I am S.M.F. (or AutisticAce; either works), an avid Young Wizards fan and PPC mission reader. I've hung around for the past 4+ years as an audience (most of the time) and a beta reader (more than occasionally).

Any questions? :3

Hello, PPC! Well, if Iximaz counts as an oldbie, then so do I!
I am sonofheaven176, and I've been part of the Board since *tries to remember* 2012 at the latest, I suppose, but it could have been before then.

My fandoms include Pokemon, Bakugan: Battle Brawlers, and MLP. I haven't been on the Board much in recent months (so that might also make me a returnbie?), but my claim to fame around here is as a Beta reader, provider of concrit on PPC stories that catch my attention, and Latin translator (Google Translate SUCKS at Latin!)

I see quite a few new faces around, so...welcome aBoard!

Formerly known as DawnFire, until January 2017 when I decided it was time to switch things up. I joined in January 2013 and, as I wrote below, I'd been reading PPC stories for at least 4-6 years before that. Funnily enough, I wasn't planning to become a Boarder (just wanted to ask about using agents in an outtake for a Mary-Sue parody fic I was writing); instead, I got tempted into writing characters, and, in March, used a chapter of the same M-S parody fic as my Permission piece. In a nice bit of symmetry, I ended up changing my screenname in the same month I joined and becoming a Permission Giver in the same month I got Permission, four years apart. Things can change so much.

I...admittedly don't know exactly what to say here, so I'll just go with random facts that might be interesting. 'Zingenmir' is Yiddish (which I've been studying for...wow, five years now, if you don't count an after school club in elementary school). It means 'we sing', or 'we are singing', and should technically be written with a space as it's two words. 'DawnFire', meanwhile, came from a time when my friend and I thought up some names for cats from the Warriors book series for a game we were playing; funnily enough, she was Dawnfire and I was Brightshadow. I actually used the latter name as a screen name for a bit--made maybe two comments in the Deleterius LJ community back when it was around--but ended up switching to DawnFire (and adding the extra capital letter for aesthetics) for...reasons I couldn't tell you by now.

Speaking of Deleterius: don't know how many of you remember it. It was a sporking community (there's an article on it on the wiki). I've actually been very slowly reposting material from there that people happened to save, at deleterius.dreamwidth.org. I, er, need to continue with that at some point. In the meantime, there is some stuff already posted, and I have a lot more to add.

Like (I think?) a fair number of Boarders, I'm currently a university student. I've finally almost finished my first degree. I also really, really like language: I've put a fair bit of effort into learning them, and can currently speak, in varying (descending, in fact) levels of fluency, English, Hebrew, French, Yiddish, and German. I've wanted to be a fiction writer since I was very small; my parents are also involved in it (my mom writes fiction, my dad writes poetry), and my grandmother wrote various children's books. It rather runs in the family. I've so far been published a tiny bit--a short story in a magazine, and a creative essay (on that same grandmother, actually) in a book. Someday I would love to publish more.

What else can I say? Well, obviously, I like to talk :) I used to write a ton of Harry Potter fanfiction, most of which didn't get posted anywhere; going through that gave me a potential drinking game (for other people, I guess, since I don't really drink much). I have it written out in a document on my laptop. It includes 'time travel' (forwards and backwards), 'conversation happening in public that really should have waited to happen in private,' and 'AU.' I really liked my time travel. In fact, I still do. That and AUs: if you ever want to make me write something, tempting me with an AU idea when I have even a tiny bit of free time and energy will often work. It's probably part of the reason I love both RPs and things like the Badfic Games and writing things for April Fool's Day (which I unfortunately missed this year. The Purim RP may still happen at some point, though, albeit very belatedly).

What else? Well, I've got a ton of stories in the process, I adore animals (one of my roommates this year has a dog and it is happy-making), I enjoy crafts like beading and crocheting, and I've gotten really into baking (and cooking) this year. (Probably partly just because I'm now responsible for making all my own food and I...really enjoy getting a bit creative). The number of cooking and cooking show videos I watch has similarly gone pretty far up. I've somehow only just discovered Julia Child, though I'd heard of her years earlier; apart from her, one of the more interesting cooking channels I've found on YouTube is called Townsend & Son (or Sons? Not sure). It's basically seventeenth century cooking, mostly American and British, done (in costume and with replica instruments and, where possible and applicable, ingredients) by reenactors for reenactors and casual viewers who'd like to try this stuff at home. It's fascinating.

