The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Here is a video of The Star Spangled Banner. Also, this comic I found was hilarious. I think it might be a goodfic. [Meet the Nazgûl(https://archiveofourown.org/works/30861323/chapters/76195286)

I'm not in an orchestra, but my sister plays violin and my mom plays cello.

Since this is the sort of thing it's probably worth planning way in advance (for the coordination of hotels, for example), would folks be interested in a Chicago Gathering at some point in the summer of 2022? If so, what sort of constraints are involved?

The piece is originally for piano solo and orchestra, but there are also arrangements for violin and piano (tempo a bit slow imo), violin-cello-piano trio, and violin solo w/ accompaniment (last video only plays half of the score).

BTW, if you don't mind if I ask, are you in an orchestra?

Maybe I could try doing that if you want, but my handwriting is not the neatest (it's legible, but wiggly) and I don't have unlimited time. Manuscripts would take up less space and be easier to make than rock carvings, though.

I am a violinist who doesn't know too much about clarinets and oboes, but I listen to lots of classical music. I think it sounds nice, and now I'm wondering if I could find an arrangement of this for violin.

Does Fauré's Pavane Op. 50 sound good on clarinet-oboe duet?

I've asked this elsewhere and so far has gotten no answer, and the only such duet I've found is this video in which the playing doesn't sound very good (it helps that one of the performers was 10 at the time of the video's making). I suppose it might sound better in the hands of more skilled performers, but I'll ask to be sure. I'm planning a music-themed fic so the help would be appreciated.

There might also be hinted "destruction by fire" in one of the ending pictures (if I remember correctly). It's fun. Fate has a pet cat (don't pet the cat) and you once have to take over for the plant department. Also, The Stupendium made a fan rap of this game, located here.

-kA, who just realized that the example link in http and not https.

I was going to say violet + indigo = violin, except that combination might actually make a good color.

Also, cellos made out of wood are usually shades of brown, so I'm not sure what it would actually look like. maybe it switches between a painfully bright neon green to a really horrible shade of brown. Or maybe it's those colors mixed up in a swirl, like marbled paper, or a color that is an even mix of them which is painful to look at and makes you want to barf at the same time. There are lots of possible color combinations.

Wouldn't that make it cello color?

It's an excellent storytelling game, with a whole lot of fun content, and it's fully voiced! Highly recommend it.

Death and Taxes ($6.50) - You're an office worker, reporting to your boss at the end of each day...except you're the Grim Reaper, and your boss is Fate. You decide who lives and who dies. (Tip: Get the mirror as soon as possible.) Warning for Discord blacklist item #8.

Fallout: New Vegas ($3) - You're a mail carrier trekking across the post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert in search of the men who tried to kill you and stole the package you were supposed to deliver. Yes, it's prone to crashing, but the quality writing makes up for it.

FRAMED Collection ($2.50) - You rearrange the panels in an interactive noir-style comic book to progress the story.

Heaven's Vault ($12.50) - You're an archaeologist in a distant galaxy, finding artifacts and translating ancient hieroglyphs while looking for a missing robotics expert. Non-linear narrative where your choices influence the story.

Moon Hunters ($1.50) - In a world inspired by Mesopotamian mythology, the moon goddess has gone missing, and it's up to you to find her and confront the evil King Mardokh. Very short (can be completed in around an hour) and designed to be replayed a bunch of times.

Prison Architect ($7.50) - You're a warden in charge of building a prison. Look after your prisoners' welfare, or just torment them in creative ways. Warning for blacklist 10 and references to blacklist 1.

The closest it got was Trojie and Pads, and the interlude in which they got together they were both in cis dude bodies at the time? The Wiki also mentions it's a sorta thing, as opposed to E and C being Definitely Girlfriends Wives.

I mean, I sorta disclaim by saying one of as opposed to the, but yeah most canon PPC pairings back then were m/f, with m/m and f/f being a bit more relegated to non-canon content/badfic games content. And also, for me personally, I definitely was not shipping E/C in 2008, partly because C was still very much tied to my friend in my mind then and mostly because baby Lily Did Not Do the Slashing. Now that Christianne's more of her own person (and older Lily barely consumes anything that doesn't have at least some LGBT rep or a Big Slash Pairing in it), I have no compunctions hahaha

That being said I think if you dig through my old Board posts you could probably watch me switch from "ew E/C is OOC" in 2008 to "I Could Be Persuaded" in ~2011 so that's... pretty funny

...one of the first (at the time) canon F/F agent pairings at the PPC.

