I know, it's a late response. Sorry. Have this gold medal for being able to write English better than most Americans as a newbie gift!

-- Len

...But welcome anyways!

You say that English isn't your first language, but you do write pretty well in it, grammar being the only thing that could use a touch up as far as I can see.

Anyhoo, have a fluffy velociraptor, and please, stay around for a while!

Greetings properly, newbie of the impressive intro post to be showered with gifts! Here is you own Infinite Notebook, lined, with urple covers and wilver binding. I find it necessary to warn to not to look at it.

-Aila

Hi, I'm Autumn, it's nice to meet you. Not a native English speaker? Me too! *slaps you on the back* My native language's actually Chinese, but I just happen to be fluent in English. *shrugs* Anyway, here is a wilver knife! Use it only in times of...just use it anytime you like. Except to kill innocent people. All of your questions will be answered eventually. I hope to see you joining in our lively discussions often.

Nice to be able to welcome you to the PPC! As someone else has already said, that is a quite substantial first post there; it's good to see that someone is willing to introduce themselves well.

As for your gift...
*rummages through bag of holding*
Here you go: Have a snowglobe of Hogsmeade!

And BTW, thanks for asking about updating the List of PPC Fiction. I have run across a few spinoffs that were not linked to the List (though were linked to their agents' profiles). If I run cross them again, now I know that I can fix the oversight!

--sonofheaven176, Esq., 25

I've seen you post comments from time to time, so it's nice to finally be able to give you a warm welcome.

Don't worry too much about age issues: the age range around here is pretty wide, and we all still get along rather splendidly, so you shouldn't be that badly off.

As a welcome gift, I'll go ahead and give you some Messiaen for the road: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PjyCpRKDrk

hS beat me to the punch, so I'll just fill in my two cents regarding the (In)Complete List:

Araeph is still around sometimes, but busy with Real Life type stuff. You could definitely ask her how she feels about striking that line from the wiki article.

As for adding other people's spin-offs to the wiki, in general I'd say go for it. The only caveat is that if they themselves don't have Permission (or if they shouldn't have Permission), their spin-off(s) probably shouldn't be added. I've noticed one or two dubious-looking spin-offs recently, while trawling through fanfiction.net looking for the history of the Department of Floaters. One guy, name of Who's Asking, claims that he got Permission, but has a line in his bio stating that "Yaoi is shit, 100 of the time" is an "undeniable truth," and some other unsavory things, so... ick. We might want to put up something to the effect that we don't condone that sort of thing, a la Gabriella and her cohorts (see Out of Continuity), but beyond that, I think I speak for all of us when I say Do Not Want.

Maybe undocumented spin-offs should be brought up with the Board before they get added?

I think the line about Permission is just supposed to apply to adding/updating your own stuff. If you don't have Permission, you shouldn't be updating your mission count or adding a new spin-off, because you shouldn't have one in the first place.

Oh, and definitely make a page for yourself, especially if you plan to join the Grand Editing Cabal. ... Okay, there is no Grand Editing Cabal. But there could be. >.> Anyway, help is always appreciated, especially with an attentive eye like yours. {= )

~Neshomeh, who is 28 and married to fellow-Boarder Phobos, for what it's worth.

Greetings, new friend! Have the One Spatula to Flip Them All!

As to the "Permission for editing the Complete List" thing, I'm pretty sure that sentence intended to say "Don't add your stories here unless you have permissions o have written them. Although I'm not 100% certain.

Personally, I would prefer for people to add missing spin-offs when they find them. Too many older stories have gone missing as it is!

Or, er, hello again! And Welcome Officially A'Board!

That is... one heck of an intro post. I'm seriously impressed. And since I'm here, I'll answer/respond to some of your points.

-Anyone who has even watched and enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies can call themselves a fan. My wife has never read the Silmarillion, but try telling her she's not a fan! It's great fun to learn the languages and read the Histories (I've done both), but it's not required.

