Oct 2018 Archive, part b

A Hero's Tale, or: Harry Potter and the Potions Accident

Harry Potter is a wizard. And also a wizard. And another wizard. And a few more wizards. And quite possibly a witch too. There were a lot of wizardly Harry Potters running around, is what I'm getting at. If you think that's confusing, just imagine what Harry thought of it.

If your imagination is not quite up to snuff, I'll give you the gist of it. One Harry (Let's call him Harry Alpha) was wondering how on earth spilling a potion could have possibly led to a multiversal rift. He didn't think it was possible. He was right, sort of. It wasn't just the potion.

Another Harry, Harry-Beta, the Slytherin twin of Harry Gamma (Yes, they were both named Harry; Hagrid meant well but it's kinda hard to tell babies apart at the best of times, and when they're identical twins with the same distinguishing mark, it becomes downright impossible) was thinking that he was never listening to the Weasley twins again no matter what puppy-dog eyes Harry Gamma gave him; Gryffindor pranks might have been rarer than Slytherin pranks but they made up for it in imagination.

Harry-Delta was in the quite awkward position of being naked, and covering up the sensitive areas with a spare textbook. He was a consenting adult with a very good reason for being starkers, and that's all he would tell anyone, not that they'd actually believe him. He generally tried to fade into the background, despite being taller than the rest and wearing a quite distinctive birthday suit.

Harry-Epsilon was looking at Professor Snape, his adoptive father, for guidance, but wasn't getting much from him; the version of Snape in this universe was somewhat shell-shocked at one of his worst nightmares come to life. Harry-Epsilon was probably going to be in for a rather rude shock if he talked to Snape before Dumbledore. No two worlds are exactly the same, and in the one Harry-Epsilon knew, a troubled man had learned to let go of hatred towards the dead. Harry-Epsilon had no idea of how rare this was.

Harry-Zeta was mostly surprised and emotional at seeing Hogwarts again; ever since an especially potent and troublesome magic had trapped him in the distant past, he'd given up on returning to the place he had considered home. He would have been wrong about that, even if no strange convergence of magic had lead him and all his counterparts together, but that's a story for another time.

Harry-Eta was wondering why no one else in the room seemed to keep any artifacts on them aside from an unfamiliar sort of stick. His was a world where magic was in things and shaped by the wizard, rather than in the wizard and channeled through things. He would soon be learning that it was never that simple in any world.

Harry-Theta had trouble recognizing the others as him. This was no wonder, for they were land beings, as opposed to Harry-Theta and his kind, the denizens of the sunken isles. There is a story behind the many changes that lead to Harry-Theta and his fellow wizards becoming amphibious, but it doesn't really have much doing here. Here, it has already been averted.

Harry-Iota is just a new first year, and he's wondering if this was what wizards considered normal. A good look around the room would show him that it wasn't, but he'd just been dumped into an alternate universe in the middle of a crowd of himself. He can be forgiven for missing some details.

These men, boys, and assorted other genders were all different people, from very different worlds. They had lived different lives, and had different stories to tell. But, as they would eventually figure out after the shock had worn off, they had things in common.

They all wished to protect their friends, and were all ready to defy authority when they thought it made a mistake. They were all brave in their own way- even Harry-Beta, sorted into Slytherin, would take great risks if the cause was right, he would just go about it in what he called "the smart way". They all had a talent for getting into trouble. They all had a strong sense of family, and after some initial shenanigans, they extended that feeling to each other. And though none of them set out to be a hero, all couldn't see a problem without trying to fix it.

That's what really brought them together. They were, the lot of them, heroes to the core, and wherever they were and whoever they were with, they would fight the good fight. This time, they'd do it together.

Voldemorts everywhere had better beware.

Think about cartoon physics, for example.

Have some popcorn and a pack of cat-shaped sticky notes!

Hi Cringe-Factoryy! My name is Twistey, and I'm a Boarder of one year. I have a lot of ideas that I tend to overplan. I guess that's all I can say about myself right now.

So, I know this has been asked before, but what about you? How did you get here? Why did you decide to join? What are your fandoms? Et cetera. I'd really like to know more about you.

And as for your newbie gift, my present to you is an early access ticket to the grand virtual opening of the theme park in the thread I'm about to start. Stay tuned to watch it develop.

Well, I hope you have a wonderful time here! Welcome aBoard!

-Twistey

Have a cupcake!

Care to share anything else? You're welcome here either way but I think we'd like to get to know you more,
Oh! Have a geniune WWII-vintage M-22 "Locust" light tank, complete with ammunition and fuel! Now you just need someone to br a driver and a loader!

