The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

My headcanon as of right now is that non-World One influence is kept to a minimum, but can be seen if you know where to look. That's subject to change depending on what other people have written that I don't know about yet, though.

On the other hand, I think the PPC is almost certainly responsible for the Heart of Voh. I mean, look at it. It's too perfect. Can't be natural. Voh isn't that far from Poya, either. {= D

I'm sure there's absolutely no connection to the Face of Boe, that makes no sense, it's just that it scans so well.

~Neshomeh

Canon representation:
Since the PPC defends canon, canon should be represented in the city. One possibility for expressing this would be different "quarters" of the city being inhabited by canon ex-residents (retired agents?), having canon-themed restaurants and parks that have plants taken from that canon. Kind of like ethnic neighborhoods in Real Life. So Harry Potter Neighborhood (Rowling Quarter?) would have wizards, wand shops, and restaurants that serve Butterbeer, and parks containing trees alive with Bowtruckles and sometimes visited by centaurs or even unicorns, with Acromantulae lurking if you wander too deep.
I have no idea how much of that is possible since I'm still somewhat new, but it's an idea.
Secretiveness of Headquarters: Depending on how fantastical the city is, it could have misleading woods that always pop the traveler back where they started from- or, the city would simply have to pretend to be normal and bereft of any non World One influences, hiding away wands, stuffing elven ears under enormous hats, and trying to explain to Pokemon partners why they can't go out and say hi. I can imagine the Flowers standing still in a garden, trying not to mind-yell at visitors who comment on their leaves being overly plump or otherwise give away their sentience. If, that is, the Flowers visit New Caledonia. Though I've heard it's a nice place, so why not?
Leakage of unusual canonical elements into the island of New Caledonia could be the reason why New Caledonian crows are unusually intelligent- and they might just be more intelligent than they let on... *dramatic music*

Everything* is collected at "New Caledonia," which is usually how "the PPC city in New Caledonia" is referred to for brevity.

"City" might be a generous term, considering the usable area available. On the other hand, who knows what sort of dimension-altering technology and/or magic may have been used in its construction? It's anyone's guess how many people actually live there, too. According to MyMiniCities, it's 1,859 people. I don't consider that the best source, but in this case it may be close enough. {= P

* Except not really; that's part of what I'd like to fix!

~Neshomeh

...because Google maps now has a explorable model of the International Space Station, assembled from photos taken in 2017. You can "walk" through each module (although you need to use hyperlinks to travel vertically, as Google Map's streetview software wasn't designed for moving around a environment where there is no defined "up" plane, and can only move freely along what it thinks is a horizontal axis), and since the photos were taken while the SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle was docked to the station, go inside the cargo bay of the said spacecraft. I assume there's a Soyuz they also took pictures of, but I didn't find the entry point if there is.

Here's the link, for convenience:

https://www.google.com.au/maps/space/iss/@29.5602853,-95.0853914,2a,75y,223.98h,86.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szChzPIAn4RIAAAQvxgbyEg!2e0!7i10000!8i5000

The tour starts in the Cupola module, which is essentially a massive window unit, for those not versed in space station modules.

Hey, everyone! It's been a while since a nice, rousing game of CAHQ, and a few of us decided to fix that. Come on over for a (NSFW) PPC take on Cards Against Humanity!

Here's the game!

Password: canhaznao?

I've heard a couple of mentions of New Caledonia, but assumed it was a coincidence. Are there any links about the City on the wiki?

Given the colors of vampires, that is an appropriately Black use for a White card.

For some time now, the "map" we have of the PPC City has been driving me nuts with how incomplete and basically useless it is. I wanna make a better one. An updated one. A useful one. One that might even take the actual terrain of the location into consideration! {= D

This whole idea started with Tawaki's spin-off and a My MiniCities game (that's why it's arranged in a simple grid), so naturally I stared by combing through his stories for data. I also asked Tawaki if he could fill me in further, but he says he didn't come up with a full map in his head. We have all we're going to get from that source.

Therefore, it's up to us to fill in the gaps. {= D I need your stories, I need your headcanons, I need your imaginations.

