The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

WANTED: The most CURLY-HEADED Hobbits in all the Shire. Assemble this Mersday 1 Halimath at BAGGINS HALL to gain something to your ADVANTAGE.

• From The Adventures of Hemlock Holmes: The Curly-Headed League, coming soon(ish) to an AO3 near you

hS

Have a cake in your favorite flavor. (It’s very American.)

—Ls

Because ye gods both great and small: once Bobby Gulls has (or believes he has) a presence in Magnus' mind, his absolute #1 greatest dream come true would be for Magnus to set his father's remains aside and take his place on the Golden Throne. That gives Guilliman the Astronomicon. It gives him the Webway. It gives him a direct psychic portal into the minds of everyone in the Imperium. Starting with those who are physically closest to Magnus at the moment he ascends: the remaining Loyalist Primarchs.

Even without Magnus being corrupted by marinating in the Warp for millennia, his usurpation would be easy to engineer: the Rift is so intense that an Astronomicon powered by the remnants of the Emperor isn't strong enough to pierce it, but a living mind (especially powered by the Thousand Sons) could, etc etc. And honestly, even with uncorrupted intentions: once he was on the Throne, would you trust Magnus the Red not to meddle in things Postmortal Was Not Meant To Know?

hS

My take on the rule is that they don't want people to use their service as a way to get around using bandwidth on their own websites. Especially if it's a commercial website that presumably makes the owner money as they force Imgur to use ad revenue generated by other people to serve their stuff. It's not fair to Imgur or to other users.

Using Imgur to share stuff on a forum such as the Board, which does not provide image hosting, is still fine.

~Neshomeh

Also, if possible, please be sure to fix your own mistakes rather than inflate the mini population. The chronically overburdened Mini Adoption Center will thank you. {= )

~Neshomeh

It won't have been ten thousand years for Robbie Gill and His Blue Meanies. Possibly this throws a wrench in the works (what do you mean that agri-world now has its own Chapter on it??), but also possibly it enables him to mess with the Imperium in a non-linear, completely incomprehensible way. Or both; probably both. The Imperium maintains just enough of an edge to stave off annihilation thanks to the occasional vision from Magnus, because he always knew time was fake.

Speaking of Magnus, by the way: I wanted to mention that I have Feelings about the necessity of keeping him off the Golden Throne in order for all this to work. Like, it's kinda funny, but also god dammit can't the guy get a break that doesn't involve a spinal rupture? {X' D

The Thousand Sons themselves, too. Another theory courtesy of Phobos: There's a good reason the Emperor called them the Thousand Sons before they were reduced to about that many by the flesh-change the first time. See, we know the Golden Throne runs on psyker batteries, right? And how many psyker souls does it consume at a time? One thousand. Inferior mortal souls burn for one day; imagine how much more juice you could get out of the most powerful of the Astartes psykers specifically trained to channel stupidly vast amounts of power without letting it burn them out. You wouldn't just have more powerful batteries, you'd have rechargeable batteries! They could take shifts!

It's very sad that the Sons are pretty much annihilated in this timeline rather than unwillingly corrupted. ... Though I wonder if Ahriman might still be running around doing Ahriman things with more or less exactly the same motivation and exactly the same dismal chances of success. {X D Unless he becomes the first Grand Master of the Grey Knights instead of Revuel Arvida Ianius Janus? 'Cause Malcador was planning the Grey Knights all along anyway, if I understand correctly, and if you can't get an actual shard of Magnus welded to an Astartes shell, Ahriman is definitely the next-best thing.

~Neshomeh

Certainly more than I would Abaddon, for example.

I mean, look at it! His plan for the Siege of Terra - and it was his plan, there's no way the Wolf King would let the Emperor come or be brought to him rather than hunting him down - left the Wolf and the Emperor both dead or nearly so, and 2/3 of the surviving Loyal Primarchs so guilt-ridden or otherwise broken that they ran off to be ineffective for the next ten millennia. Meanwhile Guilliman has his own pocket empire, the entire Eye of Terror at least nominally following him, and at least some of his Chaos opponents - his brothers - ineffective as opponents.