And I believe this is where I cut myself off. Have questions? Ask away! I probably won't talk your ear off quite as much as I have here :)

~Z

PS: Want my stories of 'aaaaah an oldbie is talking to me'? I don't remember too many details off the top of my head, but there were definitely some points at the beginning where I was pretty much skipping along grinning and going 'wheee I can't believe this.' Admittedly, a small part of that was because I'd thought there would be maybe three people still using the Board now and again, but a definite part of it was 'I grew up reading stories by these people and they shaped my fanfic and writing ideas and and and they're talking to me! How is this a thing?' Still happens a little sometimes, mostly with the people I haven't talked to as much. So that's cool.

(A similar thing also happened at some point with Scapegrace, and I think also briefly with Iximaz, despite the fact that both joined after I did. But that's another story. Er, two stories. And I'm going to actually post this now, before I end up checking the length and finding out I've written three pages...)

I joined in 2011, but I don't post very much because I tend to not know what to say.

For video games, I like Sonic, Zelda, Undertale, and Splatoon games, but mostly the Splatoon games. Lately, I've been playing Splatoon 2.

On my free time, I just lurk, hang around in chat, read sporkings on das-sporking, do greater-than killer sudoku puzzles, and occasionally read novels from the library.

Ozzielot

I have been since late 2002, when I needed an email address to discuss the upcoming Two Towers movie with a schoolfriend. I joined the PPC on Talk Like a Pirate Day 2003, and you haven't been able to shake me off since. ^^ I wound up here because someone pointed me at the Board in a review of one of my fics, and quickly made a whole bunch of friends (this was back in the days of Livejournal and MSN Messenger; Kaitlyn has discussed what that was like). Ten years ago now, I got married to one of them. ^^ I love this place and the spirit it still has, even if it is filled entirely with newbies (you know... people who joined in 2005 or later!).

I have a tendency towards deep geekery, of the type that involves mass fanon generation: I have a whole website devoted to crackpot theories on my primary fandom (Middle-earth, now and forever), and at various times in the past have concocted whole rickety fanon edifices around Harry Potter (the accepted history of North American magic is a classic 'written by the victors' scenario, and President Pickles' evil MACUSA refuses to acknowledge the wealth of native and black magic on the continent), Young Wizards (that one's still going on), and... a whole bunch of other stuff, to be honest. My writings for the PPC are very much the same thing, with the advantage(???) that my crazy theories end up becoming canon.

When not holding forth on obscure and pointless trivia, I have pretty much the least interesting science job you can imagine: I'm a computer-based chemist specialising in compliance with laws and regulations. Which... pretty much means I spend my time researching and holding forth on obscure and pointless trivia. Funny how that works! :D

I have trouble coping in large groups or fast-moving situations; that's one of the reasons for my perennial absence from the various chats. I am famously bad at finishing projects - most of my cowriters leave the PPC before we actually finish anything, and I have one mission that's still technically ongoing from 2005. I never say anything in ten words if a thousand will do. And when, about a year ago, I needed to email Miss Cam about something, I was exactly as terrified as all of you are around me. ;)

hS

I joined in January of 2010 and got Permission before the prompt system came into effect, so it's been a while, I guess. I am pretty busy most of the time, but have been trying to check the Board semi-regularly lately.

I have three kids. The oldest is probably older than a lot of people here, which is kind of freaky. He's graduating high school in about three weeks, and his Quizbowl team just won their third straight state championship. He gets to go to Nationals again at the end of the month.

My little Doomsprout will be ten in June. (I know some of you remember when he was just a little Sprout.) He's into musical theater (children's program) now, and just finished Treasure Island. I homeschool him and ferry him to various appointments.

