The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

• Michael is Spock's adopted human sister that we have never heard of before, and who is one of the most annoying, insufferable, douchebag sues I have ever seen on television. She's like Wesley Crusher, but times by cancer, and without the frequent mutters of 'Shut Up Wesley'. She is arrogant, is always right (as justified by the plot), and is the character who we're meant to feel affection for. We don't. None of the STD characters show even the remotest affaliable traits, with the possible exception of Tilly...whose enthusiasm is somehow just unbearably grating in a show which has made Star Trek a dystopia.
  
  - Space is in fact a mushroom in STD. The ship uses a 'Mycelial network' that webs the entire universe (i.e. the universe is now a mushroom') and the laughably stupid explanation that 'On a quantum level, physics is biology' (BTW, the two fields are nothing alike. Chemistry and physics; maybe. Chemistry and Biology; maybe. But physics and biology? F**k no.). Oh, and the engine is literally powered by inserting a tube full of magic space spores into the engine. This tech allows them to jump anywhere in the universe in six seconds flat, thus invalidating the entire premise of Star Trek: Voyager; making warp travel at any point after the 23rd century redundant and pointless; and making discovery non-canon (that tech is WAY outside anything they could do in the 23rd century. Maybe- on a massive stretch- the late, late 24th or mid 25th. But not the 23rd).
  
  - No, I mean that the writers have stated that their entire culture has been pointlessly and needlessly rewritten so that Klingons act like neo-nazis/trump supporters.). Also, Klingons now look like this:
  
  https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U7Nokw5i8aY/maxresdefault.jpg
  
  - They have holodecks on the discovery. Despite the fact that the tech for that only existed canonically in its most basic form on TAS, and in a much more limited form at that. They have replicators on the discovery. The most advanced ship in the fleet, the USS Enterprise, didn't have this stuff even ten years later. Not even the refit from the movies had that (they had a galley, as seen in the sixth movie) They had 3d chess and food dispensers. Oh, and even worse:
  
  MAJEL BARRET HAS BEEN REPLACED BY SOME VAPID-ASS MORON AS THE VOICE OF THE COMPUTER!!!!!
  
  The 'replicators' speak by the way. The USS Enterprise didn't even have that. Not until the 1701-D at the very least, and there's still ~100 years to go until that era.
  
  - The federation acts nothing like the Federation. At least DS9 had them act in character. All the characters who even SPEAK of utopian ideals get flushed out into space or killed off.
  
  - In TNG 'Relics', they took the time and effort to recreate the original bridge of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. In DS9 'Trials and Tribble-ations' they took the time to replicate a large portion of the ship for a time-travel episode, and spliced in the bits they couldn't replicate. Even the fan-production Star Trek Continues was caring enough to replicate the classic bridge AND the entire set from TOS.
  
  But STD's writers obviously don't give a zark about continuity or paying homage. Instead, we got this:
  
  https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1200x680/public/2019/04/ussenterprisediscovery.jpg
  
  and this
  
  <a href="https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2019/04/12/1280-discovery-enterprise-15550852668931280w.jpg">https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2019/04/12/1280-discovery-enterprise-1555085266893_1280w.jpg
  
  The original Enterprise is the ONE thing you never f**k with. Ever.

We haven't had writing prompts in a while, and the holiday seems to be a good occasion, so:

Prompt 1: Holiday celebrations (bonus points for holidays that happen around this time of year)

Prompt 2: At least one of your characters has overindulged

- Tomash

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. Disclaimer: I have no idea what the show is like, and I'm not looking anything up. I'm simply spinning from the details you've mentioned here, because it's fun. I could be extremely, wildly wrong, and expect to be told so. {= )

So like, without context, I can justify a lot of what you describe of Michael to myself. Who says a xenobiologist has to only do xenobiology and nothing else? It's not unheard of for someone to have more than one specialty. It also makes sense for a specialist to be sent on an away-mission where their specialty or specialties might be of use, and for a specialist to excel in their specialty/ies beyond even the designated bridge officer, which role might be better suited to a generalist with additional skills in command and leadership. I'm pretty sure even being a mutineer and starting a war is no more than other Trek characters have gotten away with before, though my knowledge of the franchise isn't thorough enough to recall an example. She sounds pretty much on par with Kirk to me, though, with the additional grace that a regular officer being a loose cannon is less of a problem than a captain being a loose cannon, because an officer is not responsible for representing the standards of the Federation to the same degree, nor for the lives of a whole shipload of people.

