Babylon 5

Babylon 5 is a science fiction television show that depicts the Babylon 5 space station, a neutral site meant to be a place where different planets and cultures could mingle and engage in non-violent diplomacy.
"Babylon 5" had a thriving internet-based fandom from its inception. The show's creator, J. Michael Straczynski (often referred to as "JMS"), was a pioneer in his online involvement with fans and fandom, and his intense presence in fandom spaces was the subject of much discussion. 
Starting in 1993, JMS asked fans not to write "Babylon 5" fan fiction until the show was off the air.
For more about JMS and his involvement in fannish spaces, see Babylon 5 Fandom and The Powers That Be.
==Canon==
The show began as a test pilot movie on February 22, 1993, and then aired on television as a series beginning January 26, 1994. 
It was designed to be a five-year show, with one overarching story arc. Unfortunately, the show was threatened with cancellation, so the story had to be awkwardly wrapped up by the end of year 4. As it turned out, the show was not cancelled, and a fifth season was quickly written. Many fans mourn the possibilities that an uninterrupted arc would have brought.
The universe has gone on in in several tie-in books and three short-lived spin-offs: the two television series Crusade (1999, cancelled after 13 episodes) and Legend of the Rangers (2002, cancelled after just the pilot), and the 2007 straight-to-DVD movie Babylon 5: The Lost Tales.
==Babylon 5 Fandom==
Babylon 5 has been a popular show at general science-fiction conventions, for panel discussions, interviews, episode screenings, and cosplay.
Some fans also fondly remember or still play Babylon 5's official roleplaying game, wargame, and collectible card game.
Fan communities for Babylon 5 often sprung up on message boards, such as the official Warner Brothers and TNT fan sites. Pathfinder, for example, had a dedicated Babylon 5 message board which hosted a long-running real-time round-table fanfiction roleplay, called the Babylon 5 Never-Ending Story (Add Your Own Twists!) With several dozen participants, the narrative evolved from a free-for-all wish-fulfillment into a more structured story with planning, plot, and character development. The Never-Ending Story survived the merging of the dedicated Babylon 5 board into the general Sci-Fi Television board, a switch to a different hosting site entirely, and finally petered out on a mailing list.
This robust fandom community, however, had declined by 2000. In 2012, it was eligible for Yuletide, a fanworks community for "small" fandoms. A fan in 2012 said: 
For a good overview of the fandom, see On Spreading the Gospel of Babylon 5.
===International Fandom===
On its first run in syndication, Babylon 5 aired internationally anywhere from several months to a year behind its US schedule. This led to much disgruntlement among international fans who wanted to participate in online activities, which were often overwhelmed with American fans wanting to discuss the latest episode. To keep up with the show in countries where the it wasn't airing yet, fans often copied and circulated VHS tapes with episodes recorded and mailed by American fans.
During the Gulf War, the Pentagon contacted JMS to tell him that the show improved morale among troops and to request advance synopses for episodes so that they could keep up with the airing schedule.As related in the Babylon 5 script books.
===Babylon 5 Fandom Today ===
After over twenty years, the fandom is still going strong. Even though the younger generation of fans mostly prefers the more 'contemporary' fannish spaces, fandom has not completely abandoned Usenet either, and some of the old message boards, such as B5TV are also still around and active.
In journal-based fandom, Livejournal's Babylon 5 community is low-traffic but active, and the twice a month newsletter Universe Today collects discussion, fan fiction, art, and other interesting links from all over the web with plenty of links in each issues. There is also Babylon 5 Love Month, the annual fanworks fest celebrating the show.