I spend most of my online time on AO3. I've got some Haven fanfic on there. Heed the warnings if you decide to look me up. I play a lot of video games including Fallout New Vegas, 3, and 4. Dragon Age Origins, and just picked up the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided earlier this year. Skyrim in the past, but let the Eldest have it for now. I watch Warcabbage play things like Far Cry and Resident Evil. I like reading Origins fanfic, and might eventually get around to posting the fic I wrote for it. Maybe.

I'm a big Marvel fan, MCU and as much as I can get caught up on of the comics. I like NCIS, Stargate, Criminal Minds, and DCTV shows (I'm only about halfway caught up on them, though). Trollhunters, How to Train Your Dragon, Futurama, My concentration is bad (autoimmune disease) so I don't watch plot heavy things as often anymore.

It's really cutting into my reading, too. I have read multiple Hank the Cowdog books this year. The Sprout requires a chapter read to him as part of his bedtime routine. I talked him into Treasure Island in honor of his play, so a real book, yay!

Other stuff about me: I make hats on round knitting looms, paint little wooden toys, and complete shoddy carpentry projects (when my joints cooperate). I made a Hoppit Hole for the rabbit the Sprout wants to get. It's actually not bad for me. I like Pinterest and planning elaborate birthday parties for my kids until they get too big to want them. Futurama for the Sprout this year. The kid has literally watched the entire show (even the movie season) 14 times and is on his 15th round now.


QUESTION: For those who are fresher on Redwall. What do you think of it for a kid? All I think of when I think of Redwall these days is Stormsong's origin fic, and I can't remember how dark the real books get. (I know not THAT dark, but he is young socially speaking.)


Any questions for me?

I've been around since July of 2014, I believe, and may have been reading PPC works for longer than that - I don't know when I started but I apparently won't stop anytime soon. My personal definition is that the attendance range for newbies is about one to two years, middlebies would've been here from three or so years to around six or seven, and anybody who's been around longer is an oldbie. I guess the definition is highly subjective, though, so if you guys feel I'm an oldbie by chronological association (I joined not long after Iximaz posted their first mission, and they've been given the oldbie hat IIRC), then I suppose I can roll with it.

At any rate, I've been online since 2007, which was way back during my early days in college, so at the time I was just an innocent little... well... one of how many non-canon Skarmory pre-evolutions the Internet has produced. I say this because the first fandom I ever produced artwork for was Pokémon (which still is my biggest fandom today), and fanmade Pokémon specifically where why I joined DeviantArt in the first place - I'd seen some very good "fakemon" artists on dA and thought I'd give it a try. I think I've explained my online history since then a few times before, but I gradually expanded to other fandoms including various movies, books, TV shows, manga and anime, and even certain kinks!

Looking back, getting sucked into fandom at such a young age was both a blessing and a curse, since it allowed me to find friends and common interests at a much faster pace than college life ever could, but at the same time my skin hadn't yet turned to steel, so to speak. That left me woefully unprepared for the harsh lessons of social interactions online - and believe me, I did get in trouble multiple times both online and off for being a selfish egotistic little bugger, and I have no excuse for those actions. If there's one good thing that's come out of it, though, it's the personality equivalent of Skarmory's Silver Pokedex entry: "After nesting in bramble bushes, the wings of its chicks grow hard from scratches by thorns." In other words, the drama I'd accidentally caused and the humiliation I was rightly subjected to in retaliation caused me to wise up and begin to make honest efforts to become a better person. I think my family recognized this as well and the various social events and interactions they chucked me into during my graduate period helped me grow up just as much as my online interactions did. Of course, I do still make slip-ups every now and then, but at the end of the day I also have a better idea of working with how people think and feel.

Be that as it may, though, it should be obvious why I comprehensively disemboweled the one and only badfic I ever managed to complete for my first mission - it had always been my intent to spork it for my first outing even before I joined the PPC, let alone getting Permission. I understand that it was probably not the smartest move in hindsight and that there were plenty of safer alternatives to use as a jumping off point, but there was a lot of emotional baggage associated with that fic, so from my standpoint, I guess missioning it and exploring the legacy of said mission was the only possible way I could cope. It's kinda sad that I haven't been able to pick up that level of investment for any mission I've written since then, but I've already made it this far with my characters and I've got quite a few plans as to where they'll go in the future. I just need to find the motivation as well as the time away from Real Life things (and many, many other personal projects!) to return to PPC stuff, and hopefully interacting with you guys should help restore that motivation.