Tell us a little about yourself! Have an industrial-grade bouncy ball!

BTW, what are your fandoms?

Have a bottle of Generic Liquid. It turns into whatever you expect it to be, so make sure you think it’s something nice!

What are your fandoms? I hope we share some!

Have a slightly holy suit of used Imperial Guard flak armor, guaranteed to last you the rest of your life (average lifespan of deployed Imperial Guardsman: 15hrs).

I wasn't really interested in seeing this movie, since it isn't official MCU. But my brother wanted to see it, and the Eminem song is pretty cool, so we went yesterday. And hey, it was better than I expected.

Spoilers follow for the Venom film.

The impression I got from Venom's trailers was that it was going to be some nineties grim-dark preteen boy-aimed violence-fest, so I was pleased to discover it . . . wasn't. There was humor in it, and while there was unavoidably violence, it wasn't as gory as I was expecting. I enjoyed it for what it was; the creators were faced with writing a story with a character who's normally a villain in the role of protagonist, and they did a good job with that restriction. (Interestingly, my brother had gotten the impression that it was a much better movie due to all the hype around it on the internet, and was actually disappointed by the final product. Low expectations, heck yeah!)

I was amused by the fact there was a solid premise for a non-sci fi, non-comic book story right in the opening moments of the movie. Looking past the shuttle crash and the alien organisms, I legitimately would have enjoyed a movie about Eddie Brock investigatively journalisming at Transhumanist!Elon Musk to uncover all the shady human testing elements of his business. But then, I guess it wouldn't have been a comic book movie . . .

I was skeptical of how well it would work to cast Venom as a protagonist, but the writers managed it pretty well. In the absence of a traditional hero like Spider-man, and using an equally alien but much more single-minded creature of Venom's own species as the villain, Venom does indeed feel like a character I can root for in this situation, despite its monstrous qualities being dangerous in other situations. They played up its lack of human thought and emotion in a comedic way to make it feel more ignorant of social norms, rather than outright malevolent.

I really liked the Scientist Lady with Glasses and Morals. The fact that Venom even found the right host to be able to battle Riot later on is entirely thanks to her, so I'm very disappointed that she was killed. Even that has a silver lining, though, since her death wound up inadvertently taking out the blue symbiote, which probably would have allied itself with Riot and made it harder for Venom to stop the rocket.

Minor things I liked:
*Venom basically doing a "web-shoot" while escaping Elon Musk's private military. Even though Spider-Man's not around, they had to homage Venom's origins!
*The moment during the final fight when Venom and Riot are fighting and draw away from Eddie and Elon, and the two humans have a fistfight in the middle of the roiling protoplasm. It's silly as heck, don't get me wrong, but the fact the situation is pretty much unique to this plot lets me give that a pass, because we may never get a scene like that in any other movie, ever.
*For being nothing more than a teaser for a potential sequel, there was excellent casting and acting for Guy Who Becomes Carnage Eventually. He was very eerie, even after saying he wanted to skip the serial killer stereotypes. I also loved that he was writing in his own blood, to foreshadow the role it plays in his future as a supervillain.
*Probably the most fourth wall-breaking Stan Lee cameo of all!

Minor things I disliked:
*Both Venom and Riot see a lot of convenience in hopping from host to host, but of course, this is easily overlookable for the sake of letting the plot move forward.

Uh, bonus?

doctorlit reviews "Venom" by Eminem (warning for NSFW words and the r-word learning-disabled slur in lyrics)

I don't know exactly how much creative control was wielded by Eminem himself vs. the movie creators. The lyrics are a mix of Eminem autobiography and references to Eddie and the Venom symbiote. At least the Venom properties are fairly established characters in pop culture, so the song's references to them won't feel aged once the movie fades into obscurity.

I found the music video quite amusing, with all the different people lip-syncing to Eminem lyrics—especially the little kid and the old man. It's such a reversal of the sort of face that I usually see rapping, that it's quite trip to watch.

—doctorlit, a conflicted Eminem fan

♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪ ♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪ ♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪ ♪I'm the super spoiler Dad and Mom was losin' their marbles to♪

Just tacking this onto another review post for efficiency’s sake. Hope you don’t mind, Thoth!

(I read The Epic of Gilgamesh way back in high school, and I’m afraid I don’t remember enough of it to have any real opinions about it, other than, “it’s an amazing and lucky miracle that it survived long enough to be recorded in modern languages.”)

