Black Sun Over Midland?

ok i did use the search utility to see if this topic has been covered or not.

hope i used it right cause i expect some anger if this has already been brought up......but what the heck happened to blacksunovermidland.com?!?!?!?!

and is the person/fan on this forum? this might seem like a silly question and all. but that was one of the sites i visited the most when i was first starting to get really heavy into Berserk.

blah. hope everyones having a fine day!!!!!

Blacksunovermidland.com never existed. But, Black Sun Over Midland (www.physics.scsu.edu/~jobien/berserk/ ) was hosted by J. Obien (aka SkullKnight/Skully), when he was a Physics Professor at SCSU (South Carolina State University).

Edit from the future: it now lives on through SKnet: http://bsom.skullknight.net/

BSOM's reign (1999-2001) was a golden age for the US Berserk community. There was plenty of constructive activity, and a real sense of camaraderie on the forums. That community is still the one I look up to when I think of our own. It's also where many long-time members got their start (me, Griffith, Olivier Hague, CnC, Wereallmad, Mage, just to name a few).

However, Skully was prone to long periods of absence. I asked him if he'd be willing to let me co-administrate the site, but he declined. He didn't even think it'd be legal since it was a University-hosted server (moderating that BBS required FTP access, from what I remember). So, after another long period of his absence, I made my own site, Skullknight.net

BSOM has since fallen into disarray and unfortunately, since J. Obien no longer works for SCSU, is technically extinct. However, you can still get glimpses of some posts by searching for "Black Sun Over Midland" on http://www.archive.org/

I tried my damnedest to contact J. Obien when I realized BSOM was no longer hosted by SCSU. I even made some phone calls, successfully stalking him to another university he had been working for, after tracking down a few of SCSU's older physics professors. But, he was only an associate employee, and never had a real office to take messages on. Furthermore, his new university refused to let me even leave him a note (bastards...). I've been planning to try again, so perhaps in the future we'll be able to find a true backup of the site. However, somehow I doubt Skully even kept backups.

I'd love for some of the old BSOM members to post their memories of the site. The thread may even turn into a kind of late eulogy

ahhh. i understand now. i do hope that you can get in touch somehow and see if there's a backup or whatever.

as for the eulogy, it would be a little belated.....but definitely not uncalled for.

Walter said:

BSOM's reign (1999-2001) was a golden age for the US Berserk community. There was plenty of constructive activity, and a real sense of camaraderie on the forums. That community is still the one I look up to when I think of our own. It's also where many long-time members got their start (me, Griffith, Olivier Hague, CnC, Wereallmad, Mage, just to name a few).

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Was it '99? I seem to think I joined up in '98. Perhaps not. Either way, it was a while ago.

It wasn't exactly the prettiest website out there (red on black) and didn't have the wealth of information this board and its encyclopedia has, it really was all about the forum.

So basically, the sense of community was accentuated by relative modesty of the site. I think everyone there felt they belonged to something a little special.

Wow, I was unaware how far back US Berserk fan-sites went. I really wish the site was still running, I'd love to have a look through. Sounds like it was a great community!

[quote author=IsolatioN]
I really wish the site was still running, I'd love to have a look through.
[/quote]

Actually you can check out a whole lot of it via the Wayback Machine...  Almost everything you get from this url is present in the Internet Archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_...du/~jobien/berserk/cgi-bin/messageboard/view*

Around November 2001 the file names were recycled, so there are 2 different versions of some of the pages (i.e. messages 1.html through 152.html)

Erm.. You can use this link to find the actual pages that match up with the topics you want to check out from the previous URL, if the Archive is being a stupid ass and not dating/linking its index properly:

http://web.archive.org/web/*sr_1nr_...u.edu/~jobien/berserk/messageboard/messages/*

Before that there was a more deeply oldschool board there, but the Archive only has three (pretty uninteresting) topics saved from that.  You can still see who was posting there, at least: 

http://web.archive.org/web/20000903...cs.scsu.edu/~jobien/berserk/wwwboard/bbs.html

Retardedly, I never went there cause at the time I had no idea there was cool stuff on BBSesses.  Esseses.

