Jun 2012 Archive, part a

Wait, how are we going to post?

An auspicious name for a fortress! It may last three or four whole years under our management!

(I am totally in, Techno.Dann@gmail.com )

Hi, have some fudge!

I really am starting to believe that newbies come in droves. Maybe it's just because you all know each other. But enough of my ramblings for now. Welcome to the PPC! Have some 2-D glasses, certain to compress that pesky dimension or your money back!

Well, hi there! Here, have a cup of tea. Just mind the leaves, they're omnivorous and might try to eat you.

PS: It seems that at this rate I'd be more time around here than quite a lot of people... and I found this place just half a year ago.

It's nice to meet you!
But I'm wondering... what are your fandoms?

Have a Box of Infinity, worth -£93, now absolutely FREE!
Warning! Box of Infinity may link you to badfics without warning. Do not inhale any fumes that come out of the Box.

Welcome to the Board! Have my everlasting friendship! Have fun here, and if you encounter any badfics, the Bleepka cellar is nearby.

Hello, and welcome!

Have one of my cupcakes to celebrate.

Have a cookie.
WARNING: Cookie may cause spontaneous combustion, explosion, or disintegration.

Greetings, new friend! Help yourself to the sack of venomous arthropods. Don't worry; they don't bite!

I feel like I'm being left out of something, I only know one other Boarder in real life.
Anyway, Welcome to the Board, sanity is optional here so many go without it. I don't know where you have to go back too but you don't have to do it just yet, please stay around a while.
Also, I like to give gifts depending on a person's fandoms and interests but I don't know any of yours so I'm at a loss. Please inform me.

Welcome to the Board, friend-of-Rainbow-Sanity! Have some of my hydrophobic water to commemorate the event. Banned in car washes.

What are your fandoms?

A killdeer, from Fluttershy's.

Kevin, if this is you, you are my hero.

Moczo fics are pretty amusing. I rather enjoy his Nasuverse works. Have him on Author Alert as well.

I don't know how this could count as rich, but I plan to mystically unbox a burning team captain. 5000 dollar virtual hat.

Start a cult.

Although the apocalypse one's really good.

I like to take a tip from xkcd ( best web comic evar, btw).
http://xkcd.com/955/

He's bested the worst that the multiverse has to offer with a sharpie and a spare cardboard box, and has enough friends in enough high places that pretty much anything is no more than a minor setback. He also used to get threatened by homicidal agents with technology issues on a regular basis, so he's not exactly easy to freak out.

If something has gotten loose in the Multiverse, well... it's not a friendly Multiverse, even to normally-dangerous entities like Daleks or Chaos. There's more to the Continuum Protection Initiative than just the PPC, and more than a little part of it is more concerned with protecting Canons from the Multiverse, rather than the other way around.

If it did come down to the DoSAT to handle a loose Dalek empire or two... I'd like to think that they'd handle it with aplomb. Time Lords they may not be, but they've been around the metafictional block a few more times than most.

Of course, while Makes-Things might not care too much, there are other people around the Lab who don't exactly hold with not shooting messengers. Pro tip: beware the secretary.

We have plenty discussion topics up - if you're interested in more direct conversation, there's a link to the IRC channel at the top of the page. Otherwise, please lay off making new threads, because even with the bump system, you're dropping older ones - even more active ones - down towards the bottom of the page. Although discussion topics are generally appreciated, we seem to have quite a few active discussions going already; you don't need to make a new thread every time you have something you want to chat about. That is, in part, what the IRC channel is for - or, if you'd prefer the 'Board, please consolidate your topics.

I just refreshed the main page and see there, lots of topics I had already clicked were back to their highlighted gray selves. This is, at least to me, a tad annoying, since the highlights kinda disturb the flow, and also confusing, as the board highlights things that I've read before.

Also: If people want to know which posts they have seen, why don't they look at the color of the link? If it's been clicked on, they've seen the post.

I like this system we have right now, but since I use an EMail alert to find things to post on rather than going onto the Board itself, I haven't seen the problems you mentioned.

Still, I really don't think I have the power to change anything- I must be something of a loner here, after two failed Permission attempts.

In general, I'm glad that we’ve switched back to... whatever the proper name for ‘not bump’ mode is on the Board. The highlighting new posts to old threads thing sounds like a good idea for easily picking out which older threads are still active. Having long threads be bumped up to the top of the front page actually discouraged me from posting a couple of times.

As for the stuff about Mods, before I go any further I just want to say that I haven’t participated in an online community like this before, so there may be simple, obvious, solutions to some of what I'm about to say, that I just don’t know about. Having said that, there are a couple of things concerning the practicality of implementing a Mod system, that I think need to be considered by people that know about this kind of stuff, so I wanted to make sure it had been highlighted.

Personally, I'm not sure if we do need Mods or not, but a large part of that comes from not being in a moderated community before so having nothing to compare our current state to. However, it does seem as if most of the people that know more about this think that something needs to be done (and I have a possible alternative that I’ll get to later in this post), so I’d be prepared to trust their judgement on this matter.

Can the Mods have anonymity? (Note that this is a separate topic to should they have anonymity, which is something that has already had the pros and cons of discussed a fair bit).

If we do decide to go for anonymous Mods, how would we actually give them that anonymity? Even if they’re posting under a group name, won’t their IP address show up on the post, allowing them to be identified by anyone that takes the time to compare it with other posts? Also, if PGs are to give up their status as a PG in order to become a Mod (as has been suggested before by... someone, I forget who), won’t that be kind of a giveaway?

This point leads neatly on to...

Who do we use for Mods?

If we are going to have Mods introduced, the idea of having a rotating group does sounds like a good one to me, as it should avoid people burning out. Realistically, there are only 2 methods I can think of for the fair selection of Mods, either everyone’s name gets put into a hat and an appropriate number (whatever that may be) are selected at random, or we have some kind of vote system.

With 1, no-one could be accused of trying to grab power for themselves, which may help alleviate any fears of the new authority being A Bad Thing. But we could easily end up with people that just aren’t suitable/capable of, or even interested in, whatever we end up deciding the Mods are needed for (in terms of their specific powers, abilities and limitations).

With 2, as has already been mentioned by a couple of other people, chances are that the same sort of people are going to be voted in each time. If we’re looking for people that are around the Board often, and are well respected in the community etc. (not to mention that people are always going to think of the more high profile Boarders first, simply because they are more high profile), then to me it looks like we’d be picking Mods from the same pool of people as the PGs get selected from. That’s fine if there are enough of those people out there to fill the quota for both PGs and Mods, but what happens if there isn’t? (I don’t know how many PGs there normally are at any one time, how many Mods people think would be appropriate, or how that compares to the number of oldbies).

Personally, I would think that the PGs and Mods should be different people, just because I imagine that the PGs have enough on their plates already simply by being PGs. I think July, VM and Neshomeh have all said words to that effect regarding this already.

