These types of threads are almost always my favorite, so I am really glad you posted this, juli. And I am really glad so many people have responded! Now it is my turn, though I might not say much b/c I am having major problems with eye pain and looking at the comptuer monitor doesn't help. I suppose I could just close my eyes, but who knows how many typoes I'd make then. Though it may be hard to believe, I actually do go back and fix quite a few of my typoes. I just type too fast.

Ok, enough rambly non-related stuff. Onto the related rambly stuff.

First, a short history of the FFF since juli promised you I'd write a little about that.

Many, many moons ago my bestest friend in the world convinced me to read WoT. It was one of the few fantasy series I'd read and I was quite skeptical until the Trollocs showed up. From that point on I was obsessed. At that time I was subsitute teaching and living with my parents, so I didn't have a lot to do. I read wot constantly and then tried to write my own novel. It was quite a lame attempt, but the main character was named Caleyna and thus I am named Caleyna b/c the name was too cool not to use.

A few months after I finished WoT, said best friend convinced me to hook up to the internet on my newly purchased PC (I had always been a mac freak before that). I didn't really know what to do with the internet, but then said friend told me to look up WoT. That took me to many strange, unlikable places but I was persistant. I finally found Druid's place, and after a month of lurking I said hello. Thus began the long chain of events leading up to birth of the FFF and my move to Sweden.

Druid's was a friendly nice little bb/chat, but the Druid himself was a busy father and soon closed it down. Luckily SK had made pages of prophecy prior to the close down, even though he never intended for it to be a Druid's replacement. Life was usually good at PoP, but later it become very warlike. There were just too many personalities that didn't mesh. Eventually I decided that I wanted to start my own place to ramble (b/c I love to ramble) so that only people who actually cared about me would see the rambles. That led to the idea of the Fantasy Freaks Forum. At that point I had read *very* few fantasy books, but I knew that my target audience (the people I liked at PoP) were mostly fantasy fans, so it seemed like a good hook. I set up a free cgi-for-me account and thus we were on our way to fame and fortune. Then Cer came along and got the FFF set up on his server, but that didn't work out too well, then Larry Homer set up a back up board for us, which was nice of him to do. Then I visited Jenn and we decided we could stick a board up on virtualave. Of course, that was before we read the directions. After we attempted to read the directions for the BB we wanted to use, we both had crossed eyes and no idea what to do. Luckily SK agreed to set the place up on Virtualave for me. I love my minions *g*. I may be the "webmaster" here, but I really don't know much webmastery stuff.

Eventually I decided having our own domain name would be cool, and then came the server shuffle. Can I just say servers suck, dude? After a lot of down time and lots of servers and lots and lots and lots of help from Tai and Cer and SK, we are precariously hosted on interland. Let's see how long we manage to stay stable. Usually when I get up on Saturday morning I have to send in a support request to the server. It is just routine now.

When the FFF first hit the air waves there were only a few people visiting. We were a close knit group, but we were always in search of new blood b/c it is hard to keep a BB going with just 10 members. Eventually PoP went down, and a lot of the members from PoP moved over to here. There was also another replacement board, PoL, but since PoP had ceased to be fun for me I decided not to continue onto PoL. I have enough to worry about here.

Historically we have been a very fun group of friends who can debate each other without attacking. I don't mean to brag, but I have to say that we really are the best web community I've been a part of. (And I do visit other communities on a regular basis. . . none of them are home though).

You know what? This turned out to be about the history of the FFF and it is quite long. I think I will do my personal bio in another post.

As for the future of the FFF. . . . I plan on keeping it here for a good long while. My next project (and I have been saying this for months) is to update the recommended reading page. Sk and I made it when we first put the site up at Virtual Ave. That was probably 3 years ago now.

Caleyna