The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

For some reason, the idea of the House connecting to HQ appeals to me a great deal. I might have to do something with that someday. Once I've finished the four or so missions stored on my hard drive and gotten my agents to a place where they can think about something other than recent trauma and how much they don't really want to be here at all. -grins-

--anamia

1. MSS = "Mary Sue Syndrome"? If so, I'd say it can affect natives of other canons as well.
   If you're referring to something else, then not sure.
   
   2. Tolkien said something along the lines of them having "leaf shaped ears" (He didn't specify which leaf; I'm assuming not a maple leaf or anything like that). My personal view is that they're a bit more rounded than as portrayed in the movies, but still more elongated than most human ears.
   
   4. Ardalambion is good; Real Elvish also has some name lists (arranged by meaning) http://www.realelvish.net/namelists.php
   Most of them seem to be legit, as far as I can tell.
   
   6. I'd say post all four. There's nothing that says you can only have two Agents. That said, it's a good idea to only have as many Agents as you can write properly (hypocritical, I know, from the guy with six Agents; three of which have hardly gotten any screen time).
   
   Elcalion

1. What do you mean by "MSS"? I'm not familiar with the term and neither the PPC wiki or proper Wikipedia are giving me an explanation.
   
   2. Generally, we assume that they do, but I wouldn't make it a big Charge if you can avoid it unless it's absolutely, definitely movieverse.
   
   3. It's closer to an actual 'law' than not, simply because we do try to be consistent throughout as many stories as possible. There may be a reason why other minis don't conform - such as, maybe, that there was description in the fic they were found in that directly influenced their appearance. I'd really rather that you didn't make a mini-Hedwig; perhaps your agents could adopt a forced-into-OOC-ness replacement for Pigwidgeon instead?
   
   4. Ardalambion is the best site I know for Tolkien's languages; I haven't explored the whole thing, but there's a course showing you exactly how the grammar of Quenya works, so that should help you somewhat.
   
   5. No idea, sorry. I don't know the fandom.
   
   6. Unless you plan on having all four of them work together in your missions (and for sheer confusion factor, I strongly suggest you don't, at least not for the first few missions), then stick to the two you will be writing about. Remember, mission writing is really a lot more work than it looks, so you won't be churning them out every few days. Start slow. There's always time later.
   
   Hope that helped.

I'm somewhat good at finding bad spelling, quite a bit better at grammar, can usually spot awkwardly-phrased sentences, like the Holmes universe, and know just over nothing about British terms. Hopefully I'll be some help, but you might want to get another beta as well.

This is Kelok and Unger's third mission. I'd like a beta for spelling, grammar, style, and accuracy of Holmes characters and use of British terms.


Mission is NSFW
https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=1A-CXm7OufBCSOphgtufWyqUrJPBLLhmBJ_s2Rtgexio&hl=en&authkey=CKHylfcP


This fic is high rated--Adult+ from the über pit.

This is the link to the badfic, in case anyone really wants to go there. (I don't recommend it--NSFW/NSFB--rapefic)
http://movies.adultfanfiction.net/story.php?no=600093597

Hey, a question I can actually help with!

To my knowledge, though I could be wrong on this, the Piper's Children stop aging for two reasons:

1) Time flows differently in the House, meaning that what would be days for them could be anything from seconds to years in the world they came from.

2) After spending enough time in the House, their humanity slowly starts to fade, and they become part Denizen. Also, due to being part Denizen, I don't think they age outside of the House either, or if they do, it'd be much slower.

So, to that effect, you couldn't exactly have an ex-Piper's Child, because the Piper's Children are what they are. You could have a Piper's Child who no longer lived in the House, but I think it's far more likely that a Piper's Child who was an Agent would have simply descovered a hallway in the House that connected to a hallway in the HQ, and just assumed that this was all part of the House and how it worked.

I've had a bunch of questions which I've been nursing for a while, and since I get to request Permission in a few days (:D My first post was a month ago this Monday) I figured I'd ask 'em all now.

1. MSS. The PPC archive says it affects World One characters, but can it affect natives of other canons? One of my potential Agents is the offspring of a 'Sue and a Possession!Stu, so I figure it's only fair that she get the disorder.

2. On Elves of the LOTR variety. Do they or do they not have pointy ears? I've been assuming so, since I don't believe Tolkien ever specified and they did in the movies. They weren't obvious, but they were there.

3. Minis. I found an HP fic with a mini ("Hegwig"). I know that the HP fandom has mini-Aragogs, but I find the idea of a mini-Hedwig irresistible (I mean, for sheer "Squee!" value... I like birds, okay?) and I've noticed other sporks with non-conformist minis. Is this just Rule of Cool/Funny, or is there an actual law governing this?

4. This isn't a question so much as a request--I need some help with Elvish languages, mostly for naming characters (and mostly Sindarin, although Quenya would be nice, too). I've found a good dictionary, but I can't seem to figure out how to squash words together. My penname in the Pit is Kaiko Aozora; send me a PM if you can help.

5. Piper's Children. This question is Keys-specific, but I can't find the information anywhere else. What makes a Piper's Child stop aging? Would they start aging again once they left the House? One of my Agent-concepts is an ex-Piper's Child, so...