As a possible alternative to Mods

It seems to me that most (most, not all) of the things people are saying the Mods are needed for concern the behaviour of newbies (people telling badfic authors that their story/Sue has been ‘reported’ to the PPC as if we're some kind of fanon-police, conversation spamming, joining up for the chance to bash authors etc.). That being the case, I would like to offer an alternative to an official Mod system: resurrect the ‘Little Sibling / Big Sibling’ idea.

Now, I haven’t seen this in action, and have only read about it on the Wiki, so I might be wrong about what it was there for, but it seems to me like it might work. As I understand it, the idea is that an older Boarder offers to act as a sort of mentor for a newbie, and guide them through at first to make sure they’ve understood everything.

If the Sibling thing gets promoted a bit more (maybe move it further up the Guides/FAQs, put a reminder in the top banner etc.), then we might find that more newbies ask for one, in which case they’ll be able to get direct help when it comes to things like Board, and general PPC, etiquette. Most of that could potentially be handled through private e-mail or something, so it wouldn’t even clutter up the Board. If someone doesn’t ask for a Sibling, but then goes off with a bit of unacceptable behaviour, they could be given one to set them straight. This would work a bit like a warning from a Mod, but would possibly be a bit more constructive in that at the same time as being given the warning, they’re also being given direct access to someone that can help them avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

As a side note, while I didn’t ask for a Big Sibling myself when I joined up, if someone had made the offer, I’d have probably taken them up on it.

Big Siblings wouldn’t have any actual authority (in terms of special powers/abilities), and they’d only be acting on their individual Little Siblings, so we wouldn’t have to worry about how adding authority would influence other peoples’ interactions with them.

Virtually everyone on the Board, that isn't a newbie, should be capable of acting as a Big Sibling, which should take the pressure of the relatively few people that are currently trying to take care of it. Big Siblings could also have Even Older Siblings, chosen from the PGs, long term Big Siblings, and other general long term Boarders, that would be there to give them support and advice (and a quick line to the PGs / Nameless Admin if a newbie persistently and wilfully ignores their advice).

Also, if I'm right about how this’ll work with a few levels of siblingness, it might help with another topic that Neshomeh has brought up recently, which is that of newbie integration and newbie/oldbie interaction within the community. I’ll be honest, I am slightly nervous about posting to oldbies, but whether they’re Permission Givers or not doesn’t make any difference to me. It’s not the level of authority that they have which makes me nervous about talking to them, it’s just the fact that they’ve been around for some much longer than me. The more I talk to them, the less it bothers me. Assuming that this holds true for other people too, then encouraging communication between the generations of Boarders may help crossing those divides.

So, what do people think? Was any of that useful or did I just completely miss the point?

Set out as responses to specific things people have raised, but generally applicable anyway.

Tomash's Link: I don't feel this applies to the PPC, for one specific reason: we already have a mechanism in place whereby egregious offenders can be banned. The Nameless Admin, when the Board makes its feelings clear, can ban an IP. This has happened before, but usually to trolls - because when people act up, the Board as a whole does unite against them, if it feels the need. If just one person, or half a dozen people, have a problem with a newcomer... well, that's their problem, not the Board's.

nakkel's Italics: I disagree that 'self-moderation simply will not happen in an internet community', for the simple reason that it, uh, does. Right here. We have never met a problem that could not be resolved by the community acting together, or by the Nameless Admin IP-banning - and those are trolls, by and large. There is not such a problem now. The PPC Board can and does self-moderate. Also, uh:

The fact we needed to have more complicated, precise rules of conduct attests to this. Apparently, the old rules weren't specific enough, which is code for "nobody could tell what they should or shouldn't do based on simple observation and common sense".

As the person who suggested rewriting the Constitution, no, that is not why we did it. We did it for two reasons: first, that the old Constitution was Board-focussed and LotR-heavy, both of which are no longer appropriate. Secondly, because (bluntly) I was fed up with all the 'How dare you post a new badfic outside the thread!' posts, and by way of compromise wanted to put it into the Constitution so that people would hopefully not need telling. The third type of alteration is the addition of definitions for various terms - 'troll', 'plagiarism' - which came about because of a very specific incident where someone claimed rewriting a video as their own work wasn't plagiarising because, er, something. I do not believe the community as a whole needed the definitions in, and they were originally simply Wiki links - but for completeness they are in there.

Neshomeh's second post: Well, the Wiki is irrelevant to the discussion of Board moderators, since July responded there in her capacity as an Admin, but I understand her point. However, as I think Vixenmage pointed out, the reason July never gets a break is that July never takes a break. At the top of the second page of the Board, I find her responding to three ThArcanist posts in less than half an hour each - in one case, 2 minutes. And more generally - most of the things that she's responding to are either not generally seen as issues (posting a badfic outside the long badfic thread which she wanted to shut down anyway), or are going to get responded to.

Telling people to read Legendary Badfics will get you told off - that's two separate posts recently - whether or not the insanely vigilant JulyFlame says something. A permission request five minutes after joining will get turned down or ignored. Etcetera etcetera. One post that might have gone unnoticed is the one where someone reviewed a story to say that they were reporting it to the PPC, and yes, July (or whoever it was) was right to say something - but even if she hadn't, even if no-one had noticed that particular review (since it wasn't mentioned specifically on-Board), it would either be a one-off, or the poster would do it again, and pretty soon they would have been told not to. As mentioned in my comment on nakkel's post, we do that self-moderating thing. And the PPC has managed ten years without descending into a flame-generator.

A note on badfic posting: And specifically on the fact that people seem to feel a burning need to post every badfic they find, and often to claim it for PPCing as soon as they start... um, did anyone ever read the Board header? Because until very recently it started with this:

Welcome, Assassins and all other supporters of the Continuum Protection Initiative! Here is the place to report new offenders in need of smiting, or celebrate the acquisition of yet another target. (Or just to natter on...we're not picky!)

Yes, according to the header, the sole purpose of the Board is to post and claim badfics. And the link to the Constitution was kind of thrown in offhand, what with the long ramble about wikis and IRCs. Hopefully the new version is a bit more to the point.

Techno-Dann's Questions: Are very good ones. These questions:

What situations are mods going to address, and what powers (both technical and soft) are they going to need to have to do so? You say "We need proper authority", but what does proper authority look like?

I would like to see these answered by more than one person. I think that the various proposals have focussed very much on how to select mods, without actually coming down on what they're for. Ultimately, if people feel (as I do) that mods are unnecessary, it doesn't matter if they're randomised, rotating, secret or chosen personally by the Sunflower Official - they're still a bad idea.

But, since that's not very helpful, I'll make a proposal of my own. As a reply.

hS

The thread in question.

I feel it is important enough and connected to this that we should be able to get to it quickly, now that the first few pages of the board kinda look terrible and dire and like why we switched to bump mode in the first place.

I agree that we have some pretty big problems at the moment. I don't think anyone will be surprised that I feel that way, I'm pretty open about that.

