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Since we have next to no examples of it, I figured it pretty much wasn't worth mentioning.

I did go back and fix the mistake—íliaí got left out in the second half of the phrase. ^^;

These are all pretty awesome, though!

I don't know if they work, but there's always Enochian Supernatural, aka the angelic language (which I will fully confess I only know about at this point) or the mix of American English and magled Mandarin Chinese that Firefly is famed for. XD

With many thanks to Iximaz for pointing me at Star Wars, I've managed to put together a Mando'a [Mandalorian] translation:

Mhi ori'sol uvete'ade. Mhi ru kemi echoy'la, a'jii mhi mar'eyi cuun tsad. Cuun gaane burcyan'yc to, bal mhi pirimmu cuun gaane nau'ur evaar'la me'suum tome.

We [are] many worlds-children. We once walk searching, but now we find our alliance. Our hands [are a] friendship connection, and we use our hands to forge [lit. 'light up'] [a] young planet together.

Mando'a doesn't really use the very 'to be', so the first sentence is a little ambiguous, but I don't think that's a problem. I love the fact that the closest word for 'build' turned out to be the verb 'light up' - because it comes from the phrase nau'ur kad, 'to light up a saber'. ^_^

And, thanks to a lovely transcription service, we have an in-universe text at last:

hS

This isn't a canon I know at all, but I would say you did a fine job of making it readable for unfamiliar folks like me. You kept the named characters down to three to maintain focus on the basic aspects of the plot, so I didn't get overwhelmed with a bunch of unfamiliar names. I'll admit I would like to know a bit more about the Dark Hour, at the same time, I think you communicated the main features of that event throughout the course of the mission, so my lack of understanding is probably just my own curiosity. I don't think the mission suffered at all for that.

I enjoyed the scene where the agents were actively tracking Hamuko with the CAD, and we got to see the character fluctuation change in real time. It gave an element of fluidity to the moment, rather than just being a series of numbers interspersed throughout the mission. I also liked the planning stage at the end. Even though roping canon characters into helping the agents isn't standard, I think it's appropriate for agents to recognize when they're outmatched, and to use the features available to them in the canon. Valka's bonus Medical trap for Elena at the end was a fun surprise, as well. I liked that the agents got some downtime to spend at the arcade, even though it was partly foreshadowing what was happening to Elena. I like it when missions cause personal roadblocks for the agents, so having Elena get charmed by the poisoned cookies was a nice way to impact the agents' functionality in an on-theme way, even though you engineered the event out of whole cloth.

One section that stood out as confusing was the conversation the agents had in their RC before the mission. Discussing the Persona series segues into talking about shape-shifting species in Fire Emblem, and I don't understand the connection between the two topic threads. It feels like a very abrupt change to me. Am I missing a connection between the two topics?

Finally, some typos Hieronymus Graubart missed (But he caught some I missed, so we're even.):

"Valka didn’t want to hurt her partner, and that meant being gentle, but it also meant not going to love hotel with someone clearly under the influence of something."

"to a love hotel"

"'Elena, listen to yourself!' Valka said back "

(No end punctuation here.)

"She could reasonably call the wraith possessing a Hamuko a special kind of shadow, which wasn’t too far from the truth."

An extra word.

Also, I wasn't sure about "charmdi" in the one CAD readout. I suspect it's a canon thing, but I wanted to point it out just in case.

—doctorlit beneath the mask

Then I can tease you all with my rough drafts!

—doctorlit

So according to the Wikia, there is a script for the Ancient Speech, and it's... well, it's about what you'd expect from Paolini:

"The Liduen Kvaedhi was a special script invented by the Elves for writing in the Ancient Language. It was designed to be the most beautiful form of writing possible. Words and sentences were written in glyphs that changed depending on the context of the word. The names of Dragon Riders' swords were engraved on the blades and sheaths in this script. Also, unlike the spoken form of this language, there was "no barrier to writing fiction". The script consisted of 42 basic letters which could be re-arranged into a nearly infinite amount of glyphs."

(Ix, I figure you know this, but hopefully other people will read too.)

