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I started this 24 hours ago as a means to point out some of my issues with Discovery. Since then, I have been accused of being a right winger (I vote for Labour. I’m also a bit of a control freak at the same time, and that may hsve caused some conflict here). I have been accused of gatekeeping due to some poor word choices on my behalf, and a admittedly unclean rap sheet here on the Board.

At the same time, I have been forced out if my comfort zone, and I admit that this has caused me to react rather poorly. This whole situation has begun to snoeball out of control, and I’m beginning to feel more than a little unwelcome around these parts. Should I take this as a cue to leave, or...?

Strangely enough, Lost was also by Alex Kurtzman.

You were saying...?

But the thing to remember is, as we collectively watched our way through the six seasons, we didn't know it at the time.

One part of the fandom latched on to the characters, and their journeys. Lost was unique, in its time, for having an absolutely massive cast of main characters. Generally speaking, each episode would focus on one character and reveal aspects of their history and personality from before the crash, through the show's infamous flashbacks. These revelations would often shed a new light on their behavior in the series' present. In the buildup to the finale episode, the portion of the fandom that latched onto the characters was primarily invested in seeing their personal journeys through to the end, and find out whether any of them would manage to escape the island.

The other part of the fandom latched onto the worldbuilding of the Lost setting. Without giving any substantial spoilers, the world of Lost contains no less than two mysterious organizations, overt breaking of various laws of physics, freaky breeding experiments, and a very literal smoke monster. The writers did an excellent job of portioning out both the discovery of new mysteries, and the answers to problems already discovered. In the buildup to the finale episode, the portion of the fandom that latched on to the mysteries was excited to finally get answers to every strange and inexplicable thing that had happened in the series.

The final episodes came and went. And the Lost fandom, which had previously seemed like a single group, was split in two. Because the writers delivered on one group's wishes, but not on the other's.

It may be due to cuts necessitated by the Writer's Strike—the last three seasons are noticeably shorter than the first three. It may be because the writers wanted some mysteries preserved for the fandom to puzzle over long after the show ended. It may be that the writers themselves were more invested in the characters than the mysteries. Whatever the reason, the finale focused on finishing the stories of the characters, and left much of the setting's mysteries unresolved. And suddenly, a fandom that had been so united for six seasons suddenly saw infighting on a massive scale, with the mystery fans feeling that they had been cheated out of the answers they had craved for so long.

Here's the thing, Minh: Even though one half of that fandom was vindicated through the writing and the other disappointed, both groups were legitimate fans. They both enjoyed watching the show. They both enjoyed interacting with each other, up until the finale. They took different things away from the show, enjoyed it for different reasons, expressed their fanlove in different ways. The experience of both factions was valid. It wouldn't be right for either group to look at the other and say, "You aren't real fans, because you don't like it the correct way—the way I do."

You are allowed to dislike Jodie Foster's acting. You are allowed to dislike the newer Star Trek material. But other people are allowed to like those same things, and dislike the aspects of those fandoms that you like. Because everyone is different, so everyone can potentially like a different thing about a story. But that doesn't mean that only some of those fans are "real fans."

—doctorlit would give anything to line up the entirety of the PPC in front of a screen and make them binge all of Lost while doctorlit sits next to the screen watching the Boarders's faces just so he can see their reactions

Fellow newbie here, I’d like to offer you a personal as we do tend to toss pillows around in the Discord. See ya around!

You say, "If you don't want to hang out with a person because of their disability . . ."

What we are trying to communicate to Bramandin is not that we don't want to hang out with her because of her disability. We are trying to say that, because of Bram's disability, we are not capable of interacting with her in any positive or supportive capacity. This situation has developed into the conflict it is due to miscommunications run rampant; the more we interact with Bram, the more miscommunications will crop up, which will lead to further strife and stress for both Bram and this community.

And that sucks, to use very blunt language. It sucks that we aren't able to interact successfully with Bramandin. This is not Bramandin's fault, and neither is it our own. The two parties simply do not have the collective skill to get along. It sucks, but it is fact.

