Hmm...  How I came to know about The Land Before Time...  It's rather a mystery.  I thought I knew back in the day, thought it was because of my now dearly-departed grandmother (on my mom's side), but, after talking about it with my aunt on a family reunion trip...  The mystery only deepens...  I know I was into the whole "dinosaur craze" when I was a kid; I still have all the books...  I think.  Not Land Before Time related specifically, though.  ...Anyway...  I don't remember the details...  I don't think I saw it in the theaters, because I asked my mom about it...  Perhaps I saw it at a friend's house, and told my grandma?  Whoever this friend was, I just don't remember...  ...Anyway, I eventually get III and IV, for XMas presents (which I no longer celebrate due to many changes in my beliefs, yet, gifts are gifts; if anyone wants to share a gift with me, that's nice.  It's more blessed to give than receive though.), but not on the same XMas; back to back.  And...  I grow up on them.  Kind of like someone else on here; I'm sorry, I didn't read the entire post up until now, I will later.  But some things did catch my eye...

Anyway, years pass, and mind you, I amassed a pretty decent collection of VHS movies - mostly Disney - and I grow out of most of them.  (Still have all of them to this day, too.  Well, except for The Lion King, more on that later...  It is INTEGRAL to my story!)  Not because of my own radical changes or anything like that; nowadays I'm pretty much the same little boy from Stanwood...  (Thanks to LBT, but I'm getting to that.)  Anyway, in 1995, my mom met this nut, got married to him eventually.  He cheats after three weeks, they get divorced, he leaves.  Some time later, after several months, they *gulp* reconcile.  (To this day, my mom still can't quite figure out why; sometimes, love is blind.)  They marry AGAIN, much to the disgust of my grandmother...  Although, she had a delicate way about her, about wording things.  Well anyway, he turned out to be a total psycho, busting up the house on drunken nights...  Every six months...  I had that guy pegged.  I knew so much more than him, but I never let it show.  I let him think that he was "top dog."  Anyway, years pass, I change into this cynical, yet-still-friendly person, all the while the only thing keeping me together was my faith...  (That never changed...)  I go on...  Oh, by the way, I almost lost my VHS collection (including The Land Before Time; the first one I almost lost TWICE!) - and some other things - because the freak was always hocking things for money, for weed and alcohol!  He'd spend 600 bucks a month on weed alone!!  (Nowadays, we're fortunate enough to have 300 bucks to get us through the month...)  It eventuallly got out of hand; he gets hepatitis (incurable type; he was into all kinds of drugs on occasion); it's affecting my schooling, I hang around him just to keep him balanced when he's drunk - figuratively and literally; I mean, I'm not that strong, but the guy's a pipsqueak...  I finally told my mom, it was like I was in a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from.  THAT got her going.  Eventually, it's planned that they would divorce, and he would leave soon.  He stays PAST the leave date, and, I go up to my OTHER grandma's - the one that's still alive, 83 and still a spring chicken - where I'd spent most of my life...  Things get really ugly.  He wasn't even that drunk when he...  Tried to kill my mom...  It was THIS DATE, SIX YEARS AGO!  Oh my god!  ...It just hit me.  This was IT.  ............

Anyway...  Some years before that, one of the last times I remember watching The Land Before Time all the way through, was back about eleven years ago.  However, before that occured, I found out that the weasel had loaned out two of my VHS tapes; The Lion King, and, lo and behold, The Land Before Time.  The original.  Which I wanted to watch.  I had to explain that to him; he wasn't thinking about the sequels I had...  Anyway, so it turns out that he'd loaned them out to his nieces...  And later on, when I got IT back, he tells me that they fought over them; The Lion King was destroyed, and The Land Before Time came back without a case.  Doesn't sound like something THEY would do.  I think he got jealous and started doing it himself.  But, that tape - The Land Before Time...  ...If that isn't a sign of providence from on High that I'm supposed to have it, and learn from it, and be made into more of a childlike state because of it...  To have it almost taken, not once but TWICE - well, that's rather significant, don't you think?

Anyway...  Eleven years pass...  I grow up, and change...  Not watching anything from my collection.  Until, last year, around the time that college fell totally apart for me.  (I did graduate high school, though.  But just barely.  I wrote poetry; a compromise was made because the teacher thought I had skill.)  I was just sitting around, on the computer...  What else is new, kinda day.  When, out of the blue, I remembered...  That song...  At least, the chorus to, "If We Hold On Together."  ...It felt strangely...  Nostalgic.  To make a long story short...  The first time I saw The Land Before Time, after not seeing it for TEN years...  You know, I didn't remember hardly a single LINE from the WHOLE MOVIE, just bits and pieces.  The other movies in my collection?  To this day I haven't seen any of them, and I could quote you paragraphs FROM MEMORY.  PARAGRAPHS.  But...  ...I couldn't remember anything from The Land Before Time.  Seeing it again after ten years, I cried.  I just absolutely cried.  It always hurt when I saw Littlefoot's mother die, but...  Knowing how close I came to losing MY mother back in April 2002, was, a stunning comparison.  (And, a few months after, I almost lost her AGAIN, on a more permanent basis; it was too close...  This only intensified that moment in The Land Before Time for me...)  At the end of the movie, I cried too; this is a perfect example of what friends can do, if THEY hold on, together.  Helping each other out, along the way...  Littlefoot lost his mother, Cera lost her mother, who knows whatever happened to Petrie's dad, and Spike...  Well...  We all know about that...  But, in the end, they MAKE it to the Great Valley, after avenging the deaths caused by Sharptooth - including Littlefoot's mother...  It is...  One of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen to THIS DAY; it runs rings around everything else, in my book.  I've caught up with all the sequels; I like the way that Grosvenor took the series.  I admit I had to watch "The Wisdom of Friends" TWICE to finally get it because of the new director (Jamie Mitchell), and then, I couldn't get enough of it...!  Watching 10 made me cry too...  In particular, the song "Bestest Friend."  It, and the situation Littlefoot was presented with, just...  Shook me.  Still does, every time I watch it.  Five shook me somewhat too, during the song "Always There."  ...Poor Littlefoot...  ...There isn't hardly anything else I'd rather watch anymore, hardly even The Simpsons, which I also grew up on.  I can hardly handle death, either, despite the fact that I believe it is only the beginning...  I've had to put on a tough exterior, but I'm a marshmallow inside...

