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I'd not heard of the jelly-amalgam, but it sounds like their kind of thing - a place where all the elements become one, etc etc. Hyperborea also makes a famous appearance in the George MacDonald children's story At the Back of the North Wind, which is... kinda dark, actually.

Also, Wikipedia positively delights in telling us that Hyperborea is the land beyond the North Wind, and the North Wind lived in Thrace (southern Bulgaria), 'therefore Hyperborea indicates that it is a region beyond Thrace'. Yeah, don't stretch yourselves, Greeks. ^_^

hS

Have a fancy gel pen holder for all your fancy gel pens!

-Twistey

That space rock Ultima Thule, as well as Thule the car-mounted storage box company, is named after a fictional, far-northern lost civilization.

Originally named Hyperborea, meaning "above the north wind", the idea was invented by Greek writers. It was stated to be a place where the boundaries between land, sea, and sky blurred, and instead there was this weird stuff that was kind of like Jello, which it was hard to move in. (Like... what?)

Unfortunately, around the early twentieth century, the concept (which I'm not sure when it got renamed Thule, but it was in fact also called Ultima Thule) was pretty badly hijacked. (Use your imagination.) This is why it appears in the 2009 Wolfenstein reboot. Out of those who currently believe that Thule exists, many of them are of this ideology.

However, another large number of Thule-believers are folks from various countries in Europe who insist that the Greeks were talking about their nation.

TL;DR: Humans are weird. Nothing new.

-Twistey

But yes. If you DO want that, let me know. I can help.

Woo, Francium. ...I ran out of things to say about this, so let me talk about something else.

Here in the PPC, we have a large number of MMO fans. Personally, MMOs make me feel like I'm killing myself slowly. I wish they didn't, they look like an awful lot of fun, but sadly they are not for me q.q.

However, there IS an MMO related thing that I'd recommend to even the MMO intolerant like me, and that thing is called Log Horizon.

Log Horizon is a anime and (actually officially translated for once) novel series that can roughly be described as fulfilling the promises Sword Art Online made and then some. A collection of gamers are transported into a fantasy world that veeery closely resembles their favorite MMO which they were logged into before they showed up. Okay, so, race to get home, if you die in the game you die for real, and all that jazz, right?

No.

Log Horizon is more interesting than that. It's about taking an anarchic group of people in a horrible situation and the political gambles and underhanded dealings it takes to turn that into a society. Especially when the world operates by MMO rules (actual MMO rules. As in, the author is obviously a dedicated MMO player), and nobody can die. And the NPCs are real people now, of course. Who most definitely can die, and are experiencing tensions with their immortal neighbors from the start.

And of course, our protagonist can do the Gendo Ikari Glasses Flash™, because he's a very manipulative man. The point is, Log Horizon is good stuff.

In other anime news, The Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, my favorite Fate-verse work you can't actually easily read because it's been translated terribly, has now got an Anime adaption, which is currently airing. So... yey. I dunno how many of you will care, but I'm happy.

In videogame news, over the past few months Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has become free-to-play. If you're interested in joining the world's second-largest Valve-operated saltmine, you can check that out. But protip: bring some friends. You can play with publics, but it's less fun because most of them are... awful. Not gonna lie.

Also, it has a Battle Royale mode now, which is apparently actually fun, I wouldn't know.

In videogame not-news... have you ever wondered why WASD is the control scheme that we all use? It seems random, and... it was. In another universe, we could all be using ESDF (like Gabe Newell prefers), or WADX, or even SZXC.

So what made WASD win? E-sports. Namely, the one of the first ever e-sports champions, before that term even existed: Dennis "Thresh" Fong. For the full story, check out this article from PC Gamer.

Oh, in actual gaming news, Erik Wolpaw is confirmed to be contracting for Valve, even if he's not back at the company. Speaking as someone who believes that Wolpaw's one of the best comedy writers in the industry, I think this is good. Maybe. It depends on whether Valve will actually DO something.

I'm totally gonna get back to writing. Soon. I swear. Lessons 2 is only months away. :-P

No, seriously, my schedule's clearing up soon, so that may well be possible.

*throws confetti and extra punctuation*

Nothing I could call'consistent', anyway. I was trying to rhyme it with the previous line, hence the extra syllable, but you're right, it doesn't sound good. I was hoping that it would help the flow of the poem if there were some rhymes in it, but it's kind of half-assed if I'm not doing a proper rhyme scheme. I'll rewrite it as soon as I grt the chance.

... that it uses literally everything, whether absolute, relative, or constructed-on-the-fly-by-Javascript. (I admit I'm not positive of that, but I wouldn't surprise me.)

A solution, however, is already in the works. :)

hS

I can dig up my absolute-to-relative link conversion regexes so that you don't have to change the links by hand.

Assuming, of course, that the site currently uses absolute links...

... I can't see a rhyme scheme anywhere. What's it supposed to be rhyming with, and is there a consistent rhyme scheme through the poem?

hS

Today I turn 24, a more mathematically pleasing number than 23 that still fits neatly into what I like to call the "adult cat" phase of life; that is, I can kind of look out for myself but I should still have someone making sure I'm doing OK on a regular basis.