I am in favor of seeing what we could do with a new Board design, before we make a choice about moving or not. We should at least consider alternatives to what we have now.

Bumping threads is, as so many have already noted, not working for us. That's fine. Maybe we can try hS's discovery of an option that highlights new posts. I think that one sounds like it could be a winner, and it looks to have some support right now.

As for mods, I am in favor of the idea of having them. I believe that this community is cautious enough about the idea that we will create rules, checks and balances to avoid any of the issues that have been brought up so far. In fact, let me go ahead and throw out a potential idea. To prevent any one person from gaining too much power/authority, I think you should not be able to be both a PG and a Mod on the Board. If you are a PG and you want to be a mod instead, then you can opt to lose your PG status if you were voted to be a mod. I know some people would prefer one over the other. Nesh, for instance, would prefer to stay a PG in a case like this. PGs could be like the DAs in the chat, with a new ability to overturn any punishment a mod deals out.

Just an idea. Maybe you like it, maybe you prefer Neshomeh's rotating nameless mods idea, maybe you have something that you would like to suggest. The point is, as I recently said to a friend, the fear that if you do X then Y might happen, means that you are watching for Y to happen, and you are not likely to let it.

We are a group of intelligent, mature people. We can make this happen. I have faith in the group. With people like July working to fix the problems as they arise, and people like VM watching the watchmen, I think we can make it work. I also think the group as a whole would be better off for it.

-Phobos

I quite agree. The problem is, we need to be careful with admins.

I know hatred of authority is juvenile and all that, but I've had some roleplay groups I really loved die, just because of one moronic, control-freak, jerk of an admin.

Which is one of the reasons I returned last month, or the month before, and haven't really been seen since. Bumping I'm indifferent to, though I can see how it stretches out arguments and threads which really should die.

As to the separate board idea... I have less support for that, but I can see where it's a good idea.

And the Mods getting banhammer powers? Yes, I can definitely agree with that, especially after the link Tomash posted, which expressed my thoughts and feelings on the subject much more clearly than I can. I've come back, and regretted doing so...

Authority doesn't always mean a bad thing. The Agents have the Sunflower Official to answer to, and our community should have someone to answer to when it gets really bad. Being a Mod with the banhammer doesn't mean we're going to enter a Big Brother period, but it can help weed out the Derps from the people who are genuinely here to have intelligent discussion.

I agreee that we need some sort of moderation to deal with out-of-control threads abe newbies who don't listen. Nesh's "rotating mods" idea sounds good to me, and I support it. I've also come accross this link, which is relevant to this discussion.

On the subject of a new Board, I support Dann's "seperation of post and view" idea. I like the threaded, all posts on one page model, but I realize that not everyone does, which is why that should be a per-user option. I'm willing to help with the coding (I'd need to learn Rails, though). Here's my new Board wish/idea list:

• Authentication that isn't broken. OpenID would probably work well for this.


• Support for both subforumites and not-subforumites. One way to this would be for each post to have a "tag", like "Permission Requests", "New Missions", "Random Silliness" etc. . People who want subforums could "Browse by Tag" and the others could "Browse by Creation Date". This would also, for example, let the PGs check for new Permission Requests just by checking on the appropriate tag.


• Threaded conversations like we have now (possibly with the ability to flatten if desired).


• Protection from malicious HTML.

It seems the standard depiction of authority here on the board is off tyrannical despots going completely off the rails the second they're given power and reducing the community to a grey, lifeless wasteland. It's tiring and frankly, I think it's rather juvenile.

Self-moderation simply will not happen in an internet community; Anonymity puts paid to the concept. The fact we needed to have more complicated, precise rules of conduct attests to this. Apparently, the old rules weren't specific enough, which is code for "nobody could tell what they should or shouldn't do based on simple observation and common sense". The anonymity inherent in internet use basically means that people are quicker to act on their impulses and less likely to consider what they're doing. Removing moderation from this is akin to a body acting without a head.

Most communities get by perfectly fine with less-than-stellar moderators, and clearly we're putting a lot of thought into who is moderating. It doesn't matter which way the mods want to do it, I believe this community will have no problem with the mods it chooses. The moderation will almost certainly be lax regardless; it just helps to have the safeguards in place instead of assuming you won't need them.

As for the board design, I prefer non-bump and I don't mind the current design, but I do prefer phpBB. Either way, it doesn't bother me since I'm mostly on the IRC.

Finally, I believe the community could do with a little less of the "be nice to everyone all the time" attitude, but then again I'm a curmudgeonly Scot and it's in my blood.

I've been, in my own small way, been tooting the horn of needing "proper authority" around here for a while now. I think there should be a small but trusted set of moderators (that can have rotating duties if they prefer it that way). I think we're looking at the authority angle at the wrong way. It almost seems like people feel like the so-called venerated oldbies (PGs, etc.) can't be trusted at all to run things without twenty different regulations and by-laws breathing down their necks. This comes off as bizarre to me. Most forums putter along with moderators who were almost virtually grabbed off the street or are just buddies with the admin.

Our community is incredibly strong in many ways, and we should have a bit more faith in that. And like I replied to Makari, we are not making people Kings or Queens of the PPC here; if the moderators got out of hand, there'd be Consequences. But they should be able to close threads when they get out of hand, they should be able to ban people from posting - temporarily or permanently - etc.

I think moving to phpBB would be great. I don't think we have enough volume to warrant separate subfora though.

Okay, yeah. Mods with power. Great, and, it throws the structure on its head.

My interpretation of the reason we don't have mods has always been to keep people on an equal footing. I can understand why they might look like a necessity -- maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but they sure look like it right now -- however, half the point of a moderator is that they are respected more than the other users because of the powers they wield, yeah? Not because of who they are. Because of what they can do to you if you step out of line.

Isn't that exactly what we were trying to avoid? My take had always been that we were trying to encourage a feeling of equality, regardless of chronological presence. (though the oldbies do have a certain, hm. Veneration, I suppose? All of us are human and fallible.) I realize PGs are also kind of a thing in that respect, but hey, we have stealth PGs, sort of.

I dunno. When I go into a conversation with someone I perceive as a peer rather than someone I perceive as above me on the status chain, the results are going to be completely different. In fact, in the latter situation it's unlikely to get me to engage at all. Maybe I'm just a special kind of shy, since I haven't noticed many other people doing so. In fact, I think many of the people here would be fine with it, charge brightly ahead with a smile, though correct me if I'm wrong.

I find official moderators a bit intimidating and not conducive to an open environment, but maybe I just know too many places where the moderation got out of hand, and maybe we could use people with 'official' authority to tell us to listen to each other instead of the people we know as friends. Because that always works, right?

On the subject of the Board, I think I'm probably alone in that I like this method. I can actually tell what's new. O_O This is novel. Yes, some threads are getting lost in the kerfuffle, but threads were always getting lost in the kerfuffle, and at least this way we have the capability to un-lose them.

My two bits. Please let me know if there's a point you want clarified or I phrased something too ambiguously.

