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Make it in the form of one of them choose your own story fella thingoes?

I wasn't sure if Twine was easy to use but their own website says 'You don't need to write any code to create a simple story with Twine' and by Jove that's more than enough encouragement for me!


I suppose that doesn't really solve the 'visual' aspect of the visual novel, does it?

Perhaps if we just made the prose really purple. . .

Glad you liked it!

Don't worry, I'm sure the next one won't take a bloody year to get out like this one.

I'm.

I'm sure of it.

Tiny rumbley earthquake fellas.

And thank you, good citizen, for reading.

;)

That has to be the typo I make the most consistently and it makes very little sense.

Perhaps I just have very echoey fingers.


And, uh, cheers? I was sort of hoping it would be fun, but death of the author and all, ay? Whatever works!

I am very strange.

Happy Boardiversary you wrinkly old bean!

Here's to thirty years, eh? Eh?

But I’d say you got them spot-on.

HG

The desert sun was beating down hard and Tiger was beginning to feel like he was melting. He had been a little thirsty for the last few minutes, but it was only now that he realised that he was probably dehydrated.

According to the safety lecture, what he needed to do was to get water as soon as possible and then sit in the shade to recover.

There were two problems with that: he didn’t have any water with him and there was no shade in sight.

He began to mentally curse himself. He had been rather incompetent in several ways: he hadn’t drunk enough water before leaving, he hadn’t taken supplies with him on his spying mission, he hadn’t even prepared for this situation.

And of all the times he could get dehydrated, it just had to be on this stupid training battle his dad had organised.

Not that he saw anything wrong with training battles in principle – a chance to beat his sister was always great – but he didn’t see why they had to be in such inconvenient locations.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he thought through his options. He needed to get water now or else he’d be in serious danger. He couldn’t use a Water-Conjuring Spell (well, he probably could do, but the effort would put him out of the battle) so he had to get back to base and use the supplies.

It seemed a lot further away than he’d remembered, but eventually he saw the little hollow containing a couple of tents which was the base. As he got closer, he could see that something was wrong – one of the tents had collapsed and there was no sign of any of his classmates.

He walked in and saw that whatever had happened was pretty catastrophic – Andy was lying on the ground, “dead”. Of course, no-one really died in these exercises, but Tiger’s dad liked them to maintain as high a level of realism as possible so he wouldn’t be able to talk to Andy.

It was pretty clear what had happened – Holly had paid a visit. It looked as if his carefully laid plan was in ruins, before it had even begun.

The flap of the remaining tent opened and a hand beckoned him in. Tiger crouched down to enter the tent.

Inside it was extremely crowded – his three remaining classmates, Robin, Tim and Matt, were all squashed inside.

“What happened?” asked Tiger quickly. It was Robin who replied.

“The girls came and attacked us as soon as you were gone. We tried to put up a fight, but without you we had no chance and once Holly killed Andy we had to… make a tactical retreat. The thing is, they took all the supplies.”

Tiger groaned. “Even the water? I’m so thirsty!” Having said that, he immediately regretting sounding so whiny.

Robin nodded. “So… Boss…”

“General Lion,” Tiger replied, with his usual insistence on using the proper codenames.

“Sorry – General Lion – what do we do?”

Tiger smiled a little. “Isn’t it obvious? We take the battle to them, and we win it. If they have all the supplies, we just have to win them back.”

Holly wouldn’t expect that – or would she? She’d probably say it was just the kind of reckless thing he’d do and that it was doomed to failure.

On the other hand, they were doomed either way, so they might as well just attack. Tiger got to his feet and marched out of the tent, trying to supress his growing thirst.

Now I would like to read the other chapters :-)

HG

and I can’t say that I had fun; so I guess you did the dark mood right.

One tiny error:
The Onion Grass was a goliath of a Flower who had been been shrunk into a silent, crumpled state by paperwork.

HG

Hermione Granger's secret hobby turns serious when Dumbledore decides to use her as a pawn, a distraction and a weapon in his game of warfare. The famous starlet called Mione G might change the course of the war in many surprising ways.