I already got a set of fancy gel pens from my parents. They know me so well :D

-Born 2931.
-Father dies 2933. Fostered in Rivendell as Estel. Journeys with the El-twins.
-2941: Quest of Erebor (book).
-2952 (age 21): learns true name, receives Narsil. Meets Arwen for the first time and falls in love with her. Heads into the Wild.
-2953 (age 22): Misses the last meeting of the White Council.
-2956 (age 25): meets Gandalf, visits the Shire, becomes known as Strider.
-2957 (age 26): begins journeying as Thorongil, heading to Rohan. Theoden is 11. Thengel has held the throne for four years. Saruman begins fortifying Isengard in this timeframe. Theodwyn, mother of Eomer and Eowyn, will be born in 2963.
-2958: Quest of Erebor, assuming the timeline is shunted forward 17 years by losing them in FotR-M. This matches up with B5A-M, where he's already known as Strider (per Gandalf).
-ca. 2970 (age 39): moves on from Rohan to Gondor, eventually working his way up to Ecthelion's most trusted counsellor. Denethor is 40 - yes, they're only a year apart! - and in 2976 will marry Finduilas, who will be 26. Boromir will be born in 2978.
-2979? (age 48): attacks Umbar and destroys its fleet. Refuses to return to Minas Tirith, but journeys on into South Gondor and heads for the Mountains of Shadow. Spends a while learning about Sauron's plans, then heads back towards Rivendell and enters Lorien around New Year, (ie, ca. April 1st).
-2980 (age 49): Aragorn and Arwen wander Lorien together for a season, and plight their troth at midsummer.
-3001 (age 70): Begins the Hunt for Gollum.

So there's possibilities there! You start with his 21st birthday (March 1st, 2952), when Elrond tells him his name and gives him his sword and ring. Then he meets Arwen, falls head-over-heels in love, and goes out into the wild when she doesn't return his affections.

You get a couple of episodes of Ranging, then have an adventure with Gandalf in the Shire. Gandalf prompts him to go south, noting that perhaps Elrond will look favourably on such a move, and we head off to Rohan.

Rohan and Gondor are both going to mingle politics with war, so we need to find a way to distinguish them. Remembering that Pippin contrasts kindly Theoden with harsh Denethor, we can treat Rohan in a 'family I never had' way, with Aragorn acting like an older cousin to Theoden and baby Theodwyn. They face incursions of goblins and Huorns from the north (which gives Aragorn a chance to hear tales of the Witch of the Golden Wood), and negotiate with Saruman.

Then on to Gondor, where Aragorn meets a very different reception. Ecthelion is wary of him; Denethor is actively hostile. He winds up in exile in Dol Amroth (where Angelimir rules, Adrahil has 15 years on Aragorn, and Imrahil is a teenager). We can probably tie his return to Finduilas' trip to marry Denethor - perhaps Aragorn thwarts an attack by the corsairs, earning him his place back in Minas Tirith?

So Aragorn grows closer to the Steward, though not to his son. For dramatic reasons, we're going to put his explorations of the South and East in here, having him vanishing and reappearing at odd times. That means the third-to-last episode can be 'gasp, a fleet from Umbar, but where is Thorongil?', the penultimate episode is 'haha, Thorongil smashes the corsairs', and the final episode can be his journey to Lorien and his reunion with Arwen, a sort of farewell tour of the first season, wrapping up the personal themes.

It does have possibilities, to be sure.

hS

The structure of the poem is pretty experimental. The accent in 'condemned' was more a rhyme thing, but it probably sounds different in my reading than yours (I learned English from the internet, so my pronunciation is a cobbled-together version of about a dozen different accents). You're right though, some rewriting is definitely needed. I was more worried about the atmosphere, so I'm glad I got that one right ^_^

I don't even have the knowledge to figure out what I'd need to know to understand this, but despite never really talking to him, I fondly remember Pieguy for inventing the TCDA.

(Ugh, and the Twisted Skein went down again... I really need to sort out a permanent fix for that.)

hS

Our good old friend Pieguy has published a thing! He wrote the practice adventure scenario in the quickstart guide for a new tabletop game called Relics: A Game of Angels. It's only available in PDF form at the moment. It's one of those "pay what you want" scenarios. (I'm honestly not sure off-hand if Pieguy himself gets any money from that link.)

—doctorlit, collecting what former PPCers produce

If they explicitly link this to the movies - Sir Ian or Orli appearing seem the most likely ways, or Agent Elrond - then contradicting those movies is going to jar quite hard. I can see a partial recasting going very sideways - 'why does Arwen look different when Gandalf looks the same?!' - but also if they do things that would break the plot of the films.