I'm all for turning off bump mode, but it's not going to solve all our problems. Rather than really long out-of-control threads, we'll be back to asking people not to spam new threads. I think I prefer that problem to this one, but let's not kid ourselves that everything was perfect before bump mode—somebody said something to that effect, and it's just not true.

I would like to see Dann's board up and running, too, but failing that, I would be okay with moving at this point. Something like the St. Dymphna's Academy board does have a feature that lets you view the 100 most recent posts, so if you want to view everything not separated into subfora, that's entirely possible.

I'm also in favor of mods, but I've been trying to discuss my feelings about this controversy for hours without being able to keep from descending into frustrated ranting, so that's all I can safely say right now.

~Neshomeh

While I do agree with most people that the bump system needs to go, I don't think that it's necessary to move to a whole diferent site. As far as mods, I think that the Nameless Admins would be good enough,so long as one person isn't running the entire thing. I'll admit, we need a bit more order than we have now, but the PPC has never been a very structured organization. Also, I like the fact that everything is in the same place, that way I can see everything that's going on without having to to a seperate page for things like new missions or badfic threads.

I agree with the consensus below that the bump mode has to die but I'm a little wary of the other suggestions. I've never used a phpBB style forum so I don't exactly know what it's like but the idea of mods seems unnecessary to me. We don't need anyone to rule over anyone else if everyone would just stick to the Constitution. Along with that is the point that hS brought up, while compartmentalizing the posts would make them easier to find, people would end up sticking to one type of post and never branch out. So yes we need some revisions but we don't have to completely reconstruct the Board.

I think a change might be needed. It would be easier to get around, and we would be able to see previous posts and be able to edit posts, in case we put out one with a mispelling.

I myself am in favour of moving to a new forum, because I'm more used to forums like that (Wesnoth's, TvTropes', etc). I also think that it's easier to find what you're looking for when everything has its place.
Last but not least, moving to a forum would make RPing much, much easier; I know that from experience. To me, at least, RPing in a linear thread makes more sense and is easier to follow than RPing in a Board (which I find confusing. Who's responding to who, exactly?).

The bumping new threads to the top was annoying/confusing me, do I'd support turning it off.

I like the idea of going to a new Board. A system like proboards or whatever seems like it would work. (eg I was part of July's Mary Sue Academy RP, which from memory was built on and as I recall it handled heaps of posts and nattering without getting too confusing.)

Elcalion

Seriously. I only suggested it as a brief experiment to see if, as people kept claiming, it would Solve All Our Problems (which at that point were limited to... hmm, lots of newbie threads, and too many badfic threads). At this point, posting your badfic to a previous thread/to the Unclaimed Badfic List is in the Constitution - I enshrined it in the sharding Constitution, guys - so we have an actual justification for asking people not to do it. And, you know what? People tend to listen.

We do not need mods. The Nameless Admin does just fine as it is - power without authority, acting on Board consensus. I have seen nothing to make me believe people need to be constantly hounded to get them to stand in line and play nice - because the PPC isn't a place for standing in line. It's a place for wild free-thinking madness.

hS

PS: Article 11 of the Constitution says it's okay to ask questions (but that we may point you at the Wiki). Article 6 says be nice when telling people things you already know. So can we, rather than just throwing out Wiki links, give useful answers as well? The Wiki isn't a complete store of knowledge, you know. If no one on the Board knows things that aren't on the Wiki, it's a sad, sad day. ~hS

The main thing that needs to happen is getting rid of the bump system. The main reason why convo-posting is a problem is because the bump system forces us to watch a conversation that may or may not have anything to do with this. The same thing with out-of-control threads. They're less of a problem if they get shoved off the front page by time.

I don't think we need a new board, or moderators, or whatever. Before the bump thing came along, I think we were just fine self-regulating.

...to a point. I really like the way the GitP board is set up, as they have active moderators (chosen from board veterans), and have posts organized by page. They limit threads to 50 pages, and just add new ones. Unfortunately, the way the posts work prevents one from just scrolling past a less relevant topic.

TL; DR, I like this board, but think it could be better.

Since it seems we're discussing multiple things, let's try to break them out and look at them individually.

Firstly, bump mode seems to not be working. One advantage to the old way is that threads are killed perforce by the progress of time. I am of the opinion that we should go back to it.

Secondly, layout issues. While I can understand the appeal of having everything neatly divided into sections, there is also appeal to having everything together - there are no subfora for people to disappear into and never poke their heads into the larger community. I, for one, am a fan of the current thread structure, too, where replies can be made to any post far more easily than the perforce-linear nature of PHPbb and similar.

I've been designing a Board replacement where the layout of the board is independent of the posts - I can see a layout that looks like the current one, while Pieguy can see PHPBB-esque subfora and linear threads. Or subfora and branching threads, or a single blog-like page where every thread's first post is listed in its entirety, with a little "77 replies!" link at the bottom to get into the conversation. It's quite possible - I'd like to think that I've gotten the design close to right, and flexible enough to make creating new views easy.

Thirdly, moderation. I have two questions concerning mods. What situations are mods going to address, and what powers (both technical and soft) are they going to need to have to do so? You say "We need proper authority", but what does proper authority look like?

I whole-heartedly agree with changing back from bump to . . . whatever the old way was called. Chronological? It's too hard to keep track of where particular posts wind up when I try to find them again. And yes, discussions that should have petered out long ago keep going.

(I want to say this. The badfic thread? Very little actual discussion. It's mostly "Oh it's so bad my eyes are hurting." Can't we find something more interesting to talk about concerning a badfic than that? Discuss why it goes against canon? Creative ways to handle a mission in it?)

I'm a bit more neutral about switching to the newer type of discussion board. I don't think we should go there quite yet. Let's try going back to the non-bump mode and see how things go.

On the topic of moderators: I know at least some PPCers are uncomfortable with the idea. Would it strictly be necessary to have such on the newer type of board? Or could we get by with the Nameless Admin situation we have now, with someone only intervening to delete troll and spam posts?

A new Board will definitely help clean up the sprawl we have now.

We'll need to hold Mod elections if we do go through with this though.

The Board as it is has a lot of weight and tradition behind it, but the system is just too outdated. If we switched to an IPB/phpBB/SMF-based Board, with different subfora and what have you, it would make things a lot cleaner and easier and more manageable.

I've been in favour of this for a while; I think it needs to happen.

I... almost completely disagree. (Anyone surprised? Anyone?)

I think if we get rid of the bump system (please please please, we tried it, all it does is keep things alive forever, please can we let it die), that will solve a lot of this problem. Like... most of it.

And then we can talk about the rest.

--VM, who remains in favor of modless anarchy, at least on the internet... at least, on this corner of it

When choosing what to spork, you should always consider whether or not the fic in question would make a good, funny story. Are the SPaG errors hilarious? Are the characters so two-dimensional they start to literally look like cardboard cut-outs? Is the plot so bad that your agents have to dodge Logic Loopholes the whole time to avoid getting hanged? If the answers to questions like these are "yes," then you've probably got yourself a mission.