"Ah, Miss Granger!"

Hermione jumped as the Headmaster's voice echoed through the draughty room. "Professor Dumbledore! I can explain."

"I'm sure you can." Dumbledore strolled into the round chamber, showing no sign of weariness at the long climb he had just made. "Where would you like to start?"

"Er." Hermione pushed a tangle of hair back from her face. "I'm very sorry-"

Dumbledore pulled out a scroll and allowed it to unroll; the end dragged on the floor. "I have a whole list of people who will be quite put out with you," he said amiably. "Professor Sinistra is wondering where her best telescope has gone... Madam Pince is looking for several missing sixth-year Astronomy texts... Mister Filch is convinced there's a student sneaking into the Astronomy Tower... and poor Minerva is bound to be upset that you're using her Time-Turner for unauthorised purposes."

Hermione cringed at each name. "I know, Professor," she said, "but I really needed to... well..."

"The stars are endlessly fascinating, aren't they?" The Headmaster crossed the empty classroom and peeked into the telescope. "You've enhanced the magnificiation quite considerably, haven't you?"

"I needed to be able to see," Hermione muttered. "Hence the-"

"Hence the advanced textbooks, indeed." Dumbledore glanced out of the window, then back through the telescope. "I'm reasonably certain, however, that even the N.E.W.T.s don't cover astrology of extra-solar planets."

"It's not..." Hermione squirmed, then sighed. "It's not astrology," she admitted. "It's... science."

"Oh?" Dumbledore stepped back and studied the third-year thoughtfully. "Ah, yes; I'd quite forgotten you were Muggleborn." He tapped the telescope gently. "So the planets of α Mione are of particular scienteric interest, are they?"

"Scientific," Hermione corrected, then slapped a hand to her mouth in dismay. "Er, sorry, Professor. And no, not them in particular, but..." She took a deep breath, and the words tumbled out. "Muggle scientists discovered extrasolar planets for the first time last year, but they've still only seen a few, and only indirectly, and only around really energetic stars called pulsars, and I thought that with magic I might be able to see better and find out more about them, and... and it turns out α Mione has a dozen different planets, so the seventh one would be called α Mione G, and I liked the... name... Professor."

Dumbledore gave her a long, serious look. Then, abruptly, he straightened up and beamed. "Marvellous!" he proclaimed. "This sort of thing is why we should be encouraging Muggleborn students, you understand; the way you think is simply remarkable. Using magic to enhance science - quite wonderful." He chuckled, and then just as suddenly was serious again. "But you must return all the things you borrowed right away."

"Yes, Professor," Hermione said, stooping to gather up the books. "Sorry, Professor."

"No harm done, Miss Granger." Dumbledore peered through the telescope again, then tugged thoughtfully on his beard. "In fact... you may just have given me an idea."

Hermione looked at him warily. "Professor?"

"Yes, indeed." Dumbledore chuckled again. "Extra-solar astrology - I should have thought of it myself." He slapped a hand onto Hermione's shoulder, causing the books to jump from her hands. "Miss Granger, how would you like to be my secret weapon?"

"Er." Hermione stopped in the act of picking up a thick textbook. "In what sense?"

"The only sense that matters," Dumbledore assured her: "Wizard's chess! Minerva and I have been renovating the board used to protect the Stone, and it's about ready to be used; a horoscope from your α Mione G might be just the thing to tilt the odds in my favour." His eyes twinkled as he regarded the student. "You'd have to play as a pawn, of course - we couldn't have you standing out too much - but I think you and your starlet could change the course of the game in many surprising ways..."

---

Set during the first half of Hermione's third year. The planets of PSR B1257+12 (aka Lich) were discovered early in 1992, the first extrasolar planets confirmed to exist; following the convention of the time, they were numbered from A in order of their distance from the star.

So far as I know, there is no actual star named α Mione, but if there was it would be the brightest star in a constellation called Mione. I'm pretty sure extrasolar astrology isn't taught at Hogwarts, and that Dumbledore has never met a scientor.