Did you actually manage to find something that hS didn't do first? I think you might actually have! I've done it since - most notably in Agent Kaitlyn's backstory - but back in the day my own-agent shipping was all targetted at getting genetic offspring for the family trees.

So... well done? :D I guess?

hS

... Gneil has been implying for a while now that the "plan for the sequel" was a lot more extensive than people have thought. So it's possible that the plot itself, not just some character beats, will have that Pterry stamp to it.

Really looking forward to it even if not. :D This is great news.

hS

Behold!

It's real! It's happening! It seems to be based on a sequel plotted by Gaiman and Pratchett a bit over thirty years ago, as well as conversations they had about where they wanted to take the story next!

:D

~Z, who can't believe she got here first for once and will laugh very hard if someone's managed to make a post in the time it took her to write this out

Well, I just did a massive writeup on Bastion on this Very Board, and it's currently $3. As a personal favorite and a game with one of The Best Soundtracks in gaming, it's a good pick. Transistor is $4 and Pyre is $5, so if you've put in enough hours on Hades and want to see what else the same people made... there you go.

Thief Gold and Thief 2, two of the greatest stealth games ever made, period, bar none, are sitting at $0.97 apiece, as usual, as is Deus Ex. I recommend these games every year and don't intend to stop. The System Shock games are also great, same developer as Thief, and $2.50 each. BioShock Remastered, the spiritual successor to System Shock, is $5, so there you go on that front too.

Disco Elysium is only $15 off, sitting at $25, but if you like RPGs, and games with strong writing, and games where your choices matter, and games with good world building and strong narrative... uh... honestly that's almost a bargain for how much you'll get out of this one. And if you want to play the game that it very much seemed inspired Disco Elyisum, the legendary Planescape: Torment is only $6. As are the other Infinity Engine RPGs, so if you're into isometric realtime-with-pause games boy are there some deals for you.

Metal Gear Solid 5 is $7.50 (if you want both parts of it), and Dishonored is $6, including all the bells and whistles. Both pretty solid. Mark of the Ninja Remastered, the violent and stylish (it's kinda their thing) 2D stealth game from Klei is $8, although it's $2 if you own the original.

Alright, back to shilling retro games. Anachronox, a genuinely funny Chrono-trigger inspired RPG developed by Ion Storm, is $1 as usual, Arx Fatalis, Arkane's Ultima Underworld knockoff (and I say that lovingly, Arkane is great even if their entire existence as a game developer more or less consists of them genuflecting at Looking Glass's altar with varying degrees of subtlety), is $1.50, Command and Conquer Remastered, a lovingly-developed beautiful remake of the first two Command and Conquers in high resolution, cheesy FMVs and all, packed with extra content and one of the best soundtracks in games, proving that at least someone at EA isn't completely dispassionate and still loves RTSes, is $8, and Sega's Dreamcast collection bundle, including several very good games that nobody played on release like Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5, arcade hits like Crazy Taxi, the rare good Saturn game NiGHTS Into Dreams, and two of the more entertainingly bad 3D Sonics in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, is $6.

Actually, there are many good PC releases of games you might have originally ignored at launch on sale here. Icaruga, widely considered to be one of the greatest shoot-em-ups to ever exist, is $5, Killer7, the game that forever cemented Suda51's reputation as The Weird One (TM), is $8, and Strife: Veteran Edition, the re-release of the obscure FPS with RPG elements on the Doom engine, is only $2.50.

Back in the indie realm, FTL is also $2.50 and if you are one of the three people in the world who have never played FTL, I recommend you take this opportunity to rectify this, and maybe spend $7.50 picking up its successor, Into The Breach, as well. Undertale is $3, in a similar vein. And while it's a bit pricier, Stardew Valley (the best Harvest Moon game) is also on sale. Lucas Pope's astonishing Papers Please is $5, and his even better Return of the Obra Dinn is... actually only $5 off at $15. Buy it anyways.