The Wikia shows three glyphs, on a pair of swords and a ring. It looks like they do represent the same system, but given that the words shown are 'Brisingr', 'Zar'roc', and 'Yawë', I'm not sure we can draw any conclusions about the letter-symbols that make them up. The sources are the deluxe edition of Eldest, and Eragon's Guide to Alagaësia, so there might be more information out there... it's hard to tell.

... right, so apparently Paolini drew some glyphs in the Guide, though they're not translated. I think the double-headed axe is Zar'roc's, and the one down and left of it is Brisingr's, and the top-left is definitely 'Yawë' but the others stand untranslated (and it's possible the ones we know are concept-glyphs, not actually spelt out.)

It's frustratingly clear that he has at least some of the alphabet written out, but doesn't seem to have ever shared it... ai Elbereth.

hS

That's actually really surprising - I figured it would have followed right on the heels of the map. Maybe it depends on what sort of fantasy he was reading; the Eddingses didn't play much with alphabets, for instance. (DId they not even come up with one for the movie?)

Anyhow, thank you! I think part of the fun of this is working around exactly the sort of vocab holes you mention. We were never going to end up with exact translations, and the more fragmentary the language, the more exciting the circumlocutions will end up being. ^_^

You can definitely see the Norse influences in the Ancient Language, like that 'hávr' in the middle, and the English sentence structure is also pretty clear. My big question is: what is the word for 'places'? I can't see anything in common between vaetnaí íliaí and malthinae frëma, which I think should both contain it ('scattered lands' and 'create more lands' respectively, right?).

~

I remain mildly peeved that Galactic Basic is just English. That said, if we're talking Star Wars, I think Karen Traviss made a decently functional Mando'a language, and that has its own alphabet. Hmm...

(There must be someone in the PPC Trekkie enough to know Klingon, right? ^_^)

hS

This is the first sentence of your translation, done on plasticine. ;) My letter-forms could definitely be clearer; Dragon Speech uses three wedge lengths, plus one square dot, but mine are kind of all over the place. (In fairness, my Latin handwriting isn't much better!)

I really love the detail you put into the translation, and the way you explained your thought process. I think the only feature of interest in the Quenya version is that I coined the word 'Vinyambar', 'New World'. That's Elves for you, right? Naming everything.

hS

Much as I'd love to give Klingon a shot, I really only know the good curses, there. :P I can take a stab at the Ancient Language from Eragon, though it would only be for funsies since it sadly does not have its own script.

Anyway: A-hem—

We are the children of myriad worlds. Once we wandered lost, but now we have found each other. We join our hands in friendship, and by our hands we build a new world together.

Vae eru du kynn abr vaetnaí íliaí. Framvír, vae vrangro unin rauthr, mar hávr verda darmthrell. Vae gatho lamar nen vinar, un medh thorna lamar vae malthinae frëma íliaí.

(Direct translation: We are the people of scattered lands [literally, places]. Before, we wandered in misfortune, but have become brothers. We join/unite hands as friends, and with those hands we create more lands [places].)

Hoo! Okay, that was a lot of jumping through metaphorical hoops. Lots of missing words from the dictionary, not a fun thing to be stuck with. I'm 99% sure I conjugated all the verbs properly, though... eeks.

As a side note—you could consider looking into Aurebesh from Star Wars? It would be a pretty simple 1-1 cipher since Galactic Basic is just kinda... English. :P

I did have a vague memory of you knowing this one... ^_^ I love the cuneiformesque script for the Dragon Tongue - much like the Toki Pona Mayanesque hieroglyphs, it's delightfully not what we're used to seeing. (Unlike Tengwar and the Cirth, though the Sarati have a very Sanskrit look.) Thank you so much for the translation; I'll see about 'inscribing' it when I get a chance.

Heck, maybe I'll even actually inscribe it...

(From a Coursera course a few years back, using Actual Cuneiform. It... I have no idea what it says. Could be my name I guess?)

hS

I don't think I'm especially good with any fictional language. However, the Dragon Tongue from Skyrim is fairly well developed and has its own script. I've taken a stab at a translation:

Mu los kiir do pogaan leinne. Ont mu rovaan sizaan, nuz nu mu siiv pahsemu. Mu gron haalu ol fahdonne, ahrk naal haalu mu wahl goraan lein ol zeymahzinne.

