Dec 2018 Archive, part a

Welcome to the Board! Don't worry, we don't bite... often.

Have some chocolate and enjoy your stay!

Join me in the fantasy trash can! *high-fives you* Have Kiki the mini-Chimera Anima! This refugee from a Tokyo Mew Mew badfic looks like a cross between a tamarin and a mutated lion, but in all black. In addition to the standard mini diet, mini-Chimera Animas eat mini-Sues and (when provoked) full-sized Sues. Enjoy your stay!

Congratulations, you overcame your fear of the big scary Board!

As your newbie present, here's access to the code I use on my computer to communicate with computers in alternate universes. That's how I found Nightmare, Jake, and Dusk, three of my alternate selves who have all written for the Badfic Games. And Shadow... but we won't talk about her.

Welcome aBoard, and I hope you have a great time with my online friends. *hugs*

-Twistey

Have one of my own shed feathers and a replica of Holly Short's synthetic wings! (Warning: not guaranteed to enable you to actually fly.)

And here is a bag of black-hole chocolates for you.

Flamel and Septimus Heap? Good series, lovely systems of magic, very unique.

As such, have a Chocolate Charm! Good for food, and escaping.

Have a set of Imperial Guard flak armor, guaranteed for life! (Projected lifespan of deployed Imperial Guardsman: 15 hours)

Have a ball. It’s either yellow or red, but I can’t work out which.

Question: Is Scatty best girl or best girl!? :D

Anywho, welcome! Welcome! Um... sheesh, what to give you... umm...
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*rummages pockets*
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A-HA! Have a self-stirring cauldron

Since you've already answered all my usual questions, I'll just give you this plate of SPaGhetti. :)

Welcome to the PPC! Have two cents, so you can add them to discussions later.

- Tomash

Cool story (time travel shenanigans are always fun)!

Here, have some chocolate and enjoy your stay!

Only constructive criticism I have is how much the hunter seems like he's surmounting challenges a little too fast, but I know it's a very short, abridged story and that can be fixed by expanding it more. I'd like to hear more about it, though.

Anyway, I'm Twistey, or you can call me Twisted, 'cause it fits me. I'm the PPC's resident catalyst of chaos. If you have an idea that likely won't fly by the rest of the Boarders, you can bet I'll take interest. I also write original stories, but none of them involve dinosaurs. I believe that's all I can say right now.

As for your newbie gift, here's a grab bag of Jurassic Park merch. I figured you'd love to have one. No, there's no amber with a mosquito in it. I've trusted newbies with powerful genetics-altering substances before, but I can't trust a newbie with that. *wink*

Nice to meet you! I hope you have a great time here, and welcome to the PPC.

-Twistey

Pretty cool story, and I appreciate that you've put a good amount of of research into it - looks like we've got another budding writer in the works!

Aside from one of my own shed feathers, have a replica of the One Ring that actually makes you turn invisible, and a live Darwinopterus modularis. Be sure to feed it plenty of mealworms and crickets!

Please let me gift you with a pot of black-hole coffee.

Thanks for all of your welcomes, people! Much appreciated.

Welcome to this awesome community. You'll probably be inundated with replies soon enough.


I give to you a pack of cards, be careful that they don't go to war whilst your not looking!

I’m not the best with concrit, but have an early bird - I wish I was one...

Have a flashlight and the black box from a Boeing 747.

Imagine if we had someone read ALL the lemons ever written and they had to judge which had the worst sex scene. Poor soul

It says so on the website. Still, these are pretty funny.

Here, have a self-updating hard copy of the List Of Things I Am Not Allowed To Do In The PPC!

And then three come along at once! Here, have an inflatable duck filled with helium - but don’t let it float away...

*high-fives you* Have a pack of dog-shaped sticky notes and some popcorn to eat while you read the Original Series!

I don't know the words. Dangit.

*looks up the lyrics to the DuckTales theme song*

Your newbie gift is a recording of me singing the DuckTales theme song. Except it's only a virtual gift, because I don't have the right setup to record right now.

Anyway, I'm Twistey, the most chaotic Boarder to ever never be banned! I think. *whisper* I haven't verified that claim, but just go with me, it sounds cool. */whisper* I think that's all I can say about myself. You'll find out more as you go along.

Nice to meet you, my waterfowl friend. I hope you have a great time here, and welcome to the PPC!

-Twistey

You have stumbled upon the PPC, enjoy the goldmine you have found.

Well, have a broomstick, complete with self-cleaning charms, I recommend not trying to fly though.

May I ask what fandoms you have, and how you happened upon the PPC?

In the meantime, have one of my own shed feathers and a complimentary kit of Spikes!

Have a multi-tool, a lockpick, and my pocketknife (I won't need it anymore).

I'm sorry to hear that. I know how painful it is to lose a parent. You need anything, just let us know.

