The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

I need to buck my inferiority complex and forcing myself to accept my writing as it is, at least for the purposes of asking for a beta, seems like a good place to start.

I now want betas again! Email is clickable again! I still haven't written the bios again! Just email me to gain access to them because I put them in separate docs! (Again!)

Behold as I enjoy the concept of the heir to a mini-Balrog even though I hardly ever laugh at missions anymore! Behold as I praise you for the creative ways you converted the fic's mistakes into amazing ideas, especially the bit about the tape recorder! Behold as you get your emotional impact and character development across even to readers who haven't read the rest of Driftwood! Behold as I realize I really need to read the entirety of Driftwood because it's good and short!

Seriously, you're amazing. Best way to get back into reading missions ever.

• I don't quite remember what Kaitlyn and Selene's relationship is, but I can definitely feel some tension in it at the moment
  - What is going on with Kaitlyn's memories and backstory? Is anything?
  - I liked the "Jay and Acacia classic" bit
  - Smiled but remembered she was supposed to be angry is pretty adorable
  - Totally undescribed Sues being a tape recorder is a cool and funny
  - Kaitlyn, Selene, please take a few deep breaths, both of you.
  - And just as I wrote that, they did
  - Glowing eyes?
  - Oh. Well that was an unpexected twist about what the message was. I can see why Kaitlyn was being secretive about it.
  - Oh dear, that's a complication.
  - "This story's over" and then a canon song is a neat way to do the reset
  - And the mini ate the tapes!
  
  One thing that stood out is that the thread of the story where Kaitlyn and Selene argued and such had a very strong narrative arc - there was conflict, the climax felt climactic, and the bit where things got resolved was good. It was nice to see things clear up.
  
  There was also enough badfic-related humor here that it felt like a PPC mission and not just a short story, and I have a general sense of the key issues with this fic even though you didn't quote any of it. The one issue I had while reading is that it took me moment to realize the fic was doing a Rapunzel in Middle-Earth plot with Boromir saving the girl - the bit with the flowers was just indirect enough that in only made sense a line or two later.
  
  Your explanation of your writing process at the end was very interesting, and I might draw on some of that in the future.
  
  Overall, I quite enjoyed reading this and look forward to the next Driftwood installment!

There's a good reason Ix's missioning My Immortal even though pretty much everyone knows exactly what makes it bad, and that's that having characters actually react to the events of the fic while inside of it and witnessing the reality distortions caused by Suvians is entertaining on a different level than just criticism. It's also fun to see exactly what way the agents are going to kill the fic and how they're going to deal with the dangers.

You have a point. Maybe the #badfic channel should be shoumetsu'ed. As a matter of fact, perhapseth the whole Discord should be shoumetsu'ed or highly reorganized, because I know that I'm getting caught up in all the discussion rather than reading or writing PPC. (Not to mention how fast I get around to hating what I've written...)

But missions are a heckuva lot more than just sporking badfic. They're also for character development and interactions.

And hey, maybe if we try to encourage more PPC writing by posting to AO3 and such and such like that, we can create a renaissance in our community! If we all try to be more active on the Board, we can fix this! And now someone's playing emotional, dramatic anime music in real life!

The point I'm trying to make is: Don't Give Up!

I got the Tower, the Ten of Wands and the King of Coins, in that order. So dramatic change, ambition and apparently something business-related. Seems rather vague, although I admit the ambition and dramatic change bits seem rather apt. In terms of personality-based arcana, I suppose that I fit best The Magician, The Devil, The Tower, Ace of Wands, Two of Coins, Five of Wands, Seven of Wands, Seven of Swords, Seven of Cups, Ten of Wands, Knight of Wands and Knight of Swords, going off the TvTropes descriptions.

(Trying to get better at reviewing)

The idea of a “mini-Balrog’s heir” is really funny. This isn’t really the style of mission I’m used to but I still quite enjoyed it, and I’m glad it was short and didn’t take too long to read.

I admit to being slightly worried that going 'nothing to kill here' with the tape player wouldn't go down too well, so I'm glad you enjoyed it.

hS

It's always great to hear what worked (and what didn't, if it didn't!).

I absolutely love playing with Selene's slang terms, and 'carry witchets' was a perfect fit for the line. ^_^

hS

The behind-the-scenes look was quite interesting.