If it's just kinda blah, though, you might want to find something more entertaining to work with. {= )

~Neshomeh

In cases like this I would say that the fics are sporkable, but the only valid charge against characterization would be if the characters were really two-dimensional. Therefore the fic would be sent to somewhere like Department of Technical Errors instead of say, Floaters. Dealing with fics about the original songs could lead to OOC charges though, if the character is given a personality within the song so it would really depend on the setting and plot of the fic. There could also be charges if the physical description was off, say someone describing Miku's hair as purple, but other than that there's nothing to be done about characterization.

Obviously, it would be sporkable, as two-dimesnional characters ARE a charge.

However, it's harder to handle the characterization thing, as most Vocaloids have none. But is is more of a "those kind of charges aren't applicable here" than "it's not sporkable"

Sure, the lack of the "plot" the PPC protects is jarring, but, in the end, remember that in-universe it started as the Organization who ran after Sues only because they made too much plotholes, and so they destabilized the Flowers' portals.

I'll just pick the most recent one- I saw an add for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2 that I had missed, and someone said it was the the teaser for the Force Unleashed 3. It's an awesome add, too.

But there was a Doctor Who/Star Wars crossover trailer on youtube that was bloody brilliant. Sadly, they took it down. ;n;

This, because Cas will never stop being awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs

Seriously, why not?

That...is really good, but I have no idea what's going on in it. Is timeline 2-or-3 Homura in the final timeline? Curse my lack of Japanese knowledge.

This: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCzkz3gHb8

Seriously, why doesn't this exist?

The Sims 4. Numerous trailers out there, of dubious legitimacy and not dubious quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reKeJ2cJTjk

Before I go on and ask metric f-tons of questions, there's one thing: We're a literature community. We're writers, not game designers. If you just want to run the idea by us, that's okay to do, but remember that game design isn't our focus.

Now, onto your text. First, I realize that line breaks make things more readable, but you overdid it a bit. Second, the aforementioned questions.

Why?

What?

How?

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/22535/Better-Living-Through-Science-and-Ponies

This is one of my personal favorite fanfics. It is a Portal FIM piece, and I loved it.

There is only one problem... The grammar is atrocious. The author over uses elipses... and at one point, I saw an un-capitalized word after a period.

For the hypocrosy in my post, see TV tropes.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfDemonstratingArticle

The Onset of Autumn was most enjoyable.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6136430/1/A_blossoming_love
A new girl with a secret moves in across the street. Will Phineas fall her? OC/Phineas

This is a fantastic parody of Mary Sues and their Romance/Dramas and overused plotlines.

I read a Lord of the Rings fanfic many years ago, and now I can't find it. Any ideas?

...

Oh, all right, I'll give details. (SPOILERS, of course) It was a post-War of the Ring story featuring Aragorn's struggles to reunite, y'know, everything. It also featured Alatar and Pallando, the Blue Wizards - only one of them (I'm pretty sure Alatar) had turned evil and was now Alatar the Black. It also had Elanor Gamgee/Gardner as Arwen's lady-in-waiting. The final battle was at Gundabad, and I just about recall there being something under the mountain - maybe a dragon, maybe not.

Unfortunately, Google has failed me, and I can't find it by searching various websites - not that I remember where I read it. Can anyone help me?

hS

Horse Apple Turnover by Impossible Numbers
Think Flim and Flam got away a little too easily from Sweet Apple Acres? That was just the start of their humiliation conga, as this short story tells. A bit of lighthearted fun at the brothers' expense.

The July 1954 issue of Beyond Fantasy Fiction magazine, a short-lived spinoff of Galaxy Science Fiction, had a Midsummer Night's Dream fanfic called Yours for the Asking, that sadly cannot be found in any other publication/anthology/what have you.
Oberon and Puck have been investigating the advertising industry's use of the word magic, and find, to both their relief and their annoyance, that it's all puffery. Puck casts a spell on an advertising exec so that everything labelled magic does literally what the advertisement says. Hilarity ensues.

Ready, Sette, Go! - this is a humour!fic about Sette (One of JS's Numbers), post-StrikerS (Spoiler warning for StrikerS).
While there are some SPaG mistakes in it, it is pretty funny, even if you don't know MGLN or StrikerS, and the characters are very much IC.
(Post copied from the earlier goodfic thread)

I've read this fic before. For all of you wary of it due to it being RPF, and Beatles alien-abduction RPF at that, trust me on this one- it's actually one of the better pieces of epic fantasy I've read in the past 12 months.

I hardly ever read Real Person fics, and when I do they don't involve the Beatles getting abducted by aliens and gaining special powers. Nothing bothered me about it besides that, so I guess I approve but I'm still a bit confused right now, so don't trust my judgement.

To take you up on your challenge I give you two authors, one mainly Hetalia writer and one Harry Potter writer both from ff.net.
Gemini Star 01, found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/264413/Gemini_Star01 writes a variety of fandoms, but I've only read her Hetalia ones because of lack of interest in the other fandoms. She (I'm not sure of her gender but I'm guessing it's a she) writes a lot of historical and AU stories, most of them focusing on America and Canada. A warning though, many of them are very dark and may touch on some triggers if you can't deal with scary things (an example would be her fic Awakening, which is set in a Nazi internment camp with the main characters being experimented upon by Josef Mengele). Another thing is that she hasn't updated in years so anything that's unfinished is going to stay unfinished.

The second author is Inverarity, found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1374917/Inverarity
She writes entirely Harry Potter fics but aside from one next generation fic all of stories do not actually focus on the Harry Potter characters. Instead she has created a sort of female American counterpart to the Harry Potter series, using the same universe. All of her OCs are well developed and I found the plot line original and entertaining.

...and, for the first time ever, I have something to contribute. :P

This writer has created a number of Discworld stories, both funny and serious, focusing on the Ramkin-Vimes family. She fleshes out some interesting details that have been left vague in the books, and one or two of her stories are somewhat smutty but still very well-written - all very in-character, in my opinion, and with a good dose of PTerry-like humour that actually works.

She's also done a couple of Potterverse fics regarding Viktor Krum and his relationship with Hermione, which I found rather interesting. One AU future that's rather serious, and a somewhat comical look at his point of view regarding the events of the Triwizard Tournament. (Ladies' underwear is involved in the latter.)

And old - but these days, how many people still know about them?

The Game of the Gods - My all-time favourite. Morgoth attempts to outsmart Varda in a game of Mary-Sues. Hilariously.

The One Ring Reforged - A very silly story. Also short, so no plot summary.

While The Ring Went South - It's been a while since I read this, but I may do so again. It's an expansion of the referenced chapter of LotR. It has a sequel, During A Journey In The Dark, too.

And because it has to go here...