The Prodigal Sorcerer is one of the Magic: the Gathering novels that were published by HarperPrism back in the mid-nineties, and generally aren’t acknowledged as canon any more, although technically anything that doesn’t contradict more modern setting details is still canon. They’re out of print, so I’ve had to buy them off of Amazon, though I did get lucky back in college and find a copy of The Cursed Land at a traveling used book sale that came to Arizona State University’s campus. That’s the only one I’ve read prior to this, and happily I found that not only was it a good story, but nothing in it contradicted modern Magic, allowing me to safely accept it into my headcanon as “definitely really happened.”

TPS was also a very enjoyable story. Going into nineties fantasy, it was easy for me to expect both of them to be dated, with a focus on male protagonists, solving problems through violence, and other stereotypes characteristic of early nerd culture. And both novels proved me wrong in excellent ways. Both had a woman as the primary protagonist, and while war is present in both, and especially in TPS, it’s portrayed as the weakest option for fixing problems in both, and both have some degree of getting to know opponents, and working together with them to solve problems. TPS doesn’t quite jive with modern canon as well, but it was mostly things that aren’t really the author’s fault, as the color pie wasn’t as defined back in those early days.

Spoilers follow from this point for The Prodigal Sorcerer. There’s going to be one paragraph with some potentially uncomfortable subject matter, which I’ll warn for just before it arrives, in case the content isn’t your thing. [I’ve actually wound up moving that to the very bottom below my signature, so it’s safe to read up to that point.] The rest of this review should be G rated.

The most basic theme in TPS is of how racial prejudice can blind people to overlook actual dangers. We don’t really know much of the overall world where TPS takes place, thanks to a magic Magewall that keeps the valley of narrative focus largely cut off from the rest of the plane. Within the valley, barring a few members of races that aren’t focused on, are humans, elves (called Garans), and Viashino (Magic’s race of lizard-men). The human leader Tagard wants to unite everyone in the valley, but the problem is that the Viashino have what seems to be the only fortified city within the magewall. He unites the humans and Garan to attack it and take it over, and then creates a united council of human, Garan and Viashino to make democratic decisions —woops, he got assassinated. And then his daughter Talli has to get over her prejudice towards the Viashino (Viashino had killed her mother years ago) to keep the uneasy three-way alliance together. Naturally, not a single one of the characters ultimately revealed to be villainous in the end is Viashino, and most of the conflict is caused by other humans. I liked that—that the protagonist was so focused on hating the lizard-folk who were so unlike her, that she overlooked the threat coming from the more similar species, and lost her father for it. (I mean, I like the message behind it, not that bad things happened to her.) Another more minor detail that I liked: a lot of fantasy fiction is written from a human perspective, so any character whose species isn’t described “defaults” to human. But the narration in TPS is always aware that humans are by no means dominant. It always explicitly names a human a human, and even human characters will refer to others as humans, rather than people. Because they live in a world where not all the people are humans!

The viashino are a bit off-brand for the color pie. They were mostly Red-mana creatures back in the early days, but with their fortified city of Berimish, their preserved cultural heritage, and their thriving, orderly markets, the viashino of this plane are pretty solidly White. I do still like them; the details that they prefer climbing straight up walls rather than using stairs, and don’t know their own biological sexes until they mature to a certain point, make them feel more like a race of actual lizards that evolved sentience, rather than humans who got a scaly visual overlay. They just . . . don’t quite match modern viashino in Magic. Although within the context of the novel, it does at least keep consistency with respect to enemy color pairs, as the human culture is pretty clearly red here. They live in caves, are easily driven to anger, and have close bonds to their immediate communities. So at least the Red vs. White conflict is properly present.

The Garan elves are also a little iffy to me. Abhorring constructed weaponry is certainly Green, but the reason the Garans forbid weapons feels more Red. Basically, they had such violent wars against each other in the past that they nearly wiped themselves out, and learned carefully controlled hand-to-hand combat in order to force some control and caution over combat. First of all, I recognize this as being ripped off of Vulcans, even as a non-Trekker. But secondly, yeah. Having such uncontrolled emotions is blatantly red in M;tG, even at the start, so it feels weird. Still, it is a creative new take on why a given culture of elves forgoes metal weaponry.