Literally:

We are children of many worlds. Once we wandered lost, but now we find all-of-us. We link our hands as allies, and by our hands we build [a] young world as companions.

Notes:

• The Dragon Language doesn't typically make use of articles. They can be added in for the sake of emphasis, formality, or poetic meter, but I haven't done so here.
• leinne, fahdonne, and zeymahzinne are plural constructions of lein (world), fahdon (ally, friend), and zeymahzin (companion, lit. more like honor-brother), respectively. It's not strictly necessary, since most nouns in the Dragon Language can be singular or plural and the context is pretty clear here, but I thought emphasis was appropriate. The plural construction can also be used or not for the sake of poetic meter. {= )
• haalu (our hands) could also be written un halle (or even un haal; haal is the base word "hand"), but I think it flows best the way it is.
• pahsemu (all-of-us) is my construction. I think it's valid, but you could use just pah (all, pronoun) or mu (we/us/ourselves) instead to be safe.

There is, of course, Klingon, but I know absolutely nothing about working with that one.

~Neshomeh

but I might not have any writing to contribute if it's within the next two and a bit weeks or so unless any Boarders secretly also do programming languages research.

This still sounds like a rather good idea overall though

Although admittedly my writing style tends to involve a lot of crumpled pieces of paper with about five sentences on them so I only have maybe one partly finished thing to show despite having six ideas and partly-written things in progress...

Meaning, a casual thread where people share a bit of what they're working on and give reactions/feedback? Could be a bit you're struggling with and could use another perspective to tweak, or could be a bit you just really like and want to show off, or whatever!

I'm curious to know what sort of missions and other stories people have going, personally. Sharing bits, sort of like teasers, could drum up some interest and enthusiasm, and it seems to me that avoiding spoilers is of less concern in a community setting where we're more likely to read because we know the writer/characters/canons than for pure intrigue. {= )

So, what do the rest of you think?

~Neshomeh

I have a project in mind which involves writing the same message in multiple fictional languages, preferably in their own writing systems. Slight problem - while I can do a decent job of Middle-earth languages (link slightly NSFW I guess, though more so if you happen to read archaic Qenya or Gnomish), I don't actually know any other fictional languages. I've previously been gifted names in a few, and have transcribed them accordingly:

... but I wouldn't even know where to start on constructing my own material in them.

I've crafted a simple inscription in English:

We are the children of myriad worlds. Once we wandered lost, but now we have found each other. We join our hands in friendship, and by our hands we build a new world together.

... and, as is my wont, translated it into Quenya:

Nalvë híni linambaron. Yáressë ranyanelvë, hecili, mal sin ihírielvë elvë. Nútalvë málilva nilmenen, ar málilvainen ocáralvë Vinyambar.

So can anyone help by offering up any more?

('Fictional' language can be taken slightly loosely; if we happen to have anyone fluent in Toki Pona or somesuch, I'd be happy to accept it. The key requirement is that it must have a native writing system which isn't used on Earth - sorry, Esperanto speakers!)

hS

I feel kind of bad that my own activity has been so low of late; it's been pretty hectic the last few weeks. I hope to pick back up henceforth.

I am wildly amused to see people raising the same kind of points I've been raising since, uh... about 2005, just at the point where I've relaxed enough to not make them any more. This Is All The Chat's Fault was my rallying cry for many a year. (Is it true? Eh, I'unno. This whole conversation started because I asked how active the Discord was, and the impression I got was 'not very actually'.)

The Board has been slowing down over time. We peaked in 2008, which was a very active time, and have been trending downwards since. Check out the total post counts in the annual spreadsheets to see this in action. And it does feel very slow right now, I'm not going to lie. But ultimately, I think Nesh and Zing have it right - it's not that much slower, and it'll probably pick back up.

Of course, the only way for it to pick back up is for people to post more and write more. ^_^ We had an upsurge of both newbies and writing when Iximaz was young and energetic, which was because a) there were lots of PPC stories appearing on fanfic archives, and b) when they came looking, people found an active Board. It's like you said: bootstraps.

