The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

This is one of the rare occasions when someone's said that I haven't made SPaG errors, so it's nice to see my writing's improved over the years! I've been practicing. ;)

That last bit with Lilac hugging her shield was my favorite part of this mission to write; it was in fact one of the first things I typed for it, since to me it really sells Lilac's acceptance that she's not the same as canon!Vi. Also, the arrow was in fact not connected to the scene dividers, being instead based on a literal take on a choice of words in the fic itself. It would've been interesting to weaponize the dividers at one point lol, but I couldn't find any room. Oh well, maybe in a future mission...

Hopefully 2019 will give me more opportunities to write more missions! God knows I could use a ton of those lately... X'D

Aka I didn't catch any odd SPaG mistakes, everyone's voices were distinct, and I felt that Lilac's dramatic arc was executed with proper taste. ^^

The best bits were the recurring arrows - or rather, the scene dividers and then the decisive arrow! - and the hugging-the-shield scene at the end.

Here's to the new year, and new missions!

I'm still wondering just what on earth Ri2 is doing, mind, but that's neither here nor there.

For the last few months, I’ve been re-watching the original four seasons of Samurai Jack, and finally got to watch the new fifth season, which I finished today. It’s quite an exciting moment for me, actually. I’m not sure I realized how much I wanted a conclusion to the series until I got down to those final five episodes . . . I’m not going to touch too heavily on the older seasons; I mostly want to focus on the final one.

Spoilers follow for Samurai Jack.

seasons one through four
Samurai Jack really is unique among media. Saying that it’s a cartoon really doesn’t do justice to the series or its creators. While a lot of the episodes of the early seasons did tend toward the more cartoonishly silly, a lot of them are significantly more serious in tone. SJ is an example of a series in visual medium that really couldn’t exist in any other; it relies too much, and makes too good use of, presenting image to the audience. Color, lighting and motion combine with the musical score and the voice acting to create a unique emotional experience for the viewer, and I don’t think any other existing tv show has tried so hard to do so. (I shudder to attempt a PPC mission in this continuum; I don't think I could do the mood justice at all.)

season five
This season was quite a trip. In retrospect, I think I wish the entire series had been done in serial style like this, even though it might have lost us some good episodes. After the decade-plus of wait, it was really nice to have a streamlined plot arc to follow on through this season.

Knowing that this season had been made for Adult Swim (cartoon network’s NSFW nighttime programming for not-children), I was a little worried that the tone would be too far-removed from what I remembered in my teen years. This fear was quickly allayed by the introduction of Scaramouche, a robot assassin with a silly voice that can telepathically move objects through music. He was just the sort of nonsensical one-off robot bad guy we tended to see in the original run, and it was comforting to know the show wasn’t going for grimdark.

I loved all the more direct call-backs to characters and locations from the original run, too. I especially love that so many of the people Jack had rescued over the years arrived in the final episode to rescue him, too. It really underlined for me the real conflict of the setting: not Jack vs. Aku, but hope vs. Aku. With Aku ruling over Earth for so many centuries, nearly everyone other than Jack had grown up in a world polluted by his power, that acceptance of his rule became one of his primary support structures. The turning of the tide of opinion against Aku thanks to Jack’s work was something that got touched on occasionally in the original seasons, but is very strong in season five.

Aku’s voice . . . I feel like I’m being unfair, but I can’t help how I feel. The original voice actor, Mako, passed away in between seasons four and five. The VA they got to replace Mako . . . does a really good job, considering what a unique performance it was, but it’s just not quite there. The new voice certainly has the gravelly register of the original, but not the range of cadence. Aku sounds more bored and depressed all the time—and granted, he spends a lot of this scene in such a mood, but there are more triumphant moments for Aku when his voice needed to be higher pitched, and it just can’t get there. I know it’s unavoidable, but it’s still disappointing.

It was interesting and surprising to see the depths to which the writers were willing to send Jack’s character. He had nearly always been so stoic during the show. Seeing his angry personality manifesting as a hallucination, and the literal specter of his failure to fulfill his goal, really drove home a sense of how the years with no time portal and no sword have worn away at his patience and hope.