But for an absolute home run with the color pie, we have the humans of Suderbod, in their swamp-based kingdom just outside the Magewall. I love that Sumner actually worked the geography of swamps as M:tG’s source of Black mana into the culture of the humans who live there. Living in a low, dirty land means there’s a heavy cultural focus of cleanliness, with the need for public communal baths beating out public propriety against nudity as a cultural norm, and the fact that those with higher social status are more able/compelled to wash frequently. The clothes and even armor of the Suder sport garish bright colors in contrasting geometric patterns, which would show off any physical muck more clearly, giving the wearers an even greater incentive to keep clean. The best part is (and I didn’t even realize until I happened to notice a copy of the Prodigal Sorcerer card on the back of the novel) that those color schemes were inspired directly by the older art on that card; even the floppy hat and forked beard were incorporated into the fashions of the Suder. It’s ultimately a minor detail, but it’s still rather cool that Sumner took every detail he could from the one card (I know of) that inspired the novel.

So ultimately, considering this novel’s age, it’s still decently in-line with modern M:tG, and isn’t much a blend of stereotypes from outdated nerd culture. Pretty nice! I’m looking forward to reading more of these out-of-print M:tG novels, and making posts about them, even though I’m almost certainly the only one here who’s bothered to track them down and no one will have anything to add.

Hm. I think I’ll just push that one unpleasant paragraph off to after my usual outro stuff, so folks can skip it if they don’t want to read it. It’s going to be discussing non-graphically the leader of Suderbod intending to molest a teenage elf male and a teenage human female. There’s nothing else of real value from this point, so stop reading and don’t scroll further if that’s not for you.

—doctorlit, about to go on an epic wiki walk about M:tG after not really paying much attention to it for years

“Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.” “Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.” “Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.” “Some Viashino think spoilers are nice to look at, that’s all.”

Okay, the unpleasantness begins here: yeah, the leader of Suderbod, I forget . . . Solin, that’s the name. Apparently he’s way into bedroom stuff, and went after two of the main characters, mainly because of the boy—he had never been with a Garan before. I don’t feel it really added anything to the narrative. It’s mostly there so Solin’s one underling can leave him alone with the wizard girl so she could kill Solin and let the underling take the throne. But it could have been, you know, a dinner party to hear Garan fairy tales, or whatever. The only reason I even bring the scene up, and the only detail that somewhat vindicates its presence, is that it kind of reverses the gender expectations of the setup: Solin goes after the boy first, and the girl is the one who saves him by saying “take me instead” and then magicking Solin to death. That at least makes for a nice finale to the scene, but again, it would have been nicer for the novel not to contain that scene to begin with.

I haven't read the particular translation you mention, but I own a different version, so here: talking!

The Epic of Gilgamesh is, to a modern reader, a deeply weird story, but it has resonances. If you're Judeo-Christian: remember how Genesis randomly includes stories like that of Onan (who was killed by God for doing sex wrong), or how Lamech just wanders up to his family and says, "You know how Cain was a murderer and God hated him? Yeah, I'm like that, only much worse", or how there are multiple scenes where some ostensibly sympathetic character gets blind drunk and people do stuff to them while they sleep (Noah and Lot spring to mind)? Or if you're not Christian: you know how Greek mythology has this endless litany of 'and then Zeus turned into a different animal which some girl happened to be really into and/or maybe it was rape, who knows'?

Yeah, Gilgamesh is like that. One of the opening scenes has the gods deciding that Gilgamesh needs a best bud to fight (so he'll stop ignoring his job), so they create a super hairy man named Enkidu. But, problem! Enkidu is quite happy to just chill out in the countryside, hanging with his wild animal besties.

Solution: a hunter who ran into Enkidu asks Gilgamesh if he can borrow a prostitute, then takes her and has her get naked to lure Enkidu away from the animals. After a literal week of constant boinking, Enkidu agrees to go over to Uruk and meet this Gilgamesh bloke. And Gilly and Enki fight, and then they kiss and make up, and then they go off to fight some monsters for kicks.

None of this is hyperbole or subtext; it's all right there on the tablets. It's all like that. Seriously. (Oh, and the prostitute is named 'Sham-hat', because history is awesome.)

The thing about Gilgamesh it's that it's a lot less refined than the Greek myths (or the Biblical ones). Homer, Hesiod, or Moses have a textual tradition behind them: they've been continually recorded, translated, and altered for thousands of years. Gilgamesh, in contrast, is known from original, 4000-year-old clay tablets. It's a record of a sprawling oral tradition at the time it was current. It's fireside stories told by a bunch of different people, all crammed together into an only crudely-joined narrative.

hS

First, on introductions to 40k:
The Gaunt's Ghosts First and Only the first (but not only) 40k novel I read, though I was introduced to the wargame first, and I would recommend it (the novel) highly.

