Was Cryo also the first-ever post on Naberrie Fields?
Nah. Only the first that mattered.
Defenestrates ego with a burst of Sith lightning: "No, no, nooo --
you will die!"
All kidding aside, I was actually the second person to register, roughly eighteen hours after our webmaster,
Subtext Mining , set the site up back in Feb 2017. Four other people registered over the next few days, and then we had no-one else register until June. In fact, for the rest of the year, it was slow going and only two more people joined after that, one in July, the other in November. And of those four others who registered in that first week of the site's existence, only one started posting almost immediately: Naberrie Fields' very own
tonyg . The rest of us were quiet for quite some time. I didn't actually make my
first post here until August 2019. As
ArchdukeOfNaboo has wryly observed, this website was basically the "Subtext and Tony Show" in its early days; they were essentially writing missives and essays between themselves, and their discussions laid some fertile ground for the rest of us and helped the site take shape as the prequel-loving enclave it was always intended to be. Subtext and Tony were the wine filling the cup of silence. As otherwise silent, for a while, this website was.
Prior to finally making my first public post and announcing myself here, it's not that I lacked interest in the site (I was involved in a private group discussion on TFN where this site germinated from), but that I didn't completely see the point in it to begin with -- at least, not for me. To be brutally frank, I still had TFN back then. For all its flaws, TFN still "worked" for me and I was still relatively okay being there. In fact, I even had a renewed momentum in the last year or two on TFN, before I was summarily banned with no explanation in June 2017. You might think, after that ban happened, and once it became clear no-one there gave a damn about unbanning me or coherently explaining why I had been banned in the first place, I would latch onto this place and treat it as my home from home. But no. I guess I still wanted to post somewhere livelier. I was used to fierce debate on TFN and the even more fierce and scabrous exchanges you could have on IMDb. This place, as pretty and peaceful as it seemed, was just too quiet for me. Moreover, I couldn't really see how to "start over"; it felt like too much work.
When you've had the ground ripped out from under your feet twice in one year, it can take you a while to stand up straight again and decide where you want to go next. Yes, alas, in an odd twist of fate, not only was I banned from TFN in 2017, but I couldn't go back to IMDb, as that site's message boards were also pulled that same year. Indeed, Subtext created this website on Feb 17th 2017, and the IMDb message boards were deleted on Feb 20th. One door closes, another door opens...
But, again, initially, I resisted.
Another place keeping me busy, discussing Star Wars, were the group chats a few of us from TFN and here at Naberrie Fields were having on Skype at the time, more or less concurrent with this site's founding. After I had my fill of those conversations, and overlapping for a while, I started posting to
Naboo News (run by
Anthony ) in late 2017, intensifying my involvement in the comments section of many articles posted there in 2018, which is where and when I met the aforementioned
ArchdukeOfNaboo . He and I rapidly became conversational buddies and occasional sparring partners on there, generating some exceptionally long exchanges. We had basically begun treating the comments section there like a message board. Arch Duke, in fact, is chiefly responsible for convincing me to become an active participant of Naberrie Fields. After I mentioned this website to him, despite his apprehension about the name (we had a bit of a disagreement about whether it was "too feminine" or not), curiosity got the better of him and he took a look. At some point, he decided to register, then cordially chided me for sitting on my hands and not saying anything or building up the community the whole time. I was merely a name without a presence or any posts to my name. He heartily suggested I think about changing that and diving in -- what was I waiting for? So I finally piped up, and the rest, as they say, is history.
I'm not sure I thought we'd get to 10,000 posts as the board total. Then again, I think Arch Duke and I were both reasonably confident it could happen one day,
if we simply put a bit of effort in ourselves and tried to encourage a few other prequel fans to join. It was our little challenge to ourselves. But could we; and would they? I guess, the answer to both, is "yes". Of course, this website is still mostly just coasting along, minding its own business, and I think most of us -- myself and Arch Duke included -- have had our quieter moments, our more distanced periods, and moments perhaps where we doubted ourselves, started tiring of Star Wars, and began asking, "What is the point of it all?" By now, I just accept it as a truism that these moments of doubt and distancing will strike from time to time; and one day, we may decide (as individuals) to move away from the site and from Star Wars entirely. I'm really still not sure I have as much enthusiasm this year as I did, I dunno, ten years ago; or even five years ago? Life is bigger than any one thing we spiral into or allow to joyfully (even painfully) distract us from all the other things we put off or could be doing. It's a big ol' world and there is honestly a lot more to it than Star Wars or conversating on the Internet. Yet here we all are. Let's give ourselves a pat on the back for scraping by. There are worse addictions/fixations to have, surely.
Anyway, will this website make another 10,000? I'd like to think so. But as Omar Sharif says in "Lawrence Of Arabia": "Nothing is written."
(Excuse my meta moment there -- drolly trying to read the tea leaves of this website's fate with a quote like that on a place like this, where practically all we do is write).
