I believe I mentioned in my introductory post that I would share my complete LBT story in this thread. It’s been over five months since then (22 weeks, 5 days, 4 hours, and 3 minutes, to be precise
), and I’ve finally gotten around to it. Talk about procrastinating.
The account I am about to share is unfortunately missing several details, due to my having a pathetically unsound memory and not being as much of an archivist as I’d like,
but it I have done my best to make sure it as accurate and complete as possible:
I don’t remember the first time I watched
The Land Before Time, but know for certain that I was very young. Theoretically, I could have seen it in theaters, but I would have been less than a year old at the time, so I highly doubt it.
One thing I do know is that my love for LBT was closely tied in with my early obsession with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. In the spirit of the chicken-or-egg causality dilemma, I can’t remember which came first: I’m reasonably sure that I already liked dinosaurs before I saw LBT, but again, it was so long ago that I can’t say for certain. In any case, I owned the movie on VHS, and watched it addictively; I think I can safely say that it was my favorite movie for much of my early childhood.
For years, the original film was the only Land Before Time movie I knew. It appeared that I lacked a concept of sequels back then; indeed, it must have been a paradigm of sorts, as I remember seeing copies of the LBT sequels in video stores, but not recognizing them as separate from the original film. I didn’t realize the significance of the Roman numeral (if I even noticed it); I would just see the title “
The Land Before Time,” and assume it was simply the original movie with different cover art.
I was observant enough to see Hyp, Mutt, and Nod on the cover of LBT III and think “hmm... I don’t remember those characters from
The Land Before Time,” but, if I recall correctly, it wasn’t until Burger King released its line of LBT toys (in 1997, I believe) that the paradigm shift was triggered, and I realized that there were more LBT movies out there (the fact that one of them contained a baby sharptooth character and two
Struthiomimusómy favorite dinosaur at the timeówas further cause for excitement). Within a few months’ time, I had watched (and my family had purchased) LBT II, III, and IV, and my enthusiasm for the series was still strong at the time LBT V came out. (I remember finding the plot device of the swarming leaf-gobblers fascinating even then.) In fact, I so enjoyed the sequels that I virtually stopped watching the first LBT after I discovered them. However, I did watch the original again at some point after we bought the sing-along songs video (whose purchase had in turn been preceded by that of the first three or four LBT sequels); I recall seeing the sing-along version of “If We Hold On Together”, not recognizing it as a sequel song, and going back to the first movie to hear the original version (previously, I had almost always stopped and rewound the first movie as soon as the credits started, and so had rarelyóif everólistened to the song).
My recollection of the state of my fandom at the time of LBT VI’s release is poor, but I believe it was much less active at that point. (I seem to recall that I found the sixth movie less satisfying than its predecessors.) By the time LBT VII was released, however, I had definitely lost most of my interest in the series, and when my family purchased it (primarily for the benefit of my younger siblings, I believe), I didn’t even care to watch it at first. However, in retrospect, I think I was in a state of denial at the time, believing LBT to be something I should have outgrown, and was therefore embarrassed to admit that I was, in fact, interested in watching it. Indeed, I was curious enough to ask one of my brothers about the movie, and was surprisedóand a little impressedóby its explicit reference to the original film, and the darkness of Pterano’s backstory. (Perhaps it evoked a sense of nostalgia for the first film?) I subsequently joined my siblings in watching the movie a few times, on the pretense that I had nothing better to do
(though secretly I did enjoy it). But my parents never bought any more LBT films after VII, and gradually the family interest in the series faded.
I believe the last time I even looked at an LBT video (at least until the revival of my fandom) was in December 2001, while my family and I were Christmas shopping at Toys ëR’ Us. LBT VIII had just been released, and when no one else was around, I picked up a copy in the store to read the synopsis. I thought it was interesting that a movie had been made that focused on Spike, and wondered what type of dinosaur Mr. Thicknose was, as he was not depicted anywhere on the videocase. (For some reason it never occurred to me that he would be a
Pachyrhinosaurus; I envisioned him as being an
Altirhinus or some other large ornithopod with a similarly prominent proboscis.