In fact, let's do a quick rundown of...

Bobby Gulls' Grand Plan

Assumption: from the moment the Wolf King brought Guilliman on board, all plans were Guilliman's work. Russ may have thought otherwise. Russ was wrong.

The Daemon Primarchs: Sanguinius is too charismatic; neutralise that by giving him to Nurgle. Drive several of the others (Vulkan, Ferrus Manus) into twisting themselves and their children far beyond sanity; give others (Corax, the Lion) personal vendettas to distract them. Keep Omegon sane - he will be necessary later.

The Loyal Primarchs: Find some way to put Magnus in a coma. This will involve pitting him against a more powerful psychic force: a God of Chaos or the Emperor. The latter is preferred. Ensure Alpharius remains loyal and functional.

The Siege of Terra: Engineer the maiming of the Lion. If he takes a Loyalist Primarchs down, so much the better. Prevent Russ from going out after the Emperor. Ensure the Emperor comes to Russ, and that he is accompanied by Lorgar. Eliminate Lorgar: his preaching could revitalise the Imperium, but without him it will stagnate. Ensure Russ and the Emperor eliminate each other (or nearly). Then get out - Terra is meaningless.

For ten thousand years: Harass the Imperium. Never let them stabilise. Exhaust the Loyalist Primarchs by forcing them to keep waking. Oh - and infiltrate Magnus' mind while the most powerful psyker in history is unconscious and unshielded from the Warp.

Now: When the time is ready for the Great Rift to open, allow Magnus to awaken. He will assume the Throne of Earth, despite the corruption seeded in him. His co-rulers will be two exhausted Primarchs (Perty and Mortarion), one who has spent ten millennia in the Warp (Night Haunter), one ridden with guilt (Horus), and Alpharius. Replace Alpharius with his brother. Since NH and Horus never signed off on the Chapters thing, have Magnus and "Alpharius" throw their weight behind re-assembling the Legions - as a one off, to deal with the unprecedented crisis.

Oh look. Now you've got everyone who can conceivably hurt him gathered in one place, under the command of someone who was bathing in the Warp for ten thousand years. Sounds like a fun toy.

... at least, that's my mind-read of a mad demonic post-mortal.

hS

It's... it's not the most original concept though. I borrowed heavily from the mordants and ghouls of Age Of Sigmar's Flesh-Eater Courts faction. They're undead zombies who still think they're questing Arthurian knights rather than semi-feral lunatics scrabbling around in rusty centuries-old chainmail and such. It's an amazing aesthetic, and one I really enjoyed working with to fit into a 40K context. It was also the first "full-length" Fenrykan Heresy narrative piece I wrote that really dug into the fall of a specific Legion.

I'm gonna be doing the upshot of Ferrus Manus and his quest for perfection at some point, but the CliffNotes version is: the Iron Hands go full Rubricae. Instead of dust imprisoned in power armour, they're a tangle of exposed nerves wrapped in delicate filigree patterns around a framework of perfect silver. Some of them have even directly connected their remaining nerves to the outside of their armour, the better to experience the rush of excess in the throes of battle. They're barely more than automata powered by meat-scraps, and they're all completely insane, and their jump-pack troops have bound minor Daemons of Slaanesh to these silver feathered wings so they can glide down at the perfect pace to strike.

As for Big Bob, he's got the Daemon-Realm of Ultramar which he directly controls, but a "functioning government" is a bit of a stretch. It's still beset by the same infighting and jockeying for position and general madness of any Chaos polity, but Bubba G's just got ten thousand years of managing it. All of it. So he's become the ultimate expression of fascist autocracy: power from strength, strength from power, and power used entirely at the Great Leader's ineffable whim. It is the ultimate mockery of order. It is Chaos wearing order's clothes. So yes, Ramjet Gargleblast is absolutely in charge of the Imperium Pandaemonium, as an absolute monarch and autocrat, a true king of hell. The process of trying to make that work drove him deeper into madness than anything else ever could have accomplished. He is so drenched in the politics of Astartes, daemons, and daemonic Astartes that everything he says and does can only be viewed in that context, and so to an outside observer it looks completely random. Why withdraw all your forces on the verge of winning an offensive, only to send them against a gigantic mass of enemy troops against which they could not hope to prevail? Why send a gigantic horde of Traitor Astartes to take one single agri-world in the galactic hinterland with a planetary population lower than that of the invasion force? Why anything? Because everything. According to Bob, everything is proceeding exactly as planned. It's just up to you whether to believe him.