I want to take it all and try to take the PPC City from a blank grid to a more natural plan that fits the contours of the Massif du Boulinda, where the door is located. Directly south of the door is a pretty steep slope, not really suitable for building, but about a mile west, there's a flatter area that I think would work. Have a look at this view in Google Maps. The location of the door is centered; the area I'm talking about is visible on the left; you can see more of the red soil showing where water or foot trails have run across the ridge more freely. The flatter ridge continues to the south, and to the north there are a couple of mine sites that I think could work for such things as a Hunger Games arena or Multiversal Sportsplex, especially the rounder, more obviously tiered one.

I've got some thoughts about the layout of the roads and such, but first, I want to make sure I've got all available sources to hand. If you've written anything about New Cal, or if you know of something that was written about New Cal, I want it! Please post it here.

Thanks!

~Neshomeh is learning a lot about New Caledonia and the South Pacific lately.

In letting this question (with a very obvious answer) come up in a 'harmless debate', all you're really doing is giving legitimacy to the arguments against it. You're suggesting that, yes, there are perhaps certain conditions in this society in which case you could convince me that somebody, purely because of who they are, what their body is like, isn't human.

Nah mate I'd rather not.

It's giving a platform to people who would argue this kind of poison, and they really absolutely don't warrant a platform, because this kind of argument is absolutely never worthwhile. Even if you're only giving them that platform so that you can go ahead and disprove them with Facts and Logic and suchforth, you're still suggesting that the argument 'these people aren't human because of who they are' is an argument that somehow belongs in the public consciousness, as if there were anything about it that could be gently picked at or carefully critiqued other than the fact that, no, it's garbage.

It really shouldn't be that difficult to come to the conclusion that all human beings are human beings.

These days, I don't personally know how much value I really ascribe to any one human life, but that's just cynicism talking. I'd like to believe I'd take a punch or a bullet for someone who needed it, because if human life isn't all that special, then why prize MY insignificant life over someone else's?

That's sort of a tangent, I guess, but also sort of not? Eliminating the ego is an important part of recognizing other people as people. It's not easy, but IMO it's better than being the kind of selfish jerk who would, I don't know, separate children from their families and hold them indefinitely in horrible conditions because they're so-called "illegal aliens" and therefore don't need basic commodities like toothbrushes or room to lie down and sleep.

Okay, NOW it's a tangent. But seriously, whether X people are people who deserve to be treated like people shouldn't ever be a debate. {= |

~Neshomeh

I don't know what to say, man, but the plain fact is that humans are humans, no matter what's going on with their bodies. Questions and discussions aren't inherently politically neutral, as mentioned earlier a bunch - - the simple act of attempting to determine whether or not a certain group is 'human' is already dehumanising them.

Determining boundaries as to what humans are and when somebody stops being human is damn stupid as well because at that point, you still have major body policing going on. You're still in the process of othering people in contrast against a 'normal' human and are basically just picking what level of otherness this society can withstand. As if you stopped being human just because a societal group decided you weren't. What crap.

The judgement of somebody's body and life choices and identity is up to damn well nobody except for them and a big problem nowadays is the fact that a lot of very privileged people think they have the right to do so, and the right to then go make decisions about these people. My problem with Cyberpunk 2077 and things that ask this sort of question is that they reinforce this privileged position. They invite the player to come in and make judgements and decisions about somebody else's humanity and emphasise that this is an ok and reasonable thing to do, when it bloody well isn't and bloody well shouldn't be.

Nice, very succinct, very well put together comment there Delta.

So if systemic problems perpetuated by prejudice exist in the current system, what solution is viable other than sitting down and having a frank conversation about: inherent humanity, what qualifies, what doesn't, why do people have a problem seeing it in others, what incongruities exist in the current system, and where do we tweak the system to manage it?
(this is not rhetorical - if this is a bad solution, what other solution is there?)

I realize that these conversations don't HAVE to start at the question of what is inherent humanity, but as fringes keep pushing the idea that hate against 'other' is OK, then we might NEED to establish, and re-establish that "all men are created equal" foundation.
Which I suppose can be very frustrating now that I write it down.

-----

WAIT! I just realized your not necessarily saying the broader political conversation is a bad solution to systemic injustice, but that this particular instance, CyberPunk 2077, is probably not going to give the subject the credit it's worth and might even make the problem worse by virtue of being high profile AND from biased developers!

'CyberPunk 2077' is the 'nice civil debate' in your thought process! Is this correct?

-NewKryptonite, *shaking his head for accidentally dismissing the topic at hands relevance.

