Three quick things

[thisbluespirit]

... that I've been meaning to post:

1. Doctor Who Action/Adventure Plot Generator - really rather nifty! Less cracky than some (alas), but can definitely throw out some potential ideas and is very cool.


2. tumblr has polls. tumblr is behaving exactly as anyone would expect tumblr to and it's mostly pretty entertaining. (I was at first deeply impressed by the maths ones, but now I feel I know what it is to be a guinea pig in the hands of evil maths masterminds and have stopped doing them.) Anyway, I got polls and naturally in the spirit of me-when-ill and tumblr, I made my first poll this one. (Posting the bit that had the fun bonus result I got from it.)


3. Not really a proper third thing, I can't remember what the proper other thing was, but I noticed hurtcomfortex put up a new badge reward scheme for treating and I was just looking at it, and I've never felt so hard that someone was posting from another universe. (They're awarding badges for treats created for the exchange, and they start at 25 treats! :-0 They go up - 25, 50, 75, 100 & 200. It is, tbf, an exchange where you can just post anything written from the tagset to the fest, so you wouldn't have to post like 50 works each to the only 4 people you could possibly write for in order to achieve the max, and maybe these numbers reflect what people have written in previous rounds. But, I, a mere mortal, am boggling. lol.)

ETA: (It finally occurred to me after I wrote this (and switched off the pc and went to have my afternoon lie down, of course), that I think they mean communally? Which does make more sense! In my defence, I am literally clinically stupid quite a lot right now, and also I don't understand how communal badges work, but, lol, then again, I also don't have full reading comprehension either!)

Comments

[persiflage_1]

How do you get a poll?

[thisbluespirit]

It finally dawned on me yesterday that you probably needed to use their new post editor thing I'd been deliberately ignoring for ages! And, yes, as soon as I switched, there was the poll option. But it does seem to be staggered, so idk if some people are still poll-less. (The new editor, so far, has astonishingly not been in any way unusuable, which I had come round to thinking was no longer possible in these times.)

[persiflage_1]

Apparently I too have Poll-ability!

[thisbluespirit]

*\o/*

[persiflage_1]

Heh.

I didn't create one 'cos I have nothing I want to run a poll on, but it's there.

[thisbluespirit]

Which is the best Jemma character??

[persiflage_1]

I'm not sure there are enough poll options for that!!

[earthspirits]

That boggles my mind too. Starting at 25? lol

[thisbluespirit]

I think it's actually a communal thing, though I'll have to check; in which case the numbers are suddenly a lot more reasonable! XD


/o\

[liadt]

Like an actual serial!

Lol, the poll reminded me of the mock Dr Who multiple choice quiz question: In the the Third Doctor's stories the villain is revealed to be a) The Master, b) The Master or c) The Master.

Sounds alot to me!

[thisbluespirit]

Like an actual serial!

Indeed! It seems to vary as to which TARDIS teams it will give you some days, but come back another and it'll let you have different ones. I think it could be pretty useful/dangerous!

Lol, the poll reminded me of the mock Dr Who multiple choice quiz question: In the the Third Doctor's stories the villain is revealed to be a) The Master, b) The Master or c) The Master.

omg, next tumblr poll alert! XD

(Currently James Maxwell is in the lead. ;-p)

And as for the hurtcomfortex thing, I finally (after staring at it every time I came on here for the last 24 hrs) realised that they meant it as a whole community challenge, so if the whole exchange reaches 25 treats, somehow some sort of badge is revealed or whatever. (i don't entirely get a group badge, but it makes MUCH more sense of the numbers and sounds much more likely!)

[liadt]

Ha, ha to the polls! I'm glad James Maxwell is in the lead, but will he still be by the time polls close?

I would've have got confused over the whole badge thing too:S

[thisbluespirit]

It could be James Maxwell instead!! XD

[corvidology]

I'm boggling too at that exchange amount. I think the most treats I ever managed to write for a single exchange was 7!

[thisbluespirit]

Yeah, it is a lot! However, after staring at it uncomprehending last night, this morning, and this afternoon, and finally making this post, I went away and the penny finally dropped that they probably mean communal totals! Which, i don't get the badges in that case, but otherwise makes far more sense. /o\

[corvidology]

I do remember them mentioning something about there being a 'new challenge' for the exchange this year but this seems a bit odd to me still.

[thisbluespirit]

It makes a lot more sense than expecting people to write 25+ treats! I'm now going away to possibly bang my head against a desk until it works again. XD

[philomytha]

I thought the hurt/comfort exchange badges were a community thing, so if there are a total of 25 treats in the whole exchange, the whole exchange wins the badge, rather than one specific author. It's a bit confusing, though.

And I love the tumblr polls! They're all so ridiculous and fun.

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, the penny FINALLY dropped for me after I made this and went to lie down, so I couldn;t fix the entry till now. In my defence, I currently have very little brain and I've only ever seen badges used as individual rewards before, not as a whole comm thing, which also seems a little odd, but only a very little in comparison to expecting people to write 25 treats each and then do some more! I stared at it last night, this morning and again this afternoon, trying to make the numbers make sense, but it turns out it wasn't the numbers i should have been looking at! /o\

ETA: The tumblr reaction to getting polls has been pretty delightful, even if I do now refuse to bow to my new Maths Genius Overlords. XD

[lurking_latinist]

The communal badges remind me of in Trick or Treat, when they put up a little graph of whether "Tricks" or "Treats" are ahead and hypothetically you can root for your favorite. I suppose it's something like that?