I've tried out a few methods of getting things to pick up speed here. The most fun was Driftwood, which (for the first six missions) was posted weekly on FF.net. Missions can be short and quick, so maybe someone who's got more time/energy could go back to that? I then segued into a more relaxed Wednesday Pluggage, where I tried to post a new piece of fiction once a week - not all long, but it meant there was something up there.

Then... well, there were the Friday Forums, where I posted news and fun stuff each Friday. That created an active thread each weekend, but I don't think it sparked much general activity (though I did get a quirky D&D comic strip out of the second version). I've also given myself challenges like 'reply to every thread', 'reply to everyone who replies to me', and 'make a new thread Monday, Wednesday, and Friday', but those burn out so quickly when people don't react to them.

I also created Plort... >:) The big difference between The Protectorate of Plort, Konti-Nyuum and the various other 'what if the PPC community was X?' efforts is that I didn't start with a story about myself: I started with a) a story of the community, and b) presents. ^_^ People get very excited if you offer to make something for them, and if that leads into RP and interaction, you have a Plort.

Looking back at what I've just written, I think my advice boils down to: give. If you want to see the PPC community thrive, put as much of yourself into it as you can spare. If you're lucky, people will respond in kind. (If you're not, then... prepare to feel pretty grim about the whole thing in a couple of weeks. Sorry. :-)

hS, rambling still

I have no idea who the canon characters are and what they are supposed to do, so I just liked to read about your agents and I hope I’ll see more of them. But I think I spotted some missing words:

The agents knew that wasn’t going to a good place to hide, and managed to make a desk pop in over them. Shouldn’t this be "going to be a good place"?

Her eyes remained glued to scene. Shouldn’t this be "to the scene"?

and neither of them would able to scratch Hamuko through the right persona Shouldn’t this be "would be able"?

“Hey, cutie,” Elena began, reaching her across the table, “why don’t we go liven up the dance floor?” I’m not actually sure what’s missing here, but the phrase looks incomplete to me.

Also, when Hamuko and Fuuka briefly spouted an extra pair of arms, I wonder whether you may have intended to write "sprouted".

HG

This isn't a review post, exactly. My thoughts aren't organized enough for that and I'm not going to make any attempt to be balanced. I just have Feelings I need to express and maybe talk about, that's all. {= )

Background: I've been doing some cowriting with Zingenmir, involving Jacques Bonnefoy, who is a character replacement of Jack Harkness. Eventually, it got to the point of being silly that I'd never watched Torchwood, so I finally got my hands on the first two series and Children of Earth. I finished series two over the weekend, and I'm holding off on CoE because a) Jacques is from some point in series two, so everything after that is less directly relevant to my interests, and b) I'm not ready to sink the emotional trauma I know is coming.

So.

Let me start by saying that I basically like Torchwood a whole lot. I love all the characters, all of them, and there's definitely an enormous amount of talent and passion behind the scenes. (I watched the special features for insight; it was fun.) It's good stuff, it really is. The first episode of each series is pretty much pure brilliance, and most of the rest is pretty good.

For that reason, it is incredibly frustrating when they make choices I think are just dumb. I have a sense that the general philosophy of writing for the Whoniverse is "never let [logic/science/continuity] get in the way of a story," and that is pretty apparent in a few places in Torchwood.

Worst first: for all I'm about to complain, there's only one episode in the first two series that I think was completely useless, and that's s2e10, "From Out of the Rain." It's always possible that I missed whatever glue was supposed to hold it together—Torchwood does ask you to pay attention and read between the lines a fair bit, which I kinda dig—but basically, I have no idea how the monsters worked, what motivated them, or why I should give a damn. The tiny bit of Jack backstory in the episode feels out of place and ultimately irrelevant. I don't buy him putting himself and his immortality on display, or even pretending to do so; I really don't buy him being nostalgic about the traveling circuses, and the episode doesn't show me anything that makes me feel anything for them, either. Maybe if it had been more of an Ianto story—him being into old films could have extended to or been replaced with him being into old circus entertainments, and giving him an emotional connection to a sort of romanticized image of this bygone era, only to have it come back twisted and wrong thanks to the Rift, that would make a stronger story than the one we got. The image of Jack pointing an old video camera like a gun was just silly. Bah!