I send my thoughts and prayers.

Not often on the PPC server, but my email is clickable if you ever want to shoot me a line.

I'm new here, so I'm not sure if I can help you. Know that I (and the others here) want to help you get through this and find happiness. *hug*

I know I said it before, but I'm putting it here again: If you need an ear for anything, I'll be around.

There's nothing I can do to take your grief away, but don't feel like you have to go through this alone.

I've got your spin-off, "Modern Baker Street" and both years of IAHF, "Consulting Sue Slayers," your essay, and the "Tragic Tale" parodyfic all on my hard drive + jump drive.

Hey, nice to see you again, though!

—doctorlit is thorough

...and forgot to post the link to the article: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46434711

You can find a link to it here on the Wayback Machine. It's one of my favorites.

Mission-wise... I'm pretty sure it's been done before, where the agents set Sues from the same badfic against each other. Heck, I'm almost certain that I've done it before, but then again it's nearly two in the morning and my brain is fried, so I couldn't point you to any specific examples in the PPC right now. I'm sure someone else knows, though. :)

I'd like that moderately-heavy-looking brown square, please!

... Okay, so it's more of a rectangle, but still.

It's a zip file. My gift is a piece of software. I really hope it's another game development tool.

-Twistey

I want the one with the cute red snowman wrapping paper, please. :)

Dibs on the dark red rectangular box here in the bottom. The one which seems medium-sized. I've got a good feeling about this one.

Can I have that box with the night-sky-pattern wrapping paper, the one that's big enough for me to sit in?

The small blue box, about 10 cm cubed.

The blue is peppered with small grey stars.

Just about palm-sized and not very tall. And it doesn't rattle when shaken!

The blue and green one, please. Looks like a cylinder.

I choose the package wrapped in blue and gold, with ornate patterns on the wrapping paper.

The long, narrow box.

I'll take the cubic one about a foot across, please. The forest green one with a silver ribbon. It smells nice, like an old book. But I've never seen a perfectly cubic book.

It's about the size of a softball, with gold Gallifreyan writing across the deep blues, and if I'm honest I just want to know how they managed to wrap a dodecahedron when I have trouble with a shoebox. (And where they got that paper, because that's gorgeous)

My box is one cubit long, and three hands wide. It is wrapped in green, with a white silk ribbon wrapped around it. Occasionally, the paper shimmers.

I think it's the one that rattles and emits growling noises every so often, wrapped in golden wrapping and a blue silk ribbon, with holes on its lid that emit puffs of smoke.

the cubical white box which feels extremely light.

How about the medium-sized box with the green wrapping paper covered in pineapples and Santas with Hawaiian shirts? I’m hoping for something summery (as I’m not really a winter person)!

Is it a refrigerator box? It might be a refrigerator box. It's so big that one roll of wrapping paper wasn't enough, and the natural-tone Christmas tree paper and cartoon snowmen on bright blue paper don't really go together. I suspect it contains an exasperating series of ever-smaller boxes.

~Neshomeh

...it's clearly very old, and whatever's inside it might have archeological value.

It's a knackered plastic carrier bag of the kind that costs fivepence and in so doing has saved Earth from the threat of climate change literally forever. One of the handles has torn in half and the other has disappeared. There's a worrying smell coming from inside the bag. I can't see what's in it, but I know that it's there.

Waiting.

A completely flat, red envelope with my name hastily scrawled upon it. It's not even sealed properly.

It's about the size of a shelled coconut, and wrapped in silver paper with a blue ribbon.

... I meant this as a reply the the previous post. Sorry.

I don't have too many super-detailed thoughts. That being said, I thin you did a good job of showing the contrast between Thoth and Derik's emotional states, and generally giving an insight into their characters.

Looking forward to part 2.

- Tomash

I enjoyed this! Thoth's analytical viewpoint really makes sense to me. I don't really know the canons or agents featured but I was still able to get a good idea of what was going on.

Wow, yeah, this kind of scene looks like it was tough to write. Very introspective and subtle; I'm not sure I even could have managed it! You guys did a good job, though. It's a little too abstract for me to really go int detail about why it feels so real, but it very definitely does have the right feeling about it. The visualization of Derik's feelings through Thoth's sensations of them was interesting, and felt appropriateyl complex and shifting. I'm a bit saddened by Derik's mental health state being a bit worse than I though up until now, but I'm glad he's a got a meditation teacher to help him through it.

One specific thing I like is the contrast between the first two scenes and the third. When we're inside Thoth's mind, his emotions and thoughts are stated plainly, showing his straightforward and calculating way of thinking. Then the last scene is largely from Tom's perspective, and we see how inscrutable and closed Thoth is to the outside observer.

—doctorlit, reading things

And just remember: all good things take time and effort... and this interlude is one of those good things. ;)

These two really do bounce nicely off each other - and they're more alike than they'd be willing to agree on.

