The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Now that we've got a Wiki it's no longer necessary to list explicitly by fandom, because people can just go to the Wiki page for the continuum.

Maybe we should make a note of that fact if we do change the DMS's organization.

You've done the most Rare Fandoms missions.

I mean, there've been some truly obscure ones (I recall one mission to "Flatland"... DOGA, of course).

In-world, the PPC probably handles a lot of things that the Boarders wouldn't like writing about--Twilight comes to mind; there should logically be a DMS Twilight Division, with the sheer number of fics, because a continuum's a continuum. But we don't write about it very often because... well, who wants to actually PPC fics in a world where it'd be NSFB to research enough to critique the badfic?

So if you're okay with rare fandoms being grouped, then I say let's do it, and let the groupings reflect mostly the popularity and volume of badfic in the fandoms.

My suggested arrangement would be to group by genre, and then have subdivisions in the DMS:Rare Fandoms.

Continua with their own DMS divisions:
DMS:LotR
DMS:Harry Potter
DMS:PotC
DMS:X-Men

Divisions by Genre:
DMS:Anime/Manga
--Anime Division
--Bleach
--Full Metal Alchemist

DMS:Fantasy
--His Dark Materials
--Jossverse/Buffyverse
--Labyrinth
--Mossflower
--Narnia
--Valdemar
--Wheel of Time

DMS:Sci-fi/Steampunk:
--Sci-Fi/Steampunk
--Doctor Who/Torchwood
--The Matrix

DMS:Video Gaming:
--Video Gaming Division
--Golden Sun
--Legacy of Kain

DMS:Rare Fandoms:
--Phantom of the Opera
--Pride and Prejudice
--Shadowlands
--Tortall (Tamora Pierce)
--Troy

Miscellaneous DMS Divisions:
--Multiple Offenses
--Freelance

Defunct DMS Divisions:
--Black Jewels

I think it was their fifth mission when Tasmin said that in A-Team division they did everything.

That's a little beside the point.

Point would be that number of missions written shouldn't be the measure of whether something should be in the sub-department of Rare Fandoms, because there have been more missions into A-Team than into Doctor Who or Torchwood, and the former is sub-department of Rare Fandoms, and the other two aren't. It should be a consideration of the number of badfic (absolute or relative to the number of fic in the fandom) that makes the fandom rare.

The Wikipedia article has a list of how many fics ff.net has on the 25 most popular fandoms. Most of these probably have their own DMS and DBS divisions at HQ. (I would not want to wander into the Twilight division, though. *shudder*)

The Anime division is probably the busiest department at HQ right now, looking at the numbers, closely followed by Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Video Games.

But if it's not on that list, and doesn't have a lot of published fics in the fandom, then putting it in the Rare Fandoms division makes sense to me.

How about Rare Fandoms: TV/Movies, and Rare Fandoms: Literature divisions? (Graphic novels would go under Literature, and multiple-format fandoms would go under their most common format--Buffy goes under TV despite that there are Buffy novels.)

I completely understand what your saying about it being different between how HQ sees it and how we see it. I kind of got lost in that long post, and forgot part of my point, but I think I was aiming in that direction with dividing those up into two groups. The second group includes things that I think (anyone can argue for or against any of these) might be more popular in HQ regardless of our mission count.

Maybe some of them would be better consolidated into a "Rare Literature Fandoms" Division?

FFnet has banned Terry Goodkind fanfics, but has a section for Legend of the Seeker. Apparently, the Terry Goodkind ban does not extend to the TV series.

It's not been bumped off the first page yet, but it's buried under so many gigantic threads it may as well have fallen down the Mariana Trench.

Agents:

