The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

I actually really like my choice to review every chapter - it helps me engage more with what's going on. Plus, I can always look back at the previous reviews to remind myself where the story is at.

hS

I hope I didn't ruin your enojyment of the story.

If you've got the time, though, I suggest you pick up my earlier PPC works as well - it will give you a better understanding of at least my core characters.

You'll go "oh, how do I blocktext" and have flashbacks to this post. Always. And have a mini-cry/rage about it

(memory only functional until you actually need it, obviously)

Link, which has the picture.

Finally!

—Ls

I’ll probably just go for Word, though

The Board doesn't (as far as I know) host images, and we can't see them off your computer.

I've found Imgur works pretty well these days for image hosting, but you can always chuck it into a Google doc and link to that. (Not embed from that, though; that way lies madness.)

hS

Are you joking?

Oh sweet burning stars you're not joking. -_-

(As an aside, typing "-\_-" makes the emoticon look like it has cool facial scarring, or maybe Ziggy Stardust makeup.)

hS

I’ve gotten spoilers to actually work maybe once, and only for my Bleepfic nomination. And I've never bothered with blockquotes, I find quotation marks work for me. Side note: how do you add an image that doesn’t have a website? I made a Mina and Carlisle height chart, but couldn’t figure out how to upload it.

—Ls

It's literally <blockquote></blockquote>. (stamps "not angry^tm" beneath this line)

IDK why I find it so funny that it is literally just typing "blockquote" in... sideways carrots/brackets/whatever-those-greater-or-less-than-signs-are-called, but I find it funny. :P

There's probably a shorter way of blockquoting, but that's the only way I can remember how to do it.

-kA, who now is also known as the Not Angry^tm PG

The one time you're rattling out a quick one-liner using only code that you can do in your sleep, so you skip the preview...

... is the time you spontaneously lose the ability to spell and somehow drop a U 200F character in there along the way.

(I have got the spoilers - either kind - to work exactly once, and it took four gos. Blockquote I can't even find in the formatting list, but I remember repeatedly failing on that one too.)

hS

Mr Null is exactly as tall as Urato. Interesting.

I'm on mobile, so it's a pain to hit preview then scroll through (usually) a decent-size post to see "hmmm, did it spoiler?" And then check back to see what mistake I made in same said decent-size post. It gets more annoying the longer the post. So, it doesn't necessarily help.

-kA

Height charts! I love playing around with them and being given excuses to do so!

So, here we go!

I'm doing RC Hyperbola with this height chart because, annoyingly, anyone under a certain height is displayed with a child or toddler silhouette. This would mean Kittyauthor is displayed as such, so I would get annoyed really quickly. So, RC Hyberbola.

First thing I do is try to look up Paye's height on the wiki because I remember assigning David Null a height (Six feet two inches) and Matthew a height (six feet exact), but I don't recall what height Paye is. So I look and get:

"[Paye] is normal height, with brown hair that reaches mid-back."

Well gee, past!me. What is normal height?

Anyways, I had to do some extra research because Paye is "normal height" but where is her app found? I mean, she speaks English because that was the language Player was using, but the app was probably developed elsewhere, meaning the average/median height for women would be different than in America.

So, naturtally, I go to the main Dream Girlfriend site to get the company's name so that I could go into the company's site I'm doing waaay too much research for one simple fact by Gods.

Apparently, as of the 13th of last month, Ambition is doing NFTs (aaaa!). But that's different and political. Anyways.

I find that it's located in Japan. It has a Tokyo headquarters and an Okinawa Branch Office.

So, that gives me some info. Enough to find the median or average height of women, which would give me the "normal" height.

From multiple sites, the average height of women in Japan is five foot two inches. So, I guess Paye is an inch taller than me.

There, done, by gods. Why did I put "normal" height?

Anyways, height chart:

As you can see, Paye is a good foot under David Null. Huh, interesting.

(I know, I know. Average =/= normal, but I was having a really hard time finding the median height.)

-kA, who spent too much time gathering this info and still needs to brush their hair.

for forgetting one character.

I know the easy solution is to just use HTML or pay very close attention to what you're typing as far as code goes, but just like accidentally filling your canvas with black because a tiny space exists in your lines, sometimes it's just so tiny that you don't notice it until it posts like this and then it gets annoying (in this case, there's no space between #s and " and there are no ending quotes).

Perhaps something to catch small errors in Markdown that can be toggled? For example, if someone litters their posts with an * on every line and doesn't mean to italize, they can toggle that error thing off.

It's just an idea. Probably not a very plausible one because even Toyhouse doesn't have one for regular code, and TH is pretty popular.

-kA

(Edit: Spelling)

(Edit 2: Grammar.)

I’m having to read catchup and you’ve spoiled it . . . but that’s okay. I really like what I’ve read so far, and I’m curious to see further how hS’s spinoff goes as well.

—Ls

Well, unfortunately, I think the timeline we're operating under is off; this story mentions that Jay and Acacia have transferred to the DIC recently, but in our current +20 read-through, they're still DMS. I don't really have the time or energy to investigate posting dates right now . . . sorry, hS!