6. Just out of curiosity, I have four Agent concepts. Should I post all of them with my request, or just two?

I know I had some more, but I can't remember them just now. I'll add 'em in once I do.

I posted it after you did. It goes in reverse order of what you'd think.

I've got a Kingdom Hearts fic on the Pit that I haven't looked at in ages. It got a (very small handful of) positive but general reviews. As college became more time-intensive, I slowed down working on it, and then stopped altogether. Then I discovered the PPC, and began to get worried about whether my OC was a Mary-Sue or not. I've actually become more confident of it lately, and plan to go back and revise the fic before eventually continuing it.

Anyway, I guess we sometimes have to face the fact that, no matter how much we enjoy writing fanfiction, it's always going to be fanfiction. While we should always put in an appropriate effort to make sure it's good, we shouldn't become disheartened when our writing isn't great. No one will ever write about Harry Potter as well as J.K. Rowling did, and that's okay; we can still enjoy the attempt at rising to meet her work even when we don't quite touch it.

Seems I shouldn't have made that other reply down there.

I'm glad it's been resolved without any hard feelings. Thank goodness there's one more semi-sane person on the internet...

Trying to explain things is probably a bad move - if there are any long messages coming through now, I'll bet that he's going hyper-defensive and there's nothing you can do. Regardless of what he sends, I suggest you just don't answer.

I think the best thing to do is just stop communicating with this individual. S/he obviously doesn't want any help with their writing, so leave them to it. And as you said, they might even be going through a bad time, or something, so there's nothing to be gained from pressing the issue, and things could get worse easily. So I say, just drop it.

On the subject of social phobias, it took me an AMAZINGLY long time in grade school to understand that there are people out there who will be rude to me for no apparent reason. The best way to cope with it is just roll with the hits when you have to, and surround yourself with friendly people when you can...but maybe don't become quite so much of a homebody as I have. That shit ain't healthy.

That's what I put in the note on the page, anyway.

For the concept, if not for every single OFU. In the meantime, though, let's not add OFU examples to the PPC page, okay? Even if they do involve PPC agents, it's technically a sort of crossover. (Forgive me if I'm overstepping my authority here.)

(Are we still allowed to mention character-specific examples on individual trope pages?)

Someone who you know can really write, and who knows the canon forwards, backwards, sideways, and quite possibly chewed by a dog, and who is willing to say "Uhm...no. Redo that." Because that way, if they don't say that, you can relax.

It's a pretty worldwide problem, though, so if you can't find a beta reader, I offer up the Mithril Rule of Writing:

Don't think. Write.

1. Next-gen fic.
   
   2. Fic about the lives of the main casts' parents, when they were young, which might include their friend Jane O.C. Smith.
   
   3. The main cast through the eyes of a random civilian. (I've actually been thinking about writing something like this for several different canons.)
   
   4. Sort of a variant on #3, the main cast as learned about in history class by someone a few hundred years post-game. (A la Avatar Aang: An Annotated Bibliography over at the Pit.
   
   5. Total "elsewhere fic" if you just liked the world and wanted to see what it would be like to live in it.
   
   6. A little wish-fulfillment might not necessarily hurt anyone as long as you write it very, very carefully, right?

Even in original fiction; I always worry about my characters being Sues and my plotlines being fail. Also, those difficult scenes that work in your head but are hard to get right on paper are just pure evil.

What I've written tends to get good reviews, but unhelpful reviews. I much prefer it when people point out what I could have done differently and/or better--somehow, it makes me feel better than pure compliments.

I'll also bring badfic printouts for a reading if anyone wants to do one. Need one we haven't done before, and "My Immortal" is a bit too long - what does everyone say to "Forbiden Fruit"? In it, a Mary Sue hooks up with "Ewdard" Cullen in horrific Urple prose, writes eyeburning poetry to him, and has a talking panda for a sidekick. No actual knowledge of Twilight required, because the fic doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to the canon. Or "Blood omen" or "soulless shell", which are along the same lines as "legolas by laura" except with random lasers? Those are Redwall and I don't think Pads is familiar with that fandom, but again, it bears no resemblance at all to the canon, so knowledge of the canon isn't required to find them funny.

Randomly assigning characters Tragic Pasts(tm) is definitely a charge. It's a relative of Conservation of Detail: if canon doesn't say it happened, it didn't happen.

That is really good. Useful for anyone as picky as we are.

I think that you either figure out which words you over-use and use "Find", or paste the text into a word cloud creator, which will automatically show you some of the words used most frequently.
Wordle is a good website.
So is TagCrowd (it also allows you to upload text from another source, like a Word document, as long as it isn't larger than the allotted MB amount).
ABCya! is worth giving a try.
Maybe this will help. (I have the same problem.) I'm not sure if this will help with phrases, but I think it will help with words.

...can be tricky. It's always nice to know that somebody likes your story, but I've seen Legendary Badfics get similar positive feedback. I've made a habit of looking at other fics my reviewers have also given positive reviews, to see if they generally have good taste in writing. But, I know all too well that that is one of the most time-consuming ways to check if your fic is good.

A less...creepy way to check is to let us look at it. We generally only review missions, but I for one wouldn't mind reviewing other Boarder's work.

(And I'm fairly sure that you're distraught, not disraught.)