The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Welcome to the boards, and here is a plush panda that eats, shoots and leaves. :D

Greets and welcome. If you've got any questions or whatever, we've also got a big sib little sib thing going and I'm sure someone would be willing to 'adopt' you.

I'm not talking about "For whom the Bell Tolls" romance. I'm talking about "Transformers: The Movie" romance, which seems to infect nearly every movie but is named after the movie in which it stood out the most. If you want to do a mature take on it that is juxtaposed with a war that's cool, but most screenwriters don't seem to do this.

That is definitely a good nickname to have, especially around here.

Help yourself to a venomous arthropod.

Welcome to the Board! I gift you with a pirate hat, for sailing that tall ship Kahjidu gave you.

I was going to put a review in and ask if she was a disgruntled PPC agent, but.... You've answered that question for me. Thanks, RipplingOphelia.
Yeah, she's a hoot, ain't she?
-Honu_Wahine

I comes bearing links. *drags out Big Bag O' Links and digs through it*

First off is the link to the Wiki, a veritable fount of information for a newbie to read through. Especially helpful for you if you want to write missions would be the page on Permission (note the capital P).

I would advise against reading any Legendary Badfic, unless you are of strong mind and stomach. Even the summaries have been known to give those of weaker constitution nightmares.

For your reading pleasure, not knowing what you have already managed to find, I have several links for you. The Original Series (not to be confused with Star Trek) is a good place to start, as the PPC did many aeons ago. What do you mean I'm exaggerating? The Department of Geographical Aberrations is another interesting place to visit, if you have the time and inclination. Also by hS is the Tangled Webs site, which contains backstory for the PPC as an organisation. If you would rather visit the Floaters, then July's site is the place you need to be. And last, but most definitely not least, Response Centre 45 is where Trojie and Pads' missions are archived.

Hope you enjoy your stay here. Please deposit your sanity into the container offered to you by another Boarder; you won't be needing it here.

(I just read that Sue Parody of yours. It's very awesome.)
Welcome to the PPC! Here's a Glitter-proof shield from the Raven Armory! (It can't be Suefied and can be used to block out the sight of any pesky Sues.)

Fair winds!

I just realised that I should probably introduce myself first, before I go bashing round the boards. ;)

I'm Araloth, also known as Araloth the Random in various Tolkien fanfiction places. I usually get called Ara, though.

So, hi! *waves* :)

My tips:

1) Don't have everything work perfectly - the world gets in the way a lot of the time in real relationships

2) Have them argue, misunderstand, sulk etc etc as well as be happy, cuddly, sexy etc

3) Consider writing from one POV so that you can see one person's thought processes, insecurities and worries about their relationship, and the things they're happy about, excited about, looking forward to etc.

Really *consider* why these characters are together or getting together in your story. If the only reason you can come up with is that you think they're attractive as a couple, then don't write the pairing :)

And practice! You won't write a perfect story the first time. Just keep trying! You don't have to post every attempt, obviously, but run every attempt past a beta and get their honest opinion as to whether it's a good story. Look around for good romance stories, ask for recs from people, and try to notice what makes the good stories good.

- Trojie

PS: Have fun!

Is it possible to write a romance story that isn't puke-inducing? I can't think of a way to.

Proves that I have no future as a writer.

~Xanthia B.

Whoa. I am seriously flattered here. *blushes* :)

Ah! So you have come across the genious named Araloth. She's actually my beta. She is a really cool person. Flexible yet hates Sues vehemently.

That is how he should react.

Thank you. :)

I tend to think of my characters through the lenses of my roleplaying background. I look at two sets of opposing factors: virtue/vice and merits/flaws.

Virtues and vices are a good way to broadly define your character. Virtues include Temperance, Hope, Faith and Justice, among others. Vices can include any of the Seven Deadly Sins. Giving your character these two elements should add a bit of imperfection, so long as you stay true to them.

Merits and flaws are more specific. For merits, any attribute that gives your character an advantage over other people: eidetic memory, ambidexterity, being unusually strong or pretty. Flaws are, of course, the opposite: addiction, cowardly, deficiency in a sense, having an embarrassing secret, aloofness. The most important thing I find is to balance the merits and flaws. If your character has a merit that boarders on mythic then give them a flaw that is equally mythic to balance it out.

These things will not only allow you to create imperfect characters, they will also help you create characters that are easy for a reader to identify with.

Just make them like regular people, I guess. Normal, real-world people are imperfect--they're good at some things and terrible at others; they make mistakes; they do things even when they know they shouldn't, they don't do things even when they know they should. Sometimes (often) things don't work out in their favor. And yet they also do good and right things, often when it really matters, and sometimes it works out for them. That's about it, really. *shrug* Maybe other people will have more to say.

~Neshomeh

How do you make characters imperfect? I mean, I do try, and some of them come out rather plain (which is good), but lots of them come out like - well, you really don't want to know.

I can't think of what to do. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
~Xanthia B.

If I remember class right, all women have four metamers - the usual red, green, and blue, plus a fourth that's a red-orange. Usually, it's so close to red that there's no visual difference, but in some cases, it's distinct enough that it gives them crazy amounts of color sensitivity.

Well, you'd better not read these fics then. Evangelion is a tight-knit fandom, which occasionally delves into that sort of stuck-up "I can interpret this highly ambiguous series better than you can" bit but otherwise is really devoted to the canon.

Unfortunately, even here lies badfic, and a lot of it is really, REALLY gross. I'm warning you, the following is NSFW.

http://www.mediaminer.org/fanfic/viewch.php/8741/16410#ficc

Okay, first up, we have "Obsession," and what a turkey it is. Shinji's all grown up and is Vice-Commander of NERV (oh, like he would agree to that), and has a cute little daughter, Eve, with Asuka. But Shinji has a dark secret involving necrophilia, Eve turns out to be Rei's, not Asuka's, through some lengthily-explained hooey that makes no sense, and child molestation, child abuse, reincarnation, murder, and Rei's real name apparently being "Kiboo" ensue. Easily EVA's most infamous fic; were it in a bigger fandom, it might even qualify for Legendary, or at least "famously disgusting" status.

http://anime.adultfanfiction.net/story.php?no=544216205

But compared to our second feature, "Obsession" is Citizen Kane. "Boys Will Be Boys" features the brutal "interrogation" of Kaji by Gendo, who's thrown his canonical magnificent bastardry to the wind to become an "Agony in Pink"-style kink torturer, whose repertoire includes hooks through the hands, anal rape, peeing in his mouth, and forcing him to eat his baby son. And no, I am NOT kidding about the last part. This author's other "work" includes a horrendous Warhammer crossover, a story about Rei finding happiness with a pet cat... which proceeds to die horribly, and a story called "Rape: It's What's for Dinner!" which I haven't checked out yet but, umm... huh. TVTropes postulates that if you read this guy's work in the right order, Hastur will appear.

So... yeah. Umm... enjoy? Can you really say that?

The lost tales are the best PPC's yet in my opinion.

Science is awesome. I've always been kind of intrigued by the idea of metamers -- that's the red, green, and blue channels that we use to perceive color, and all color is a combination of use of those three. Well, apparently there are people who have an extra metamer, and can perceive an extra dimension of color. These people are mostly women, who can perceive color changes in a person's face that most of us can't --changes that are indicitive of health alternations when you're getting sick. Pretty cool, huh?

Thanks! HAHA!!!

Light seems to throw scientists for a loop fairly often. It's fun that something that's constantly around us can still be so mysterious and difficult to study.

Yeah, it was a Scientific American. Specifically, that particular SA.