Your friends and your Interest in LBT

[action9000]

About a month ago or so, I left a LBT wallpaper on my computer's desktop, when a few of my close friends came over to my house for the night, just to play games/hang out.  now, let me first say that these two guys have been my best, most understanding, supportive friends all throughout high school, and even right now.  

Anyways, when my friends arrived, they looked at my wallpaper, and just gave me this....look:  :blink:  -  <_<

It wasn't a big deal, but it was just funny.  Then they started joking with me about "I see you have a soft spot, :" just jokingly.  
Whereas my other friend just got up and asked what the hell that was doing on my desktop; non-threatening, but just the idea that I knew he couldn't respect it for what it was.

In my experience, my female friends have been much more accepting when it came to my interest in the LBT series, than my male friends, who just think i'm nutz

So I'm just wondering, what have your experiences been when your good friends learned of your strong interest in the LBT Series?  Have they "converted" to enjoying it as well?  Have they accepted it, ridiculed you, abandoned you?  How has LBT been when it came to your real-world (non-online) friends?

[Malte279]

Difficult question for me.
I'm afraid the truth is that my best friends are LBT friends yet none of them lives closer than several hundred miles from me  
Don't get me wrong. I don't have a serious problem with people yet a problem I may have. I'm getting along well with literally everybody. I like the people and the people like me.
But if it comes to really close friendships to friendships that were at least remotely similar to the friendships from the land before time, I'm afraid I have not any such close friends around. Maybe I'm a little lost in reverie too often. I don't mean to say that I have a messed up sense for reality. I certainly don't I'm fully capable of making a difference between real live and the rest.
Yet I may be too much into my own world. Too much into what was, and what will be, or what is going on on thousands of miles apart. Not ready to share my ivory tower with anybody of whom I don't know for sure that he or she is an affinity.
I never made a secret of my favor for the land before time and save from a few surprised or sceptical looks without further consequences it never did me any harm not to hide it.

[Petrie.]

Depends on if you mean friends we had in high school, college, beyond college, etc....

High school - never knew, never told since they had no real interest in dinosaurs

College - they know I have the soundtrack and I've watched the first; they don't really care, and its not like I'm ridiculed for it

Beyond college (other friends of the family, etc.) - not sure if they know; my mom and sisters certainly know

[Littlefoot1616]

I think the beauty of my situation is that the majority of the guys and gals I speak to are in the same place as me. They grew up with movies like LBT just like I did. It makes great conversation at social gatherings and the like LOL Mind you, I never uttered a word about my love for LBT whilst I was at school. That sort of thing was grounds for immediate taunting and bullying sad to say! But at uni, it's a great thing to say coz you find a lot of people are into their own little "personal pleasures". My housemate admits he has, as action9000 put it, "a bit of a soft spot" for retro games like Super Mario LOL   But it is true that the girls seems to be more understanding than the boys about this sorta thing. Just as a joke, I'm with a university sporting society and when the president (a girl), found out about my LBT collection I had stashed in my room at uni, she entitled me "Littlefoot" and I've even got it as my name on my training uniform!

The ladies are much more understanding but I think age also has a certain amount of value to it too

[Threehorn]

I've seen the training shirt myself, few people know I like LBT so I keep it that way the most of the time. my classmates know of it since I listen to it on my headphone MP3 player. they think it odd but like David said, 'Everyone like what they like. it way people are.' Like a person in the class Like PokÈmon still and another with Mario brothers. mainly Yohsi I might add

-Threehorn

[WeirdRaptor]

Some of the my friends also like LBT, still, and some of them don't. They all know i like still the series, though, but none of the ones who aren't interested don't really care.

[F-14 Ace]

There is that idiot at my school that thinks LBT and all who enjoy it will find a place in hell with their name on it.

[Malte279]

And you care about that enough to even think about it? :huh:
"Religious believes" seem to twist in strange turns if they are meant to support the own aversions against something or somebody.

[Littlefoot Fan]

...My friends...don't even know yet...

 

I just always kept it secret since it's so personal lol

However once my friend said something to me like "I don't really hate The Land Before Time" or something like that.

I know there's a weak spot somewhere in him  :

[Malte279]

If only I ever discovered such a "weak spot" among people around me  
They don't hate it, but they don't love it either, and they probably consider me somewhat peculiar for my interest in it. Once a fellow student at the university watched me drawing an LBT picture and asked me why I didn't draw anything more "masculine". Having seen the stuff he is drawing I knew what he meant  :
He is not a bad guy, certainly not, but just like about everyone else around here he won't ever understand my favor for LBT. There really seems be no LBT fan closer than some hundred miles to me. Makes me almost jealous when I hear people from elsewhere talk about their friends many of whom seem to be strong LBT fans. There seems to be a higher percentage of LBT fans in some countries. While Australia has less than a fourth as many inhabitants as Germany I found about three times as many LBT fans there.
Anyway.
No one has to be alone in this world we live in
You don't need to fear...