I recognize the role that Ashi played in the plot of this season, but I’m not a fan of the romance that developed between her and Jack. As an asexual person, one of my favorite things about the show all these years was the complete lack of romantic plot in it. I just didn’t get any benefit from that aspect of season five, and it especially felt like it slowed down the third quarter of the season. It almost made for a rather pointless slap in the face at the very end, when Ashi fades from existence as a result of Aku’s past destruction during her marriage to Jack. It gets a little confusing, because if Ashi had never existed, Jack could never have gone back to change history in the first place, so it feels like she needed to continue existing? Maybe that’s the reason for the delay?

That also leads into the next weirdness: the realization that all those friends who rallied to Jack’s aid in the final episode, now have never met him at all. I wonder if Jack’s memories of being in the future will fade just like Ashi did? Even so, I think Jack would content in knowing that he made the world a better place for all those lives, even if they’ll never actually know him or what he did.

—doctorlit, scratching a nostalgia itch

“You need to bring your best if you’re going to beat the samurai. And the best parts of you . . . are spoilers!” “You need to bring your best if you’re going to beat the samurai. And the best parts of you . . . are spoilers!” “You need to bring your best if you’re going to beat the samurai. And the best parts of you . . . are spoilers!”

Another thing I really love is the old stop-motion Christmas movies made by Rankin-Bass. This'll sound incongruous until you read what I mean by this, but this one in particular's even got an elemental war in it. Check it out.

https://christmas-specials.fandom.com/wiki/TheYearWithoutaSantaClaus

And here's both of the musical numbers relevant to said elemental war (warning, it may seem a little Uncanny Valley since you're not used to it): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGlPnAiCk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGlPnA_iCk

Hehe, seem relatable?

(I totally want to draw this. So can you tell me what your ideal snow queen outfit would look like, so I can doodle some Board humor wrapped up in an obscure Christmas reference? :P)

-Twistey

You didn't make that one fireproof! Haha!

And to Edward, what if I throw in a nice, pocket-sized flamethrower to make that nightmarish mission easier to end?

*A decoy gasps.*

Don't worry, brothers, I took it out of one of the defective ones. We don't like a defect in this business, ja?

*The decoy nods.*

Keep digging.

*The decoys are getting close to breaking through the floor.*

-Twistey

Since last year's NYGE didn't pan out so well, you know what this means... It's time to start a new one! So without further ado, here be the rules:

ADMISSION AND SETUP:
1. You need to have Permission and at least two agents to enter this event. You don't have to have the teams participate in their entirety, either - any one of your agents can opt out based on whatever's most convenient for you.
2. All Boarders and agents will be going in basically blind - meaning that nobody will know who sent what until all the gifts have been opened! Hence, in order to enter, send me an e-mail (my address is clickable) with your attending agents and which gift each will bring. This may be either a "souvenir" from a mission you've published previously, or just something they happen to have that they want to give away. As soon as you've sent the e-mail, reply to this post with the word "Sent" and no message content, so everyone will know who's participating.
3. For the sake of organization, I will take just four or five other Boarders for this year's event, so the first five Boarders to submit applications will be the ones attending.
4. Anyone with Permission can host this event. One of their agents must serve as an in-universe host for this event, but all agents are required to participate as players, including the host. I will confirm who the host will be if and when anyone steps forward - otherwise, Falchion will be the host this year. (My other participating agents will be my DIC and DMS-VG teams, but no other agents of mine will be participating, for some very spoilery reasons.)

EVENT RULES:
5. Once everything's been set up, the Boarder volunteering the event host will set up an introductory post on the T-Board for this event. The most important rule: NOBODY MUST KNOW WHAT THE GIFTS ARE UNTIL THEY'VE OPENED THEM. All of the gifts will be wrapped and put in a big pile at the start of the game.
6. Once I've tallied the full list, I'll provide a list of the players, and a list of the gifts, but not a list of who sent what. The starting player will then be selected at random. Then when that player opens a gift, the agent who submitted it must speak up and confirm that they were the one who did so. Then that agent is the next to play! Thus, in general, the person who will play during each turn is the one who volunteered the gift revealed during the previous turn.
7. For each turn, the agent currently in play can either choose a gift from the pile (I'll provide the full list of gifts on the Posting Board) or, if others before them have already chosen gifts, they can "steal" a gift from the previous owner. A gift can be stolen up to twice; after that, it is locked to the agent it's ended up with, and cannot be stolen again. Note also that if a gift is stolen from any agent, THEY CANNOT STEAL IT BACK.
8. The game ends once everyone has received a gift. Since the first agent cannot steal, he/she will be given the choice to steal after everyone else has played.