Don't Panic - Girl drops into real Middle-earth. Also has a sequel (Okay, NOW Panic). Written by an ex-PPCer.

hS

(PS: Interesting choice of yours - not many people read Real Person Fic. Not that we say you can't, just that you might not get many takers)

I came back on here for the first time in a while and thought my computer was going wacky.

I thought something was wrong with my computer for a second with those gray highlights. Like ThatOne said, it's a bit too early to tell, but it's good to know that we're off the bump. How long did that last again? A couple of months? All I know is that I'm glad to see it back to normal.

But I'm sure the confusion will clear up soon, or at least some of it. Also, the gray highlighting is strange because you get random splotches of gray on threads that have kinda died down, which makes me look at it and say "Wait I thought we were done with that thread, why is it suddenly being highlighted?". I'm sure when everything is settled in it'll help to locate live posts and conversations but it'll take a day or two to get used to.

I initially thought my computer went insane.

Since all the previous ones did, it was kinda plausible.

Between the colors, sudden thread order change, and the front page looking like a wasteland. :P

But I don't know either Nanoha or Madoka. So if you have any good reference pictures, I could really use some.

Yes! It does! They're making a LotR LEGO video game!

*savin' money*

I am in no way a Lego fan, but this still looks awesome. Also, that Shelbob figure is really scary, especially when you look at poor Frodo's face.

My cynical side is grumbling about commercialism, but whatever. I wish we had space for Legos right now.

Also, the Shelob model is absolutely terrifying to look at, especially coupled with Lego!Frodo's face in that picture. I applaud the Lego company.

I do agree that it would be nice if the Helm's Deep set was a little more grand. Perhaps a more enterprising Lego Engineer than I ever was could figure out how to expand it and make it more awesome.

I wonder what they'll do with Minas Tirith, if they do anything. It would have to be a big set... or maybe they could make it into several smaller sets: "Minas Tirith, Levels 1 and 2," "Levels 3 and 4," "Levels 5 and 6," "Level 7 and the Tombs." Or something like that.

~Neshomeh

Well, it is if you still buy Lego pieces.

But a cynical side of me is saying in the back of my head that this is LEGO very quietly announcing a LEGO LOTR game, which would be cool, I must admit.

Honestly, I was hoping for something a little more impressive for the Helm's Deep kit. It just looks a little small to me.

I think it's cool that they're bringing out more lines like this, but in my heart I'm still more of a Lego Technic fan.

I don't have much more to say than that...

A great man has passed away. What else can I say except "Thank you, Mr Bradbury, wherver you are".

If there is a Heaven for writers, Ray Bradbury is up there swapping anecdotes with Mark Twain today.

Ray Bradbury was one of my favorite authors, and like a lot of other people, I first started reading his works in high school. My favorite novels of his are "The Illustrated Man", "Fahrenheit 451", and "The Martian Chronicles", and I've seen the movie version of "Fahrenheit 451", which is pretty good... despite some cheesy special effects.

I heard about his death the other day, and it inspired me to do a tribute to him. I think it turned out pretty good, though I don't mind constructive criticism.

http://psychodemonfox.deviantart.com/art/Regarding-Mr-Bradbury-306769123

I read Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 in middle school. He was a good author.

Ray Bradbury was... well, what can we say about him that hasn't been said already?

I read Farenheit 451 in middle school, and then followed that with Something Wicked This Way Comes in high school. I loved both of those books very much, and... well, I think they both speak to Ray Bradbury's abilities as a writer. I think his books will become classics of the current era, and... well, he's earned his place in history, that is for certain.

He's one of my favorite authors, and I haven't even nearly read all of his published works. This was a man who respected the written word because the written word came from the minds of people. I've always looked up to him for his view that the human mind is a beautiful, precious thing, and our greatest individual resource.

I am glad that I got my Fahrenheit 451 mission out before his death, not that it made any difference to him.

I don't know what else to say.










;_;

The year I went to Comic-Con.

He spoke about kindergarten, and reading, and books, and writing, and libraries, and the importance of all these things. I was amazed, and inspired, and listening to him filled me with something different, that I had never experienced from listening to someone before.

I remember reading Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the Illustrated Man, among others, and drinking the words up.

He has died, but will live forever.

HTML might not be enough. "Help" is always a very general term. Do you just need a design, or a script to switch between comics (first, back, archive, forwards, latest)? Or do you have a script already and need it to be embedded?

... it's about this big. :P

No, honestly I don't think it's well-defined. When I write it it tends to be quite large and bustling, and in one future story of mine (unpublished) it's possible to wander for half an hour among tower blocks, but as with everything in the PPC, it's definitely subject to change.

hS

Also, not pathetic. Funny. Imagine he gets lost really bad, only to find out that it's actually just a little town. And he still keeps getting lost.

Although eleventy-one years is far too short a--

No, wait, sorry.

Are you one of those people who enjoys the collecting part of Collectible Card Games more than the game part? Well, the PPC Card Game is here to help!

Card Game Packs

No, you can't buy them (sorry), but you can now get your very own randomised pack of six cards from any of the four completed generations, delivered straight to your screen! Gen5 will be added when it's finished.

(Requires Javascript may take some time to load warning image heavy works in IE and Chrome other browsers not tested)

hS

Since it would help the VG fandom become playable for Gen 5.

Also, what do the little rarity letters on the top left corner of the card stand for? I think "c" is common, "r" is rare, but what do "u" and "g" mean?

Card Type: Agent
Name: Doc
Department: Floaters
Fandom: Les Misérables
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: Enjolras
Picture: (Sorry it's so big!)

Weapon: metal pole (the far right Mace image on the rules page will work fine.)
Stats:
*Attack: 1
*Defence: 3
*Speed: 2
*Stealth: 3
*Insanity: 3
*Special: 3
Special Ability-Research: Move Doc to another location of any fandom.

(Sorry about the uncommon fandom; Doc is sort of a generalist. I went with a fandom that's already appeared on an older card, so it's at least a little interactive with the rest of the game. Here's a picture of Enjolras:)


Card Type: Canon
Name: Miss MacKinnon
Fandom: PPC
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Speed: 1
And her picture:

If I measured properly, that should fit within the Canon card frame fairly well.

And, since you asked for feedback on the game . . . I had printed out decks of Gen One cards and played four or five games with my brother several months ago. We found that the Sue deck was (perhaps appropriately) massively overpowered, and whoever played with it was guaranteed to win. This was due to one Sue card in particular, Kawaii Baka.

With a huge Special stat, Kawaii was pretty much guaranteed to beat any Comparison to activate her special, and she usually didn't have to, since her Speed is high enough to keep the opponent's cards out of her location. (Or another Sue with even higher Speed could be moved there to help guard her.) The trouble is, her ability feeds into itself so the opponent never gets a chance to take action to stop her. We implemented a house rule that Kawaii's Special couldn't be activated during the bonus turns she herself created, but even then, Kawaii's player had a 2:1 turn advantage over his opponent, which is pretty massive. We finally changed the house rule to, "Kawaii's Special can be activated once per game," which made the decks more balanced, but by then, we were kind of burned out from playing, and haven't really had a chance to touch it again since.