I would require a pretty damn good explanation for Spock having a sister we've never heard of before, I'll give you that. Is it, like, honorary or something?

Re. "space is a mushroom" ... er. Okay, I'm struggling with this one. It has to be a metaphor, right? Because space is curved, right? And maybe there's something about the gills of a mushroom that represent folded space... right? I COULD see the technology existing in an experimental form, though. It's not like the level of technology in Trek has never been retconned before. Kinda like how the franchise considers advanced androids basically unprecedented before the Soong type of Next Gen, even though we had some pretty dang advanced androids show up in TOS. For something as potentially game-changing as something like a tesseract, I'd just expect it to be so flawed as to be abandoned for reasons of impracticality by arc's end. Or it could be that Our Heroes decide it's too powerful for any faction to have, and takes it upon themselves to keep it secret and safe or destroy it, like another more recent space opera I won't name so as to avoid spoilers. ("Spore drive" is a dumb name any way you slice it, though.)

Now, I know you don't mean the Klingons are literally Trump supporters. {= P But it's not like their appearance has never radically changed before, either. If Discovery is roughly contemporary with TOS, I'd expect them to look more like TOS Klingons than later Klingons, though hopefully with less problematic racial coding, since it ain't the sixties anymore.

If Harry Kim's word is all we have to go one re. holograms and holodecks, I think we can safely give that one a pass?

Re. the Federation and its ideals and utopian-ness... eh, I can't say I was ever convinced that everything was always hunky-dory and peachy keen back on Earth. I think DS9 explores this a bit? Having the highest of ideals doesn't mean we always succeed at upholding them, and no society is without flaw, because it's all based on people, and no person is without flaw. Also, strict adherence to canon would be incredibly troublesome here. TOS was progressive for its time, but if we take the Terran culture on display on the original Enterprise literally, without sort of temporally localizing for progress in real-world society, hoo boy, is the Federation ever a scary place for women to be circa TOS!

I'm okay with the Federation being flawed and making mistakes, is what I'm saying, as long as they're also shown to learn from those mistakes and continue striving to do the best they can in the belief that it's worth it to always strive, even when we falter.

I'm cool with temporally localizing the appearance of the Enterprise, too, though I'd personally prefer a functional Android aesthetic over a lens-flare-ridden iPad one. {= P

... I think that's everything except for the video, which I may watch later. So, how wrong am I? {= )

~Neshomeh

Here’s to many more!

My mother has invited me and Mel out for dinner. I'm not gonna be around tonight.

As of today, I have been a member of the PPC for exactly one year. It’s been lots of fun and slightly insane and my writing has improved massively since I joined. (No, really. Not long before I joined I was writing a blatant Sue and Stu).

As a thank you for putting up with me, have virtual versions of the chocolate chip cookies in the oven at the moment!

It is FILTH.

I'm not exaggerating. It is somehow WORSE than the movie we do not talk about. It fraks with the canon without regard for continuity or even proper characterisation. It has some of the most dumbass and predictable plot twists on television. It completely disregards the whole theme of Star Trek, turning a optimistic utopia into a dystopian hellhole. Let me give you some (spoiler-ridden) examples:

* The main character- it's not a ensemble cast BTW- is a officer called Michael Burnham. She (yes, she does have the first name Michael) is a utter Mary Sue of the most unholy variety. She's a xenobiologist...who also can debug computer code for a experimental engine; has test-piloted a experimental hamster-ball small craft; is SPOCK'S FRAKKING SISTER; commits mutiny and is forgiven three episodes later despite having singlehandedly caused a war with the Klingons and thus killed thousands of people; can participate on away missions; is better at science than the science officer...I could go on. She's a Sue. And a bad one at that.

* The Discovery is powered by a experimental 'Spore Drive'. A engine that uses the dumbass idea that the universe is a giant frakking mushroom to jump anywhere in the universe in six seconds. It's a literal magic mushroom engine that could have gotten Janeway and Co. home in six seconds flat. Thus, canon-violation.

*The Klingons...*snerk*. Sorry, Kling-ORCS (given that STD Klingons look nothing like canon Klingons, and would look less out-of-place in LotR) are now Trump supporters.

* The Federation considers commiting genocide, and makes mentioning Burnham at the end of the second season a crime punishable by death.

