Winterfest Interview with Eric Tullis
| Interviews by Fans | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Winterfest Interview with Eric Tullis |
| Interviewer: | Winterfest |
| Interviewee: | Eric Tullis |
| Date(s): | 2006 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom(s): | Beauty and the Beast |
| External Links: | WINTERFEST ONLINE 2006 INTERVIEW: ERIC TULLIS, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
In 2006, Eric Tullis was interviewed for Winterfest.
Eric was the Beauty and the Beast webmaster for Songs of the Bluebird.
See Winterfest Interview Series.
Some Excerpts
I happened across B&B quite by accident, as I recall. I was in college at the time, and I saw an episode (I think it was during the second season) at my parents’ house during one of my breaks from school. I was initially struck by the visual texture of the show, and then got pulled in by the various themes.
I was an awkward young man with plenty of self-image issues, and so the themes of unconditional acceptance and a “world apart” where one could be oneself were particularly compelling to me.
For the rest of the series’ run, I tried to catch as many episodes at college as I could, which was a neat trick on an all-male campus. I had one friend who liked the show as well, and so we’d seek out TVs in dorm rooms each week to keep up on the show.
I think my motivation for creating that site had much less to do with my enthusiasm for the show than it did with my newfound enthusiasm for the fandom itself.
I had just returned from the 1995 convention in Los Angeles (my first convention of any type), and was stuck with a particularly severe case of “post-con blues”. I had also been learning a bit about the basics of writing web pages, and decided to put a web page together as a means of staying “connected”, and of somehow filling that big post-con “hole” that I felt.
It is true that there weren’t any established web pages for the fandom back then, and I wish I could say that my motivations were purely for fandom’s “greater good”. But in retrospect, the fundamental reasons for creating the site were more selfish than I would ever have realized at the time!... I was not so much a computer enthusiast as simply a computer user. I had a Commodore 64 at home before college, and then had exposure to both mainframes and PC’s at college. Most of my post-college internet use was through the computer at work (gasp!), and then I finally got a computer at home.
The web design rudiments that went into the “Blue Bird” page were learned on my own from a few books and web pages on the topic.
I don’t remember any particularly challenging aspect of starting the page other than learning the basics of writing the page and working up the first draft on the home computer. But BY FAR, the most challenging aspect of running the site was finding the time to do the requisite content updates.
For the first few years, there was a section on the front page of the site that featured links to recent news items in the fandom. It was very difficult to keep that info current, and indeed, the overall maintenance needs of the site was one of the main drivers for finally “retiring” it.
The other issue with the page was finding places to host the files that would not increase my monthly ISP bill! My wife and other local B&B folks were kind enough to donate file space through the years to keep the site as low-cost as possible. Now the site is hosted through Sandy Shelton’s generosity, which I appreciate.... Updates were more frequent early on (perhaps even weekly), but tapered off as current news became more scarce and my own time to do the updates got shorter (as my interests drifted to other things).
The final version of the web page that was retired is not that much different from the one that launched in 1995. The basic architecture is the same, although it ended with a few more main menu options than it had at the beginning.
I wish I had had the foresight to archive “snapshots” of the page to document the evolution, but sadly, it never occurred to me. The web page was a very “in the moment” project, and I never anticipated that I’d be answering questions about it a decade later!
When I look back at the aspects of fandom with which I’ve been involved, Of Love and Hope is the project that really makes me feel good. I see OLAH as a more significant contribution than the web page, but that’s just me.
The online fandom was in a real infancy in 1993. There were several compartmentalized communities, mostly tied in to subscriber services like AOL, Genie, and the like. Usenet groups were also around, but there was no regular B&B discussion there. OLAH was an attempt to facilitate a B&B fan community that would reach across all the various services to include anyone with an email address.
During most of its run, OLAH was a biweekly email digest. Submissions were emailed to my partner, Betty Christophy, who compiled the digest and added a post of her own. She sent the digest back to me, and I sent it out from my work email account (I didn’t have a home computer then). I maintained the mailing list. For a time, Betty was between email accounts, so Jean Torrance performed the editor role.
Given the “more and faster” expectation of the typical internet user today, it seems hopelessly quaint to me that anyone ever had the patience, much less the enthusiasm, for a biweekly digest. But things truly were different then. OLAH started out with about 20-30 subscribers, and ended with over 200 (I wish I could remember the real number).
A few years later, the beautybeast-tv mailing list (with a gateway to the alt.tv.beauty+beast usenet group) provided the fandom with much more real-time discussion options, and the traffic at OLAH faded away. But I’m really proud of the role that OLAH served in its heyday. It was the right project at the right time, and Betty, Jean and I had a great time with it.