One of the most active hubs of activity at the moment is on Tumblr, where the B5 fandom is well-known for welcoming new fans with open arms (and being considerate when it comes to spoilers). When a new fan posts in the B5 tag (usually to mourn for the perceived lack of fandom for B5), it is traditional for the other fans to reblog their post and welcome them to the fandom.
As one fan put it:
==Characters==
* Susan Ivanova
* Talia Winters
* John Sheridan
* Delenn
* Marcus Cole
* Londo Mollari
* Jeffrey Sinclair
* Michael Garibaldi
* Stephen Franklin
* Vir Cotto
* Lennier
* Lyta Alexander
==Pairings==
* Sheridan/Delenn
* Sheridan/Garibaldi
* Ivanova/Winters
* Ivanova/Cole
* Delenn/Ivanova
* Cole/Neroon
* Londo/G'Kar
* Sinclair/Garibaldi
* Sinclair/Sheridan
==Babylon 5 Fandom and The Powers That Be==
From its inception, Babylon 5 fandom has had an accessible relationship with series creator, J. Michael Straczynski, as he was a regular contributor to the newsgroups alt.tv.babylon-5, rec.arts.tv.sf.babylon5 and Rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated.http://www.midwinter.com/b5/Usenet/ JMS (as he is commonly known) would frequently answer fan questions about the show, not only about production or technical issues but about the backgrounds of the characters and the worlds he created. His posts, which are archived at jmsnews.com, are an early example of internet creator/fan based interactions.The posts have also been collected into a five-part book series, compiled by JMS and a team of fans, that contains of every question JMS had ever answered on Usenet, AOL bulletin boards, GEnie, and in online chats, sorted by category. The books total approximately 2,000 pages and cover 5,296 questions. More .
J. Michael Straczynski himself attended MediaWest*Con in 1992, just over a year before the show aired as a test movie in 1993. At that con, Straczynski was one of the five fans on the panel: "Computers: reach out and touch a fan - bulletin board systems," as well as the Ghostbusters panel.
Regarding his place as a showrunner and fan, he wrote in 1996: 
Fan interaction with JMS also helped to shape details in several episodes of the show. In the late first-season episode The Quality of Mercy, for example, there is a discussion of the rights of due process in a society where there are functional telepaths. JMS acknowledged on the newsgroup and in discussions that he fleshed out the on-screen discussion rather than glossing it over because there had been a high level of interest on the newsgroup.
Many cast members, such as Claudia Christian and Patricia Tallman, also often interact with fans online or at conventions "In the summer of 1997, I attended the Chicago Comicon. One of the guests was Pat Tallman, who knew about the mailing list I ran. It was a super cool moment in my fandom history." -- comment by Laura Hale: User:Laura/Timeline , and contribute to fan-run projects such as The Babylon Podcast.
A good example of co-operation between fans and TPTB is Babylon 5: I've Found Her, a space combat simulator which continued the legacy of the cancelled Babylon 5: Into the Fire game with the help of the developers of the commercial game (and the unofficial blessing of JMS).I've Found Her official site
===Regarding Trading Tapes===
JMS scolded fans about selling/trading Babylon 5 tapes:
October 1995: 
===Regarding an Alleged Jettisoned Script===
A fan's comment in 1997: 
A fan's comment in 2001: 
===JMS Requested No Fan Fiction===
JMS often spoke of being online 3–4 hours a day,"I spend 3 hours per day just on the internet." -- Why are you here? mentioned the vast amount of email messages he received,"It's now 2:03 a.m., and I have 248 Internet messages in my mailbox to get through before I crash tonight." - Why are you here? and provided his personal email address, to fans. He spoke of being the only television executive of being online and interacting with fans in a meaningful way,"I am, insofar as I know, the ONLY television producer to be on-line to this extent, creating what is really an interactive experience." -- Why are you here? and appeared to gain a lot of energy from these interactions. However, the thin line between being a showrunner, an accessible go-to guy, and a fan was a delicate balancing act. Because of these relationships, and transparency, JMS also spent a lot of time controlling what fans could say and where.
 