Once again, if anyone wishes to participate, just send me an e-mail with the agents planned to be involved and the gifts they'll bring. Let's hope it works out for real this coming year!

In the meantime, after over two years of not being able to write a single mission, I decided to finally get off my tail this past week and put one under Lilac's belt. So here's a healthy dose of "Tunnel Vision", wherein she is led by Falchion and Sarah into a Team Fortress 2/The Incredibles crossover and ends up facing an existential nightmare. Enjoy, guys!

(BTW, this mission doesn't count towards the countdown to Operation: [REDACTED], because it's an immediate follow-up to the aftermath of said operation - though without spoilers pertaining to it, don't worry.)

Now, onto 2019!

And I’m running out of ideas now. My snow army is probably useless now, but there’s no sense in wasting all my effort building them. Snow army, attack!

Edward, if you accept that offer, I will find the nastiest badfic I can which isn’t already claimed...

You already did that with the whole “princess of the unicorns” thing. That’s our forthcoming first mission.

I will make you go through every chapter of that thing, not just the something-teen you managed.

Well, the idea of coming back from death is very tempting, but so is the idea of all my missions being absolutely nightmarish. And I do have ways of escaping death, even if I can’t outrun it forever....

...give me some time to make up my mind.

In the meantime, I think I may need to get out of here...

*starts building snow car*

(You catch me out with Wolfenstein 3D stuff, I’ll catch you out with

I gave up partway through the fifth series. I think reading The Apprentice’s Quest was my first encounter with the fact that not all published work is brilliant.

Unfortunately what I tried to write in response, as you can tell from that Prologue, didn’t exactly turn out that way. Your fic looks acceptable by those standards!

Some folks are still playing, but I'm out because my headphones are making my ears hurt, so here are links to the histories of the first four games. NSFW and NSFB, investigate at your own risk. ^^

<a href="https://pretendyoure.xyz/zy/metrics/game/pyx-315415370144338915451">Game 1

<a href="https://pretendyoure.xyz/zy/metrics/game/pyx-315415370144338897822">Game 2

<a href="https://pretendyoure.xyz/zy/metrics/game/pyx-315415370144338939511">Game 3

<a href="https://pretendyoure.xyz/zy/metrics/game/pyx-31541537014433_8956713">Game 4

~Neshomeh

Just a little, though. While it does help to have a realistic or less-used portrayal of the trope, seeing something you've seen before can make you start predicting what's going to happen next, which in turn detaches you from the story. Unless it's satire, in which case you end up loving it more.

That's why, when my writer friends use common tropes, I warn them to be careful on not just how they handle these things, but, yes, how many they use.

-Twistey

Pah! That's what I like about puppets! They don't feel pain or cold!

*We continue digging*

Oh, and Edward, I think you'd be most interested in a 1-Up, which gives you the chance to come back from death one time. Over in Wolfenstein, that's no big deal, but in continua where you only have one... Good deal, ja?

-Twistey

For one thing, I've recently had to often make the choice of whether to write/create in some other way or to read during my free time, and I'm definitely biased towards the writing side.

Another thing is, the series... the mega-series... no, the franchise is intimidatingly long.

And frankly, though I love the world-building, I kind of lost interest in the plot and characters. I don't know why, I just did.

But I still look through its fandom from time to time, because, as I said before, I love the world-building.

-Twistey

Game is here and lasts as long as there are enough people to play! Password is Jingle.

Feel free to suggest new cards in this thread, too!

~Neshomeh

Its also interesting to consider the differences between works in similar genres, like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.

Last 5 or so hours gone. But you really should've known better than to tell her. Let her maim you a bit.