I can hardly resist an overlooked retro classic that's also technically an indie game, and Psychonauts is $5. Psychonauts is one of the funniest, best written games ever made, and you should play it. Also the sequel's coming out soon. But if 2D platformers are more your speed, well, we've got plenty of those. OlliOlli2, the best skateboarding game that didn't pay for Tony Hawk to adorn the cover, is $3, the maddening N++ is $7.50, but if you're into hardcore platformers, Celeste is one of the very best, arguably better than N++ and far better than Super Meat Boy mechanically, and beating both of them out on a narrative level. And it's $5. For 3D platforming fans I recommend Yoo- haha, no. I recommend A Hat in Time, which is $15 and combines the irreverent humor and out-there scenarios of Paper Mario with the gameplay of Regular Mario (specifically Mario Sunshine), and then adds a hefty dose of its own personality, as well as 50-player online, split-screen co-op, and mod support. And while it's not a platformer technically, it's time to bring up one of the best games of 2004, Resident Evil 4. No, I'm of course talking about Katamari Damacy, the most adorable story ever to exist about parental abuse and casually rolling up people into balls that get turned into stars. Although when I put it like that...

Do play Resident Evil 4, though. It's $5, and I don't care if you don't like horror, because it's one of the best action games ever made. Although 2004 was wall-to-wall great games, and more of them are on sale here now. All the Half Life games except Half Life Alyx (which you probably can't play anyways) are going for a few dollars a piece, and the episodes are really good and fun and also Half Life 1 and 2 are genre-redefining smash hits that any FPS fan honestly owes it to themselves to go play. And speaking of FPS classics, Doom and Doom 2 are both 1.50, and you can pick them up alongside Final Doom and Doom 2's Master Levels for a total of $5. Not only are you buying a piece of gaming history, you're also buying a ticket that lets you access some of the best fanmade content in all of gaming: The Doom community has been at it for a very long time, and they are very, very good at what they do. And if that's not enough Doom for you, Doom 64, the classic Doom that wasn't, is $1.50, and Doom 2016, the game so good that it almost single-handedly made Doom relevant again in the mainstream, is $6. You can also pick up Doom Eternal and all its DLCs for a mere $30, which is not too shabby for a game that's only a bit over a year old.

But if you want the most gameplay time for your buck, at a killer discount, pick up Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, which is a mere $10. Is it the best Dark Souls game? Emphatically not. But Dark Souls at its worst is better than many series at their best. If you're a newcomer to the series, Dark Souls II is a fine introduction, even if it's not the best game. Although for $10 more you can pick up Dark Souls III and all its DLCs. Playing Dark Souls 1 first is honestly the best bet, but sadly that game isn't discounted at all.

Of course for those of you who like your giant action adventure games 2D, you can pick up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for $20. This is a metroidvania by the man who's behind the "vania" part of the, Koji Igarashi. I have heard from people who are more into the genre that it's a really good one. But if you want a cheaper one, check out the Guacamelee! games, Hollow Knight, and Axiom Verge.

Which I think got taken off of AO3 again, so I might be off the hook there because I am not jumping through the author's hoops to read it on their Dreamwidth. :P

I like the guide to New Cal! It sorta served as a starting point this time around since y'all added in more infrastructure from the last time I was here. I'll be diving into some of the New Cal stuff I added in other interludes, like Nakamura's, haha. And yes, the writing from different viewpoints is a lot of fun! I have an entire series on AO3 that's just all of my fics that use multimedia snippets, so that tells you just about how much I rely on them as a writer haha

The most fun I've had with PPC writing for years was working on the Guide to La Calédonie. It was this madcap game of figuring out a plausible timeline for the place, and what it would actually be like to live in a multiversal city in monkey-puzzle rainforest-slash-mountaintop. Plus playing around with different viewpoints and writing styles. I do still intend to write missions, but, like... one of those has been in the works since well before you left. :O

(Oh, I need to add Kayleigh and the kids rambling on about the beaches... fun stuff.)

hS

I actually remember printing out the little cards back in the day! As well as trying to replicate the board game, you know, the one in Rivendell? Somewhere at my mom's there's an old binder with all of my old PPC stuff in it, if I haven't tossed it out during one of my "can't look at old stuff ew" purges hahah

Speaking of nostalgia:

I do believe I snuck Christianne behind the Tomb of the Unknown PPC Agent in that picture, hahaha, oh silly me in 2008

Parts 3 & 4 actually mentions timeline nonsense for 1) why Lori and Bill were giving directions to the Floaters that show up at the end of IAHF2, who had been sent out on their trip at the beginning of 2008 when Lori and Bill had arrived in fall of 2008, and 2) the DES not noticing the LOMSF break-in that nabbed the Chronotransporter's component parts until... weirdly later, so I guess Christianne knowing about Dr Huinesoron falls under that umbrella lol

I'm glad you like it so far and that I've been doing some fill-in-the-worldbuilding there! Honestly it's not mission-writing that's brought me back so much as the opportunity to collaboratively worldbuild, so hopefully this time I might stick around and do some more of that...