And if continued interaction will continue to end in failure, and cause heartache on both sides, how can we justify wanting that to continue? It will be more healthy for both Bramandin and this community when the two parties stop interacting. Therefore, severing ties is the best course of action, and the only solution that prevents endless hurt feelings going forward.

—doctorlit

Do birds actually get into a fetal position, and what does this look like? (I’m not acquainted with Sonic the Hedgehog and can only guess that the animals are anthropomorphized so much that they totally would do that; it would still be nice to get a description that doesn’t depend on me imagining a human being curled up in a fetal position, but actually being a macaw. To keep this in Gizmo’s POV, it should actually be a description of how exactly Gizmo moves to get into that position.) Alternatively, what might an actually sentient macaw do in a situation where a human would curl up in a fetal position?

Why does the man who is later revealed to be Makes-Things immediately refer to Gizmo as a "kid"? Does Gizmo look like a macaw poult? Huh, unlike my dictionary, MS Word spell-check doesn’t know the word "poult"? I wonder whether I picked the right word and whether Makes-Things would know it (the retranslations of "biddy", "chick" and "fledgling" look too ambiguous to me). Makes-Things saying, "Oh, no, not another─ what's this poult [or some applicable synonym thereof] doing here?" might clarify the situation. On the other hand, if you flesh this out, Makes-Things trying to be comforting without realizing Gizmo’s young age may add some tension and genuine misunderstandings.

Makes-Things yelling at his co-workers after trying to be friendly and comforting to an "intruder" feels out of character even in the context of this story alone. When I think about his background, I remember that in TOS he was afraid of agents, or at least of assassins. He may have overcome this and may yell at agents who repeatedly break their gadgets, but did being the First and Senior Technician really get to him so much that he would yell at colleagues? If this were a Permission prompt and I were wearing the PG hat, I would ask you to point me to appearances of Makes-Things which imply he would do this. IMO he would just tell them to get back to work in a much calmer tone, and wouldn’t threat them with his mood getting worse.

Having an "omniscient narrator" who knows every characters thoughts and motivations is okay although a bit old-fashioned when done right. Alas, most of this story looks like it is in "third person limited", where the narrator only knows what one character – in this case Gizmo – knows. Thus, Makes-Things realizing that he needed to comfort Gizmo and later Makes-Things doing his best to calm down the bird stick out as sudden head-hopping. Changing the narrative form/POV whenever it’s convenient is a badfic trait frowned upon. The advanced art of storytelling includes conveying what’s going on while only showing one character’s tainted impression. (I admit that there may be readers who need everything spelled out and, if not told otherwise, might perceive Makes-Things as evil just because Gizmo is afraid of him.) The change of POV near the end, when Gizmo has left, is okay, but in a longer story it would warrant the start of a new chapter with a new POV character.

"Past perfect" is a tense you should use when you narrate in past tense, but refer to something that happened before what is actually narrated. Example: He just met him, so he wasn't sure if he was a truly good person should read "He had just met him, so he wasn't sure if he was a truly good person”, because Gizmo meeting Makes-Things had happened a bit further in the past than Gizmo thinking about whether he could trust Makes-Things. Your first paragraph confuses me so much that I can’t even be sure what the intended time-flow is and which parts thus should be in past perfect.

Now, all these many words may look like you’re doing everything wrong, but hey, your draft looked promising enough for me to invest all this time when I’m a slow writer in this foreign language, so you are probably on a good way.

HG

Geema, I think you've confused me with Minh - I wrote the "I can't just not say anything about this" post. My saying "this is not gatekeeping" was referring to Larf criticizing Minh's very Alt-Right sounding rhetoric; Minh in turn had called said criticism gatekeeping.
My second point was about Minh using language unsuitable for the Board, and justifying it by saying that they find it "apt". I don't think that's a good excuse for breaking the Board's no-swearing rule.
My third point, about Alt-Righters agreeing with Minh's position on the liberal politics of Discovery, probably doesn't need explaining. It is a very interesting> coincidence, is all I'm going to say here.

And for a third Tuesday in a row (I think this makes a PPC tradition?), we had an All Write on the Discord! The prompt was “But what if the Goddex is wrong?” - and for reference's sake, "Goddex" is the gender-neutral form of "god" and "goddess".