She was alone; after the disaster that had been Halloween Edward had point-blank refused to come. That suited her, as she was able to socialise without her embarrassing brother tagging along and annoying everyone.

Kat wore a simple pale blue dress made of light material and fairly unremarkable black shoes - not high heels, they were far too uncomfortable for her.

Glancing around, she saw that there weren't many people (or other sentient beings) there yet. She wandered over to one of the tables and picked up an orange paper hat, which she placed carefully on her head. It was a little big but would probably stay balanced if she didn't move around too much. She considered a plain white mask but decided against it. Kat preferred to be recognised.

She wandered over to the food and drink table, making up her mind that she'd have a few snacks and maybe a drink and wait to see if anyone wanted to talk to her.

Not going to post the whole fic as it's fifty-four pages long, but here's the prologue.

Prologue
In a clearing in the middle of a lush green forest was an old, large rock, bleached white from many moons of sun. Four huge oaks stood around it, old and withered, but immensely tall. There was a rustle in the nearby bushes, and a flame-coloured tom padded out. He padded to the rock and leaped onto it with his muscular hind legs. He seemed to be waiting for something. A moment later a small black-and-white tom with a very long tail padded out of the bushes.
“Tallstar! Good to see you again!” mewed the flame-coloured cat. Tallstar nodded.
“And you, Firestar. Have you seen the others?” Firestar shook his head. Just then, a huge white tom with jet black paws joined them, dwarfing his companion, a spotted she-cat.
“Blackstar! Leopardstar! What kept you?” asked Tallstar. Blackstar sighed.
“Stonefur came along. He wanted to know what we were doing.” The bushes rustled once more, and a grey-and-white tom joined them.
“Sorry I’m late,” he mewed, “but it’s a long journey.” Firestar raised his tail in greeting.
“Cloudstar, it’s moons since I last saw you!” Cloudstar purred.
“You too. Without you, I wouldn’t be here.”
A fifth cat joined them. He was almost as large as Blackstar, but a dark, mud-splattered, grey.
“Greetings. I meant to arrive sooner, but I lost track of the time.”
“Does any cat here know when moonhigh is?” Blackstar mewed sarcastically.
“Typical ShadowClan!” This was the first time Leopardstar had spoken.
Another cat came through the bushes, small, blind and ugly. He was followed by a badger.
“At last!” mewed Blackstar. “Now can we start?” The ugly cat, Rock, nodded.
“Six moons have passed since the Great Battle.” The seven cats and the badger nodded.
“Clans have enjoyed moons of peace.” , the badger murmured.
“But a new evil is rising.” mewed Rock. “Five Clans and Tribe will be in danger.” They padded through the bushes to another clearing, in the centre of which was a large, clear pool.
“One cat alone can save Clans.” growled the badger. The seven cats and the badger stared into the misty depths of the pool. For a moment the water shimmered, and then the cats and the badger could see, in the depths, a light brown she-cat and a russet-brown tom curled up in the hollow in the roots of an old elm tree.
“She is the one.” The group all nodded.
“Bright leaves can halt darkness.” mewed Rock. “I will tell Jayfeather.” The badger nodded. “That is good. All six must know. Tell Willowshine, Kestrelflight, Echosong, Littlecloud and Stoneteller.
Rock mewed, “Each leader should tell their own healer. Firestar? You must explain it to her.” Then the group merged into the bushes, and the pool shimmered once more, and then returned to clear water, as if nothing had happened.



Apologies for the lack of paragraph breaks; I'm reproducing the original format. *cringes madly*

Agents allergic to asprin take Suebuprofen instead, and it's never been said exactly how that works, so she may be in the clear to take it as a substitute without suspension of disbelief getting in the way. She could also go for an Obliviate charm to forget you telling her, or some other memory-fuzzing technique from other canons (There's a trope page for Brain Bleach, if you don't mind far too many options and being distracted from your original purpose for hours on end).

SPaG pretty good, but every so often a sentence that makes me wince... I might dig out some of that Warriors monstrosity I wrote a couple of years ago.

Talking of which, you’re a fellow Warriors fan! How much of it have you read? It seems we have more in common than insanity and a liking for elemental wars...