* Holograms and replicators in the 23rd century despite Harry Kim stating otherwise in Star Trek: Voyager 'Flashbacks'. Oh, and Holographic Communicators - which replace viewscreens in STD- first canonically appeared as a brand-new technology in DS9.

* They. Messed. With. The. Original. USS Enterprise. It looks NOTHING like it should in the 23rd Century. Neither does the bridge.

* The showrunner admits he's too lazy to maintain continuity. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqDkkLF-yxA

I'll try my hand at these...


Chenille is one of the very last of a presumably dead race of shape-shifters, the taguel. Taguel are stronger, faster, more agile, and generally more -er than humans, even before you factor in their transformations. He's a loner, suffering from a tragic backstory that he doesn't speak of if he can help it, meaning he's just waiting for the perfect woman who's also madly in love with him to heal his broken heart...

Merula is the daughter of a villain from her home continuum, and was the earthly avatar of the main Big Bad. She's a skilled tactician, mage and swordswoman. But she has amnesia, so she doesn't actually remember her Mysterious Past(tm). She's also absolutely besotted with the prince of Ylisse, but is he really her true love?


...I admit, that was all really cheesy. I tried making them as cliché as possible, not sure if that succeeded. But it was fun, so I'm happy with it.

With four for, zero against, and presumably a lot more who don't care either way, the Minis for the Fire Emblem continuum are hereby switched to Wyverns!

The Wiki will likely be updated on this topic when the first of the mini-Wyverns is discovered.

With four for, zero against, and presumably a lot more who don't care either way, the Minis from the Fire Emblem continuum is hereby switched to Wyverns!

The Wiki will likely be updated on this topic when the first of the mini-Wyverns is discovered.

It occurs to me that we haven't had enough games here. So here's one (feel free to suggest others):

Pick a character of yours. Write a description that makes them sound as much as possible like a Sue... while still being entirely accurate.

I'll put in on this one later, once I've had a chance to think more.

I'm happy to see someone do something with the world that doesn't directly tie into the War of the Ring for a change. We know so much less about the Second Age, surely there's room for some good stories that we haven't seen before, that won't mess with the established lore! An actual expansion to the world, if it's done with love and respect, could be really great.

Definitely don't want a GoT flavor to override the Tolkien flavor, but OTOH, Númenor before the fall is a pretty dark place. I reckon there's even room for a bit of grit, if done well, by which I mean to show the corruption taking hold rather than for empty spectacle. Middle-earth isn't a place for deeply flawed heroes and bleak, senseless death like Westeros. Not that the Good Guys must always Do Good and the Bad Guys must always Do Bad; there should be nuance. But nuance with ideals, you know?

... Basically what I'm saying is I just want good writing. {= P

~Neshomeh

So far I've heard mixed but trending positive reviews of Discovery, namely "it's great; haters gonna hate" and "it didn't grab me." The most negative thing I've heard is that it feels more like the new movies than classic Trek. As someone who liked the 2009 movie, despised Wrath of Khan for its cheating and lack of imagination, and was surprised not to hate Into Darkness because at least the characters got a few good moments where they felt like themselves, I'm not sure I'm willing to go out of my way for Discovery, but I haven't it written off yet, either.

So, besides the standard gripe that the new thing is not the same as the old thing(s)—because there's always a period where people hate the new thing just for not being the old thing, especially in the first season, while it's still figuring out its own identity—what don't you like about it? Why?

~Neshomeh

Back when I was really young, Peppa Pig was my life. I loved that show. I watched loads of DVDs because my tv didn't have channels. When I was a bit older I also really got into transformers because my brother was crazy about them. There was also this show called Buzz lightyear of star command which was a cartoon toy story spin off series. My parents also showed me a load of the banana splits show, my favourite segment was arabian nights. I think that's what it was called.

Sunday is fine for me. What time precisely? after 6:00 Pm shouldn't be a problem for me.

You wouldn't happen to know of this book series, would you?

They don't appear to be in English, alas, but I figured you might have at least heard of them.

Late 90s, early 2000s, but we never had satellite TV growing up so Cartoon Network &c was extremely very off the cards. I only remember one specific cartoon from my childhood, and not for good reasons: the aptly named Butt-Ugly Martians. It was a very early 3D-animated series about... I'm not quite sure exactly. Humans and Martians living together and this causing, uh, shenanigans? Somehow? Maybe? Eh, whatever. The point is, it was stupid and had a horrible theme song and the character design was ugly to the point of actively poisonous. My childhood's cartoons kinda sucked.

