The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Just making sure; there are newbies who spend the first few months sucking up for real. It's... er, not cool.

Glad to hear you're not one of 'em. Roll on, dude.

(Also, ha. I know I'm not the only person who says that, but it's just obscure enough among my RL friends that it still tickles me when other people say it.)

So if you guys need things done with the wiki, I could work on it. But I don't want to change anything fundamental without being told what's wanted, as I'm not senior enough to know what's best to change. :)

The fun factor is part of why I think formula missions are "too easy"--how's it fun to be utterly predictable?

Does it matter to the DAVD if the torture is deliberate on the author's part, or accidental because random gore is being thrown around and/or the author has no concept of what the human (or whatever) body can actually take? It's still torture, and still disturbing. Like in the chat room the other day, somebody mentioned a fic with a character having sex with a vampire for three weeks straight. Without breaks. Now tell me that isn't disturbing--it's a recipe for one gruesomely, horribly dead canon!

Anyway, yeah, we haven't had DAVD missions in a while yet. However nausea-inducing they tend to be, there's just way too much gratuitous torture!fic out there for it not to come to the PPC's attention.

I try to make things make sense to non-fans in my missions. I need to check the most recent ones before I post them to be sure that I still am. I can see how that gets really tough when you are extremely familiar with the canon or on higher order missions.

I don't think I listed Narnia in mind - damn. I just forgot.

I know we have a beta-reader page up on the wiki - unless anyone objects, I'm planning to flesh it out dramatically, with all these sorts of details, so fools like me who forget a fandom or two can add them. If you guys don't mind, I'll add everything on this post there as it comes in.

I did the Wizard of Oz/Wicked article, with the same goal as I think you're talking about here - I want to flesh out the Star Trek article anyway, so if that's the kind of thing you mean, I'll push it up the list. Regardless, that sort of thing would be very helpful.

If nothing else - particularly if no one can seem to find the time - perhaps we can make links in our wiki articles to the wikipedia articles (or relevant media wikis, if they exist) for said fandoms; in the past, I've linked to such pages "for more information" after writing a short article on a character. Think that's a good idea?

Makari Crow, at your service. I tend to be quiet, since I don't often find I have relevant/helpful input, but I do hang around in the chatroom pretty often. ^_^ I recognize your name, at least, though I suppose we haven't interacted much.

I've already volunteered to do one of Miah's missions, but when I get that done, anyone else can ask. My information is now on my Wiki user page, but I'll copy it here:

Neshomeh is willing to beta-read any type of mission in any of the continua listed in her infobox*, and then some. If you're not sure if she knows something, just ask.

Should you wish to request her services, there are a few things she would like you to know ahead of time. First, make sure your story is in a .DOC file, because she prefers to use Microsoft Word's "Track Changes" feature to edit. It shows very clearly what changes she has made and allows her to leave comments and suggestions in the margins. Google Documents just doesn't match it.

Second, she takes time to read, absorb, re-read, correct, and double-check any story before sending it back, so if you're in a hurry, she's probably not the one you want. Expect the average mission to take at least a week to get back to you; more if it's longer or particularly in need of help. And then she'll want to check the re-write, too.

Finally, and perhaps most important, Neshomeh does not ask rhetorical questions when beta-reading. If she leaves a question in the margins, it means that something didn't make sense and needs to be addressed in the re-write. She has found that people often do not understand this without being told.

-----

My preferred fandoms are these:

*Animorphs
*Babylon 5
*Battlestar Galactica (2003)
*Discworld
*Dragonriders of Pern
*Farscape
*Firefly/Serenity
*Fullmetal Alchemist
*Harry Potter
*House, M.D.
*Jekyll & Hyde (book and musical)
*Lord of the Rings
*Phantom of the Opera (Leroux, Kay, and Webber)
*Young Wizards

But really, if I've heard of it and don't hate it, I'll give it a shot. If I don't know a fandom, that makes it easier to point out what might need more of an explanation. {= )

... By the way, don't mind the yellow highlighting you may see in the lower part of this post. It's because of the <a name="fandoms"/> HTML tag I used to make the asterisk from above link to it. I have not broken the Board, or your internet. {= )

~Neshomeh

I always try to do that anyway, unless it's Harry Potter or something I can reasonably expect everyone to at least have heard of. It's helpful if one of the agents on the mission isn't familiar with the continuum--or is just really fond of ranting about errors.