If you want to get to know me in other places aside from the PPC and the Discord, my DeviantArt and Tumblr handle are both SkarmorySilver. I had a Twitter for a short while but it's DOA, and while I do have both a Spotify, YouTube, and SoundCloud, those are largely for faving and consuming media content rather than producing them, so dA and Tumblr are your best bets. I've also shared my Gmail around here before (once again, it's the same handle as my PPC account) if you want to check me out on Hangouts, and though I don't use that as often as Discord nowadays, I may drop in every so often to check how some of my chatroom buddies are doing.

Tl;dr, I talk way too much, have feathers made of knives, and am far too busy with Real Life right now to do much else. Yeah, that's me. Ask me stuff! :D

It's been about a decade, I think. Although I certainly hope no one is feeling intimidated by me, as I'm hardly even a person.

So hi. I'm doctorlit. I am a workaholic with a psychological need to feel busy. I have little to no emotional spectrum to speak of (unless a hose gets kinked around me, in which case the Rage Glasses go on). I have difficulty understanding the emotions of others, and can barely tell people apart unless I've been around them constantly for months. I strongly believe in depriving myself of fun time unless I've run out of work to do, and am secretly obsessed with living forever.

I'm really stingy with money, even though I don't really need to be. Even so, I've amassed a large chunk of tv shows, books and games in my condo that I almost never touch, due to the previously mentioned fun deprivation, and a very time-eating zookeeper job at an understaffed zoo.

I have a large and complex spin-off planned in my head that weaves the stories of multiple characters together, but I'm also a perfectionist, so i write so slowly that I doubt I'll ever get it all written out before I die.

I don't really know what else to say about me. I eat, sleep, and job, and sometimes I do hobby work in between.

—doctorlit, or whatever there is of him

But I did say for people to talk about things, so what the heck?

Hiya, I'm Thoth, kinda-not-newbie-maybe? I mean, I've been around for most of a year now...

It seems I've earned some degree of respect, somehow, and I also got permission and did a co-mission. I'm honestly kinda baffled by all this, but it seems pretty cool? so I'm just gonna roll with it.

I'm probably the youngest member of the PPC Programmer Coalition, which exists because I say it does.

Besides that, I'm an avid reader (most recently, Neshomeh has dragged me into finally reading Pern), and a gamer, although most of the games I actually play on a regular basis released before I was born.

Also a bit of a computer history nut. So that's a thing.

Yeah, so... the oldbies were asking the newbies and whatnot to ask them stuff... and I'm a newbie? so I guess... the oldbies can ask me stuff?

What the heck. I've been grilling you guys, you deserve a free swing or two. :-P

Hello! I am Scapegrace. I write a lot more original fiction than fanfic these days, but I'm still a colossal nerd. My primary fandom these days is probably Worm, a web novel about a bullied teenage girl who has superpowers and eventually saves the world along with a ragtag bunch of misfits she was befriended by. Other fandoms include HP, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Pokémon, Red Dwarf, Overwatch, Doctor Who, early Buffy, XCOM, and more besides.

My primary interest, however, is in robot combat. I'm an avid follower of the UK live scene and try to keep up with the US stuff. I have watched and devoured every episode of Robot Wars, Battlebots, Robotica, King Of Bots, Clash Bots, and This Is Fighting Robots (the last three are new shows from China). I am obsessed with combat robotics to the same degree that hS is with Tolkien and Ix is with Harry Potter. Does it constitute a fandom? I don't know. What I DO know is that it's a huge part of my life.

...

It occurs to me that talking about my obsession with murderously violent killer robots is not helping with the "fear not the oldbies" thing. Whoops.

I've been wondering for a while what the (nm) thing some of you put on the end of your posts actually means. Can you help me out with that, please?
Sorry, I'm far too curious for my own good.

