Introductions before we start

[ruuger]

Sunday is here and it's time to get this thing on the road. The response to b5_revisited has been amazing with over 100 people watching the community already! Thank you to all the people who have pimped the community.

While we wait for the discussion posts to go up (or you wait and I make the posts), how about some introductions first.

I'll go first: I started watching B5 in 1997 when it began showing on Finnish tv. I'd never heard of the show before, but was a 17-year-old who loved scifi, and in those days we were lucky to get any scifi on tv so the fact that it had aliens in it was enough for me.

I can't actually remember what I thought about the first episode, but I do remember the moment when I became a fan of the show, which was when I saw "And the Sky Full of Stars". The episode that sealed the deal for me, though, was - and all you old fans are going to laugh at me now - "GROPOS" in season 2. And by season 4 I had already started my own B5 fansite, 190 Bester Place (which is still up even if I haven't remembered to update it for about three years and celebrates its 10 birthday next month).

In fandom I used to lurk at the Finnish B5 fans' group on Usenet, but was at my most active on the About.com Babylon 5 fans forum and the fabulous JumpNow forums. The last few years my fannish activity has been mostly on LJ, and has included running universe_today and babylon5_love and couple of ficathons.

I can also often be found hanging around in the Buffyverse and X-Files corners of Internet.

How about you? Are you an old fan from the first age of usenet, or a newbie watching the show for the first time? How did you first heard about the show? Where do you hang out, what are your other fandoms?

And remember, no spoilers! Because one of the best parts of Babylon 5 fandom is, after all, watching the reactions of the unspoiled newbies when they reach that episode where that character does that thing and it is revealed that the thing is actually a thing. You know that thing I mean ;)

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

The pilot and the episode Mind War were shown at the Munich Fantasy And Sci Fi Film Festival, shortly after the show had started in the US and a year or so before it started in Germany. I watched and was intrigued enough to tune in when they finally got around to broadcasting B5 on German tv; I remember being impressed by Walter Koenig - whom as an old Trekker I knew - and being neutral on the matter of Sinclair; I liked Talia, and in the pilot the scene between Londo and Garibaldi where Londo says the Centauri have become a tourist attraction struck me, emotionally.

Watching s1 made me fond of the show and by the end sad Sinclair wouldn't be in the second season (which being a year behind we knew, of course, though I wasn't spoiled for anything else) but happy everyone else would be. (It didn't take me longer than Born to the Purple to fall for Londo, and Parliament of Dreams to fall for G'Kar.) And incredibly curious as to where this show was going with the set-up mysteries. By the time s2 ended, I was so hooked I tried to get English episodes, which before the internet was available to me was very difficult. And then I got a scholarship in the US where I went from the start of s3 (Germany, when I left) to watching Ship of Tears and War Without End I +II. Talk about jaw-dropping. I caught up with the other episodes through repeats. Due to the crazy scheduling in the US, by the time the show ended we were just weeks behind in Germany (where I was again), and I also was online by then. (Though it took me ten more years to write fanfiction. *g*)