It's about sending a message.

-Phobos

Sudden burst of energy at projects that then just don't get finished because the energy burst is gone is ... most of my writing projects, for one thing.

... Why not use a flat board-wipe, then? The results will be essentially the same, and you won't have to waste a creature to use it.

Sometimes I get really into bizarre little projects, blaze through them in a burst of energy, and then trail off towards the end.

Other examples include the TOS Badfic Archives, agent hub pages (a second one's in the works, promise!), and... pretty much any series I've ever written. Really, the surprising thing is that so many of them are finished.

hS

That lets me reference the events of Agent Dafydd + The Gurl, so I get to play continuity games of my own. If you need Remus to be present immediately after the game, though, let me know and I'll tweak it.

hS

It falls in the period when Dafydd was hiding from Selene for, uh, three months, because timelines are things that happen after the fact. It would actually come between the two halves of Al and Death, so... maybe Dafydd was actually semi-transferred to work with Vemi while Penny was recovering from Selene's hissy fit? With the usual mission time-lapse effect, that would make sense.

Checking the stories around it, Penny is kind of passive during the Badfic Game (which I have a precise timeline fix of April 16th for, by the way), so that fits with her still being injured.

Yeah, I think this could actually work. I'll take a run at it and see if I can get Vemi in character.

hS

PS: ugggggh muuuuuum i don' wanna tidy my room... yeah, maybe. ;)

There's definitely a spectrum, from "genuinely good-faith, trying-to-learn questions" through "exhausting labor that really could be asked of Google instead" and "veiled demands for assurances that the demander isn't a bad person" to "bad-faith attacks on peoples' rights."

I don't have a good word for the middle there, for all that it's very definitely a thing. Your description there is really good - one of the hallmarks of our Very Enlightened and Totally Post-Prejudice Privileged Majority is wanting to sit down and civilly debate other peoples' experiences and rights and existences. And that feeds systematic injustices, as you've noted, because people keep wanting to find a nice civilized compromise...

Yeah, "asking questions is violence" is itself a position to be far more careful with than I was in that (rather hyperbolic) paragraph. Sharing knowledge is, in the abstract, a good thing. But... it's a spectrum. There are "questions" that are, as NewKryptonite said, rhetorical - they exist to carry a message that's harmful, that incites violence, and the people asking them from the very darkest end of the spectrum have gotten rather good at using those midpoints as cover. (To the point where, on the other side, people like me are hyper-vigilant for questions that smell like such. And someone pointing at a fictional woman and saying "maybe she isn't clean," is... wow.)

-Delta, tossing a few more thoughts into the processor, in hopes that they'll help explain her reactions earlier

While I generally liked English classes back when I was in school, since it was basically READ --> GRADES, I did often have trouble finding the sort of thematic, metaphorical whatever that teachers like to see in essays. I just read stories for the events in them and to imagine myself there being a total hero. So it may be my own weakness in being able to analyze the story beyond its presentation as a story. Or maybe pretentious literary types just want to seem edgy by accusing John Milton of being a . . . what, Satan-sympathizer? Even though, based on the bibliography stuff in my copy of PL, he basically ruined himself opposing powerful monarchs he considered illegitimate and exposing corruption in the church.

Regarding the Bible . . . oh boy. I really just see it as another story, and I kind of want to do a "Book of" by "Book of" review of it here, but I'm a little worried that I'll end up offending any other Boarders by treating it like fiction. Might be better if I skip my review series for that one . . .

—doctorlit rates Satan 7.8 out of 10, too much brimstone

Don't want to overhype this scene as being really big or involved or anything, it just lets me establish a bit more about who Jenni Robinson was back then. If an actual mission gets written, too, that's a fun interconnectivity bonus, but it's not necessary for anyone to go out of their way to make it happen. {= )

~Neshomeh

as in full of rhetoric, designed to inflame, or dramatize, not really looking for an answer.

Yea, i don't think all questions are created equal, just that they all should be allowed to be asked, hopefully by people actualy searching for answers. Some people use them as sheilds against critial thinking and alternate perspectives, or even as atagonistic rallying calls, those questions are garbage and should be devoutly ignored, because they're not really being asked at the end of the day.
(i suppose you could also counter them with opposing rhetoric, much like the post that inspired all this! my mind is blown)