Second, on Gilgamesh:
I just want to say that I really enjoy a lot of ancient mythology, especially when its strange, and the heroes die.

I think a "Multiversal Tour" ride would be pretty cool. Either as a slowish dark ride, or an outdoor tram ride. And it takes the riders through a series of physical sets built to represent locations and scenes from the PPC's main canons. Say, just as example, maybe Aglarond, a TARDIS interior (possibly flying around during a battle in the Time War?), the Department of Mysteries, [an obligatory something to represent anime/manga/Ghibli films, I don't really follow the genre well enough to say], an off-shore kraken attack on the Black Pearl, something out of Shakespeare (a simple speech, perhaps?), the midst of a firefight out of Halo. The exact contents might vary depending on whether it's an indoor or outdoor ride, but I do want it as actual sets, not just video on a screen.

Also, never mind the food shops, let's talk merchandising! We've got to rip off Disney's pin trading thing. We can have department and division flashpatches, chibi agents, all the minis, OFU crests . . .

Oh, and how about a poster shop themed around Bjam? It could have the sorts of banners she makes in canon, plus classy-looking posters of OFU crests and flashpatches, and maybe group portraits of some of the smaller departments' and divisions' staffs, or group portraits of characters by individual authors.

Oh, and around Halloween, we can do scary mazes! Except play it completely straight: no blood or anything, all the Mary Sues in the maze are portrayed as glittery and bright and friendly, and it's just the behavior of the cast members playing the mind-controlled canons that makes it unsettling . . .

I had more thoughts about this than I realized before I started typing! I'll keep thinking over it . . .

—doctorlit has friends who discuss those Disney pins like they're crack cocaine: "I know a guy who's coming down from Michigan next week, and he's bringing some good stuff!"

but Ix got there first. I definitely like the sound of some of these things, though.

Food: everything delicious from every canon: lembas, Every-Flavour Beans... *stomach rumbles*

The best idea I got is a "Hall of Agents" where all the great agents of the past are honored like Jay and Acacia (natch)... does anyone else have any suggestions?

A ride through Rina/Ave's missions, with the steepness of the track at any given moment determined by how much angst and/or drama is found in that mission. The Little Miss Mary drop is the tallest in the country.

(The country is probably New Caledonia, which as far as I can tell doesn't actually have any theme parks. So I'm technically correct, which is the best kind of correct!)

As for shops: in the style of the Build-a-Bear chain, how about Adopt-a-Mini? You look through the catalogue and select one of the many, many types of mini, which is brought to you to stuff and dress as you please. You choose a name for it - which has to be a plausible misspelling from its canon, of course! - and get a lovely adoption certificate (and a voucher for a half-price bacon/fried egg sandwich at the Cafeteria, naturally).

For the kids, I propose one of those rides where individual cars move at a steady low speed around a flat, twisting track, through a landscape of plants, statues, and anamatronics (there's one at Legoland Windsor which is full of Lego dinosaurs). Obviously it would be the story of a mission, perhaps a classic Jay and Acacia tale?

(I hope anyone who still plays Rollercoaster Tycoon or its relatives is paying attention here!)

hS

doesn't mean we don't know.

Trust me, I've dived into more WBWL fics than I can remember. And, if you dive deep enough you'll find there are the occasional ones that aren't too bad so don't tar them all with the same brush. You're also forgetting the 'fics that have Neville as the fake Boy-Who-Lived, of which some of those are quite interesting too, both in a good or bad way.

So, I'm not *quite* sure why you felt like you needed to exclaim this, rather over-used fanfic cliche to us, I'm fairly certain Ix has missioned a WBWL 'fic before. But thank you for your... efforts to keep us notified of such things, perhaps tone it down in the future. I'm not saying such spontaneity is bad, I'm just saying perhaps think before you post sometimes.

Novastorme

I just checked AO3 and there are seventeen works in the tag, not 179. But yes, they are awful. All of them. Once I get Permission I might mission one of them.

Multiple friends who are into it and some interesting world-building I've already seen. Wow. Now I seriously need to check it out.

-Twistey.

Tiger wasn’t exactly in the best of moods, to put it mildly. This was because of his left hand, which was chalk-white and lifeless. He couldn’t move it at all, but at least it was no longer causing him pain.

So, when the butler unveiled a platter of perfectly cooked salmon, he was extremely angry.

“Salmon?” he said incredulously. “Did it have to be today?”

“And custard for dessert,” responded Holly, with her smuggest expression.

Tiger only just managed to stop himself from groaning audibly.