Name: Summerblaze (Summer)
Species: Human
Home Continuum: Valdemar
Department: Department of Mary-Sues
Background: The offspring of a Sue and a Darkwind!Possession-Stu, Summer was created with virtually no personality, and pretty much ignored except for sicky-sweet bits of fluff. The PPC interrupted the fic when she was about five years old, but not having any charges on her except for parentage, they took her back to the PPC Nursery (after a jaunt through the science center, where they attempted therapy to remove as much Glitter as possible). She was "adopted" by another Tayledras agent, and essentially grew up in the PPC HQ. Due to her parentage, she has a mild case of MSS, but not quite as bad as a full-blown Rehabilitated!Sue.
Skills: Mind-to-mind communication with her bondbird, mental shielding, (momentary) physical shielding, small fireballs
Weapons: Tayledras climbing pick; longbow
Appearance: Her parents may have been Suvians, but the author at least paid attention to genetics. Her hair is black (at certain times of the month it becomes "glossy, raven locks" and/or "onyx tresses") and waist-length; on missions, she generally ties it into a pony-tail or braid. Her skin is golden-brown, the laws of Narrative Comedy having been lenient for once, as even in canon the Tayledras are simply described as "golden-skinned." She is fairly tall and athletic, although without Suvian influences her figure is about as average as it gets. She is perfectly fine with this, and wouldn't have it any other way.

Name: James Ochre Yellow (Jamie, Oke)
Species: Human (Ex-Piper's Child)
Home Continuum: Keys to the Kingdoms (The Lower House)
Department: DoM-S
Background: A Piper's Child of unknown ancestry, Jaime was running from an Overseer after stealing a pair of wings when he fell into HQ. No one's really sure how; it was put down to a plothole. An accident with a Mage!Sue caused the wings (he'd worked /hard/ to steal those. He wasn't just gonna leave 'em in a closet) to attach themselves permanently to his back, which, while occasionally convenient, can also be incredibly annoying, as they have a mind of their own and tend to snap out at inopportune times. (The process of turning a magical construct into a pair of flesh-and-blood appendages was also excruciatingly painful, and remains a source of spontaneous agony. Mammals were not meant to possess six limbs, and the Word World occasionally decides to recognize this fact.)
Skills: Flight
Weapons: Whatever heavy object is nearest; decent hand at just about everything, but not particularly good at any one thing.
Appearance: James is quite clearly of mixed blood. His longish hair is sandy brown and usually messy; occasionally he ties it into a stubby ponytail when it starts to get in the way. His eyes are medium brown, and his skin is tan; in short, his coloring is what one might expect of a European, but his build is more like the stereotypical Asian, and his almond-shaped eyes and nonexistent epicanthic fold only emphasize the look. He is a rather mature-looking fifteen, easily mistaken for a college student.

Writing sample:
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1648576/ My page in the Pit, although it's mostly serious stuff, and since I haven't posted there in ages my writing style's changed. I'm working on a sample with these two, but I figure as of now, might as well post what I've got, eh?

First badfic: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6094334/1/TheLifeofRosannaHathaway_Potter I don't normally read this fandom, but it's such a god-awful frightfest that I couldn't resist. Warning: The whole thing is written in bold/italic. THE. WHOLE. THING.

Because this came up in the first post, I'd assumed that there had been more than one batch of Piper's Children, given the number of them in the House. Also, with regards to parentage, James isn't necessarily half-Asian, half-European. I didn't figure out an exact ratio, but it's not impossible for a European to have a stereotypically Asian build, and Asian genes tend to be dominant over European ones in mixed-race offspring. There was Asian influence in Britain at some point in history, though I forget when; it's almost entirely faded now, but he's from a time period when it would have been much stronger.

Also, until I come up with a better idea, I've decided that he's the descendant--grand or great-grandchild, most likely--of a European merchant who married an Asian woman who he met on his travels. It's not entirely implausible or uncommon; Indo-European trade has an extremely long history. It's not going to affect the writing in any way whatsoever, but it's nice to have it.

That was my thought. But if, like I said, the Eagles are instruments of Manwë, they seem like they'd be quite a bit more well-known than the very inconspicuous, culturally-antisocial, almost-totally-non-traveling hobbits.

Long philosophical discussion GO.

Sentience? I've been using it to mean self-aware. No one's ever corrected me, but now that I look, it seems I've been using the science fiction definition (and there appear to be several others). To quote Wikipedia, "Sentient characters typically display desire, will, consciousness, ethics, personality, insight, and many other human qualities."

I probably wasn't quite accurate in saying that my philosophy is that "life brings sentience"--at least, for my definition. It's hard to believe that, for example, frogs and chickens possess sentience, and as for insects... I have some hope for ants (and to a lesser extent, bees), given as they have a complex society and even agriculture, but the rest... Meh.

So that's what I call sentience--not exactly, but I'm a thinker, and my definitions of just about everything are very complicated... What's yours?