[action9000]

...My friends...don't even know yet...
I just always kept it secret since it's so personal

I sort of have three groups of friends.  

Group 1 consists of myself, and two other guys my age.  We're all very close, but we have a hard time finding time to do anything.  Eventually, the three of us want to try to split the cost of a place, once we're closer to completed our educations, which will be awesome  
This group does Not know about my LBT interest, the fact that I'm working on a few LBT midi projects (one of my friends is wondering what I'm doing with all my time, since I'm not currently working on a project that the three of us have set out to do  : )or even that fact that I OWN all of the films (they do know I own the original on both VHS and DVD, but they've decided to accept that, more or less).  I honestly don't know how they'd react if they found all 10 sequels sitting in my room, gift packs and all .
   It wouldn't be a huge deal, but it would be a bit of a "storytime!" moment, to quote one of my friends whenever something story-worthy comes up in conversation. I don't plan to mention it out-loud, but if they find out, I can certainly explain it to them.  I tend to keep my LBT interest more hidden from this group. Ironic, since I am closer to them than I am to any other group.

Group 2 consists of two other guys, who are aquiantences of my friends in group 1.  Both of these guys know of my interest in LBT, and one of them (screenname tobeysan, who made this photoshopped picture) has critiqued my midi projects from time to time, including my LBT ones.  I have sent him copies of all the LBT songs, and a few screenshots, one of which, he used for this photoshop project.  He doesn't own any of the movies himself, but we have watched a few at my house, when we're really bored, or I wanted to show him an interesting section.  The other guy in this group respects my liking of LBT, yet has little input on the topic.  I'm pretty sure he thinks it's dumb, but he at least respects it.

Group 3 is Everyone in my circle of friends, combined, working out to around 25-30 people (I can't even remember anymore).  This group as a whole knows nothing of my LBT interest, or projects, and I don't really plan to tell many of them.

[Littlefoot1616]

Sometimes I wonder about things like this...I mean...love for something that you cherish from a childhood era is nothing to be ashamed of yet...it is a subject that (speaking generically) a lot of us find we should be kept taboo. Obviously there are fears of becoming outcasted by fellow peers and others around the same age grouping but really...it's not something that should be locked away to remain hidden from the world. There are plenty of other things you could get into that would get you into a hell of a lot more trouble and the way kids of this modern society are going about it, it looks like they are more likely to go out and be destructive and try out stuff that'll see them either dramatically shortening their life expectancy or see them in a concrete block for a good long time...sad that they have to take that route in life but hey...Each to their own!

I have to admit, I'm much more open about letting people in on my love for LBT than I was before. During secondary school, not that many knew and those that did pieced the evidence together for themselves (seeing videos, sketches in my room etc.). Embarassingly enough in most cases, in one of my uni's video editting labs, a friend of mine was looking through my album list of my iPod and she openly said to the whole lab that I had the LBT soundtrack on there. She didn't mean to announce it to every other person sitting the lab (she had the volume up too high and shouted it by accident LOL ) but as soon as eyes turned my way...I just shrugged and said, "Hey! So I'm into stuff from my kiddy days! Big whoop!" Saying that, the guys that I was actually working with all smiled and nodded and started remembering sections of the original movie from when they watched it as kids.

So to me, this really isn't a subject I find too damaging to talk about openly. Maybe it's because I have people I can talk to who can relate to my love for LBT despite them not actually being as close to it as me. Again...each to their own I say! :^.^:

[Littlefoot Fan]

but as soon as eyes turned my way...I just shrugged and said, "Hey! So I'm into stuff from my kiddy days! Big whoop!" Saying that, the guys that I was actually working with all smiled and nodded and started remembering sections of the original movie from when they watched it as kids.

Wow that must be a day you'll never forget   I wish I was you  

But anyway you're absolutly right! I shouldn't have to keep this all bottled up in me...