But that's fine, every show has a clunker or two. It happens.

What shouldn't happen is an episode completely missing the point of its story for the sake of more pathos when there was already plenty. Here, I'm talking about s2e11, "Adrift," in which we've got Jack forgetting that he recruited Gwen because of her inability to let a mystery go and the writers forgetting how human grief works. I can forgive Jack pretty much just being Jack, even if he ought to know better; setbacks happen. I can't forgive the episode showing me some very appropriate grief, catharsis, and moving on, and then expecting me to think it's a bad thing, and that Gwen was right to give up bringing closure to people based on the very understandable knee-jerk reaction of one person to learning that her son is injured, aged, and incurably insane. I mean... seriously. The mom, Nikki, had been spending her life combing through hours and hours of crowd footage hoping to see her missing son's face, and sleeping in his bed to remember how he smelled. This was not the life of an emotionally stable person. At the end, she might not like the truth, but she's finally able to properly grieve, and pack up her son's room, and get on with her life. This is not a bad result, episode. Gwen was right, and what's more, she was right in the course of being the "beating heart of Torchwood" and counterpoint to Jack's aloofness that she's supposed to be. Screw you for taking that away from her and undercutting the integrity of her role like that.

I liked Gwen's arc in that episode, see. I really liked it right up until the end. It's like, they had all the math right, but still got the answer wrong. Gah. This one bugs me the same way "Small Worlds" did in season 1, except I've come around to believe that we're supposed to be conflicted about the end of "Small Worlds"—we're supposed to see that Jack is right, but being right doesn't always make you popular; we're supposed to see that reality is harsh and that the members of Torchwood can't have nice things. Maybe something like that is true of "Adrift," too, and I'll feel differently once I've thought about it some more, but I dunno.

The last thing I want to gripe about is a trope involving the undead. Namely, that the undead "have no breath" and therefore can't perform CPR. I can forgive this in a fantasy series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where breath is symbolic of life itself. It's dumb, but it's forgivable, because magic. It is not forgivable in a show that bills itself as science fiction.

Look. If your character can speak, that means they are capable of moving air into and out of their lungs. They may not need to breathe, but the lungs are blatantly capable of moving air around. In fact, you know what? If the character isn't respiring, that makes them better at CPR, because the oxygen they pull into their lungs isn't going to be exchanged for carbon dioxide on the way out! They're basically just a bellows at that point! And the bloody medic, of all people, should know this, zombie angst or no zombie angst.

Oh, and on a related note, what's up with poor zombie!Owen losing his sense of touch, but keeping all the rest of them? He can still see, still hear, probably even still smell and taste, else he'd have complained about it. Why is touch different? Surely whatever is animating the synapses of his brain, spinal cord, motor nerves, etc., can animate the various receptors in the skin, too? If not, why not? Apart from narrative contrivance, I mean. {= P

Finally (not that that's everything on my mind, but it's enough for now), not a complaint, but a serious question: Jack, did you really leave John Hart free to roam the Earth? I know he helped save the day and all, but you know that's only going to lead to mayhem. What were you thinking? {X D

~Neshomeh

I think using the badfic's time distortion with the cookies made for an interesting subplot.

I can't speak for others, but let me tell you how I've used it:

-to go through badfics I already know I won't mission, but would like to share and boggle and rant at and analyze with other people joining in all of that. It's fun, it's interesting, it's writing critique--it's a slightly intellectual form of entertainment.

-to go through bits of badfics I am missioning, because I want to share a bit of it (without talking too much about the mission itself) and am a slow mission writer anyway. It also sometimes leads to new ideas for the mission itself, or the outcome--for instance, in one case I worked out that I was definitely rescuing a particular baby and another Boarder helped me name him.