Hopefully I've got them both somewhere close to in character; it's been a long time. :)

hS

That’s what I tried^(*) to do: Use every no-permission-required opportunity to write my agents and get helpful feedback from the Board, then distill the character sheets from the stories. The trick is keeping them consistent or showing same character development through stories set in different points of their timeline, or knowing which stories that have been fun to write must be dismissed as uncanonical to get a consistent character sheet. (This doesn’t mean that these stories shouldn’t have been written in the first place; I learnt a lot about my agents and how not to write them by writing parodies of them for the badfic games.) Also, knowing how a character’s experiences formed their personality is more important to me than having a detailed physical description and a complete list of abilities.

I know of at least one other Permission Giver who would read your Permission Prompts first and only then look into your character sheets to check whether they fit or at least don’t contradict what is shown in the prompts, and what other important information is there. We actually don’t need to know every small detail about your prospective agents; we just need to know that they’ll fit in and that we can trust you that you won’t make them overpowered suvians after getting Permission.

Tl;dr: Working from detailed pre-defined character sheets may help many authors to keep their characters consistent, but it’s not an actual requirement for everybody.

^(*) I tried, because after three years of writing my non-permissioned agents and doing other stuff on the Board, some Permission Givers just wanted to give me Permission and didn’t even ask for character sheets. (Apparently, Permission came to me with writer’s block, because now I’m responsible to do it right and write stuff that’s worthy of the PPC. After two more years, my agents still don’t have any canonical stories or character sheets / agent pages on the Wiki.)

HG

... magic Permission Giver hats which I used to animate snowmen to fight for me? I think I remember that.

hS

I will always remember running, very early on, into your DoSAT spinoff, and for all its brevity I've always felt it was very influential. It turned the PPC's tech support from one person into a team that could actually be used in stories, and started the journey of Makes-Things from 'shy techie who's scared of everyone' to the figure who came back from the dead in sheer denial. It also started off a trend of far more interesting department names, and I know some of mine were directly inspired by it - nothing as simple as 'Department of Mary Sues' here, thank you very much!

Here's to fifteen more years.

hS

Well, I've got two more prompts for you today. One inspired by the weather in Britain at the moment, and the other by something from a little while ago. Hope you enjoy, and remember your answers to these prompts doesn't have to contain PPC character, meaning yes, anyone can write them.

Prompt 1: One of your characters gets dehydrated.

Prompt 2: One of your characters is getting coached.

Enjoy!

Novastorme

And now that I've done my submission, I'm going to add a prompt of my own:

love the way you lie

Draco starts to give in to his urges he has built up towards harry. but will it negatively affect his life and what will it do to the both of them in the end? can he keep to his true self or are old habits hard to let go. -DRARRY-

[Prompt 2]

Not everyone admires heroes. Even among those never harmed by them (some people just get so bent out of shape when their evil plans are stopped), there are always going to be people who go against common opinion, even if only to be contrary. Some people believe that focusing on only one man demeans the ones who enabled his rise, since no heroic deed is done in a vacuum (with some exceptions, allowing for the existence of space programs and CERN). Some don't believe heroes exist, and thus can't trust any who call themselves such. Many are just very, very jealous.


I will leave it up to you to decide which of these applied to Danielle Henderson, 'Danni' to friends. Not that she really had any; she was an awkward child whose parents didn't know how to handle their adopted daughter's unnerving tendency to make objects she hated explode, attract a surprising number of cats, and play tricks on other children even as she swore up and down that she'd never laid eyes on electric blue hair dye in her life and never been anywhere near that amount of superglue. They loved her, true, but it must be said they were somewhat relieved to hear that Danni would be spending most of the year at a boarding school where she would learn how to make sure the thing with the squirrels never happened again.

When she boarded the Hogwarts Express, Danni didn't know what to expect from this school. Ten minutes later, she did know: Harry Potter. Apparently this kid was a year her senior, and if the redhead in her compartment was to be believed, the sun only rose when he wanted to wake up in the morning. You could tell he was a hero, because last year a teacher went mad and tried to kill him. He was still here, the teacher had been fired with extreme prejudice (i.e. he died horribly). He was hero of the wizarding world, he had friends, and he was notably averse to the amateur paparazzi that composed most of Hogwarts' student body.