Whoa o.o' *takes deep breath*  

I couldn't just flat out tell my friend "I like Land Before Time". It just doesn't work that way  :

I know, I'll leave a wallpaper on my computer  

Friend walks in
Friend sees wallpaper
Friend: ...
Me: ...
Friend: ...
Me: ...sup

 

[action9000]

I know, I'll leave a wallpaper on my computer

Friend walks in
Friend sees wallpaper
Friend: ...
Me: ...
Friend: ...
Me: ...sup

LOL  
Ahh, I did that Exact thing by accident one day a few months ago, with main group '1' (see my post above).  One of them just gave me a big * <_< shrug :blink: * with a confused look on his face.  The other brought up what I said in the first post, about a "soft spot."  It was actually kind of funny  
I've noticed that the general trend is this:

People are generally very accepting of us liking/respecting the original movie, since it is a classic, by the big-time producers, it was a masterpiece of the time, etc etc.  People generally liked the original.
The problems with acceptance, and peer issues, tend to start when we expose our interest in the sequels.  Generally, people saw the sequels as Very weak, very childish ripoffs of the original, and few people have the same respect for them.
I think many of my friends know I liked the original LBT film, however only a certain few know I have, and enjoy, all of the sequels.  That fact simply doesn't feel as easy to be open about.

By the way, I still keep a LBT wallpaper on my desktop (a screenshot from LBT 6, actually), but no one knows its origin.  It's a very indistinct scene from the film, with just landscape, and no clear characters in it.

[Littlefoot Fan]

It's a very indistinct scene from the film, with just landscape, and no clear characters in it.

heh   must look quite interesting to people who aren't familiar with the movies  :

btw, how do you take a screenshot? I always thought there was a certain camera you buy that plugs into the tv or something and when you click the button it saves the snapshot to the camera so you can maybe implement it onto your comp somehow?

Or do you guys just stick a camera up to the screen?  :blink:  

There are so many shots I want to take of Littlefoot at certain moments  :

[Petrie.]

If you have the dvds, you can go download a nice little program called VLC media player.  If you can get the dvd to play in it (doesn't always work because companies manufacture the dvds differently  <_< ) you can take screen captures with that program.  Its free.

A no hassle solution is Power DVD, but you need to pay for that one.

For VCR, you'll need a capture card to plug in the appropriate analog cables and some type of capture program.

[action9000]

I have three ways I can make screenshots:  Normally I use method 2-a, for convenience.

1)
I have a DVD drive on my computer, so I just put the DVD in and play it.  My software DVD player (it came with my DVD drive when I bought it) includes a function where it will write the image being played on the screen, into a picture file (a screenshot).  This just saves wherever I tell it to, and I can use this picture for whatever I want.

2) I have a program called "Magic DVD Ripper"
I can insert a DVD into my computer and use this program to make the movie into a AVI (a movie) file of whatever quality I choose.  This process takes a LONG time though (about 12 hours for a high-quality rip, even for an 1.5 hour-long movie).  Over the course of a week or so, I ripped all 11 LBT DVDs to my hard drive (take up a total of around 9.2 GB of space on my hard drive).

2-a)Now, I can just load an AVI file inst a media player called "VLC media player" (Roger Rabbit would highly recommend it as well.  It has a screenshot function, and it can play anything   ).  You can use Winamp or whatever you want, but screenshotting is easiest in VLC.  Simply play the AVI file in VLC, and press the screenshot button in the program, to instantly write that frame of the movie into a picture file.  You can tell VLC where to save the pictures to.

2-b ) If you don't want to use VLC, but you still want screenshots, here's how you can do it with Winamp or Windows Media Player:

Copy the DVDs into AVI files as I mentioned in method 2-a.  Play the AVI file in your media player.  When you want to take a screenshot, make sure the window displaying the movie, is the active window (the program on top of all the other programs), hold Alt on your keyboard and press the "Print Screen" key (may be labeled "prtscrn", "print" "printscr" or something similar).  This will copy the image in the movie window.

Now, open any image editing program (even Paint will work) and hit Paste.
An image should come up.  Use this program to crop (if needed) and save the picture.

I hope this helps!

[Petrie.]

*snickers*

Beat ya.  

[Petrie.]

Oh, for the record, I could never get Windows Media Player to ever do a screen capture like you said.  Piece of junk that hogs memory.    That's why I deleted it from my computer.

[action9000]

*snickers*

Beat ya.

Bah   Well, I had to type more, so there  

Anyways, yes, for WIndows Media Player, I assumed it would work.  Alt-printscreen works in Every program I have Ever tried it in, including my memory-hogging audio production software, which can eat as much as 3GB of RAM/virtual memory  (and I have screenshots to prove this   )  That's very surprising that you couldn't get it to work on Windows Media Player.  Ah well, there are Plenty of alternatives out there.  I can't say I Ever use Windows Media Player for anything.  Winamp is smaller and is easier to work with for most media, and VLC is a Very nice video (and audio, if you like) player