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For absolutely no reason whatsoever.

There's actually a fair bit of nudity in Tolkien. Nienor, of course, but also Saeros (who Turin set to run naked like a beast) and maybe Beren and Finrod ('naked' there might just mean 'exposed'). And then over in LotR we have 'run naked over the grass' from Bombadil, and naked Frodo in Cirith Ungol... okay, it's not Game of Thrones, but it's there.

What it isn't, ever, is sexualised. Actually, I'm wrong about him agreeing with you, because it's not even aesthetic- it's always symbolic, either of innocence or vulnerability.

I don't think that's just a stylistic choice, either. There's a page of sketches by Tolkien of home life at Gypsy Green, including several of Edith (from behind, Tolkien hated faces), and one of then clearly shows her bare to the waist while washing up:



I dunno... put that together with the fact that when he does talk about sex, Tolkien often tends to the poetic (he literally has a poetic Qenya term for the act), and the fact that this Catholic family only had 4 kids (my dad's parents had 9), and stopped immediately after the first girl... has the idea of Tolkien being asexual been floated before? Because the argument is there, for sure.

hS

This was actually quite an interesting new take on PPC training! Simulating field missions would allow for faster training overall, I think, cutting out some of the "book learning" prep time before agents get thrust into their first actual badfic. I like that it actually starts the simulation in a phony RC, and I love the implication that DoSAT just used a generator to make up a fake badfic, rather than going to the trouble of trying to accurately digitize an existing badfic.

I feel like Bradbury has a bit of a stronger presence in this story than Gibbs does. I've got a good sense of Bradbury's dutiful outlook, and the value he places on his now defunct rank. Gibbs, though, was pretty quiet throughout the whole piece. In fact, other than his height and one allusion to Yark, his status as a giant lizard person didn't really come across much at all. What does he eat? Is the temperature in HQ at a healthy level for an ectotherm? How weird are human social customs to him? (Not that a human self-relating into a body-ball is a good example of human customs, but it's something that might come up more in a more standard mission.) I do suggest giving Gibbs more of a voice in future stories.

I do like the technician quite a bit, though. I particularly like that she clearly has some bad blood with one of the trainees, but still stays professional and jumps straight into her duty in training them . . . right up until Bradbury mouths off towards her at the end. I'm curious whether her silence is her coming up with a response, or whether she's simply left them in the simulation for a while until they're less argumentative?

Now some technical errors, in reverse-chronological order because that saves the nitpick-y one for last:

In the charge list: "'. . . have unreasonable angst about being special in unclear ways . . .'"
"Have" should be "having" to match the rest of the verbs in the charge list.

"'Let’s hold up on that. People deserve the benefit of the doubt.'"
The line break between this sentence and the bold badfic excerpt that follows it is missing. (I think you want one there, though I could be wrong.)

And finally, in your opening notes, the title Lord of the Rings should technically be The Lord of the Rings. Told you this one was a nitpick!

—doctorlit really wants to see Aragorn, Galadriel and Snape fighting crime together as Green Lanterns now

But it's definitely worth trying at least.

though this one's for Animorphs

(I have not yet opened the bad one)

AKA create and answer your own prompts. To try and limit spam from one or two people, I'd ask that you only suggest 1 prompt each, although unlike last time I won't put a limit on how many prompts overall I'd like.

Good luck!

Novastorme

Ah, that would indeed make sense.

I wasn’t entirely comfortable with at least parts of what I remembered of the PPC, but I’m really glad to see that a) I misremembered some of it and/or b) the culture has deliberately shifted away from those bits.

I just reread TOS, which is very clear about the focus on canon-warping, so I suspect(/half-remember) that the pieces I was less comfortable with were a few of the earlyish spinoffs that lost track of that a bit. I’m glad those were, or now are, more solidly outliers.

No, that’s not how I found my way back, though I have seen a post or two about bringing back the citrus scale in light of the Tumblr apocalypse. I actually found my way back because I decided on a whim to go wikiwalking on TVTropes, and found my way to the “Hamster-Wheel Power” article, which lists the PPC under “Web Original” examples: “In the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, electrical power to HQ is provided by generators driven by dead authors spinning in their graves by reason of all the terrible fanfic.”