Certainly don't feel like it sometimes, but it must be the old age eating away at my memory :p

So yeah... Hi I'm Novastorme, you won't see me posting on the board all that much, it's not because I'm not interested, I just don't have a massive amount of time on my hands. I will occasionally post writing prompts on the Board (yes, yes I know you're overdue one I meant to do it yesterday), and they're meant to be little things that don't even have to involve your PPC characters if you want. I'm more active on the Discord, although I do mainly lurk there, and then occasionally drop into the conversation (much like I am on the Board just with greater frequency), and I'm always interested in playing games (especially multi-player/co-op ones), so if there's a game you want to play with/against a Brit, let me know and I'll see if my laptop can handle it.

I don't write a lot, I have got Permission and have got a Prelude for those agents out (and nothing else) although I am currently planning missions for two other teams (when I find badfic for them to mission). When I do write it's more often than not either a little bit of one of the fanfics that I've got planned, or my own original story that has gone through more iterations than I care to remember. I also do quite a bit of online RPing on another forum, and that will occasionally bleed through into here, either with my want to get a D&D group up and running on our Discord (or maybe elsewhere if others want it there), or with some of my agent ideas coming from said RP's.

I can't remember any real embarrassing newbie stuff that I did, although I do remember Nesh saying that I had perhaps the cutest Mini-Aragog in existence, when in my first fanfic I wrote, (which was also a badfic) from before I joined the PPC (and in fact lead me to joining the PPC), I misspelled Hufflepuff to... Hugglepuff.

Novastorme
Who writes a lot and on second though can see why he could be intimidating.

Joined the Board as Barid, but changed it when I decided to make a self-insert...who may still be lost in HQ somewhere. Never did get back to him.

Anyway, I never was a newbie. I appeared on the board as a fully formed midbie. Mostly that's due to listening to Nesh talk about stuff while we were dating.

I write stuff, but only like once every couple of years (see: Agent Phobos, above) so there are a lot of loose ends hanging around. I do intend to get back to Agent Decima, Barid and Brightbeard, Agent(?) Phobos, Catastrophe Theory, Going Postal, Temporally Offended (still not officially a thing yet), Baron Phobos, Troll shenanigans. All of that stuff is planned, but in various states of disorganization.

A large part of the reason none of that stuff is getting done is that I spend a substantial amount of time being a semi-professional Magic: the Gathering player. I travel to regional events quarterly and grind local tournaments pretty constantly. I also write a Magic blog over at BadMoonMTG. I think it's pretty all right, but I don't have the time to really get it off the ground via social media.

Anyway, that's me. Now taking questions, I guess?

-Phobos

Like Juliette, I've been here about 15 years now. I can date how long I've definitely known about the PPC to June 2003, anyway, based on my ff.net review history. Probably a bit earlier. I turned 18 that month. I'm 32 now, and I live in Chicago with Phobos, my husband, who is also 32 now. I have a cat named Merlin. He is about 18. Behold my cat pics if Photobucket behaves!

When I was a newbie, I still spent a lot of time RPing on Neopets. This was one of my characters. *cringe* Some of the Boarders at the time (I don't remember who) gave me some good advice on making her less Sueish, such as not having her share a name with one of the Valar for crying out loud. >.> They also gave me some other good language/naming tips, which is why the ones there now aren't terrible. The PPC was the first place I met people who knew more about Tolkien than I did—like a lot more—and that experience was the beginning of how I learned to be less of an arrogant little tosser. ^^

The PPC also helped teach me not to hate slash and shipping in general by way of teaching me that asexuality is a thing. I am definitely demisexual if not ace; how I feel about it varies. I thought everyone else was crazy for being so into all that stuff. Turns out they're not—and neither was I for not being into it. Go figure! These days, I enjoy reading and writing good shipping of all kinds, and have even written some M/M smut that people liked!

I didn't actually write a mission on my own until 2007, because at first I wasn't sure about the whole Sue-killing thing and I didn't come up with characters besides my self-insert until 2005, when I started writing Supernumerary and Cameo for games of Fill the Plothole (which was totally doing it wrong, but we were bad at telling people "no" back then). I rather quickly realized Cameo was a terrible agent, though, so I was stuck again until Twiggy Papaya recruited Ilraen in 2007 and let me adopt him.