JMS frequently requested that fans not post fanfiction or story ideas to the newsgroup he frequented as he didn't want his copyright compromised by the possibility of being seen to have stolen a fan's idea.http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/resources/story-ideas.html In one case he went so far as to delay an episode's production, pushing it off for a season, until he could get a release from the fan who had suggested a similar idea on the newsgroup.http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/guide/048.html
At least one zine, Third Age, was also dead in the water before it even began because of the no-fic policy.
JMS' very frequent presence on USEnet meant that not only were discussions of fanfic prohibited, but also fans' discussion of "scenes they'd like to see on the show."
 
====Quotes by JMS About the Fan Fiction Ban====
=====1993=====
September 1993: 
=====1994=====
February 1994: 
February 1994: 
February 1994: 
March 1994: 
June 1994: 
July 1994: 
December 1994: 
=====1995=====
March 1995: 
August 1995: 
=====1996=====
February 1996: 
March 1996: 
May 1996: 
June 1996: 
October 1996: 
=====1997=====
=====2000=====
====Comments by Fans About the Fan Fiction Ban====
====1994====
====1995====
 
====1996====
 
 
=== 2001===
January 2001: 
===1997===
 
==Babylon 5 Fanworks and the JMS Effect==
While some fans reveled in JMS's participation and lurking on the discussion boards, other fans found JMS's presence in "their" space to have a chilling effect on conversation: "You definitely didn't want to go off on a rant about his, say, dialogue skills, for example. [You'd have to find] some other place if you wanted to talk about that." Fan Fiction Oral History Project with Jinjurly (2012)
Another fan said: "Since he hung out in lots of different places, it meant there was no fan fiction in any of them. Which was a sort of a weird—like, you could say many many things about episodes, and people did immense quantities of analytics and whatever. But they had to be really, really cautious about where they posted their fan fic." Fan Fiction Oral History Project with Eruthros (2012)
JMS's no fan fiction policy—or, more accurately, a policy of "I can never say that I am in favor of fan fiction"—was seen by fans as a request to keep the fanfiction where he could not see it. For a few years there was little Babylon 5 fanfiction openly published on the internet, with only a few archives and no discussion about it on the major message boards and forums. Because of this, Gen fans found themselves in the unusual position, formerly the place of slash fans, of needing to be introduced to invite only fiction mailing lists.
JMS's interactions with fans was often sharp; he could be very blunt and critical of fans' comments. Some very random examples:
 
==Other Fan Interactions and "Babylon 5"==
Fan interaction with JMS helped to shape details in several episodes of the show. In the late first-season episode The Quality of Mercy, for example, there is a discussion of the rights of due process in a society where there are functional telepaths. JMS acknowledged on the newsgroup and in discussions that he fleshed out the on-screen discussion rather than glossing it over because there had been a high level of interest on the newsgroup.
Many cast members, such as Claudia Christian and Patricia Tallman, also often interact with fans online or at conventions "In the summer of 1997, I attended the Chicago Comicon. One of the guests was Pat Tallman, who knew about the mailing list I ran. It was a super cool moment in my fandom history." -- comment by Laura Hale: User:Laura/Timeline , and contribute to fan-run projects such as The Babylon Podcast.
A good example of co-operation between fans and TPTB is Babylon 5: I've Found Her, a space combat simulator which continued the legacy of the cancelled Babylon 5: Into the Fire game with the help of the developers of the commercial game (and the unofficial blessing of JMS).I've Found Her official site
==Fanworks Today==
After the show ended, the 'ban' on fanfiction should have been lifted. But even as late as 2001, JMS was trying to control fans and their questions and fanworks: "In 2001, he wrote: 
It is unknown when Babylon 5 fanworks became more visible.
Popular topics for fanfiction now include what-if alternate universe stories (What if the Minbari did not surrender at the Battle of the Line, what if Sinclair was never replaced by Sheridan), relationship-centric stories featuring both canon pairings (John Sheridan/Delenn, Susan Ivanova/Talia Winters, Susan Ivanova/Marcus Cole) and non-canon pairings (Delenn/Susan Ivanova, Marcus Cole/Neroon, Londo Mollari/G'Kar, Sinclair/Garibaldi), and continuations of the original 5-year canon both gen and relationship-centric.
	
Babylon 5 was considered too large fandom for Yuletide until 2009, when it was allowed under the ten year rule (Crusade had been eligible for a few years until being disqualified because of the franchise rule). However, the next year it was again deemed not rare based on the number of stories on AO3 - only to allowed back again in 2012.
==Inclusion of Gay Characters==
In 1993, JMS said: 
In 1997, a fan recounted hearing JMS at LosCon: 
==Tensions with Star Trek Fandom==
J. Michael Straczynski wrote on June 12, 1995: 
Also see JMS comments on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 at USEnet, see "Re: DS9 vs B5 comments," June 20, 1995
==Early Fan Comments==
===1993===
===1994===
===1995===
===1996===
===1997===
==Fanworks==
===Fanzines===
Links to Babylon 5 fanzines can be found at :Category:Babylon 5 and at the List of Babylon 5 Fanzines.
===Fanart===
===Vids===
===Archives===
* Babcom, early archive, no longer active
* Delusions - An archive for fic of the pairing Marcus/Neroon. 
* Rogue Sanctuary - A femslash archive for Susan Ivanova/Talia Winters. 
* Visions Before Midnight - A fanfiction archive, last updated 21 May 2001.
* Alternate Universe Today, one of the earliest fanfiction archives.
* JumpNow, a fan site with a fanfiction archive, forum, screencap archive, and a preservation of the John and Delenn Storybook, one of the earliest fanfiction archives which is now defunct.
* Diamond Mayhem - Individual fanfic archives (archive mode)
* Aubrey W. Adkins - Individual fanfic archives (archive mode)
* Evermore's Archives
* Babylon 5 (TV 1993) tag at Archive of Our Own
* Babylon 5 at FanFiction.net
===Forums/Mailing Lists/Newsgroups===
* Rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5
* Rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
* Aus.sf.babylon5
* uk.media.tv.sf.babylon5 
* Babylon 5 On-Line (1995, Sandy was the moderator)
* The Babylonian Times (1995, contained news, information & discussion concerning Babylon5, especially with reference to the UK)
* The Babylon5 Reviews Electronic Forum (1995, out of Cornell University, moderator of this list was Michael Shappe)
* Talia Ivanova Fan Fic (created April 2000) Description: "For fans of Talia Winters and Susan Ivanova and their relationship in Babylon 5. Fan Fiction and Discussion. If you write fan fiction, this is a place where you can share it, or if you like to read about Talia and Ivanova. Note: The stories can be romantic or erotic in content. Poetry/lyrics also welcome. We may also welcome other F/F fan fiction for other tv shows or movies that Claudia or Andrea have been in. But this is strictly Lesbian Fan Fiction."
	