Ah, okay! ^.^ No problem, I've got similar little twitch factors. I wasn't aware that there was actually a word for it; Specist is a word I made up, though it doesn't seem that implausible that anyone else has invented it as well. Parallel evolution...

JayBird:- thanks!!! i want to wriet more about Logen an d his new patrer i think that there arent enuff storys showing this side of teh ppc.

Lady Ciskia:- :-) here u go! bet u didnt guess who the new parhet was gonna be!>!>!?

Ellintyra Lloysinthayr (lol i had to copy ur name:- yeha Ageis sux logens new parten is gonna be totally awesomeer

Chapter 2: Recuitment

Logen walked inte the dorr of his new responce cenetr and he stopped in sochk when he saw his new paretnr.

she was tall and wilowey with dark black long hair the color of ravens wings that shimmers and cathches teh lihgt. her face was gorgus with alebastre skin waz white an d palle and was dusted b y a feew freackles on eithha side of her dellicat pointed nose. her eyes were deep greeen pools of liquid emereald fleked with lighter hazle flekcs like cyrstal fire.

she was wearing a bueatiful long slinkey dress that was the colour of sunlighy in the forest which perfectly matched her eye. the dress embrased her body that had curves in al the right palaces.

(A/N OMG I luve this rdess i totaly want one ofr me)

'you must be logen' said the elegent stranger 'i am agent veridianne Starsfire. you ar egoing to be my patner."

Logan bowed and then took one of her milkwhiet hands in his. he kissed it and looked solefuly into her eyers. "pleaseur e to meet you' he said.

"i didnt expect you to be such a gentelman" said veridienee.

Logehn smiled, his totally cuet face lighting up with happyness and he talked to Veeridianne

"taht's becasue your such a prefect lady" he said. "so this is our new rc. which side do you want?" he asked. "i want this rc to be just how you like it".

'oh, id love to put up my poster for evanesence theyre totally my favoruite band.' said vedirenene.

"omg there totally mind too" said logna. "were gonna be totally greta as partner s"

Logen and Veriduenne spends two or three hour s decoriating the reponse center so that it was just like Veridienne wanted it.

Verideiene said "wow this rc is totally awesome now. want to listenm to some music?"

"SUre' said Logan; "put ion a cd."

They sat down and lsitened to evanesceneses latest cd but after a few tracks teh console went BEeEP.

"Oh noes' said Logan. "I was really liking listening to music with you Verideinne."

"Me to" said Verideienne. "Oh well we should go on our first mission together. Come on logan lets go."

Logen and Veridienee walked through teh protal into the mission...


Chapter 3: Missien

There misison was in lord of the rings (OMG i loved that movie soooo much) where they had to stop a Suet who joined the fellowship and wanted to mak e Bromir marry her.

They portelled into Riven Dell. Logen wrote donw the carges for Veridienne. he didnt want her to have to miss out on seeing the totally awesome Elfin city cause it was her first time in middleerath. Veriddiene spent her time talking to the Elvs who complemented her on her beautty and grace.

Logean found Veridiene talking to Arwen. "I am sorry my lady' he said. "we must depart hither on our journey to lands distant adn unknown".

"Fear thy well, Princess Awren" said Veridienne. "I did so enjoy our coversing togethr but alas i must depart".

Veridianne and Logan folowed the fellow ship out of Rivendell, preteding to be travelers on the road in case the fellowship noticed them. Logan couldnt stop admireing how the dawns light was captyred in verideinnes ravendark hair to shimer.

They walked with the fellowship all morning, until they arrived at the gates of Moria after walking for a couple of hours from Rivindell.

The Sue fought the squid thing in the pool all by herseld and then new how that you neede dto say 'melon' to open the doors of morian before gandalf did.

"Mary sue,' said Veridiene. 'we are charging you with being a mary sue and with yousurping the place of cannon characters. you are sentenced to be killed."

The sue fought back. she used her sword to fight the agnets. Verydiane dodges the sword but it strucj Logan in the side. he cried out in pain.

Veridienne looked over at her partner with fear in her deep green eyes, changing to anger at the Sue who dared to hurt her new partner. She used her magic Star Elf powers to kill the sue and heal logan and then newralised the cannon characetrs and opened a portal and brought them back to rc 17263.

"thankyou for saving my life" said Logna after they returned to the rc. he was shaking with adrendaline after the fight. "i am glad i am your partner."