Regardless, I'm glad you mentioned hurtcomfortex, because I hadn't realized it was starting so soon and now I might sign up. (I can make other people be terribly cruel to the Seventh Doctor *for* me! Ah, the joys of exchanges!)

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, I should imagine that was exactly what was intended! I've just been very brain dead and I've only ever seen badges used as individual rewards (like in fan_flashworks) so I just could not read it the right way no matter how long I looked at it! Until I posted it and it immediately obv clarified in my brain, too late.

Regardless, I'm glad you mentioned hurtcomfortex, because I hadn't realized it was starting so soon and now I might sign up.

It is all worthwhile if my mistake was to someone else's benefit! :-)

[astrogirl]

That random generator is so good at spitting out completely standard-sounding DW plots that it's simultaneously impressive and a bit boring. And yet, I still wonder if I should enlist its help if I decide to do Space Swap this year and end up writing Who (which I probably will, on both counts). Last time I actually did need to have a plot, and I am very, very bad with those. :)

I did, in one of my off-and-on Tumblr lurking sessions, see that they'd added the polls. I also see that they're re-running the Twitter character polls that happened a while back, or some variant of them, and, checking back now, I see my beloved amnesiac wreck of a detective, who took a very much deserved #1 in Twitter's Most Pathetic Loserman poll, has now come in second on the Tumblr equivalent. Which is a) very wrong, as no one qualifies as more pathetic, and b) deeply amusing, because of course he can't even win at losing. So it all does seem to be living up to its entertainment possibilities, even for someone who is usually a bit bewildered by Tumblr.

[thisbluespirit]

The generator does come up with some very good ideas! And, yes, lol, some that do sound exactly like the latest release from Big Finish, or last ep of New Who. I think the slightly off-putting thing is giving you a typical solution to the plot which, tbf, could be useful sometimes, but does cut off creativity in a way, because just as you're thinking, "Ooh, how would that go?" it's told you. (Also it may be slightly my fault, because originally it had another sentence in which made it go a bit too much to include in one thing and I commented about that, and they seem to have taken that out. But, given the contradictory nature of the brain it might have helped actually, rather than "here's the bones of a plot." But I suppose it is the perfect generator for people who don't want Unconventional Courtship summaries to make them lol and go how the hell would that work, but actually want to sensibly write something. idk. obv i am not that person. XD

So it all does seem to be living up to its entertainment possibilities, even for someone who is usually a bit bewildered by Tumblr.

They keep doing magic things that are apparently Maths. It's all very strange and probably should be in a DW plot generator.

[thisbluespirit]

Ok, I take it back, it just gave me this, which is a collection of contradictory sentences and nearly broke my brain:

The Doctor and Tegan land in a spaceport aboard a spaceship. They discover that a group of terraformers are performing human sacrifices. They promptly get pressed into service, but end up getting help from a ghost. In the end, a new ruler takes over.

[astrogirl]

Now I genuinely sort of want that fic, just to see how anyone could make all that in any way make all that make sense.

[thisbluespirit]

I was just thinking, hmm, you probably could, and I started to rationalise it into something, and I was doing quite well until I came to the ghost part and stopped. I can do the spaceport on a spaceship (it's a very big ship of some kind! some of the travellers there are on their way to do terraforming and have very strange ideas about that, but my brain baulked at the ghost.)

... also FIve and Tegan, do they have the GRavis with them or has he been dropped off already? Because then it is a giant space ship with a spaceport, cult terraformers, a ghost and a giant gravity influencing insect.

[astrogirl]

I mean, the ghost would have to have some kind of science-fantasy explanation that's only marginally more believable than ghosts, like it's some kind of psychic projection or something. But even that does seem like A Lot to add to this already very A Lot-ish concept.

Because then it is a giant space ship with a spaceport, cult terraformers, a ghost and a giant gravity influencing insect.

And that would definitely take things from A Lot all the way to Too Much, for sure!

[thisbluespirit]

The ghost is perfectly plausible as far as DW goes, but somehow my brain just skidded to a halt at that point in my attempt.

And that would definitely take things from A Lot all the way to Too Much, for sure!

I love Frontios a lot, but there aren't many places you could or should take a giant evil woodlouse where it wouldn't be considered Too Much. XD

[kalium]

The Doctor and Liv land at a power station during the stone age. They quickly discover that a group of cultists are making a deal with the devil.

Huh, there's already a plot hook about what a power station is doing in the stone age. I want to see this now.

[thisbluespirit]

That is a very DW-ey start all right!

[executrix]

A Stone Age power station is probably a pile of twigs for starting fires.

Astrogirl: and he would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those meddling kids!

[thisbluespirit]

It's DW, though! "What's a power station doing in the Stone Age?" is exactly what it does basically.

[a_phoenixdragon]

Aww, bless, honey. I have been there. Too many times, Fandom has thrown New Thing at me that I didn't get....theeeennn the light bulb went off. Sometimes the New Things are fun, sometimes not. The learning about them can be fun, though.

*HUGS*

[thisbluespirit]

<3 One day I will learn to read properly!! XD