around time travel (time loops, alternate timelines, people meeting their past selves and so on), and they're all played for horror and/or tragedy. I'm also planning to add a soupcon of gay romance to the later stories, but the two I've finished so far don't have that yet.
I'd be much obliged if someone let me know what they think of these; I've been feeling very rusty, and my latest stories desperately need feedback. I'm posting them on Wattpad just for reach, but if anyone here decides to check them out, please let me know what you think. :)
-Oculus
You know, since there's been quite a few book challenges lately...
And of course Hermione's first f-bomb is dropped about the library being locked to her! Anything else would have been OOC ;P
I did want to bring out how posh Justin Finch-Fletchley is! Honestly if it weren't for the blood status thing (and at least nominally according to the rules of Purityworld, that doesn't factor in at all now that he's a New Blood) I feel like he would've been considered a proper Malfoy playmate. He's proof that snobby Muggles also exist!
Lucius: How dare you expose my son to--
Lucius: How rich?
Lucius: Well, I’ll make an exception just this once.
(The Malfoys love money more than blood purity, according to Pottermore :P)
Yes, Harry is being ridiculously and unreasonably jealous. It will come back to bite him eventually. I promise.
Umbridge is horrible but I have to reiterate: this isn't even her final form. It's gonna get worse. I had a lot of fun drafting up the names of her horrible policies.
And re: Doctor Who: the DW reboot only came around in 2005, so that's why no one's wondering why Jacques looks suspiciously like the chap who played Raoul in the 1992 performance of Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre, or presenter of the Electric Circus on the childrens' programme Live and Kicking, or the presenter of The Movie Game. I will say, John Barrowman in the 90s was fine.
Thanks for catching that typo!
I would argue for Male/Female/Non-Binary/Gender Unknown or something, but for me personally I'd rather not. Like Ls said, pronouns in the articles themselves tend to be a better marker than a hard category.
Alex Orange and Sam Apple - who have their own spinoff which I've almost forgotten about - have genders; they've just never told me what they are. It wouldn't be correct to put them in "Non-binary".
There's also Laduquac of DAS, who is male but will eventually mature into a Drosk matriarch. "Will change gender" would seem to be non-binary, but he's definitely male for now.
Tiiiiiiiime Lords. I'm pretty sure Ave, at least, has a gender-switch while in the PPC - while not being "non-binary" at most points, since the character is fixed at either he or she until death.
And any agents for whom we just don't know, because they're a background mention on a glossary.
That's just off the top of my head when I've just woken up. :) Which, if you're happy with the categories not covering everyone, fine. But an info box field would mean "male, but will eventually mature into a female" would be just one more piece of text entry.
(Also, categories are great for searching up, eg, a DOGA character or an elf - but is anyone going to want to go "right, I need a page about a lady - apart from that I'm not fussed"?)
hS
Just to quickly respond to Linstar's comment, most of the details in the infobox are also covered in the article; the point is that the most basic facts are collected in a simple format one can take in at a glance, so it's redundant by nature.
My only slight qualm is the headache of backfilling the new row in all existing infoboxes, but that can at least be visually solved by making the row only appear if it has data in it.
New categories would definitely be a headache, but plenty of wikis categorize characters by gender, and I think it would be neat. Categories would have the advantage of capturing characters who only exist as redirects to the Glossary, and then we'd have a way to see at a glance about how many of each have existed. I'd propose three, for "Male Agents," "Female Agents," and "Non-binary Agents."
~Neshomeh actually enjoys grindy projects like this, anyway.
I think gender is a quite important information to include in the infoboxes, but I wanna see comm consensus.
It's rather late to post a New Year story at this point, but I had my reasons. Either way, here's a piece of Kaguya & Momoka backstory.
It's been a long time since I watched the show, so if it's a specific thing, I don't remember. Lots of the episodes do feature Gems that were damaged or corrupted in a recent war and have taken on monstrous forms, and the cast have to neutralize them (with the hope of eventually healing them). It could be a canonical or original one of those.
It's an awesome show, by the way. Highly recommended!
~Neshomeh
A rather gloomy chapter, but I liked the high moments: the image of Jenni sneaking literature to her contemporaries, and serving as the inspiration for “Dumbeldore’s Army;” Hannah apologizing to Hermione, and Draco and Justin finding common geographic ground. (Although Harry is so jealous, dang, Draco can still converse with other boys, harry, jeeze!) I love that the schisms Umbridge opened last chapter are already starting to fill back in . . . funny how taking away people’s freedoms leads to mass solidarity, eh, Dolores? (Although I don’t think Georgiana Smith is going to be reconciling any time soon, that girl is scarily into the Avalon stuff. “Wah wah, they took away my right to gaslight eleven-year-olds into abandoning their families, how am I supposed to be devout now?!”)