These are definitely badfic. The prose is some of the most beige I've ever seen, there are few commas or periods, and there is no characterization whatsoever. Overall, the series seems boring, which works especially poorly for smutfic. This is just me, but I don't see much humor potential here; beige prose and bad SPaG are annoying, but I don't know how to make them funny in a mission context. I think most of the jokes would have to come from Agent interactions rather than from the fic itself.

The problems I see are more structural than anything. None of the fics I read established who Marcella was; she's just There. On the smut side, I have to wonder what exactly the point of making Marcella a hermaphrodite is. The description doesn't mention that much. You could replace her with a cis man with long hair and only a couple of sentences would need changing. What's the point of kink if the kink isn't described?

You've pulled all our wandering thoughts together really well. I think my favourite line of the addition is Mortarion had a dissenting opinion that his brother could not pick apart, which just gets to the heart of your version of Perturabo in a handful of words.

Of your alt-legions, I think the most interesting fate is the Blood Angels. The idea of them being shambling horrors but not knowing is absolutely perfect(ly chilling).

Question: "Imperium Pandemonium". I kind of glossed over that when I read the first time, but: has Bobby Gulls got an actual functioning government down there in the Eye? Because yiiiiikes.

hS

These minis weren't found in fics. They were found off the 'net, most of which were from erroneous renderings by websites. A few of these are mistakes I made myself

---

Characters and Families

_{Minis of last names take the mini forms of the characters bearing them. Cases of families with more than one recurring character (i.e. Leech family) will be specified otherwise.}

Ashengrotto, Azul

• Ashengrot (adopted)

Bucchi, Ruggie

• Buggie

Felmier, Epel

• Epée
• eperFermier
• eppel

Hunt, Rook

• luk
• luke

Leech family

Minis of this category appear as very ugly blue moray eels

• Leach

Schoenheit, Vil

Spelling "Schönheit" is accepted

• Ville

Vanrouge, Lilia

• VanRouge

Organizations

_{Misspelling the name of a dorm leads to a mini of its leader. Misspelling the name of a school leads to a mini of its headmaster}

Heartslabyul Dorm

• Jearts

Pomefiore Dorm

• pomfiore

I’d read it, but not cowrite it. Just...no thank you.

—Ls was squicked by the content warnings alone.

I'm just not as... au fait with all their nuances as I ought to be. They slip more easily from my head for some reason, while the magic system really does stick around. Also, if you want to use Algernon at any point in LU, do feel free. =]

I missioned the infamous Wall of Tags fic, “S*xytimes with Wangxian”, wherein their later chapters have the titular couple hopping around to other fandoms having questionably beige sex with other characters (and also certain kpop groups, but I didn’t cover that portion of it because I don’t deal with RPF). The plan in the mission was to rescue all kidnapped canons and set up a Creativity Shield so that the fic itself wouldn’t damage the rest of the multiverse. The latter didn’t happen because the fic itself got deleted during the mission, but this could also be a good candidate for seeing a Creativity Shield put into action. You could have agent teams fetching the Sue’s clones and bringing them back to her original world, and then setting up a Creativity Shield there so they can’t affect the rest of the Multiverse.

Incidentally, if you go with that approach, you would also thematically line up with the “League of Mary Sue Factories doing cloning experiments” idea that I’ve been playing with in my stuff. So that could be an interesting addition to the lore, if Marcella is treated like a Suvian with a clone army set out to mess with the rest of the Multiverse.

It discusses the shattering of the Legions into the Chapters of the 41st Millennium. I considered finding some more, y'know, Gothic-y name for them, but Chapters is legible and easily understood.