-as a form of advertising. Much like a more in depth version of a badfic thread on the Board, going through a badfic in the channel brings it more thoroughly to others' attention, and sometimes (relatively often, tbh) results in someone deciding to claim it, or to claim it pending Permission. It doesn't happen with every fic, just as not every fic posted here gets claimed, but I've seen it happen a good few times.

So. While I'm still in favor of a bit more transferral of cool/interesting things from the Discord over to the Board (in the sense of making posts about it, not moving over--there was discussion of this a while back, some of it from me, though I'm not completely sure which keywords to search yet and can't do it right now anyway), I don't think it's bad that the Discord exists or that it should be limited or something. Encouragement to make more Board posts and to share more of the fun things from the Discord (remember, there are Boarders who aren't on there, or who only pop in once in a long while!) is one thing; however, I don't think it's taking anything away, really. There's been a form of chat lounge for a very long time; moreover, the idea that it's draining away the PPCness of the community...

Listen: I've been here since early 2013. Longer than some, not as long as others, yes, it's a bit of a yikes moment to see that mean it's been a while...I'm getting off track. My point is: when I became a Boarder, the Board was not purely a place for writing discussions! There were bits of current events, science posts, movies coming out, life event announcements that weren't all writing related, Gathering reports, silly posts about quizzes, silly posts about pretty much everything...

There were also, of course, all sorts of writing-related posts: writing questions, PPC-related questions, RP posts, writing challenges, the occasional writing workshop from PoorCynic, movie reviews, hypothetical questions, questions connected to fanfic writing, questions/threads about writing philosophy, PPC-specific threads like story announcements, beta requests, Permission requests, wiki questions, the various annual events (shipfest, badfic games, eventually Plort, a handful of others that are a little less annual), etc...

As far as I can tell, we still have a lot of that going. It's ebbed and flowed throughout the years--heck, I'm not just talking about 2013 here to begin with--but whenever something vanishes, at some point it's often brought up again as 'hey, we used to have this going and it was fun, how about we do it again?' and it gets restarted. Sure, we should absolutely get excited about the new Board and hopefully see it as a reason to post more, and, as mentioned, I'd be supportive of more posts about things from the Discord, but I don't think the essence of the community is anywhere near draining away. If anything, we've just been able to move some of what might once have been smaller random chatting/supportive discussions into somewhere with a larger audience! (Disclaimer: I was not in the IRC at its heyday, and, in fact, only went in once or twice and found almost no one there. It's very likely that it functioned pretty similarly; I wouldn't know. What I do know is that I see on the Discord similar sorts of discussions, whether serious or just chatting about shared interests or silly things, to ones I had in private or small group chats in earlier years. Mind you, if that is how the IRC functioned...congratulations! The Discord has worked out well as its successor!)

Also. Alllllso.

There's probably a lot more writing going on behind the scenes than is apparent. A lot of us are in some form of school; those who aren't have often entered the working world. Writing, editing, revising--it takes time. I have stories I've been working on for years, and I know I'm not the only one. Heck, even recent stories that have been written and finished within months--you haven't seen them yet because they're still in first draft or betaing stages! Believe me, there's a lot of slow writing or slow editing happening that isn't talked about constantly because one doesn't really want to give constant updates on how slowly something is happening (or to get people excited over and over about something that likely won't be done for quite a while yet).

Another writing behind the scenes point which is more personal but, who knows, potentially relatable to others: we change, develop, as we grow. For me, one thing I suddenly realized had changed was my writing style. It made it very hard to want to continue older stories, both PPC and not; it also, for a time, made it rather difficult to think up new ideas and have faith that they could go the distance. I'm not sure how much of a drop that caused in my PPC writing, though I do think that point coincides with a time when I kept starting, stopping, and completely redoing a small set of PPC ideas, so...yeah, I'm pretty sure it had an effect. I don't know if others here have experienced something like that, but given a lot of our non-teenage contingent seems to have joined as teens and now grown into mid-twenties or -thirties...well, it seems possible, anyway? Anyone's welcome to weigh in, should they wish to.

(Also, yeah, we've never really...done the advertising thing. That's okay. See...I can't check from this page, but Cassie, Neshomeh, or both have already said what bears saying on this topic, I think, so see their posts.)