) But my interest in LBT was no longer sufficient to motivate me to pursue watching the films on my own (that, and it did not outweigh my shyness to admit that I still HAD that interest), and I never even watched another LBT film for the next seven years.
At the time I “lost interest” in LBT, my interests in movies were very narrow. Nature documentaries, and a few “real-looking” films such as
Jurassic Park and
Dinosaur were about it. By 2008, however, I had significantly expanded my horizons, and was a much more avid movie-watcher. I had also come to use the Internet much more frequently, and tended to browse sites such as Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database when I was bored. I believe it was some point in that year (it may have been 2007) when, for some reason, I became curious about how many sequels LBT had produced since I had stopped following it. On that whim, I checked out the Wikipedia pages for the original
Land Before Time and the post-
Stone of Cold Fire sequels. I was actually quite intrigued by some of the new plots and characters that had been added, the biggest surprise perhaps being Guido (I was impressed that such a recently discovered dinosaur had been incorporated into the series). This was also when I learned that Mr. Thicknose was a
Pachyrhinosaurus (cue the “duh”
moment). But I still couldn’t be bothered to watch an LBT film, and much of what I discovered that day was pushed to the back of my mind.
Then, in late 2008, three events took place which ultimately precipitated the revival of my interest in LBT. My memory of the events is blurry; I can’t remember the order in which they occurred,
when exactly they occurred (it was most likely late November, but could have been as early as October), how they may have led to or influenced one another, or what prompted them to occur in the first place, so I’ll just present them individually:
1. I visited Wikipedia’s LBT pages again, exploring them more thoroughly this time. This was when I definitively cemented my knowledge about the new sequels and TV series, which had previously been only a passing curiosity to me that I had quickly forgotten.
2. I learned from an online TV guide that
The Great Day of the Flyers was going to air on Cartoon Network (a channel I normally never watch). I thought, “What the heck, I’ll tape it and see what this ëGuido’ character is like”, but when the day came that it aired, I forgot to record it. I didn’t care much at the time, but as it turned out, the movie reran several times over the next few weeks, providing me with further opportunities to tape it. Again and again I missed doing so, either out of forgetfulness, or simply because I decided not to bother. Eventually, however, there came a day that I DID remember to set the timer on my VCR to record it.
3. For whatever reason, in late November or early December, I felt an impulse to watch the first LBT again. Dimly remembered scenes, dialogue, and music from that movie kept playing and replaying inside my head, and I eventually decided that the only way to get them out was to watch the movie. (At the time, it had been as much as ten years since I had seen it; no one in my family had watched it much after we discovered the sequels.) It’s possible that my visits to the Wikipedia pages had served to rouse these memories. I also may have been spurred by the consideration that if I was going to watch the twelfth movie when it aired on TV, about the twelfth movie’s TV airing by this point, and decided that if I was going to watch it, then I might as well re-familiarize myself with the original film beforehand. In any case, it was this nagging urge to re-watch what had once been my favorite movie that had the greatest impact on me.
I began combing the house for my old VHS copy of the original film. This was far more daunting than it sounds, as our house contains literally hundreds of videotapes (mostly recorded TV shows), lined up on shelves and cupboards, and stored away in boxes and bins. Over the course of several days, I searched through every household cache of videos I could find (though I never spent more than a few hours searching on any given day). In the process, some of the sequels my family already owned began to turn up. At first I ignored them, my interest being solely in the original film, but as my search continued to turn up fruitless, I decided to take them as well, partially to put a stop to the irritating false alarms I kept experiencing (“I found it! Oh, dang, it’s ëThe Land Before Time
II’!”), but also because I considered that I might feel like watching them later.
Eventually, however, after tearing apart (and subsequently repairing
) every possible video-storage area in the house (often checking the same places twice), I gave up my search. I had acquired sequels II, V, and VII, but not the original. Taking the course of action any sane person would have chosen much earlier, I borrowed the DVD of
The Land Before Time from the public library, and late that night, watched it. (I’d estimate the date to have been December 15, perhaps a few days later.)