Thanks again to hS, Nesh, and Phobos for their help. It means a lot that people engage with my ideas. <3

EDIT: I have also finally included a table of contents with links to each subsection. This should help with the story's non-linearity. =]

And it would shift a lot of the drama from "bagging her" to "make sure she doesn't touch and burn any world outside hers". With just a bit of care and, of cours,e cross-checking each other's works, we can basically turn this into a big containment operation, which still has a lot of community effort potential, but ultimately we would pretty much avoid the big controversial topic entirely.

It woulkd become "Marcella is absolutely free to do what she does and be who she is - we have no grudge against her peronally (or after her author). But we'd like her to not hop around seducing and impregnating all the canon girls in the multiverse, thank you."

And, with the right disclaimers, we should be able to make it clear that it isn't a raid agaisnt one author we don't like, but that we thought the badfics themselves provided a good starting point for doign something a bit bigger than usual (while being, well, badfics).

In fact, I think that we can ultimately avoid the "dogpiling" aspect by... releasing only one story. Basically, those who are willing to tackle this choose a single one of these badfics to have one of their agent teams in. We roleplay/cowrite the big pre-mission meeting with, I dunno, the Board of Department Heads? In which the assignment is stated. (We have a problem with this character somehow propagating herself through the World Worlds. We have to banish her splinters back to her world before she seduces the whole multiverse.). The missions' scenes get alternated, to have the effect that the teams are working simultaneously, and then we have the big simultaneous exorcism at the end. Followed by whatever roleplayed wind-down, havign a drink at Rudy's, whatever we want to get the agent teams interact with each other a bit more.

It would be, in the end, just one mission, tackling a single Suvian (but it different world at once), without actually killing her or even judging character.

Suppose we just banished this literal demon back to her own universe rather than killing her? In other words, treat the stories like implausible crossovers. Or, more precisely, proper trans-dimensional hopping.

It wouldn't remove the necessity of treading lightly with any critique of the kinks as portrayed, but it would make it more plain that the message is "you're free to do what you want in your own home, but not anyone else's."

We have people well qualified to do sensitivity checks, too, if they're willing.

And there wouldn't have to be a detailed sporking of every fic. Take a few examples from representative continua, preferably featuring different versions of the character; assemble a master charge list from the individual ones; get enough agents in enough places; and do one big ol' exorcism.

... It could be done that way, anyhow. I'm on the fence with everyone else on whether it should be done. Great lore in-universe? Yes. Potentially worse optics than usual out-of-universe? Also yes.

Not that I'm especially worried about bruising this particular author's ego. It seems clear they know exactly what they're doing and don't care what anyone thinks about it, or they wouldn't be flooding AO3 with 200+ bloody fics all in the same vein. >.>

~Neshomeh

Minor spoilers, but that canon character they met at the end of chapter two is very much the third member of the main cast. I know it's one of your fandoms of interest, but I wasn't sure if you're much invested in the characters, or just the setting as a whole.

As for Hemlock and Whitson - they're fun, I like them. I don't know if I can concoct another story for them, but I'm pretty sure the first one was written with no idea where it was going, so maybe!

hS

My initial thought is, first and foremost: we don't author-bash. By sporking all/most or even some of these fics by this author, we could be accused of focusing too much on one person, bullying them, even if the work is questionable. I personally feel that, by sporking some of these fics and threading them into One Big Plot, we could be trending over into that territory, making it seem like we're picking on the author. If we spork more spread out and not just in one huge clot, maybe it'd be better.

My second thought, upon reading through the comments here, is that the work both have certain fetishes in them that are repeated and are transophobic (if I misinterpreted that, I apologize. I saw that they were explicit and noped out). As at least one person has noted, by sporking this fic in a mission, we (and the mission itself) could be seen as transophobic, despite it being the work that is. On that level, I'd say we shouldn't mission them, either, or if we do mission one of these fics, we are very careful to point out that we aren't being transophobic. Writing about a trans character in intimate relations with other characters is perfectly fine, it's just how this was pulled off seems bad.

Of course, I haven't read the fics because I don't typically read something explicit (although I have in the past) and just wasn't in the mood, so take these opinions as lesser than someone who has read the fic.

-kA