Danni had heard enough, and it was all things she didn't want to know. Here was a boy who knew what he was all about, could find kindred spirits like it was some sixth sense, and could break whatever rules he wanted and get honored for it. He was the sort who people would believe when he said he hadn't had anything to do with the squirrels. This all she decided without telling her compartment-mate, since even she wasn't bitter enough to ruin the girl's starry-eyed view of a kid who probably wouldn't give her the time of day (popular kids never did, in Danni's experience).

I believe now might be a good time to in form you all that one of Danni's greatest character flaws is premature judgement.

In honor of Delta's 15th Boardaversary, I figured we should bring back one of the oldest PPC games, Fill the Plothole.

The way this works is that I post a few fanfic titles and summaries that are questionable or maybe just plain weird. Your quest (if you feel like accepting it) is to write something good based in some way off the summary or title. There's no need to claim summaries, and it's more than fine if multiple people write based off one fic.

If you're not happy with your options, please feel free to post more of them, since I grabbed these by skimming the first few pages of recently updated Harry Potter and LotR fics on AO3 (the LoTR section looked pretty good, but I haven't read those books in a while).

So, without further ado:

The Twins Saga-Book one-The Potter Twins (Harry Potter): Series re-write. Harry has a lot more power than he knows about, and a twin he isn't even aware of. What happens when his life as he knows it is a lie and he can't even tell? Will he ever find out and be able to right things? His sister is determined to help him do so. He just has to let her in, and learn to trust a Slytherin.

Harry Potter and the Mysterious Mind Reader (Harry Potter): Danni is a student at Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. She has always felt a deep hatred for the famous Harry Potter. Then he catches her breaking the rules, and offers her a deal that she can't refuse. After seeing more sides of the famous figure, she begins to become unsure of her own feelings.

The Star Called Mione G (Harry Potter): Hermione Granger's secret hobby turns serious when Dumbledore decides to use her as a pawn, a distraction and a weapon in his game of warfare. The famous starlet called Mione G might change the course of the war in many surprising ways.

A second chance (Lord of the RIngs x Harry Potter): what if Mandos decided to save Harry Sirius and Snape while simultaneously saving Middle earth.
first fanfic so feedback apreciated

- Tomash

We recently did some updates on the Plort map, and plort setting as a whole. And even more recently, we brought around the concept of space-plort, which I don't have a link to right now, but there's certainly a setting for it (though I don't think a map exists, correct me if I'm wrong.)

A bear is a type of guy. Its precise meaning varies, but the general idea is large (either with fat or muscle—typically a mix of both) and covered in hair. According to Wikipedia, hairy men of any build were referred to as bears until the terms "otter" and "wolf" arose to describe men of medium and slim builds. According to The Advocate, they coined the term in 1979, although it can be said for certain that the term gained traction in the 1980s, with the creation of Bear Magazine, the founding of bear groups, and the like.

In 1995, the International Bear Brotherhood flag came to be. I only knew of this flag until now because of a sidenote in Gengoroh Tagame's genuinely excellent (and family friendly, unlike his other stuff) manga "My Brother's Husband", which I would highly recommend to anyone who likes adorableness. Unfortunately, the excellent "Mike's Gay Culture Lectures" segment I got that fact in were cut from the official English release (I read a scanlation before I got my hands on it), presumably on the assumption that readers in the more gay-friendly US and Canada would already know this stuff. :-(

So why does the term exist? Probably because the guys look kinda like bears. Or maybe it morphed from the term "beards", another term referencing hairy men at the time. As for why it refers to gay men, that would be because the term lriginated and gained popularity in gay cultural circles, and thus became associated specifically with gay men.

I hope that makes sense.

Other than that, this looks good to me, I can't really see anything wrong with it.

Other than I'd like a little more explanation as to how those magic powers worked...