“Holly won,” Francis remarked mildly, “so she gets to choose the meal.”

Under his breath, Tiger muttered, “And of course she chose salmon and custard because she likes it and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she knows I hate it…”

As if placing a potentially deadly spell on his hand, then “killing” him in a training battle, wasn’t enough, she just had to add insult to injury by ensuring that his least favourite food was served.

The other problem was that he was left-handed, so he wouldn’t be able to cut the salmon the normal way. He stared at the slice of orange fish which had just been placed on his plate and wondered how hungry he really was and whether it was worth the effort of trying to cut it up for something he didn’t even like.

That was when he came up with the idea of using magic: a basic Cutting Spell shouldn’t tax his abilities too much and would get the job done without having to try and use the wrong hand.

Carefully, he began chanting the same few words again and again, watching as the salmon was scored with lines. When he was done he felt a little tired, but at least that ordeal was over. Now all he had to do was actually eat the disgusting thing.



Was there some kind of reference in that one as well? If so, I missed it.

"Are you absolutely sure this isn't cheating?"

"Of course it's not. People from other species have got just as much right to play as anyone from World One. It's just a shame that Meyerpire in ESAS went and got herself turned into a human, to be honest, she would've been really useful to have around-"

"Yes, okay, we get it. We got it the last time you brought that up."

"I was just saying-"

"You were just repeating yourself. About twelve times."

A third speaker broke in. "Can we PLEASE focus on the task at hand, ladies? Thirty seconds until kickoff and we're in the Pacific Trials if we win this. Sound off."

"Yeah, okay. Maturin, projectile DPS." Maturin's tone let everyone know she was the first speaker, mostly on account of her exasperation and how it wasn't doing much to mask her nerves. "Going Brig."

"MoonGerbil, hitscan deeps, Zarya." Gerbil was the second speaker and had a pronounced Valley Girl accent, which seemed rather at odds with what was going on.

"DGale, offtank, D.Va." This was a fourth voice, slightly spiky and tired-sounding. "Like I'd give up the chance to pilot a giant robot mech suit thingy."

"ThingWithAllTheTeeth, flex support." This voice was, unlike the others, male. It was older, too, warm and slightly accented. "I'm picking Torb. You know I'm picking Torb-"

"AL!" DGale all but screeched.

"Kidding, kidding, I'm on Lucio, don't worry."

"Um. Is my mic too loud? Um. Hi everyone, I'm Drakie, and I'm a heal support and I'll be playing Moira today! This'll be fun!" This last voice was just... sweet. And even nervier than Maturin's.

"Drakie, your mic's fine the way it is and so are you. Right then. OzCOM. Main tank. Going Rein, because GOATS is good on attack and we can run it on control very easily. We set?"

"All systems cleared for takeoff and Caroline's running smooth as you like," ThingWithAllTheTeeth said with more than a hint of pride. "Let's do this!"

And the team barrelled out of spawn on Sanctum. Four women, one middle-aged man, and one very fluffy Flareon. What a bunch of misfits and freaks they had here.

They loved it.

---

Now, I'm pretty sure Nova follows competitive Overwatch just as much as I do, so he won't mind me mentioning that Apply, Effect, and Hydration are the monikers (or handles, if you prefer) of professional Overwatch League stars. The vignette just kinda flowed from there. Just so everyone's on board, the agents are as follows:-

Maturin: Cass Aubrey, DMS (Aubrey and Maturin are the protagonists of Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander series, and Cass was named for the former of that pair.)

MoonGerbil: Em Perilled, DMS (Em is a weregerbil, which comes up from time to time when she shows up in my board vignettes.)

DGale: Karen Shawcross, NPC (Karen's overriding LO is Ace McShane of the Whoniverse, real name Dorothy Gale McShane.)

ThingWithAllTheTeeth: First Technician Albert Sproggins, NPC (The Thing With All The Teeth is one of the many horrible things, or possibly Things, that haunts the A/V Division courtesy of Wobbles the Clown; Al was a former member of that Division before his transfer to Non-Propaganda Communications)

Drakie: Gabrielle, DWT (Drakie is Gabrielle's nickname for Draco Malfoy, upon whom she has an inexplicable crush. You nickname your favourites, you see.)

OzCOM: Field Commander Lola McCandless, DIA (Lola is ex of XCOM: Enemy Unknown... sort of. Her homefic (again, sort of) was a mega crossover based on crossing XCOM with a bunch of Weird Things. She's from Australia, hence the name.)

And, because this drabble is a bit short, here's the strips for if/when they get into the Overwatch League Itself:



Presenting the HQ Generics!