My earliest contributions to the PPC, around 2004-2005, were the Glossary of Useful Technology and the Substance Menu 2.0, which NenyaQuende was good enough to link from the PPC Handbook. I also did a lot of work on the <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/ppcmanual/index.htm">PPC Manual, Second Edition (which seems to be down again as of posting this; dammit Webs). And then the wiki came along and made it all obsolete. So when I have nothing else to do, I work on that instead. {= D

... I never have nothing else to do. I have too many things to do all the time. And that is why I rarely actually get anything done.

What else? According to every personality test I've ever taken, it is difficult to be more introverted than I am. Occasionally, the effort of making conversation feels so huge that I just drop off the face of the Internet without notice for a week or two at a time. To everyone I ever have left or will leave hanging in e-mail, as a beta, as a co-writer, or anything at all, I apologize.

I'm pretty sure I'm the original PPC tea nut. I'm just quieter about it.

Oh, people often wonder about the curly bracket in my emoticons. My favorite TV show of all time is Farscape. I will never stop trying to get people to watch it. My Internet home before the PPC Board was a fansite called Friends and Defenders of Pilot, and we used the curly bracket to represent Pilot's carapace. I never stopped. {= )

Um... yeah! Anything else you want to know?

~Neshomeh

hS gave me the crown of Oldbie-ness, even though I've not been around nearly as long as some people have—four years and a bit for me—so I guess it counts.

I love fantasy and sci-fi, and will kick your butt in Harry Potter trivia. Currently have big dreams to run camera for Doctor Who someday in the far, far future. I'm contenting myself with writing a very cranky Time Lord agent in the meantime. I've got a bit of a reputation for writing a lot and doing horrible things to my characters. It miiight not be completely unfounded.

I'm about to turn 21, want to do film stuff with the big fancy cameras, might or might not be moving to London in a few months. I'll know as soon as I hear back if I got accepted into film school.

As for stuff I got up to when I was a newbie: I introduced myself on someone else's introduction thread, accidentally put my email in the author spot, and then proceeded to let my phone's autocorrect Toey ruin my spelling for a while. Fun times... fun times.

I was realizing in Discord that this year will be my fifteenth year on the Board. I don't even know how that happened- although I'm pretty sure I have a lock on the record for longest hiatus for an active (ish) Boarder!

... So long, in fact, that I've got an entirely new self-insert for DoSAT. I should write that scene, new-me meeting old-me.

If I've given off unapproachable vibes, I'd be happy to try and change that. (For all I know, I've been doing a decent Tech-Priest impression around here.)

One thing that's suddenly seeming like a good idea is to do a bit of an oldbie introduction, so here goes: Hi, I'm Tomash! One of the main things I do around here is helping with technical stuff, like the PPC Board Archives and the T-Board (I did the programming for both of those a while back). I also do programming stuff in real life, and I'll be starting a Computer Science PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle next fall.

Media-wise, I tend to like works with sufficiently alien aliens (to pick an example, The Mote in God's Eye was good stuff, and I'd really like to convince someone else to read the Chanur books at some point). As is probably obvious from recent threads, I'm a Young Wizards fan. I'd definitely also count Harry Potter, the Culture series,Animorphs, and Anathem (which I highly recommend if you think you might be like me) among my fandoms as well.

I've also gotten into tabletop RPGs over the past year by way of the Dark Heresy campaign Mikel is running that used to be on the Discord (we moved to a separate server to avoid spamming everyone with dice rolls so much). That also happens to be how I got tossed into the 40k universe in the first place.

In random RL-related facts, I have a ham radio license that I haven't used in a while.

I'd also like to link my first post, in which I unironically plugged Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and misspelled "goodfic", in order to demonstrate that even the Old Ones started out doing vaguely silly things.

So, uh, say hi! Ask me things! (In the event you don't want to do that on the Board, my email, which also works as a Hangouts username, is clickable above.) I'm also open to beta requests (I can mainly promise an earnest attempt to look for typos and small-scale flow issues, though.)

- Tomash