So . . . I guess I ended up reviewing just the one card, which wasn't my intention starting out. :(
Unfortunately, that one card had a disproportionately large effect on our gameplay.

Name: Gilbert Hawk
Weapon: Wand, box elder and dragon heartstring, 11.5"
Department: DMS-Myst
Active: 2005-
Image:
ATTACK: 2
DEFENSE: 3
SPEED: 3
STEALTH: 2
INSANITY: 2
SPECIAL: 3
Animagus - can turn into American kestrel. +1 stealth, +2 speed, -2 defense, -1 attack.

Madison Stephanie O'Grady
Image:
Weapon: Neutralizer (Dalek gun), fiery breath
Departments: DIC (as intern), DoGA
Active: 2008-2009
ATTACK: 3
DEFENSE: 1
SPEED: 2
STEALTH: 2
INSANITY: 4
SPECIAL: 3
Dragon Breath - can produce a 4m jet of flame. +3 attack, -2 stealth, -1 speed.
If there's room, note that it needs 1d6 turns to recharge.
LO: Jamie MacCrimmon

Took me some time to get these up because I had to figure some stuff out. I think a good Department Special for the All-Purpose Department would be "Specific Knowledge: +2 to any one stat for 2 turns. Only usable if the Agent is in their fandom."

Name - Barid
Department - All-Purpose Department
Fandom - Warcraft
Species - Troll (5 HP)
Years of Service - 2009-present
Lust Object - Lady Sylvanas
Picture - Agent Barid
Weapon - Shadow Magic

Stats - Attack 5, Defense 1, Speed 4, Stealth 1, Insanity 4, Special 0

Special Ability - Power Word: Shield - Raises the defense of any agent to 5 for 1 turn.



Name - Brightbeard
Department - All-Purpose Department
Fandom - Warcraft
Species - Dwarf (6 HP)
Years of Service - 2009-present
Lust Object - Thrall
Picture - Agent Brightbeard
Weapon - War Hammer (Mace)

Stats - Attack 3, Defense 5, Speed 2, Stealth 1, Insanity 2, Special 2

Special Ability - Tank - Forces any unit attacking another Agent to attack Brightbeard instead, if both Agents are in the same location.

Lots of agents coming in, so look out below!

Name: Florestan
Department: DIC
Fandom: Video Game
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: Tali'Zorah vas Normandy

Image:

Weapon: Gun

Stats
Attack: 2
Defence: 2
Speed: 5
Stealth: 1
Insanity: 4
Special: 1

Special: Rant - At the complete cost of Florestan's Stealth, increase the Attack of all other Agents in play by 1 point for 2 turns.

----**----

Name: Eusabius
Department: DIC
Fandom: VG
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: Anders

Image:

Weapon: Pikestaff [Mace]

Stats
Attack: 3
Defence: 4
Speed: 1
Stealth: 2
Insanity: 3
Special: 2

Special: Unshakable Calm - Increase Stealth and Defence by 1 point for 1 turn.

----**----

Name: Xanthus Garkaran
Department: Floaters
Fandom: Video Game
Species: Alien
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: None

Image:

Weapon: Gun

Stats
Attack: 4
Defence: 2
Speed: 2
Stealth: 3
Insanity: 1
Special: 3

Special: Nostalgia Trip: Increase Defense of one other Agent card of choice by 1 point for 2 turns.

----**----

Name: Anneli Rodriguez
Department: Floaters
Fandom: Any
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: Edward Cullen

Image:

Weapon: Hand (Mace)

Stats
Attack: 1
Defence: 2
Speed: 4
Stealth: 3
Insanity: 3
Special: 2

Special: Like, Oh My God! - Increase Attack by 2 points for 1 turn.

----**----

Name: Cinderella
Department: Floaters
Fandom: Harry Potter
Species: Witch
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: None

Image:

Weapon: Wand (Magic)

Stats
Attack: 5
Defence: 2
Speed: 3
Stealth: 3
Insanity: 1
Special: 1

Special: Desperate Measures - At the complete cost of Cinderella's Stealth for 3 Turns, liberate 1 Ensnared Canon of your choice.

----**----

Also, have a few more canon cards:

----**----

Sonic the Hedgehog:

Video Game - Male
Humanoid Hedgehog
Image:

Speed - [Max]

----**----

Tali'Zorah vas Normandy:

Video Game - Female
Alien [Quarian]
Image:

Speed - 3

----**----

Sephiroth

Video Game - Male
Human Mutant
Image:

Speed - 2

Name: Sylvia
Department: Floaters
Fandom: SciFic
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: Malcolm Reynolds

Picture: http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/Sylvia?image=Sylvia-282-29-jpg

Weapon: Deathclaw Gauntlet

Stats
Attack: 3
Defence: 1
Speed: 4
Stealth: 1
Insanity: 2
Special: 4

Special: Question Motives- Attacking cannon gets -2 to attack.

Name: Natasha
Department: Floaters
Fandom: Fantasy
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2011-
Lust Object: Terra

Picture: http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/Natasha?image=Natasha2-jpg

Weapon: Backpack

Stats
Attack: 2
Defence: 1
Speed: 2
Stealth: 3
Insanity: 3
Special: 4

Special: WHAT?!- Increase Insanity by 2 for one turn.

Is this alright?

Four, to be precise. Sorry for the rush. Feel free to tweak the pictures to fit the card if necessary.

Laura Dukes
Department: DMS
Fandom: Video Games
Species: Human
Years Active: 2007-Present
LO: Garrus V.
Picture:
Weapon: Combat knives
Stats: Attack 4, Defense 2, Speed 2, Stealth 1, Insanity 4, Special 2
SA: Leeroy - Increases attack and speed by 2 and decreases defense to 0 for one round.

Danny Richardson
Department: DMS
Fandom: Video Games
Species: Human
Years Active: 2010 - Present
LO: Zoey
Picture:
Weapon: Shotgun
Stats: Attack 2, Defense 4, Speed 3, Stealth 3, Insanity 1, Special 2
SA: Research - Subtract one from speed and add one to any other stat for one turn.

Gremlin
Department: DBS
Fandom: Sci-fi
Species: Metahuman
Years Active: 2010 - Present
LO: The Doctor
Picture:
Weapon: Genetic electrical manipulation
Stats: Attack 2, Defense 2, Speed 3, Stealth 4, Insanity 1, Special 3
SA: Zap! - Additional +2 to attack when attacking from stealth

Xericka
Department: DBS
Fandom: Video Games
Species: Nobody
Years Active: 2010 - Present
LO: None
Picture:
Weapon: Hand-to-hand
Stats: Attack 1, Defense 5, Speed 2, Stealth 5, Insanity 0, Special 2
SA: Shadow Portal - Switch positions on the field with any other Agent.