Poorly designed in Flag Maker Junior and MS Paint!

I am Bad At Things! =]

Finding myself in the generic corridors of HQ was somewhat surprising, but it wasn't long before I realized that I was dreaming.

I tend to have lucid dreams, so naturally I remembered that since I'm a writer, I can change anything in a word world just by describing it. So I started changing the color of the wall, painting on it with my fingers, and so on.

This was fun until I, in my sleepy lack of common sense, decided to try declaring the wall to be urple. At that point, I was surrounded by pink-purple-haze, fell through the floor, and landed in my bed, awake. My cat was sitting on my chest, demanding breakfast.

I like to think she saved me from my self-created Urple Cloud. :)

Dangit, I was even going to post about it, but I completely forgot!

-Twistey

I dreamt I got loads of concrit! Dreams being dreams, I can't remember what any of it was, sadly. If I could it would probably be irrelevant to anything I've written.

If I remember right the details involved a new OFU somehow, but that's all I've got.

Most recently, I dreamed that the Board had been taken over by a spambot or something. I think I was unable to post, and I was trying to find where everyone had gone to wait it out—the wiki, the Other Board, or something else. It was one of those worrisomely realistic ones where I had to check and make sure everything was okay when I woke up. No ypurs this time!

Dreaming about the PPC is also how I got the idea behind "The Cabin," so there's that, too. >.>

~Neshomeh

I went off to try catching up a little (I've been...not hugely active on the Board for the past few weeks or so, given that I've been really busy), and there's a post down-Board with EPL volunteering as a beta? If she did beta your permission request, she ought to be credited as well :) Probably just an oversight, but something to bear in mind for the future--if someone's been your beta, it's only polite to credit them (unless they specifically request you don't. Doesn't happen often, to my knowledge, but once in a while there's a reason. The most frequent reason I've heard was 'I don't feel I really did enough to be credited as a beta reader').

~Z

Ah. So.

I've read through this, and I thought I'd give a few comments. Namely...well.

I do like Summer. I liked him a little better from his bio, funnily enough, but he's still fine in an actual scene. Your writing is also pretty good, from my reading; I didn't go trying to pick it apart, but nothing really jumped out at me when it came to SPaG, etc. Your descriptive writing is also nice. So that's great already.

Thing is, Nic...I really do not get Nic. He's, ah--well, look, I could see someone like him being interesting to read about, but as it is? He's too much for me in the bio, and he's too much in the story. He's confusing to read; he careens around the room, he changes every other second and it's unclear whether he does or doesn't have control over it (he seems not to right up until the bit where he looks like Nico and then it suddenly gets more ambiguous)...for me, he's just really, really too much. I think he'd need to be toned down quite a bit for me to even just not feel exhausted trying to keep up with him. The main thing I did like about him, beyond that he seems to mean well and like Summer, is the bit with the mac and cheese--the little detail about somehow changing cheese powder to actual cheese was amusing and *did* feel like something I'd want to read about both in general and I think in PPC writing, too. I think Nic at the heart of him is a nice sort of character; I just think his current window dressing, so to speak, is far too busy to really get along with as a reader.

A few more technical things:

-Had Nic and Summer already met? In the first piece it sounds very much like they know each other, and not at all just superficially (they seem to have a grasp of each other's names, personalities, powers...they read like they're already good friends)--yet Nic's only been there a week, there's no clarification regarding previous meetings, and it kind of seems like they're moving into a new RC (rather than Nic moving in with Summer? Moving into a new RC would be perfectly fine, it just...really isn't clear what's going on and why). It's never explained if and where they've met before, or even if it's a new RC (unless I just missed a mention)...I think we need more information, preferably in the text. We're very much lacking context.

-The destroying the RC piece: I...really wouldn't mind a little more context there, as well. Why did Nic already go in? Or did he not go on the mission? Did Summer even *finish* the mission? Where he was on a mission *to* is less important, since it's not the focus (though I *am* curious), but the other questions...again, we're missing just enough context to have a few too many niggling questions while reading.

-The writing just feels...it's very *busy*. I think a lot of that is due to writing Nic--who might work a little better as a cartoon character, honestly, except that even there he'd be very hard to keep track of. It doesn't really help me picture the scenes as more than exhausting shenanigans, at times.

The badfic: I don't know much about the canon, so I'll take your word for it. Personally, I don't often go for fics that *warn* they'll be OOC, but that's my personal preference. You're probably good on this front.