Yeeeaaaah, gonna call it now: the rumors about Umbridge “consecrating” her family members are absolutely true. She just Is Like That, it fits. I’m sorry, Lily, I know I’m probably going to get repetitive complaining about Umbridge every chapter, but she’s just so despicable! And she’s scary, because unlike your standard fantasy dark lord, Umbridge is a bigoted bureaucrat who’s willing to use the law to hurt others, and real life has no shortage of those. I hate her nonsense about using titles, because titles don’t mean a damn thing, they’re just an excuse for some people to feel superior to others—but of course, about 70% of Umbridge’s personality is justifying social superiority through any means at all, so it’s no surprise she would stand by the formality of titles. “Take back your school,” what an overt way to indicate that only Pure/New Bloods should be on the Inquisitorial Squad, and therefore to imply that Muggleborn students should never have positions of authority; that’s not their place, after all! And it’s got a certain ring to it somehow, a familiar vibe, something about taking some place, like a country, and making it better than it is now, like it had been at some nebulous point in the past? Something like that.
The fascists love going after the library, don’t they? At an old school like Hogwarts, it’s frightening to think what ancient texts could end up lost if some government stooges are removing books, if they’re not careful to catalog and properly store what’s being removed. All this to say: a very appropriate and justified first f-bomb from Hermione! “Open $%*#ing sesame,” I say aloud to my bookshelf as I approach it seductively excitedly.
Okay, I’m probably being really dumb in asking this, but Harry, Hermione and surely loads of other Muggle students have watched Doctor Who, so . . . how are they not freaking out about Professor Bonnefoy’s face? Does he not look like Harkness in this timeline? Or . . . or is he actually this timeline’s alternate version of John Barrowman, and some other actor got cast as Harkness?
“So you’re not asking her to take responsibility for… you know?” asked Jusin . . .
—doctorlit, asking the really important questions
Hey, so, if you're not aware, I've been trying to kickstart a career as a indie author online. I've been writing stories over at ScribbleHub, and have currently got two original stories and one fanfic. I've had a pretty good run so far, so I've decided to start up a dedicated discord server for my writing, and also try and supplement my finances with Patreon income.
Minimum tier is $1 a month, and max is $10. Only big difference between the tiers is that the $1/month will get you two days of early access to new chapters, the $5/month will get you a week, and the $10/month will get you two weeks. This will apply after I take a break for five months to work on my final year of uni, but I will be starting work on the first four chapters of my current stories after I get back.
Any support, whether it be by joining my community or contributing financially, would be very much appreciated.
See you all out there on the web!
Crazy Minh.
I'm not entirely sure whether the fic was supposed to be a bunch of oneshots or not, it mainly focuses on the same pairing but is so utterly incoherent it very well could be a badly butchered singular plotline. Frankly, I'm not sure how one would clearly distinguish either way.
Thanks for at least helping clarify some of that Gem weirdness! I guess that weird bit with the random bird kidnapping wasn't from Steven Universe?
Not sure why Bill is a Diamond either. Was "sentient triangle demon" not weird enough? :)
Anyway, thanks for reading another of my MSTs!
--Ls
Looks to me like the fic is a series of one-shots with a unifying theme of Valentine's Day, but otherwise no connection. The author's native language probably doesn't use articles (a, an, the), hence the lack of them.
The third chapter does look like a Steven Universe crossover to me, too. Fusions are a thing Gems and part-Gems (i.e. Steven) can do, including with humans (though it takes a lot of practice); the resulting being takes a new name and is something greater than the sum of its parts, at least in a stable fusion. Unstable ones split apart again pretty quickly. Permanent fusions are frowned upon in Gem society, but one of the main characters in the show is one; they sometimes act as a metaphor for a stable, loving partnership and/or for healthy mental balance.
The core of each Gem's being is a literal gemstone that appears somewhere on their body. The "triangle for an eye" thing seems to be a reference to that, except the gemstones don't fuse, they just migrate to their usual location on the new being, so IDK.
The four Diamonds are top-tier Gems who rule their society, and we know who all of them are by the end of the show, so casting Bill as one of them is a bit rich. There is canonical precedent for the "former Diamond" thing, but it's a major spoiler and wouldn't help the chapter make any more sense, so I won't get into it.
I don't know if those bits of explanation help at all, anyway. {X D
~Neshomeh
I LOVE TCGs, i’ll take a look into it :]
-HC
Hello!
Discord link will be valid for about 12 hours as of posting: https://discord.gg/TcGYU3C
As in, Aelit, who cowrote parts of Blank Sprite and The World Without Authors with me, is in Frame Games, the team behind Astralia Chronicles, an anime-styled trading card game that is being launched right now on Kickstarter.
It is a game in the style of Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh, but its lore is something dear to us: you're literally summoning fictional characters from stories existing in the world of Astralia. Don't worry, as a Machinist you're exempt from Trans-Dimensional Snatching charges!
I haven't been able to take part in playtesting, but as a former Magic player I can say this definitely works. They even took care in making sure the text of the cards is dyslexic-friendly!
Check it out here on Kickstarter, and if it interests you please support them!