And then there was fiction!

Homs Divine, by Voyd

The Price of Utopia (CREATOR CHOSE NOT TO USE ARCHIVE WARNINGS, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT, ALL THAT JAZZ), by FourMoonsWatching (cw: suicide, angst)

The Plan, by EatPrayLove

Dealing With Death, by Granz the Ice Cream Monarch

Gathering Sources, by Larfen J. Stocke, Esquire

Rebellion, by Athena

Wisdom's Cost, by Mikelus

Wisdom, by Tomash

Minerva, by Delta Juliette

And a final contribution from Athena: "A pokeball flew at the stunned man, opening when it struck him. The large man somehow entered the small ball, which shook for a while before becoming still. At long last, Thor was captured. According to the Goddex, that was the last God to be captured, but then again, the Goddex was thousands of years old. What if it was wrong?"

I was the one who said "we don't talk like that on the Board", and I was referring to Minh using the word "***hole", because it was breaking the no-swearing rule.

Because the quote-formatting problem persists.

They do seem to have read my last comment, though, which I appreciate.

...within this community and causes harm to other members. I have given respect wherever due on past occasions by agreeing to think about this at all. I have decided to stop doing so. These are the words of a Boarder who has run out of patience for such things.

Inadequate physical descriptions seems to be a known failure mode of mine. It's something I'll need to work on in the future.

Thank you for spotting the various typos. It looks like I definitely didn't fully eradicate my Programmer's Quoting, despite my best efforts.

Do you have thoughts on how to fix the smart quotes problem? I didn't even notice it was an issue until I zoomed way into the document and stared at my single quotes/apostrophes very carefully.

Re roll: that's the result of the Sue watching country side roll on pass her window. I'm willing to retroactively declare it a RollFeet cameo, since that would explain why Toey has been haunting this mission :)

Jason Mason got poked at since it's as you said, silly enough that no one would actually named their kid that and my beta readers were WTFing at it. Your interpretation of the situation is definitely also valid, though.

... I didn't plan on that feeling like a time warp back to the beginning, but I suppose I don't mind taking credit for accidentally being cleverer than planned.

I'm glad you liked it overall, and thank you for pointing out some issues I should keep an eye on in the future!

- Tomash

I'm glad you liked it.

... and yeah, yeah I did.

Have two cents, so you can put them into discussions later!

- Tomash

Aren't timezones fun

> They were rules about being polite. And honest. And the likes.

Bram told me that she gets punished for honesty. As for polite, she did mention that she can't get anyone to help her with her social problems. Perhaps you're reading innocent gaffs as malicious?

I do think "what else could she have done" should be discussed with her.

Have you asked her why she cares so much?

I do admit that she got to say her piece first, but I don't think you're really respecting her side. I read where someone said to treat her like a tantruming child. Why do you care so much about what she does?

Could you clarify who you're talking to with each of these points, please? The first definitely reads like you're quoting and responding to Crazy Minh, but I'm not sure who you're addressing with the second - it was Mirage Fontane who said "we don't talk like that here," but your further points read more like they're aimed at Minh?

First: You said, quote, "What I don’t expect is to go onto a Trek message board, and encounter people who think that the Jar Jar Abrams movies are representative of real Star Trek."

The argument you made is that the J. J. Abrams movies are not "real Star Trek," and that fans of those movies who don't also like the classic TV shows therefore cannot call themselves fans of "real Star Trek". Therefore, you are telling people who call themselves fans of a franchise, or at least a portion of that franchise, that they are not really fans of that franchise. How is that not "trying to keep others out of [a] community?"

Second: "we don't talk like that on the Board" is gatekeeping the Board. You are trying to exclude someone from commenting on what you said in what is more or less a public forum in addition to saying that you don't care what they have to say. It's fine if you don't care what people have to say, but that raises a question: if you don't care about what others think, then why did you make a post at all? From here, it looks like you wanted to produce drama, especially since your original post basically said "Don't like, don't read" right at the start.

Hello, Newbie! Here, have some chocolate, and enjoy your stay. And don't worry, we don't bite... much.

elves are off the menu, boys!