The funniest thing will be if they do something book-accurate which disagrees with Jackson. How about black walls around Minas Tirith? Or accurate distances between various points?

hS

I think you've done a good job on the atmosphere, but the structure seems to have been developing as you wrote. The last 3 verse pairs have the same form: her lines start and end with a 'Father' invocation, while his all start with 'daughter'. You haven't quite stuck to that in the first two verse-pairs, and I think it would make it stronger if you did.

I'm also unclear whether there's supposed to be any rhythm in there. The accented 'condemnéd' suggests there is - ie, that you needed an extra syllable in that line to make it fit - but I can't find one by reading it.

hS

We're back! Well, it's quiet, I figured the place needed some pepping up. (Not sure whether it's more depressing to imagine bustling conversation in the Discord, or to imagine it's all gone silent over there too...)

As always when discussing the news, please remember that not everyone will agree with you. You're free to state, discuss, and defend your viewpoint (provided it does not violate the Constitution), but please don't use that fact to attack others.

Fandom News



A new World of Warcraft NPC

As we all know, Stan Lee died late last year, putting an end to a career that most people thought of as a continuous string of cameos. Except it didn't put an end to it, because the next World of Warcraft patch includes one.

'Stanley', an elderly man with a very familiar looking face, apparently wanders around the Keep in Stormwind City - and yes, on entering the throne room, he reportedly exclaims "Excelsior!" So that's adorably silly.

Old News



Marguerite Perey

80 years ago on Wednesday, Marguerite Perey, French chemist/physicist and protege of Marie Curie herself, discovered a new element. Realising that the reported radiation emitted by actinium didn't make a lot of sense, she purified some for herself (from samples of lanthanum, which she may have purified from uranium ore...) and did an intensive study of its decay. She realised that the reported radiation was actually from actinium's decay product, a brand new element she named francium (after, y'know, France).

She went on to become the first woman elected to the French Academy of Sciences... and then died of cancer in 1975, because working with radioactive elements is seriously bad for your health.

New News



Images from Ultima Thule: Colour & 3D

On January 1st, New Horizons - the probe that discovered the heart on Pluto back in 2015 - performed its second close flyby, of a Kupier belt object named (486958) 2014 MU69, and nicknamed Ultima Thule. This is the furthest object ever visited by a spaceship, and due to being out in the cold dark outer solar system, is basically unchanged since the solar system formed.

Ultima turned out to be a reddish contact binary - two objects which fell gently against each other and stuck like that. Comparisons with snowmen and BB-8 have done the rounds, though the best response was Mira McKinnon on Twitter: "MU69 is Moo, our little space-cow".

We should be seeing more results out of Ultima Moo soon - there's been a brief break as New Horizons swung behind the sun, but we'll be back on track soon.

PPC News



A conference for course coordinators and other non-canonical management of OFUs, held yesterday in the Small Auditorium at PPC HQ, had to be postponed indefinitely after a fire broke out in the room. Reports - by which we mean a hassled-looking Dr. Huinesoron of OFUDisc - say that a friendly competition between OFUM's mini-Balrogs and OFUN's mini-Dragons got out of hand, possibly with intervention from OFUO's mini-Furies.

Reports that agents residing on the floor above the auditorium are trapped in their missions until DoSAT can be bothered to fix their consoles should definitely be ignored.

Non News



The Holy Order of the Bumblebee

Nesh has already seen this one, but I don't think anyone else has... a party of four clerics. What could go wrong?

The Order are actually parodies of Kaitlyn at different stages of her life, from 'scary-smart kid', past 'rebellious teenager', through 'hassled manager', up to 'bone-weary student'. There's at least one more picture in the works, but no story other than what you see in the image.

hS

I've written my first ever poem in English (I've written poetry before, but English isn't my first language), and honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about it. I'd really appreciate it if someone took a look at it and gave me some feedback. Warnings for a scary atmosphere and implied nasty things, but overall nothing too explicit.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xOeCzMBdDg0gdPAneCrv_sP6qk3oZ5KfAXb5ZiL8k48/edit?usp=sharing

"Some species have their amino acids backwards from humans — and hani — so they can't eat the same food."

"Forgetting about that is a great way to have a bad time."

“Guess that’s okay, then.” She placed the cake on her plate and looked around for a drink. She smiled when she spotted some Butterbeer: she’d taken a liking to it on missions. As she grabbed a plastic cup, she thought of a question. “What’s... amino acid chirality? I have a vague idea what an amino acid, but I’ve never heard of chirality.”

“I have a bad feeling - your laugh sounds suspiciously evil.”

Meanwhile I’m buried under snow somewhere. Wait - I just had an idea. Fireproof avalanche, anyone? Thing is, the Board’s flat...

*hands a 1-up and a bottle of serum to Edward*

Hehe. You're welcome.

-Twistey

Should we put that on the Unclaimed Badfic page, then, so that Improbabilities can make said comeback? Does anyone have agents in that department?

-Twistey

P.S. Hehe, for my next installment of this series of posts talking about badfic I wrote when I was younger, I totally want to post a similar fic I had written earlier that's a lot worse. That one would make a DMS mission, I'm sure of it.