EDIT: Hmm...  It may have been my cousins, that I saw it through first!  After talking some more with my aunt...  Hmm...  The mystery only deepens!

Thanks.  ...Maybe I should set this forum to my home page...??  Ha ha ha!

Wait - What?  What's this about a writer's strike?  What???  HUH?????!!!?!!  WHAT?!?!

Haha, Beatles songs?  Hmm...  "Yellow Submarine," "Ticket to Ride (???)," hmm...  I can't...  Think of any more!  Of course, I've heard quite a few Beatles songs, but I didn't grow up with them...

Heh, I like the Weird Al & LBT one...  There was something else that I liked too, but I can't remember now what it was...  Ah well...

I've got one to add, that may prove to be interesting - and potentially doable; I'll try my best...  Chrono Trigger & LBT!

I just wanted to "call this dib," but I'm too tired to post details now.  I'll flesh out a quick plot tomorrow when I'm fresher.  Though, it may be a little lengthy...

Yeah...  Although, thinking about it now, they might be two separate things: a poem about The Land Before Time, inspired by what I feel, or something; and more of, well, just a typical post, albeit it may turn into a mini-essay, as I find more parallels...  Hmm...

Who knows?  I do know for certain that I'll be doing that document sometime, though.  I just don't know when.

Oh yeah, and thanks everyone!  Hopefully I'll be more active here than at, uh, a gaming forum I tend to visit.  I'm not going to advertise, though - that would be going beyond the scope of this introduction...

Certainly some tutorials, perhaps from a few different sources, would definitely help!  I'm not so good at drawing, although I've thought of chalking up the courage to "doodle" on some paper.  I'm more of a poet.  But I for one, would certainly benefit from something like that...!  I know it takes practice, patience and time, though.  Hmm; I have a few ideas, but what good are those ideas, if I can't draw much?  (Then again, it's not like I've spent years and years trying to draw, unlike poetry.)  A picture truly IS worth a thousand words...!  It would be brilliant if some tutorials were put out on this subject.  Books for drawing The Simpsons exist, and other cartoon characters as well, so why not some tutorials on drawing the Land Before Time characters?  That would rock!

EDIT: Oh, and if this was considered a "bump," I'm sorry.  But I could hardly resist, and only stopped to look at the last date after I posted...  Bleh; sorry.

EDIT 2: Alright, Sky's already posted one on how to draw Littlefoot!  I'd be content with just those...  Go Sky!  Tutorials for all seven characters would rock!

Why, hello everyone!  Wow, I can't believe that there's actually a forum dedicated to The Land Before Time...!  (Actually, I've heard of this place before, but didn't bother to register before, uhh, last month actually.  I guess I forgot about doing so...)  Anyway, I'm quite a fan of this amazing series; I grew up on the first four movies, albeit only in recent times have I come to know of the rest of the movies; the last I'd heard, they'd made a seventh movie (The Stone of Cold Fire), and I had no idea that it was still going...!  Ironically, I got back into it about a month or so before the TV series debuted on Cartoon Network, last year (in the U.S.)...  ...Seeing that something that I grew up on, is still going so strong...  It's the last animated series that's still doing so, a true Diamond in the Brimstone...  (Well, unless you count The Simpsons, which newer seasons have lost their spark.)  It makes me brim with a joy I've rarely, if ever known, a joy that words cannot express nor justify.  There's hardly anything I watch on TV anymore, I can't stand it.  I coined the phrase, for those of us who like the whole series equally without restraint, "pureblood" fans, though I mainly coined it for myself...  It's not meant to be insulting; actually, I see it as a sort of "classification" thing.  I've said it before in a few places on the web, and that's what it means.

Anyway, enough witty banter from an old, young adult with two grey hairs in his beard...  I truly believe that it was destiny that I should get back into it, as it has completely changed who I am; in many ways, I have reverted to a childlike state - in good, mature ways.  Yahweh must be smiling down at me, I guess...  (Ironically, there are certain aspects of so-called "entertainment" that I can no longer handle...)  I simply cannot wait for another movie.  Me wantee, more!

(Hmm; they'd best be explaining how Chomper and Ruby got accepted into the Great Valley, not to mention how they originally met.  Maybe Elsie had something to do with Chomper getting off the island, but that still doesn't fill in the rest of the details; it's even mentioned that Ruby is given the responsibility of watching after Chomper...  There's a lot of important miniscule details that should really be expounded upon.)