My first viewing of the original
The Land Before Time in (possibly) a decade didn’t feel particularly momentous at the time. I wasn’t in a constant state of nostalgic delight or satisfaction, and there were even a few moments when I thought “Wow, I don’t remember the dialogue being this silly!”
Once I had finished watching the movie, I thought that I’d just return it to the library the next time I got the chance. But a day or so later, I found myself pining to hear “If We Hold On Together” again (there was also a particular scene I wanted to rewatch, but I can’t remember now which one it was
). So I watched the DVD again (at least the parts I was interested in). If memory serves, I later watched it in full a second time. It seemed that the movie was once again growing on me. At some point around that time, I watched LBT XII (which by then I had recorded), and LBT VIII (also rented from the library; I can’t remember whether I saw it or XII first. :unsure:). Having seen the unparalleled original immediately beforehand, I wasn’t too impressed with them, but I enjoyed them nonetheless.
It seemed that a switch in my brain had been flipped, because I started watching the three sequels I had found while video-searching, and after Christmas, I started renting the other sequels from the library, and buying the movies on eBay. By mid-January, I had watched all of the LBT movies (LBT IX being the last one I saw), many of them two or more times over. Even before I had reached that milestone, it was official: I was once again officially obsessed with LBT.
By then, I had paid many more visits to Wikipedia, as well as the LBT Wiki. I had read in depth about the TV episodes, and though I had not been particularly interested in watching them before, I now turned to them to satisfy my now-ravenous hunger for more LBT. The first one I watched was the readily available “The Hidden Canyon” on the LBT XIII DVD. I didn’t like it that much, but my newfound LBT addiction was in full swing, and the disappointment, if anything, only increased its momentum. After some initial difficulty, I downloaded most of the TV episodes (Thank you, landbeforetimelover
), and began watching them fervently. On multiple occasions I stayed up well into the night (4 AM or later), watching episode after episode. Once I had seen them all, I found myself once again experiencing LBT withdrawal. To satisfy my addiction, I turned to reading LBT fanfics, some of which I found almost as enjoyable as the LBT films themselves.
I soon learned, however, that there were all too few good LBT stories available on the web, and few places where they could be found. Inevitably, my obsessive quest for new LBT material brought me to The Gang Of Five. My first act upon discovering the forum, of course, was to skim through the entire “Fanart and Fanfiction“ section, reading every fanfic that caught my attention. Afterwards, I started reading through RPs, figuring that they were basically collaborative fanfictions by multiple authors. It was around this point (for reasons that remain fuzzy in my memory) that I registered as a GOF member, choosing “Pangaea” as my screen name for no other reason than that it was prehistory-related, and the best thing that I could come up with at the time.
Finding that the RPs weren’t as satisfying (or easy) to read as regular LBT stories, I returned to the fanfiction section, combing through the threads in search of fanfictions I thought I might have missed, or ignored because they had not initially interested me. I didn’t find many, but in the process, I started reading the discussion threads about fanfictions, and later, threads on other LBT topics. Many of these I found very interesting, and occasionally, even felt like participating in them. For many weeks, however, I was too shy to do so, preferring to remain an observer.
Eventually, however, my desire to be useful, to receive social attention, and to be a part of something won out, and I decided to become an active member. Not wanting to enter without properly introducing myself, I spent a few weeks writing and refining an introductory post and designing an avatar. At one point I thought to wait until my star day to make my entrance, but I’m an impatient fella, and everything was ready and I still had a month to wait, I decided “what the heck!” and made myself known right then and there.
Okaaaaay....looking back at what I’ve written, I’m pretty sure I’ve stretched the definition of “LBT story” to its limits. :blink: If anyone who’s bothered to read this autobiography has made it this far, I congratulate you.
For obvious reasons, I’m going to stop here, though I will not hesitate to add updates to the end of this post if I learn any more details about my history with LBT that change, clarify, or conflict with the story I have recounted here.
Pangaea