I feel like, as this read-through has moved forwards, I've had fewer and fewer contradictions to point out between the story of the moment and our current canon . . . but this story has those in droves! .Honestly, I like a lot of it, even some that doesn't quite work today; Thornton was willing to test out lots of details for the sake of world-building and cross-department interaction, and it's rather fun! In roughly chronological order: Even though she's unnamed and undescribed, I like seeing an actual human employee under the Marquis de Sod. As much fun as it is to torment him, it's frankly unrealistic for him to seemingly be the only staff in Personnel. Meg seems to treat her remote activator as a handheld version of the full console, complete with uploading the story's text into it before entering the fic. Probably unnecessary; we already have "reading the Words," as well as the DORKS to take over disguise generation. I like the protocols she's made for team-ups, to a certain extent. It makes sense that Untanglers would default to party leaders in a story like this, since they have the most experience with crossover material. And it certainly creates clear guidelines for who's responsible for what . . . but it also blocks PPC authors from having options, and potentially puts agents in a position where they literally can't complete a mission because of, for example, a Sue they aren't allowed to assassinate, or a snatched character they were never provided the equipment or training to return. And while I'm a big fan of "restrictions breed creativity," I think this setup is a little too restrictive, especially considering "wild" badfics aren't going to be tailor-made to slot into any one department. (Not to mention Floaters would be even more disproportionately popular to write in, in that scenario!) Plus, it led to the weird scenario here where Erica and George had to leave the mission before it really began, because they're anime division and can't assassinate the Tolkienverse Suvian, even though she seems to be "native" to Sailor Moon anyway? Why even have them there, then? I do like the idea that the agent under the disguise can be seen underneath by using the reading-the-Words stare, though it doesn't really have much practical application in a story. Apparently, the default uniform in this spin-off is coveralls? I mean, sure, they're practical, and have a lot of leeway in fitting different body types (and to jump briefly to the end, I definitely approve of the pockets-only loadout for speed, a strategy I employ at the zoo every day!) . . . The Chronologically Correct Time Device feels like an EXTREMELY PPC piece of equipment. I love the mental image of PPC agents out in the field just bent over this timepiece having to record exact paper measurements to use later, paying perfect attention to the timing of an orc attack. A little field bureaucracy! The black tear of a "portal" that represented Boromir's transdimensional journey is really cool imagery! While I don't think it would catch on today, I think the idea that the reason our equipment is so hard to fix is because the actual physical casement takes multiple days to reopen is a hilarious gag. Hm. I don't like the implication that Meg's base of operations in Middle-earth, in the Eryn Vorn, would depend on HQ. I get that it's unaffected to the reality break-down, but it's still canon, existing on its own power. I also don't appreciate the implication that Boromir would vanish from reality if he was caught in the reality collapse; that's just giving the PPC ( as a series) too much power . . . we can't allow ourselves to fail that spectacularly! Although one detail I do like about the reality collapse is that, rather being a destructive, world-ending event, it's actually the original canon forcing itself back where things belong; it's a healing process! One that's intensely dangerous for PPC agents! The most dangerous healing!

To segue from there into the mission: yeah, the reality warping and break-down are very detailed and imaginative, and I quite enjoyed all the descriptions! It's unnerving to an almost cosmic horror degree, and it makes for an excellent action sequence in the end, but it also left me feeling like it was reckless for the agents to let things deteriorate to that point. We usually stop missions before abusive scenes and such nowadays, and I feel like this is the Despatch equivalent, especially with a 12-year-old agent in danger! It's not explicitly stated, but the fact that reality warps so badly while Boromir is largely catatonic shows that it's not just the presence of a character from another canon that produces the warping, but rather the poor logic regarding time in the writing itself. The coin flip testing continues to be great from the first story, and the different first person narrators with different fonts is clever . . . except that the latter also forced me to read to the thoughts of a gross sexist pig of a man, so that was unwelcome. Gross. Kind of glad Will never got any more page time after this . . . And possibly relatedly, why is Shelley's kleptomania worse when directed at guys? Is it saying she like, flirts them into forgetting she has their stuff? Weird.

So, this specifies that 18 continua in particular needed extra dedicated attention in these early days. Tolikienverse and Potterverse are obvious shoe-ins, and this very story seems to imply Sailor Moon is another . . . What else? If we accept the essay on our wiki's Uncle Tom's Cabin page as canon, UTC could be another, but that still leaves 14 more . . . Might think more on this later . . .

So, why was the original fic titled "Teddy Bear?" None got mentioned . . . unless . . . oh no . . . Is Boromir the teddy bear? Because of his hairy chest?! D: D: D:

—doctorlit out the door

It's pretty silly and fun!

What Charlie was doing to prepare the latte is a mystery...

--Ozzielot

I remember using that ages ago, wow. Also I find it really funny that when I'm comparing them to objects, one of my (non-canonical yet, still working on permission) agents is shorter than the car object. Tiny hobbit. It's a really fun tool to play around with, actually.

We had three separare groups we were following, as well.

• Sergio's group, whose plotline involved understanding what is going on (until Chapter 3, when Corolla was found) and then loooking for other survivors and supplies.
• Nikki's group, whose plotline involved a bit of the same questions Sergio's had, but eventually the questions switched to "why is Spare Squadron even operating at all in this situation" and, oof course, how to survive being used as disposable pilots.
• Keiko and Hajime, confused by each other's existence just as much as by the Unravel, looking for their family.

Those three groups fully converged only during Chapter 8, which means that until then we had to follow the situation of more than one group of main characters. Also, in the first half I kept introducing new characters almost every chapter, which only increased the confusion!

I think things really improved around Chapter 12. Many plotlines were resolved - what happened is clear, Strike Dove has now an official status with the surviving countries, the main character groups are now just one. I also worked on the character amount, by basically "off-screening" the Razgriz and Hayate's ship, and making more clear that the new supporting characters were, in most cases, just temporary support.

Also, the main plot lines are now just two: "End the war" and "What is the Professor up to", with secondary character plots that are either being resolved (Nikki and Sergio's emotional problems), or not the main focus of this arc (Keiko's Cyber Formula shenanigans, which will have their own arc soon)

Pardon me, that thing jumped at me like a shock site.