What did not suck, however, was the live-action stuff. Shoebox Zoo, Black Hole High, Aquila, The Ghost Hunter, Bernard's Watch, those are the things I remember. I mean, I might even count Raven, even though that was technically a game show (think high-fantasy obstacle courses with the presenter who made me realise I was into men). This was my childhood, and I think it stuck. Sure, I watched a ton of my dad's Supermarionation stuff, and even looked up some myself; sure, I watched my mum's favourite kids shows, like the works of Oliver Postgate and Small Films. I love them, and they formed me. But the weird, short-lived live-action shows on CBBC and CITV in the early-to-mid-2000s? Those were mine, in a way that the others weren't. They'd been... pre-owned, in a way. Examined and vetted and sanctioned for consumption. The live-action shows, for all their (very, very many) faults, were something I got to first. I loved them all the more for that, and a part of me always will love them, as long as I live.

Oh, and they brought back Raven with Angela Toussaint as the second Raven (with James Mackenzie's iconic character and capital-L Look being kept on as the Raven Of Old), and I am EXTREMELY HERE FOR IT. Extremely. Here. For it.



Do you understand now.

I can't get you dinosaurs. I can, however, tell you (and remind hS!) that Rohirrim rode on mammoths and the White City was a gargantuan stepped pyramid.

This theory is completely bananas and I don't care, it's the only time I've had something useful to contribute to a Tolkien discussion. =]

How many people here have seen that abomination Star Trek: Discovery?

If so, did you like it (for whatever inconceivable reason)?

Alternatively, how many people have seen the Orville, and how many have enjoyed it so far?

hS… it is so nice to be friends with people who are nerds. This made me laugh really hard in a good way when I saw it the other morning. Worldbuilding is the part of writing I struggle with most, so this Lot Of Words is lovely; thank you.

I’ll have to make a separate thread for my Hobbit project at some point, I think! It’s a bit long and kind of tangential to this current topic, but I am very interested to see what people feel about cutting various elements and how that might affect things as a whole. I need to do a proper writeup of how timelines intersect on various plots first so I can show what things are giving me issues and why.

Going back to something you said in your earlier post, I’m intrigued by the fact that the entire city has a rise of 700 feet. I’ve lived in places where that sort of elevation change is the difference between rain and snow! (Or, rainy pavement and ice.) It makes me wonder if there are architectural differences in the lowest level vs. the higher ones. I’m not sure how cold Gondor gets, but for a chuckle I looked into it a bit and it does appear those suckers people at the top might have freezing temps when people don’t at the bottom, but only by a margin of a few degrees: https://www.onthesnow.com/news/a/15157/does-elevation-affect-temperature

One of the things I love most about the idea of shops being scattered throughout the city is this idea that each circle might in a sense have its own microcosm. They could each have their own personality, and this might imply some amusing rivalries between circles. It also helps me make sense of how so many people could make a living; if they generally do their shopping on their own level, there would be more room for people of the same trade to run a successful business.

It strikes me that, if the bridges across from one side of the road to the other were wide enough, they might have shops on them as well, like Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Narrower ones might have stalls instead (or just people standing there waving things in your face).

All your ideas about markets are making me want to grab some copies of the Dinotopia books, which have some gorgeous depictions of markets in warmer-climate cities. (Also dinosaurs--a clear bonus, if not applicable here.) I might go to the bookstore later this weekend and see what artbooks I can find about markets and trade. If there’s anything that looks promising I’ll post it here.

I’m a visual person and you have no idea how useful it is to have the visuals you’ve dug up! I was trying to use stills from the movies, or, even worse, squinting at WETA minis because they seem to be the only comprehensive 3D versions of the city with a 45-degree or so view I could even find on the internet without knowing where to look. Obviously neither of those is a very good way of figuring street layouts.

Also… “Pippin’s sister the political assassin” may be my favorite thing I’ve learned out of this entire discussion of things I’m happy to have learned. And I am utterly delighted by hobbits having piggyback rides, especially as a means of settling a score.

Hello!! I remember that name :D

Sedan chairs! I like that idea. It's versatile enough that you can have simpler litters for everyday folk or stretchers for triage situations, and then have fancier enclosed chairs for the higher classes. (Not that I imagine the actual royalty of Minas Tirith using them, but perhaps some of the more grasping nobles...)

It's nice to see you too! I'm amazed there are still people here from back then!