(Do I recognize you? Of course I recognize you. I'd say you're pretty well integrated into the community, by this point.)

And one last thing: I know this has gone through at least one other iteration. Good for you for putting so much work into it! I'm guessing Thoth is the only one who betaed this particular version, as no one else is listed?

Personally, at this point I'd say Permission Denied (but able to be obtained by remembering to give a touch more context and also toning down Nic--where is he *from*, by the way?), but I really wouldn't mind a second opinion.

~Z

PS: ;lakjsdf never, ever fail to repeatedly copy what you're typing in here and keep an eye on your keyboard. I'm using a different one than usual, and hit the back button when I went for where the tilde key normally is. Thank *everything* that when I went forward to the page everything I'd written was still there. Wow.

What I mean by that is you're doing pretty much the same awkward things that I did as a newbie, and that I still continue to do today, except I'm less bad than I was originally. Key phrase being the "less bad than I was" part, and you will be too, eventually. Hang in there, you'll get better as you learn the flow of things.

With belief in you,
-Twistey

I once read this original badfic that was written with the “humans are slaves to vampires (in the future)” trope, and (I think) the main character’s name was Rogue, but it kept being spelled “rouge” and that was very uncomfortable. I think it was spelled wrong for the whole fic, for whatever reason. Also, I have no idea why I’m typing this.

Okay so apparently she’s the first girl to attend Durmstrang, the most powerful witch of her age, etc.
https://www.quotev.com/story/7945100/The-Forgotten-Sister/1

A twin sister of Hermione... who is abused. And Harry falls in love at first sight, because Twu Wuv.
https://www.quotev.com/story/11260514/The-Forgotten-One

American at Hogwarts, who is also Hermione’s cousin.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3174333/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Secrets-Revealed

Right, so the second link is actually a cover for the actual fic. There’s a link to the fic and it’s author in there, though.

I'm on my way

In a final act of spite, yesterday has managed to screw me over once again. I have sustained an inexplicable cut on my foot that makes walking any distance at all extremely painful. I'm really sorry, everyone, but I have to bow out.

hS

If I travelled to Waterloo instead of Victoria I could of got up an hour later. Unfortunately I was too awake at that point to make any use of this fact.

Assuming that you're talking about the London Science Museum that is. I could make it to London, although if it's somewhere else in the world it might be a little short notice.

And it would be cool to see you guys again.

-Irish

~Akrinor, posting from a bus somewhere in the Netherlands.

checks which tube train to get

I'm sorry to say that I largely know you as "that guy whose name appears in the credits at the bottom of Lost Tales," but I'm glad to get to know you better.

Like sci-fi and anime, huh? In that cause, I highly recommend checking out The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, which is an amazing space opera comedy that had me rolling in the aisles.

Hope you enjoy that (assuming you have time to check it out...),
--Thoth

(Sorry, that was a reference to "history of japan". Moving on.)

Hey Irish, welcome back! I'm Twistey, and I've been here for about a year and a half. I think of myself as the resident wild-card Boarder, as I've pulled several embarrassing stunts on the Board that I'm... rather glad you missed. I'm currently building my Permission attempt, and I guess that's enough about me.

As for your returnbie present, here's the opposite of a snow globe: a fire globe! Inside is one of my own fireballs, kept burning by magic. You can replace it with fangirl flames, though, because even I know they look cooler. You can also carve a wooden figurine of a chosen badfic author, stick it in here, and watch it burn. Good stress relief.

Anyway, nice to finally meet you after hearing about you for a while, and welcome back to the PPC!

-Twistey

Glad to see you're still about!

—doctorlit, also still about

Always nice to see a familiar face (or screen name) return. Welcome back! I'm completely jealous that you can just jump on a London Gathering at the drop of a hat. ^_^

~Neshomeh

While I am slightly disappointed you did not link to this video, it is not a problem in the grand scheme of things.

And depending on how you feel about AI, I may have a book series to push you towards~

/hands you some chocolate bark

Three things:

1) Have a suit of slightly holy Imperial Guard issue flak armor, guaranteed to last the rest of your career. (Average lifespan of deployed Imperial Guardsman: 15 hours)

2) The critical roll link seems to be broken.

3) For a similar RPG series, check out Dice Friends, courtesy of Canadian sketch comedy group Loading Ready Run:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV_qemO0oatj5my_xlWsrqm-gd1COup23

Critical Rickroll, on the other hand...

It's good to see you back! And don't feel bad about not having anything to post; god knows it's been too long since I've actually written anything.

The story sounds interesting and I'll definitely check it out when I have the time!