* Zocalo (created March 2002) Description: "A home for Babylon 5 fiction, alternative fiction, slash, and everything else that doesn't seem to belong in the happy chatty B5 groups abounding."
	
* Dark B5 Fic (created June 2000) Description: 	"DarkB5Fic · b5 fanfiction with a darker twist. Join us in the dark side of Babylon 5. It's an adult show, aimed at adult audiences - and here is where we, as adult readers, can read *adult* fanfic. This means anything that leans on the 'dark' side - violence, sex, gore, adult themes.... all those things we found in b5 anyway. ;) All stories posted here will be archived at the "Visions Before Midnight" webpage at http://www.angen.net/~victorias-domain/tv/bab5main/bab5main.html" 
* Babylon 5 Fanfiction (created March 2001) Description: 	"A group for adult Babylon 5 Fan Fiction there is no required pairing or required type of story, pretty much anything goes." 
	
* Crusade Babylon 5 Chat and Fic Description: 	"This discussion/fanfic list is dedicated to the loving relationships among the characters of Babylon 5 and its wonderful spin-off, Crusade. This is an adult only list, joining it confirms that you are indeed OVER the legal age in your area. All fiction, general hetero and slash are welcome and will eventually be archived at "The Wonderful World Of MakeBelieve Archive", which houses varied fandoms and independant authors." [Archive/other website: WWOMB]
===Some Early Mailing Lists===
==Fan Clubs==
* The Official Babylon 5 Fan Club
* Newsletter of the Grid Epsilon Irregulars
* Garibaldi & Co., a fan club with a focus on the character of Michael Garibaldi
==Conventions==
* The Wrap Party
* BabCom
* a list of Babylon 5 cons: Babcom 95 - A UK Con of some sort (Mar 9, 1995)
==Meta/Further Reading==
* JMS From Usenet Past, some October/November 1993 posts by JMS
* JMS Speaks (long!) ("This document contains a selection of actual quotes by J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, during his tenure online as the show's pilot and series was in production.") (dated Feb 1, 1994, posted Apr 3, 1994)
* How does JMS feel about fan fiction?, October 1996 post and comments on Usenet
* Science Fiction (1998 discussion: J. Michael Straczynski, Alexander Jablokov, Henry Jenkins, others) (May 4, 1998)
* What the Networks Don't Know About Science Fiction by J. Michael Straczynski (January 14, 1999)
* Alas, Babylon by Abigail Nussbaum (2005)
*On Spreading the Gospel of Babylon 5 by Howard Kleinman
*The Baptism of Contemporary Science Fiction by Declan Finn
* An Auteur in the Age of the Internet: JMS, Babylon 5, and the Net, by Alan Wexelblat (2002)
* The Great War of Rastb5: How a cabal of trolls in the Babylon 5 newsgroup led the show’s creator to flouncing from the newsgroup, ultimately causing the most responded to RFD in Usenet history and the creation of a 2nd Babylon 5 newsgroup by 3eyedgiraffe (2021)
==Resources==
* babylon 5, archived 
* The Lurkers Guide to Babylon 5
* The Great Machine wiki
* The Babylon Project wiki at wikia
* Babylon 5 Tech-Manual
* And the Sky Full of Stars - also includes Alien Languages Lexicon
* Fandom overview on crack_van by sabine101reference link.
* Psi Corps Headquarters, a fansite focusing on the telepaths
* JMSNews: The J. Michael Straczynski Message Archive
* JumpNow Site and JumpNow Archive part of German Babylon Projekt Webring
==References==
*