"i wish taht you weer more than jsut my partner" said veridinne. she had a scare when logna was hurt and suddently she realised that she didnt want to loose him. "i wish you'd..."

"no more talk" said logan. he realised that even though hed only known here for a few hours that she was the one for him. she was smart and beautful and a great assasin and shed saved his life...

"i love you Verridien and i want to be your partner in more ways then one"

their eyes met, the hidden fire of her eyes mingled with the cool ice of logans eyes. suddenly he drew her close and held her in his strong arms and then he ran one hand threw her hair and leaned in and kissed her.

(A/N OMG Logan and veriienne are soooo cut together huh? Ill write more if i get 3 more reviews so dont forgetr to R+R!!!!)

[[And again, my brain hurts. That, and I think I'm running out of variations on how I can (mis)spell 'Veridienne'. And boy did this turn Logan into a woobie... I think I'll have to write a reaction snippet about this.]]

Maybe the Ents don't know about the Eagles? They didn't know about hobbits, so it's not implausible.

Sentience. You keep using that word. I'm not sure you know what it means.

And the word is speciesist, dammit! (I apologize, but that's a particular pet peeve of mine.

I'll have to run it by my parents.

Barid and Brightbeard are in the Warcraft Division of the All-Purpose Department. I also think that they should be labeled, if everything else is divided on the list then ADP should be as well.

Consolidation would be a good idea, if only to keep the list read-able. The thing is, in my mind, that we've got two ways to officially divide everything: The way we percieve it here in the real world, and the way that things work within the Word World. Just because we Boarders don't write a lot in one department doesn't mean that it'd be a snall department within the PPC, so I'm wary of lumping a number of fandoms together under an official label and acting like it would be normal in HQ. Then again, there's nothing to say it wouldn't be. I'm just careful.

In response to your other questions:

1. Sure, why not? If we can have a hundred little subdivisions in one area, why not another? Besides, it's easier to say that an agent "belongs to the Sherlock Holmes division of the All-Purpose Department" than to say that they "belong to the All-Purpose Department but specialise in/only take on missions from the Sherlock Holmes continuum". It means the same thing anyway, an if there's one thing to be said about the PPC, it's that we don't fuss about giving things fancy names. The shortest and simplest will do.

2. I don't see why not; that sounds like the most tactful solution for everybody. :)

I was looking through the DMS section of the list, and there are quite a few Divisions that only have one or two missions, a lot of them are for pretty rare fandoms. I had the idea that some consolidation might make sense to make the page look neater. I'm looking specifically at:

Group 1: Labyrinth, Legacy of Kain, Pride and Prejudice, Sci-fi/Steampunk, Shadowlands, Tamora Pierce, Troy, and Valdemar/Mercedes Lackey. About half of the links are broken in this group.

* What would the general opinions be of possibly moving missions from this first group to the Sub-Department of Rare Fandoms?

* We could maintain their identity by making them Divisions of the Sub-Department. That might work well for most of the items in the next group as well. Something could remain a division of rare fandoms until it reached a significant number of missions. Maybe five? Then be made its own division. This would cover agents like Tasmin and Allison, remaining in the Sub-Department, because they take on all sorts of rare fandoms, whereas these other agents only take whatever they are labeled as.

Group 2: Bleach, The Matrix, Narnia, Phantom of the Opera, Wheel of Time, and X-Men. This group seems to be more popular/common in terms of quantity of fanfic or with current Boarders, or they still have active agents and might therefore grow. I'm just pointing out that they also have a lot of broken links and not very many missions listed. Bleach and Full Metal Alchemist (which does have more than five missions) could both go in as sub-divisions under Anime/Manga.

* Basically, I am wondering if we could limit the Divisions to things that have a large quantity of fanfic, or more than one or two pairs of agents, or more than five missions. I kind of like the idea of sub-divisions in such a large department as DMS. It looks all organized and professional and stuff. ;)


--Two more things--

1. While speaking of divisions, the All-Purpose Department is pretty much all about being divided up by what continuum the agents work, would it be okay to actually label them? I think Echo Kazul and Kat Daydream worked Star Wars, and Brightbeard and Barid are in Warcraft? I admit to mostly selfish reasons for asking this, as I am about to move Kelok and Unger to the Sherlock Holmes division of the All-Purpose Department.

