The Texas Darkfriend Mailing list!

The mailing list's primary purpose is for the proposal, planning (Wyrick), and discussion of what are called Darkfriend Socials, meetings of the people on the list and other Jordan Fans. The origin of this term was in the nickname that was given to the meeting of Friends of the Dark in the prologue of the second Book (The Great Hunt) by Jordan fans on the internet. Any allegiance to Dark Powers which may or may not be claimed by individual members of the club is strictly a personal delu^H^H^H^Haffair.

The mailing list is currently in it's second incarnation. It was originally run out of the University of Texas servers by Darkfriends who have since largely wandered off to paths unknown. In the void left by their absence, I declared that the list should be born once more out of the darkness, and so it was done. Well, that and I heard about this Egroups thing that would let you start your own mailing lists for free. Then Yahoo bought out Egroups, and so here we are.

If my puerile prose has sold you already, you can join the mailing list this minute if you like. To do so just use the following form:

If you want to get a preview of the list on Egroups, you can look at the list's main page before you finally succumb to your inevitable urge to subscribe.

The list does have a couple of rules for posting, which, since they really ought to be posted somewhere permanent, I'm going to post here. Firstly, any mail which is sent to the list should be prefixed with TDF: in the subject header. So an e-mail which was sent to the list discussing Mazrim Taim might have the subject line TDF: Taimandred is bunk!. Thankfully, the Yahoo list will insert this prefix if you forget to. Secondly, if the message is not about either a Darkfriend Social OR Robert Jordan discussion, then you should prefix it with TDFTAN: (ie. TDFTAN: Nothing much to do with Squids). Sadly, the Yahoo list can't tell if you're being on-topic or not, so you do have to put this one in for yourself. These headers help those of us who subscribe to multiple mailing lists sort out the Texas Darkfriend stuff from the others, and the on-topic stuff from the not.

The other major list rule is more TDF specific, and that is that one may only go by a name from The Books if one has been to a social meeting certain requirements. Really. We mean it. If you use a Wheel of Time name as your handle, you will be asked not to use that name until you can be confirmed at a social, and if you persist you will be ignored at best. We call this "proving your existence," and it has a long and humorous background which I will _not_ go into here. The conditions required for a Naming social are: At least four people, at least two of whom have already acquired a name, must be in attendance at the social; If James is attending (the original list-founder, AWOL now for an age it seems) then he assigns names, in all other circumstances, the group decides some format by which names are assigned. Names of major characters are only assigned if they really _really_ fit, and many of them are taken already anyway. Names are very rarely chosen by the namee, and some people have names which only make any sense at all to the Namer. Names of Forsaken are right out. There is NOOOO rule number six! And we don't care if you're a poofter.

Have fun on the list!

The Gray Man

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