[EVA] Finale

[Brendan Jamieson]

I have been pondering, for about a month now, what my
final post to the Evangelion Mailing List would be. I
found it very ironic, that Tom's notice came but weeks
after a somewhat heated discussion over what the ML
was, should be, and had become. A discussion that lead
to a few of us, myself included, pleading to let the
ML die quietly. And now it's that time.

The first time I posted to the Eva ML was on Sunday
April 5th, 1998 (through a cruel twist of fate, I'll
be missing my 5th year anniversary by a few months -
oh well...) regarding, of all things, who shot Kaji. A
topic that would cycle many, many, more times during
the course of my stay with the Mailing List. To be
quite honest, I found the ML a little intimidating.
That is, it seemed like people had so much information
at their disposal that I had never known existed. And
I wanted to be like that too. I wanted to "understand
Evangelion profoundly", too.

Which is why I've stayed here so long. Longer than
most, not as long as many. In those 4 1/2 or so years,
I have yet to find a forum, bbs, chat, or any other
area for Eva discussion full of such thoughtful and
insightful people. The Eva ML is special, it really
is. While Yahoo! and AnimeNation clubs fall to
ridiculous debates over the most attractive character,
the ML stayed strong - more or less - because those of
us who were active tried our best to keep conversation
relevant. It was never a matter of simply getting
traffic, but of getting worthy traffic. And although I
can remember the days of checking my email after
skipping a day or two to find hundreds of messages
over several perfectly useful topics, those were the
days that laid the groundwork for the low traffic that
exists now. So much has been talked about here, so
many commonly accepted ideas and theories originated
in discussion that took place over this very mailing
list. This list has been and indispensable and
undeniably important resource for the English language
Evangelion fan community.

Remember the Instrumentality of the Eva ML
(http://eva.onegeek.org/ml/idx/msg.cgi/archive/204/03
-- I'm so depressed you never finished that Peter :P)?
The Shinji Clone? The endless speculation of just
which US company would get the films and when? The
mythical Eva ML T-Shirts (I still want mine, damn it!)
:P ? The random flame wars? The way Oska did what many
of us were thinking of doing and quit the ML for a
while during a particularly rough time on the list ;)
? The analysis of the murky Lilith-Eva-01 image with
the use of an absurd amount of arrows and numbers and
letters? The debates over the relevance of the RCB?
Spending more time discussing Eva ML Policies than Eva
itself? I do. :)

So really all I have left to do is thank people for
shaping this ML into what it became, whose opinions I
respect and/or people I think understand Eva
profoundly, and helped me do the same. Tom Rothamel,
George Chen, Gateth Ortiz, Patrick Yip, Zhou Tai An,
Avery Davies, Andrew Huang, Antookis, Ian Forrest,
Dafto, Widya Santoso, Seventh Messenger, Jesse Smith, 
BboYKRoNoLoGiK at aol.com, Frank Masi, Peter Svensson,
Ebj and Bochan_bird - thank you very much. And if I
forgot anyone, I sincerely apologize.

When I was going through the archives to write this
message, it struck me how quickly I was able to get
through so many pages of the archives. Years worth of
messages. 1998 turned into 2003 like 'that'. No, I
didn't re-read every message in the archives, but I
read a lot of them and glanced over the topics.
Chuckling to myself over the ones I recognized or had
forgotten about. But that's about how fast these 4 1/2
years have gone. I don't feel as though I've been a
part of this group for as long as I have. I am sad to
see the Eva ML disappear into the digital wasteland,
both because of the loss of what was one of the most
important Evangelion websites ever, and also because
of what feels like the "loss" of those 4 1/2 years.
Although, I hardly mean those 4 1/2 years were wasted.
It's something different. I'll miss this place. I
truly will. And for how often I remarked that I'd
rather see the ML die strong than become weak and
crumble - I'm sorry that that time has now come. As of
January 31st 2003, the Evangelion Mailing List at
eva.onegeek.org, dies strong.

Sincerely yours,
-brendan
bjamieson1 at yahoo.com

Final Post Count: a modest 1292 posts. Er, 1293.