I do love the tape recorder. It just... amuses me. Right idea, right place, right person. /shrug.

It's just a nice, satisfying short. Not a lot to say because I feel like it hits all the right notes.

I have no context for the 'Lan'/A.G. message, but the reaction to it (and Selene briefly questioning Kaitlyn's memory even more) was funny.

And I'm not sure how I'd have taken to being an anything of 'carry witchets' either. XD

Songfic is definitely a classic! Can't recall offhand any incidents where quoting a whole song ever goes well, oddly enough. Usually it's just a few lyrics, to show a character having fun.

Aaaand there's the shoe dropping. Oh, Kaitlyn... ;;

Very nice mood swap once they talk things out, though! Gotta embarrass the Agent with a Lust Object, after all~

And it turns out 'a character having fun' is basically what happens in the end, so go me!

Thank you for writing, and for the backstage-context. :)

It's only been a little over a month since I last published a mission; that's blisteringly fast for me these days. :)

There Is Another

In which obsolete technology and a mini-Balrog's heir make their appearances, and a Big Reveal is made which will Change The Face Of The Series FoReVeR!!! (or not)

I've taken the Author's Note as an opportunity to briefly discuss the process of writing the mission. It's probably a little overblown, but a few people have expressed interest, so I figured why not?

All comments, reviews, and concrit are welcome, but if you don't have the energy for that (I totally sympathise), just a note to say you're reading would be greatly appreciated. If for some reason you want to leave a more permanent review, the mission is also up on the Pit.

hS

But no pressure; I really shouldn’t request anything when I’m just still around, but not doing anything for I don’t actually know what reason :-(

HG

My general assumption with PPCing is that a mission can go to any department that can identify at least one charge specific to them. So any mission with a Geographical Aberration can go to DOGA, even if it's only a minor part of the story. (This was taken to extremes with the requested Pain & Regrets etc, where the DOGA charge is... moving a hut.)

That said, for pure DOGA missions I preferred to find stories that had something seriously geographical going on, and there were three ways of doing that:

1/ Reading fanfic. Back in the day, I was an active reader of fanfiction.net, and looked at multiple fics per day. If I found one that was a) bad and b) had a DOGA charge, I made a note of it. More Than Ordinary was actually written by someone I internet-knew.

2/ Place-names and princesses in summaries; in Middle-earth the latter (especially Elven princesses) usually imply the former. Echoes of the Narbeleth has a Summary Princess, and sure enough, she comes from 'Lakewood'.

3/ Being prompted by the Board. Eledhwen was one of these, apparently, and creates at least three new countries.

~

For a more general approach, I'd say a DOGA-worthy mission should have one of:

-A badfic-created location (country, planet, building, whatever) that doesn't fit with the setting.

-Major geographical compression, ie, you can protest that they go from '[blank] to [blank] in a single day!'.

-A change to the nature of a location. Empire State of Mind places Middle-earth as a separate planet, which... no.

hS

I’d like to get a few more sign-ups before I start, and the timing might be a bit awkward. Especially if midway through an RP the agents suddenly have to kill someone they didn’t earlier.

but please don't feel obligated to put in a bunch of work unless you want to.

I just realised I'm about to start a tangent off my own tangent, but anyway...

hS, how do/did you go about working out which badfic's where DOGA missionable instead of DMS or Floaters missionable? Is there a certain threshold after which you went "this is too far" or what?

Asking because I have a pair of DOGA agents I want to write about but one of the reasons I stopped trying with them was a lack of badfic to do with them.

Nova

Think about it: everyone in costume, possibly wearing masks... Just thought I'd put that out there. ^_^

~Neshomeh

We're RPing this on the board, so the lack of speed means timezones are a non-issue.

Also, it's agents. so... you're not going as anything! But your agents can dress up as iron man, yes. ^_^

Oh yeah, I also forgot that the timing on the chat may be weird for me because of the time zones.

In where I live, it is GMT+8, while in Washington DC it's GMT-4.

Sorry if I'm overcomplicating things!

Fun fact: We don't really celebrate halloween here, but for some reason Nicklodeon and food channel and literally everything else on TV has Halloween related stuff. Even toy stores have halloween decorations!

Hey can I dress up as an iron man costume that I made when I was 11?

But it'd be super neat!