-Fire

The female form is indeed lovely when rendered thus expertly in soft watercolors.

But definitely not in a pervy way. If you're perving, that's a moral failing on your part, you monster. ^_~

~Neshomeh

I had fun reading this. ^_^

Your characters are suitably quirky, and I generally enjoyed the dynamic between your characters, although I must say I'd like to see it explored more: Gibbs and Bradbury have very different backgrounds, and seeing them bounce off of one another (and seeing how Gibbs defies expectations, given his rather strange home continuum) would be fun.

Errant notes:

-DoSAT agents being irate. Yes.
-You actually *do* need to tell everyone that your mission is rated for explicit language. We're PG unless otherwise noted, sooo...
-I wanna see more description out of you. All those incoherent perspective shifts and general nonsense no doubt creates a World World that looks like a freaking Escher painting for the agents. I wanna see them coping with that. I want descriptions of the insanity. But then, that could just be me. I like descriptions. :-P
-Your sense of humor is generally really sharp. Try and use that more, develop it out. It was a big part of the draw of the mission.

Yeah, I remember you - congrats on figuring things out! You’re not the only one who’s changed a few things since then. As applied to me specifically nowadays: Gender? Sounds fake, but okay.

Yeah, I think that’s a definition I’m more comfortable with. Interesting words, indeed. ;)

Which, I like to think, may explain our confusion! We've historically tended to incline progressive and feminist around here, which may seem ironic to other corners of the Internet, but I reckon that's why we've survived. IMO, if you look at the Original Series, it's clear that the PPC was not founded on the idea that "female OC = bad," but rather "messing up the world you claim to be a fan of = bad," and the prevalence of female OCs at the heart of it is a byproduct of demographics, as I noted above.

Not that the PPC has always been a shining bastion of pure ideals or whatever, because that ain't the case, but I'm with hS: we've come a long way since the beginning, and those of us that have been here the longest have worked hard to put the focus on the objective quality of the writing, not the sex of the OCs, and especially not the writers.

BTW, out of curiosity, did you find your way back here because of the Citrus Scale? I hear a screenshot of that page from our wiki has been going around Tumblr lately.

~Neshomeh

Thank you!

I think Huinesoron really hit the nail on the head with what I was trying to go for, which was more along the lines that most people are much more likely to call a female character Suvian than a male character. I don’t think I was very clear in how I phrased that, though, since a lot of people seem to have been confused.

(Huh, was that all? Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised either way, whether it was a glitch in the archive or my memory. All I know is that I was here long enough to have memorized the old server address cold - disc.server.com/Indices/199610.html. Then again, I’m just weird like that.)

Yeah, that’s what I was wondering about. Good to know! I’ll have to check out Driftwood (along with, y’know, everything else).

So here's one good and one bad.

The good: This prompt response by Luna LoveWell. Pitch-perfect and hilarious.

The bad: "The Creation of Life" by Mazeline Gerard. A horrifying Severus Snape/Luna Lovegood shipfic that definitely knows what it is doing is wrong and does it anyway. You may commence screaming internally forever.

~Neshomeh

... have you seen the history of art?

"Gentlemen, there are two acceptable subjects for Art. First, there is Religion..."

'See how the Christ Child looks upon the Most Blessed Virgin with adoration and grace!'

"... and second, there is the Classics."

'... she's doing what with a swan?!'

^~

hS

PS: <a href="http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/File:JennyDolfen-NienoruponHaudh-en-Elleth.jpg">This totally applies to Tolkien fanart, too (pretty much NSFW; it's Nienor)

But nah, though, there are some very attractive people doing some really cool stuff in there. >.>

~Neshomeh

If you click on one of the items, it takes you to a sort of movie player, and you can select any frame to stop and look at. Also, some of them have multiple camera angles.

But it's true that it won't give you an example of anything you could possibly want to draw. That's why knowing how things work is important, so you can extrapolate while not bending any bones or joints in impossible ways. ^_^

I also like Joumana Medlej's guides for a simple how-to approach. Her human anatomy collection is all here.

~Neshomeh