Oh, right, because my agents and I were AWOL for over a year. *sweatdrop* Well, I aim to correct that right now . . .

Name: Suicide
Department: DMS
Fandom: Variable
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2007-present
Lust Object: Scary women
Picture: (Can be cropped as needed)
Weapon: Darning Needles (thrown spear-- stat-equivalent to bow)
Stats:
ATTACK - 4
DEFENSE - 3
SPEED - 2
STEALTH - 1
INSANITY - 5
SPECIAL - 0
Special Ability: 11% Cyborg -- Can take a one-time +3 health bonus.

Name: Diocletian
Department: DMS
Fandom: LotR
Species: Human
Years of Service: 2007-present
Lust Object: Legolas
Picture: (crop as needed)
Weapon: Morningstar (mace)
Stats:
ATTACK - 3
DEFENSE - 5
SPEED - 3
STEALTH - 3
INSANITY - 1
SPECIAL - 0
Special Ability: Calm Down! - For one round, add another agent's INSANITY to said agent's DEFENSE.

I may add Ithalond and maybe a couple of Sues if I get the chance later. XD BTW, I apologize if the cards above don't make much sense or break the game--I don't play TCG much, and am still a newbie at this kind of thing.

Gaspard De Grasse

Department: Intelligence
Species: Human
Fandom: Legend of Zelda
Service: 2012 to present
Lust object: Princess Zelda

Pic:

Weapon: No-look willy-nilly fists of fury

Stats:

Attack: *
Defence: **
Speed: *****
Stealth: *****
Insanity: *
Special: *

Special ability: Surveillance: Opponent has to reveal three unplayed cards

Name: Riboflavin
Department: ESAS
Fandom: Harry Potter
Species: Human - Wizard
Years of Service: 2008-
Lust Object:
Picture: see http://stranglerfig.webs.com/riboflavin.htm
Weapon: Wand
Stats:
Attack 2
Defence 3
Speed 3
Stealth 3
Insanity 2
Special: 2

Special Ability: Impedimenta charm. +2 to speed for 2 turns

Don't suppose it's possible to edit old cards (make Entropy's years of service 2004-2008)?

Elcalion

OK, I'll try to give one of my two agents now. If she is all correct, and I haven't missed anything with her, I'll post Ari, Lana and Narav.

Name: Tera
Department: Floaters
Fandom: Anime
Species: Insect-humanoid Summon
Years of Service: 2011-present
Lust Object: Garyuu (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha)
Picture:
Feel free to crop the picture to fit on the card.
Weapon: Arm-blades (they are retractable, and have pretty good reach)
Stats
Attack: 3
Defense:2
Speed:4
Stealth:3
Insanity:2
Special:1
Special Ability: Invisibility--when attacking, Tera gets to raise her stealth by one point.

Sergio Turbo
Department of Floaters
Anime
Human
2009-Present
Sakura Kinomoto

Assaul Rifle (gun)
Attack: 4
Defence: 2
Speed: 2
Stealth: 4
Insanity: 0
Special:3
Special Ability: Sniper - Can make accurate shots with Gun. +1 Attack and Stealth, -2 Speed

Nikki Cherryflower
Department of Floaters
Anime
Human
2011-Present
Syaoran Li
https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT4kqUW-iyHKMWGQAhpkrMoDB8rNRIdRKPjtIPigcwKWsmg2zA3_A
(with long hair, if possible. Yes, this is an image of the girl she's a badfic clone of.)
Magic
Attack: 2
Defence: 3
Speed: 3
Stealth: 2
Insanity: 2
Special:3
Special Ability:

I'm trying. Really really hard.

Wait. What are the Sue/Agent tokens for if we have them as cards? And do the factions have any significance?

Name - Decima
Department - Bad Slash
Fandom - Harry Potter
Species - Human (Wizard)
Years of Service - 2011 - Present
Lust Object - Luna Lovegood

Picture - Decima

Weapon - Potterverse Magic

Stats - Attack 3, Defense 1, Speed 4, Stealth 3, Insanity 2, Special 2

Special Ability - Closet Dive: +1 Defense and Stealth, -1 Attack and speed for 1 turn.

I never knew someone make trading cards around here! Do you charge for manufacture, and how much?

saintdane05@gmail.com

I can give it a read if you'd like multiple beta readers. Email is in my username~ (zekesturm@ymail.com because I'm not sure if it'll work >

Maybe I could give it a looksee...

I used float-left and some other stuff. Just look at the CSS if you want to see the details.

But I'm a n00b at CSS myself. I think the HTML looks okay, so almost certainly something is up with the style sheet, but I can't tell you what. There are a couple of things that specifically confuse me, though; maybe that will help?

First, you've got some "top" properties set to what look to me like really big negative values, "top: -605px;" in #content and "top: -595px;" in #footer. I understand that the "top" property normally sets an element to a distance below a containing element, so a negative value for "top" would set the same element a distance above a containing element; could those large values be creating extra space for #content and #footer to be above?

Second, I'm just plain unfamiliar with your "-moz-border" properties and can't find anything like that in my CSS guide. What's the "-moz" for, and why is there a hyphen in front of it?

Disclaimer: Total n00b shooting in pretty dim light here. I have a friend who knows better and has been teaching me, so if it's okay with you, if I see her before you figure it out, I'll ask if she can help. It would be helping me learn, too. {= )

~Neshomeh

Just throwing around some alternate mini ideas for discussion.

Greater Dead
It's been too long since I've read the books to recall any Greater Dead by name, but I suspect you're more familiar with the canon since you're planning a mission in it. I think there were at least a couple varieties named in the series? They wouldn't exactly be the first zombies to appear as minis, but the Greater Dead struck me as quite a bit more monstrous than the average zombie.

Orannis the Destroyer
Orannis is definitely the biggest baddie of the series, but . . . it's also a giant ball of metal. So a mini-Orannis would just be a small ball of metal. Not too impressive, but it might be fun if they could speak and constantly rage against everything that exists and have no power to do anything about it?

Free Magic Elementals
mini-Free Magic Elemental doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? This series isn't the only one with elementals, either, so there's the same potential for unoriginality as with the Greater Dead.

The Bells
Even though they aren't a monster, the Bells are a major enough part of the series that I think they warrant consideration as a mini. Perhaps they could even assist in an exorcism after they get rescued! Plus, lessened effects of the Bells screwing with agents' off-time has humor potential. Of course, the writer would have to decide what Bell was created by what misspellings; perhaps a mini-Remembrancer's pipe would work better?

Paperwing
If you want to go the really quirky route, mini-Paperwings flying around like regular paper airplanes could work. The paperwing is definitely unique to the series, as well. On the downside, it's not really a monster, and maybe isn't terribly memorable when taking the series as a whole.

But! Remember the final decision goes to the mini's discoverer--you--so don't let my opinion sway you! You go for what you think is the best representative of the series/most potentially humorous option. I just put this post forward to get your imagination going, and maybe get a bit of a discussion going among Sabriel fans.