This whole story is now available in a PDF with clickable index, for easier reading:

Ghosts of Evangelion (PDF)

When I copied Bagheera's Ghosts of Evangelion to this forum, I was reminded how our very different stories were written in parallel, with much mutual encouragement.  It therefore seemed appropriate that I should copy my fic here in the same way.  As my fic is complete, I have not linked the individual posts, but only the PDF of the final version:

Afterwards...

In the unlikely event that someone might want to follow the struggle to bring this story into being, the original thread can be found here, on EvaGeeks.

Of course, whereas Bagheera's story can continue to be enriched with new chapters if he chooses, and will remain relevant for as long as Evangelion itself, my story is complete, and what's more has an expiry date as it will be rendered pointless at the moment that the final film in the Evangelion movie sequence is released.

My intention with this forum is simply to provide a replacement for the "Serious Discussion" area at EGF for those who wish to continue.  It is likely that the more political conversations in the film area at EGF will also be reined in to some extent, and I would be happy to define a separate section for "Politics in Entertainment", say, though a couple of the main suspects in this area have said they won't come here.

Depression (and similar things like relationship problems) is a trickier matter.  At EGF, talk about that is pretty much confined to the FML thread, and there is little active support on offer - and that is not being changed, so there is no obvious need for a replacement.  A "Mind Games" forum needs careful handling.  Many of the issues that are likely to come up might be best addressed by professionals, and there is potential for real damage to be done by well-meaning forum members giving inappropriate advice*.  OTOH, the support of those who share your problems can be helpful in putting yours into perspective, and their experience may guide you towards the best source of professional help when required or in some cases be enough help on its own.  This implies a sufficient population of people to have those conversations with; and it will probably take some time for this new, small forum to be able to offer that.  However, at Questionable Content, alongside the "Discuss!" forum is another one called "Relate" which offers exactly what I have just outlined, and is quite active; and I think in this case I would do better to suggest you have a look there.

*  Or by people trying to rely on the forum to avoid facing issues properly - in one case at Questionable Content we went as far as to ban someone simply to try to force them to go to a more appropriate source of help.

If I feel the need to explain some aspect of my moderation, this is where I shall do it.  The thread is open, so you are at liberty to disagree with my point of view, or to raise issues which you feel need discussing.

I have made some comments on my likely moderation style in the post at the top of the actual Serious Discussion forum area.

Note that it not my intent to impose any political viewpoint on contributors through moderation.  If the forum leans one way more than the other, that is the result of what the contributors write.  I welcome challenges to my viewpoint, and others should also; but they should if possible be presented soberly and with evidence which can be discussed.  Moderation will be a response to behaviour, not views - so there's an opportunity to show that views do not necessarily influence behaviour.

If you think something is wrong with how the forum works, or you would like to see if a change can be made, post in this thread.

This forum runs the forum software SMF 2.0 (from Simple Machine Forums).  This is the other most widely used system just a bit behind phpBB v3.1 which is used at the EvaGeeks forum.

I have chosen a default theme which is somewhat similar in style to the EvaGeeks forum, but I won't change it to become any closer than it now is.  There are other themes I have made available for my own amusement, but for now this theme is the one which I will ensure works properly before considering the others (for instance, the text in a spoiler is unreadable in the Contrast theme - I can fix that, but you'll have to wait until I feel like it).  I am happy to receive reports of issues in any theme though, in the thread created for the purpose.

Here are notes on a number of differences; there are doubtless others, but experimentation will resolve most issues without harm.

• You can edit the text of a post in place - just click the icon to the bottom right of the post.
• If you edit your post, it is marked as edited if more than five minutes has passed since you originally posted it; at EGF edits are only shown when there's another post following.
• I have not set the forum software to remove nested quotes because sometimes that's necessary to retain sense; but be sensible and do not abuse this fact.
• Title text in spoiler tags does not have quotes round it (quotes are required in the EGF spoiler tags)
• Tweets can be embedded; this happens automatically, without tags
• Videos from YouTube and Vimeo are automatically embedded (and some others); if you prefer just a link, either I can change the setting so embedding requires the [youtube] tag, or you enclose the url in [url] tags
• The handling of newlines around quotes and some other things is different - so formatted text from one forum would have different spacing if copied to the other.
• Font sizes are somewhat restricted to avoid excessive stupidity.  Font sizes can be in pixels, or a percentage change (the phpBB method).
• There are far less smilies; but in serious discussions how many do you really need?
• I think the editor can be switched to a wysiwyg mode; but when I tried it (years ago) I didn't like it that way.  YMMV.