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JMS News

StarStuff

Regular
http://jmsnews.com/

JMS News now has a discussion board. Unfortunately, it is temporarily closed to fix a problem.

Will we be able to get some inside info at this site? Will JMS respond to questions? We can hope can't we? :)
 
It's working now, I just registered. (Not that I really need another B5 forum to read/contribute to, but I wanted to make sure that I registered my name before somebody else did - as has happened several times in the past on other boards. :))

I doubt that JMS will contribute or even lurk much because a bulletin board does not allow for as much filtering and protection from things like story ideas as the moderated newsgroup does. Also JMS decided at some point that it would be best to pick one venue to post to - knowing that fans would repost anything really newsworthy to other sites - and that he picked "the mod" as the place. Given that JMSNews is largely an archive of things he posted to usenet, it would be odd if he decided to become active in the forum located there. Which isn't to say that he'll never see anything posted there. The forum moderators may well pass along copies of particular messages, but rasftvb5mod has been the single "point of contact" for JMS for so long that I think it very unlikely that he'll add another. (At one time he briefly surfaced on the Sci-Fi Channel board after lurking for a bit. I think he saw it as a chance to interact with new fans who were just discovering the show and weren't aware of usenet or the numerous other B5 sites. Even there he didn't post anything until someone masquerading as JMS put some nonsense up on the site. He left the board entirely after board members started posting fan fiction to the site.)

Regards,

Joe
 
This will pretty offtopic but...

I just don't get those story ideas and all that stuff that fan's made up. I mean... does some of those who post something like: "kewl!!11!! humans will be teh first ones!!11" do they really think that JMS or anyone would... share the same thoughts? Even to me 99% of all that sounds like a total crap... Why does others just don't get it... :rolleyes:
 
I mistakenly thought that JMS was personally connected with the site.

Weren't we (here at b5tv) anticipating an announcement from JMS around mid-October? Did I miss it?
 
Geo Kuutio -

I can understand how a person can have some interesting story ideas but not know how to put them on paper or how to go about getting them published. I have a great story idea but trying to make the characters come alive is beyond my limited talent.
 
Star Stuff:

I'm not sure if JMS is "personally" connected with the JMSNews site or not. (Like earlier archives of his posts I'm sure it has his permission, but beyond that I don't know what involvement, if any, he might have with the site.) Either way, the associated forum, which is a whole separate issue and involves all the usual dangers of a semi-moderated environment where every incoming message is not subject to some kind of automatic or hand-moderation. My gut instinct is that he will stay away from the forum for all the usual reasons.

I don't know why vague speculation based on something equally vague that JMS said always seems to get a specific date attached to it, and how that date then becomes "JMS said" on the boards.

It happened with the possible feature film, season 4 and now JMS's passing reference to a couple of possible B5 projects that were in a talking stages. Not blaming you, Star Stuff, you're reacting to what you've read or heard. Just commenting on the phenomemnon, which I keep seeing on different sites and on different subjects.

No, JMS didn't say he'd have an announcement about anything in mid-October. What he did say, about a month ago, was that there were some talks going on about a couple of possible projects, that it was too early to say anything beyond that because nothing was decided yet, and that he might have something more to say "in a few weeks". (Which as a practical matter can mean anything from two weeks to about ten.)

So far he hasn't said anything. His saying something would depend on two things: 1) One or both of the ideas actually getting to the deal stage where contracts are signed and/or money has changed hands and 2) Word getting out from someone else. Normally this would mean Warner Bros. and/or a television network making some kind of public announcement (even if only a blurb in Variety that nobody outside the industry is going to read.) Hollyweird protocol is such that the entities footing the bill, not the lowly writer, gets to make such announcements. The only exception would be the word leaking in some other way - which nearly happened when the Sci-Fi Channel picked up the B5 reruns and did happen with the S1 DVDs - when someone from the National Captioning Institute posted a message on the moderated newsgroup asking for help with the spelling of the alien names. :) Once that was out in public, JMS no longer felt contstrained by protocol and he confirmed that the DVDs were on their way. (After giving Warner Home Video a head's up so they could rush the official announcement out ASAP.)

Geo Kuutio -

While a lot of fan posts are pretty illiterate, this is not always the case. One fan on the old non-moderated newsgroup wondered what would happen if someone sentenced to the death-of-persaonality somehow regained the memory of his previous life - and that resulted in the already-written Passing Through Gethsemane being postponed for a full season until JMS could track the fan down and get a signed release from him. That wasn't a "lousy" idea, it was a good enough one that JMS had already used it, even if the episode hadn't been filmed yet. Another fan posted a piece of fan fiction to a site an SF novelist maintained and the result was that an entire unpublished novel by the author was rejected by her publisher. The fan's story was too close in plot to the novel, and the publisher was too concerned with the risk of a lawsuit.


Regards,

Joe
 
Will we be able to get some inside info at this site? Will JMS respond to questions? We can hope can't we? :)

You can hope but I highly doubt it will happen. Ask JMS on RASTB5M and see what he thinks but I agree with pretty much what JoeDM said about the chances. ;)

Besides, here is what the site owner (DougO) of JMS News said:

It is actually unlikely that you will get a response from JMS here. Your best bet is to post this question to the rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe or rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated usenet newsgroup. Those are the places where JMS normally replies to questions.

Although I have permission from JMS to archive his messages here, this site has no official connection with JMS. I wouldn't count on him reading or replying to posts here.
 
And here's what the FAQ from the JMSNews front page says:

*****


Question: Is this site affiliated with JMS or Babylon 5?

Answer: This site is operated independently and has no official connection with JMS. The site has received permission from JMS to repost his messages. This site was created and is managed by Doug Olson.


*****

Regards,

Joe
 
Geo Kuutio -

While a lot of fan posts are pretty illiterate, this is not always the case. One fan on the old non-moderated newsgroup wondered what would happen if someone sentenced to the death-of-persaonality somehow regained the memory of his previous life - and that resulted in the already-written Passing Through Gethsemane being postponed for a full season until JMS could track the fan down and get a signed release from him. That wasn't a "lousy" idea, it was a good enough one that JMS had already used it, even if the episode hadn't been filmed yet. Another fan posted a piece of fan fiction to a site an SF novelist maintained and the result was that an entire unpublished novel by the author was rejected by her publisher. The fan's story was too close in plot to the novel, and the publisher was too concerned with the risk of a lawsuit.


Regards,

Joe


You catched my point here. What I meant, that most of fan made stuff.. well.. they are not too good nor they have anything interesting, of course there are some good stuff. But well yes, I think that you understood my point here.
 

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