It could be nice to have a compilation of recent missions, but...we have that. It's on the wiki! We could direct people there, along with TOS, but otherwise...well, it's right there on the sidebar of the front page :)

And finally: regarding AO3...yeah, I probably have more interludes to put up there. We'll see when I get there (and hm, a good number are co-written, so that's a brief discussion...). More important, I think, or at least equally so, is continuing to add publication and setting dates to story docs! And I need to rewrite Dawn's wiki page, though at least the story list is pretty much up to date...

Basically: many little projects. Many little RL projects, too. I'll get to them all eventually.

Anyway, those are my two (more like five) cents.

~Z

PS: Breathe, Neo, though presumably you have by now. It's good that you made the post--it's sweet that you're concerned, and a bit of good reflection/discussion/context about the Board's past seems to be coming out--but while there are probably some small changes that would be good to make, panicking is, fortunately, unnecessary.

PPS: A little anecdote regarding the vitality of the PPC:

When I found the Board in 2013, I'd already been reading PPC stories for years. I'd found them something like 6-7 years earlier, around the point I really got into reading and writing fanfiction, and had read...pretty much whatever was available around that point, as well as related stories like OFUM and Suedom. By 2013, I hadn't read them as recently, but still remembered them and the setting...and I was writing a Mary-Sue parody fic, and decided I'd like to swing by and try to find a surviving member or three (about all I thought would still be active) to ask for permission (yes, lowercase) to write in a couple of agents for an outtake.

I didn't find three people.

(I found roughly a hundred, and a pretty active community. I wound up joining because someone asked if I was planning to go for Permission, and I wasn't, but then I started thinking about it, and that was it, I had plotbunnies coming out my ears and started developing agents. Three months later, I was still skipping around excitedly because oldbies were talking to me a bit and then that became excited jumping because aaah, after probably a month or so of carefully editing my Permission request, I'd submitted it and was successful. And the rest is that it kind of took over my writing life, to a certain extent, etc, etc, my point is...right, that the PPC Board is a lot better at survival than one might expect. Even when it has to move!

Also, returnbies. People do come in and out a lot. It can take months or years, but people often pop up again if they didn't intend to leave forever.)

Okay, yeah, I'm not sure how I got that reading either, other than, you know. Being me and having books on the brain. Woops!

Since I'm replying anyway, I forgot to ask about a possible error: After the line, "As the water started boiling, the situation quietly got worse" you have one of those [630599 messages elided] messages, but this is the only one of them that omits the word "similar." Wasn't sure if there's a computery reason for that message being different or not . . .

Also also, I don't seem to get email alerts for replies, even though I check the little box above the "body" area. How I fix?

—doctorlit is being dumb

I highly doubt that the Discord's #goodfic channel is going to be detrimental to the PPC, and there's an important reason why: it takes a lot less effort to say "Hey, this thing is good, I think you should read it if you're in the fandom!" than it takes to take a badfic apart. The way things move in the Discord, people can spend a few hours riffing on a particular fic, and I can easily imagine writing a 30-page mission taking weeks to write, edit, and get beta-read before publishing.

Doing that kind of analysis on a goodfic is possible, but then it starts being less of a plug and more of a full review, which I think of as being in a different category. Plenty of people have done reviews of things on the Board before--Thoth has done a few, and I recall Nesh doing a bit of one for the last How to Train Your Dragon movie--but those reviews are generally meant to spark a conversation about that particular work or genre, not start or be part of a recommendation thread.

Not much to add to that, really. I've been around since 2003. To me, "the PPC is dying" is just one of those conversations that happens every so often on a somewhat cyclical basis. Seeing as the PPC hasn't died yet, I figure things will tick up again eventually—I'm not done yet, at least. As long as there are people who aren't done yet, the PPC will continue to exist. If there are people who want more enough to do more, that will happen, too. That's all anyone needs to do about it, really: be the change you want to see in the world PPC community. {= )

~Neshomeh, generally in favor of not panicking.

It's worth reading his autobiography (Riding the Waves) if you ever find a copy, very interesting