-Good fanfic is fun to read too! Good fanfic should expand on the original, not damage it. A good example for a Middle-earth fan is The Leithian Script, which is a dramatic telling of the story of Beren and Luthien. It's incredibly long, and it has shaped a lot of my perception of Valinor and Beleriand, in ways which Tolkien didn't give us a lot to go on.

-I hadn't actually realised that you were working in a foreign language. As far as I can tell, nothing you've said has given the wrong impression - so well done.

-I'm not actually sure what the average age is on the Board any more. It used to be around fourteen, but while there's still some people around that young (and occasionally younger!) a lot of us are up in our twenties now. I believe in the past we've had people on here who are grandparents - there's no age limits, believe me.

-While it used to be the case that most Boarders were female (I remember when there were... lessee, AW, Dann, Leto, Elcalion, me... about five males, total, in the PPC), I think the split is a lot more equal these days.

-The grey links: the way those work is that everything posted in the last day on a thread older than 24 hours will be grey. So a new thread will have no grey replies for a full day, but after that, each reply will stay grey for 24 hours. It's quite useful on a slowish Board like this one - you can skim the front page once a day and see exactly what's new.

-Araeph is still around sometimes. I'm not actually sure if she's updating the Complete List, though.

-The wiki version ought to be up to date at all times (even though it isn't). I think this is more a question for Unofficial Wiki Queen Neshomeh, but as far as I'm aware, if you find something that's not on there, you can add it. I don't know about it requiring Permission - it might be a quality control measure, or it might simply be a leftover bit of text from some earlier version.

-Your punishment question: this is really two questions, which I'll answer separately.

--How would this be written? Most of the time, it wouldn't be. If a PPC writer thinks something is 'canonical enough' that they don't write a charge for it, they probably won't write the Flowers telling their agents off. Equally, in cases where the agents specifically say 'well, it's a breach, but I prefer it', there won't be any consequences simply because the author doesn't create them.

--How would this in theory work? Well, assuming the Flowers became aware of it, I doubt they'd care. The charge list is a means to an end - it's a way of checking that the character being killed/story being sporked is actually bad. Leaving off a charge but still killing the story has no effect - and, as recently discussed, there's more to a Mary Sue than merely breaking canon. A well-written story which just disagrees with some aspects of canon is an AU.

But imagining a story which is clearly, say, the business of the Department of Implausible AUs, only the agent decides they prefer it that way and lets the story keep on existing - then, the Flowers might have something to say. What it is would depend on, as ever, what's funnier - a hardline Flower, or one who says Yes, agent, I actually agree with you on that score - but I still have to punish you.

-Elvish reincarnation: there's actually a fair number of sources for this one. Obviously Luthien is in the Silm, but so is Finrod (after his death scene, we read that he was restored to life and now lives with his father). I don't remember how much of the story of Finwe and Miriel ended up in the Silmarillion, but the reason Finwe was allowed to remarry is that Miriel declared that she would never return to life.

There is more on this subject - a lot more - in the Histories, which basically contain most of Tolkien's working notes and essays. He played around with two ideas: reincarnation along the Luthien lines, where the spirit is given a new body modelled after the old, and rebirth, where they are born to new parents, and eventually regain their memories. I think he eventually settled on the former.

Somewhere - I don't remember where - the idea comes along that the rebellious elves - that is, the Noldor who went into exile, and possibly the Sindar, Nandor, Avari and other elves who either gave up on the March or never joined it, and thus never reached Valinor - wouldn't be allowed to leave the Halls of Mandos for a very long time. Finrod is the canonical exception to this, but in general, the idea that they could just pop straight back out is a false one.

That said, the idea fits very well in Middle-earth. Men are mortal, and their spirits pass beyond the world when the die. Elves are immortal, but their spirits are bound to the world. They don't have an 'elsewhere' to go to - this world is all they get. But they are immortal in the lifetime of the world; why shouldn't they be reembodied so they can continue that life? Particularly in pre-Rebellion Valinor, when the only cause of death was accidents (it doesn't seem to have ever happened, but the possibility was always there).

-I believe Tolkien's final decision was that there was only one Glorfindel. That's in the Histories, too.

hS