And by fun, I mean by Ix standards. >:) Lots of delicious angst to unpack here.

I want to give Derik so many hugs right now, but probably best that I don’t. It’s going to be interesting to see how their relationship develops moving forward!

Masterfully done. The way they rebound off each other is...complex yet somehow relatable. I very much look forward to seeing it from the other end in the next part.
Honestly, though, my favorite part is exploring the developing bond between the two. How it's full of emotion and tension without being cliche (not that I'd expect cliches from either of you) or overly angsty for the sake of being angsty. "Everything has a purpose...the Emperor ordains it so," and every word of this piece did exactly what it meant to do.
Side note, have we got M:tG alignments for either of them? Because Derik just screams Red to me.

Tiger glanced at his watch. It was precisely midnight. “Happy new year!” he announced, smiling as he looked round at his fellow boys. “May it bring many victories!”

“To victories!” echoed Tim, Andy and Seb. They all raised their plastic cups and took a swig of lemonade. The solemn note was rather ruined when Tiger coughed: the lemonade had been a little fizzier than he’d expected.

“Time to change watch,” Tiger added. Seb groaned but got to his feet, working his way past the blankets to the exit of the en-suite bathroom.

A couple of minutes later, the three remaining boys were joined by Robin.

“Fancy a round of cards?” asked Andy.

“You’re only saying that because you always win!” said Tiger. “I think we should go over the plan again.”

There was a collective groan.

“What’s the signal?” Tiger asked.

“A red flag dangling from the ceiling,” said Robin. “Seb’ll stick it out as soon as he sees the girls.”

“And what are you each going to do?” said Tiger, pointing at Andy first.

“I’m the emergency backup,” announced Andy. “I get to stay where I am!”

Tiger nodded. “Tim?”

“I go and sit out and twiddle my thumbs to lure the girls in,” said Tim.

“Robin?”

“I sneak round the right line of blankets to ambush.”

“And I’ll take the other side,” Tiger concluded. “The door should be unlocked, so what happens when the girls come in?”

There was a pause. Tim filled the silence. “Seb shuts the door with his lever up there once two of them are in. Then Robin and Tiger launch their ambush.”

Tiger nodded. “Now, there’s a high probability that Holly will try and blast the door in, which means we need to work quickly to avoid being overwhelmed. Aim to – “ he made quotation marks with his fingers – “kill them more or less straight away. If we’ve lost no more than one – ideally, we shouldn’t lose any – by the time we’re done, we attack. We’ll outnumber them and we can beat them easily. If we don’t win, everyone except me attacks. Aim to take out as many as possible no matter what. If you could leave Holly to me, that would be great, but don’t worry if not. Got all that?”

“We got it the first time you said it,” said Andy. “This is the fifth at least!”

They all glared at each other. Tiger kept waiting.

Amber waited. Jokes about going to some spaceship and being KILL BY DEMONS made her smile, even as reality proved the spaceships to be in limited quantities and the demons all too real and in disturbingly large numbers.

Being a Trainee, she found herself in a position most actual Agents would've envied: long periods of downtime without the Console BEEP!ing every time someone needed a break.
Amber would've switched in a heartbeat. She wanted to go out there and face the demons. She wanted her Console to finally, at oh so very long last, blare to life and assign her a Trainer, a partner, a mission, anything.
But instead her Console remained as silent as always, ever since she was first assigned her RC.

She sighed. Waiting was always the worst part.

Ce’rana of Borune hummed softly as she pulled another stitch through, flicking her eyes back to the cloak hung from her tree. Time to change colors again, she thought as she compared the crest on its back to the incomplete copy on the cloth in her lap. She reached for her tiny, bird-beaked scissors to snip the blue thread short, then reached for the red spool to re-thread her needle.

Alex probably wouldn’t be happy if he found out Ce’rana had borrowed his cloak; it would be unavoidable come Erastide, but for now, her tree would keep quiet and it wouldn’t be difficult to hang it back where it belonged. The thing had been sitting in there untouched since they’d moved in, unless Alex had been using it when she wasn’t paying attention; there wasn’t much call for formal attire around HQ, especially not when it came to garments of situational practicality. In all likelihood, he wouldn’t even notice she’d gone into his wardrobe at all.

But even if he wasn’t wearing it often, Ce’rana had grown up around the Imperial Court. She knew how much a family crest meant, and there was nothing else this could possibly have been. Heraldry was the end-all be-all for some; in all likelihood that wasn’t the case for him given how rarely he displayed it, but still, having a hanging for his half of the room bearing something of such significance would have to be a joy.

The Dryad dipped needle back into cloth, humming a half-remembered melody to herself as she worked. Even if it turned out Alex hated this present, it would still be a gift given, and… well, maybe she wouldn’t enter it into the logbook after all. Even he deserved a break for Erastide.