2. Black Jewels is a quarantined continuum now. What would you all think about relabeling it to something like "Historical reports from now Quarantined continua" or something like that, just so it is obvious that we only have that mission listed because it was okay when it was written, and if any other missions are found that fall in that category, we could group them all together.

Perhaps they were their own pre-existing species, created along with the animals and suchlike, and all Morgoth did was make them sentient? Technically, that's just changing life into different life... And I harbor the theory that life = sentience anyway. Did you know that even paramecia have personalities? -cough- Anyway.

Since we're on this topic, what about the fell-beasts? I'd assumed that they were twisted Eagles (poor Eagles T.T), but since they appear to be mammalian (bat-wings), that doesn't really work.

On the other hand, if they're a reptilian species, that makes a lot more sense, since birds are descended from reptiles. But then again, if Eagles are the servants of Manwë, could you even do that to them? I've always been sort of confused as to their status--are they living creatures who just happen to be considered representative of Manwë and are occasionally messengers, or are they some sort of spirit-avatar-thing and not actually a sentient species? I'd think they'd get a mention in the Ent song, if that were true, unless it's being specist. Of course only the humanoid species get a song...

...Yeah. The Eagles confuse me.

Condense water-ice out of the air?

I thought cold-drakes breathed "ice" (and wondered how that was supposed to work, at least thermodynamically, :-P ) but "cold-as-in-not-hot" makes much more sense.

A feature I am offering for anyone still writing PPC to use is the Terrain de Golf Chan Tayrime.

And there there is a minigolf course to the side. I am letting the Board brainstorm and vote on what the theme for the hazards should be. So keep the suggestions coming.

Depending on whether or not I can catch a space on my aunt's couch before heading back to Olympia for a while.

Well then. Get on that, Az...

... that since Melkor could never create actual life (only Iluvatar can do that - see Aule and the dwarves as proof), they have to be either a) corrupted something-elses, b) Maiar, or c) mere extensions of Morgoth's or Sauron's will.

Trolls seem a little too common to be Maiar, and apparently act of their own accord. Might they be corrupted Stone Giants (see The Hobbit)? Tolkien also mentioned 'Tree-giants' seen in the Shire, so the Ent=Giant connection is there. If Melkor took Stone Giants and twisted them, giving them a form of intelligence in exchange for somewhat reduced stature, might that account for them? I suspect Yavanna was quite ticked off to see her own creation mocked by creatures made of stone - her husband's domain.

That would allow trolls to breed, but what about dragons? Tolkien's dragons come in four combinations: fire-breathing and not, flying and not. Glaurung was fire-breathing but not flying. The Cold-drakes were non-fire-breathing, but some could fly. Smaug and Ancalagon could do both. The Cold-drakes, at least, seem to have bred true, but it's entirely possible that Smaug himself was created by Morgoth. Certainly he is described as the last great Fire-drake. If this is the case, might (and I'm theorising completely here) Cold-drakes have been either pre-Melkor, or some form of corrupted snake, while Fire-drakes, being more powerful and having an unnatural ability, were Maiar in built shells, like Balrogs? Of course, their bodies could well have been 'built' by twisting something pre-existing anyway...

hS

I don't remember, but off the top of my head, I think Melkor/Morgoth created dragons. At the least, they are Always Chaotic Evil. Same with trolls, if I recall-- they were made, by the "pale imitation" thing. Made as originals by Melkor/Morgoth, but only by copying Ents.

I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the Tolkienverse, but I think Glaurung, from The Children of Húrin, is said to be the "father of all dragons." That probably isn't literal, since I doubt Morgoth cloned Glaurung (especially since Glaurung lacked wings), so magic is probably involved somehow...And I don't know much of anything about Tolkien trolls (except that they're less annoying than internet trolls).

Hopefully someone else who knows better than I can correct me/enlighten you further.

A bit off-topic, but who knows LOTR canon better than you people? Someone asked me today where dragons come from. Some people say they're Maiar, but they apparently breed, so I'm not sure how that works. I can't think of anything in middle-earth that could be turned into a dragon, though.

This led me to the question of where trolls come from. We know they were formed in imitation of ents, but I don't think even Morgoth could make a plant into an animal, so I don't believe they could be corrupted ents. Were they giant orcs or what?

Does anyone know?