Question England calling!

Hello there! For anyone who inexplicably can't remember me from the old CH, here goes:

I first encountered Whateley in about 2008-9, I think while trying to find gender bending stories that weren't your standard FictionMania type. I think my first port of call was via Sapphire's, then trying to find the rest of Canon discovered Stardust, BCTS then eventually the old Crystal Hall, where I basically hung out ever since - initially reading the then canon from start to finish before joining in the banter on the fora.

At some point in time a new fan Wiki was started, and for reasons lost in the midsts of time, I started maintaining the List of Canon Stories - adding several new fields and a wall of explanatory text. At one point in time, switching to / from Source View was so time consuming I seriously considered splitting the table into terms (which I was reluctant to do as it would break sorting), but mercifully Wikia updated their software to be able to cope with gigantic tables.

Not content with that, my fascination with (pointless) statistics led me to start compiling word counts for the stories, which then led onto counting the number of chapters / stories by author, their overall word count, and average words per episode / story. Did I say I like (pointless) statistics?

As for picking a favourite character or author, that's like picking my favourite Smartie - different coloured shells, but all as tasty as each other

Having said that, there are several characters on hiatus it would be nice to see more of, e.g. Sara and pack, the Abyss crew - hopefully we'll at least get to see them as secondary or tertiary characters in other tales while awaiting new PoV adventures.

-oOo-

As for me personally, I'm a geek by trade (social care information analyst) and live in Warwickshire - a country that oozes history - Stratford-upon-Avon (Will Shakespeare's home turf), Warwick Castle (one of the few intact ones), Kenilworth Castle (once owned by Robert Dudley, Elizabeth I's favourite noble who spent the equivalent of several million pounds extending it for a Royal Visit - of course, it didn't impress her enough to want to marry him, and a few hundred years later the castle was slighted and the mere drained during the English Civil War) and Rugby (the town whose independent school first codified the game, and places much store on the legend of William Webb Ellis being the first chap to think of picking up the ball and running with it). Just over the border is Coventry (where a noblewoman almost certainly did NOT strip naked and ride through the town in protest at her husband's excessive taxation, the "safety bicycle" was first mass produced by the same chap who invented the differential gear, and locals wittily say the town planners caused more damage than the Luftwaffe).

Oh, and there's a street in town called Whateley's Drive

Hi, mittfh. Thanks for the work you do for the Whateley universe, keeping story details and the list of canon stories straight. And the name of the street you live on, I don't believe in coincidences.

Dreamer wrote: Hi, mittfh. Thanks for the work you do for the Whateley universe, keeping story details and the list of canon stories straight. And the name of the street you live on, I don't believe in coincidences.

Dreamer, I'm starting to think we should name you the official Whateley Welcome Wagon. You've gone from being a lurker to responding to every single topic (at least in this thread) practically overnight! Good to see you still working to stay out of your shell.