Another thing is the Wiki. In a perfect world, the articles about various continua should give an outline of basic things one should know about the world and its characters, which should help people who haven't read it understand at least enough to be going on with. Of course, that requires people who know those continua to update the Wiki articles with helpful details.

~Neshomeh

I never expected this much of a stampede, but I think the suggested organisation is exactly what's needed. Thanks for jumping in to save the situation before it gets too crazy, Sedri. :D

As for my offer to beta, I can handle the following fandoms:

- Lord of the Rings, including Silmarillion-era and bits of HoME
- Harry Potter
- Discworld
- Good Omens
- Redwall (up to High Rhulain)
- Chronicles of Narnia (bookverse)
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- The Belgariad/Malloreon and Elenium/Tamuli

Wishing everyone the very best of luck!

Ok I get violence and Sweeny Todd but why one of the few characters who would never be unjustly violent. Pretty much anyone else would have made more sence. On the other hand well written mission.

I especially like the mini-conversation/debate at the end about bit-character meat pies.

On a different note, d'ya think Molly would try to follow them on missions?

Well, it's sort of democracy. Maybe.

Anyway, I vote for both. {= )

~Neshomeh

An excellent yarn! I always enjoy reading the stories you post.

One minor problem I had was with Todd's behavior after S&S rescued him. He seemed remarkably active for someone who just had someone rooting around inside his leg muscles without anesthetic just moments before. As I said, however, it's only a minor problem and didn't detract from my enjoyment of the story at all.

In regards to the Nine Inch Nails mission, you'd be welcome to borrow Gremlin.

I know I will occasionally read a mission in a fandom I don't know, but if it's too hard to tell what's going on I'll usually backspace. Maybe if we try to include very basic information about said fandom's setting and characters so as to make it easier for readers who don't necessarily know why it's so bad that X happened?

Missions that were already in progress, and are not being finished specifically for this challenge, can be exempted from being counted.

Bootlicking as a slightly comical exaggeration of the 'grace term' that newbies take before doing serious things.

Not to worry. I plan on sucking up to no one.

It's just not how I roll.

It seems to me that one of the most un-dealt-with problems around here is the issue of fandoms. With the possible exception of Lord of the Rings, I doubt there's a single fandom that everyone here knows. In a thread below, Miah pointed out that it's disheartening to get very few reviews for a mission, and she's right - I often can't read a mission because I just don't know the fandom, and I feel bad for it, but I know I wouldn't be able to understand, let alone provide useful feedback. It also makes things difficult in terms of overall PPC organisation, the wiki, and badfic discussions.

Short of everyone here trying to become familiar with every fandom in the world - which isn't even possible and beyond the scope of a practical solution - does anyone have any idea how we could make this easier to deal with? My above post about labelling plug threads will help, but that's all I can come up with. I'm not even really sure what the problem is, or if we can call it a "problem" rather than "an unfortunate fact".

Let's not forget the fun factor. I try my best to make sure my missions don't get repetitive and seek out badfics with more than just the standard problmes, but it still has to be fun. That's generally what keeps my missions from being about killing the Sue - the fun. I'm not disagreeing with you; I just don't want to push people too far in the other direction.

With so many people taking up Cassie's challenge at once, logistics are likely to become a nightmare around here. I have a few ideas to help smooth this out:

1) Please make sure to update the Claimed Badfic page and check to make sure that no one else has found the same badfic for their non-Sue mission; with everyone going out to search at once, we're likely to come across the same things. First come, first served.

2) Please make headings in Board posts more informative, particularly when relating to missions, particularly in terms of fandom. When there are ten posts in a row entitled "New mission!" "Plug!" "Post!" "Done!" and so on, things get confusing. If there are no objections, I'd like to make it standard policy for all such threads to have headings like so:
* New mission! Bad Het, Harry Potter fandom
* Badfic report! Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Aladdin; ratings from G to PG-13
* Beta reader needed! Pirates of the Caribbean mission, 6,000 words, Department of Bad Slash
And so on. It will save everyone a lot of time if we don't open threads for fandoms we don't know a thing about.

Have a sonic screwdriver and a bag of jelly babies. Please use responsibly.

Thanks for your wonderful missions, I very much enjoyed reading them while I lurked around the board.

Best of luck with all of your future endeavors.

Both! I hereby vote for both VM and Makari, and so does my alternate personality!