Hah, I made such an ass of myself on those boards that it's not even funny.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure it's older than 99'. My guess would have been 97 actually (I remember finding it probably the day I saw the first episode of the anime), but then I'm really bad with dates. Either way, I think it might have been the first english language Berserk community. It certainly was one of the earlier ones.

It was totally different than what you find on message boards today, smaller and much more cohesive. Discussions were surprisingly focused, though I guess it pretty much had to be given the simplicity of the bbs software.

Skully was pretty cool too, I even played PSO with him, back when you didn't have to pay a monthly fee.

I always kinda thought that maybe skully offed himself, the last time I spoke with him he was super stressed out from work and sounded pretty down, then he just dissapeared completetly, and the site never got updated afterwards (to my knowledge, I stopped checking after a while).

I also remember when Olivier first showed up and I dismissed him as some snobby guy trying to be a know-it-all. I Kinda missed the mark. Back then I think most people never actually considered how long Berserk had already been running, and that there were people out there who had actually been following it for as long as he had. For that reason it was pretty easy to just assume he was talking out his ass. I think many of us got humbled pretty quick.

I actually misjudged a lot of members. For instance, I never thought this site would take off (wasn't it originally a fanfic site?). Oh well, live and learn.

That reminds me, how many people never migrated? Only one I can think of is the guy who called himself Godo. He was there before I joined and stuck around almost till the end, but then he dissapeared.

Oh, I definitely made an ass of myself on a daily basis too. I was probably one of the most obnoxious regular posters there. I remember I called out Olivier for saying Griffith would be reborn, (something that should have been obvious at that point, vol 18), then was justifiably slammed (politely, as usual) by him. His entrance into the forums was really similar to the ending of The Lord of the Flies .

From what I remember, the first post on BSOM was in early 99. It's still visible at the bottom of the old BBS index (here), though the dates are all fucked up thanks to SCSU. If an earlier form of the BBS existed before that, I was never aware of it. But Godo and Wereallmad were there before me so...

As for SKnet's origins, it originally existed to host new episode scans. But the bandwidth traffic got so ridiculous, no free site would keep me. I briefly used the main page to post links to fanart and my own fanfic (Gaiseric), but it was never the focus of the page. Feels like a looooong time ago now...

Wereallmad, Godo showed up here fairly recently, though briefly. Here's his profile.

I guess there is enough shame to go around.

I just don't think people were ready for Olivier to show up.

Back then there wasn't really much foresight into the future events. It was pretty much "Guts and Zoddo, seperated at birth" or "Guts the elf!". I really don't want to remember what involvement I had in either of those discussions.

Anyway, I can't be certain when the BSOM bbs went up, maybe it just feels like it's that old.

I also had no idea that was the same Godo. Weird when you think about how active he was on BSOM.

Wereallmad said:

Back then there wasn't really much foresight into the future events. It was pretty much "Guts and Zoddo, seperated at birth" or "Guts the elf!". I really don't want to remember what involvement I had in either of those discussions

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Well, there was that dark side, but there were also some great early discussions about Gaiseric and Skull Knight's origins. One elaborated on the Roman period connection. I also remember some ridicuous, but well researched theory Skully had of why Miura chose not to show Griffith's face in the unmasking scene of volume 10.

These are just off the top of my head... But, I agree, I definitely wasn't focusing on future events at the time. Then again, we didn't even have any source for the episodes at the time either so, we worked with what was available.

Started lurking at the end of 99. Didn't have that much of the Pokemon feel to it that this forum here now has thanks to 95% of the newer users.
Even mangykid's nonsense was kinda fun back then.
Always loved the responses for questions about a second season, ranemaka just couldn't hold it

I didn't post too much (or did I? I was kind of immature back then) since I usually didn't have anything worthwhile to add...as for memories...it was hilarious when Walter put up "new scans" that turned out to be coke bottles and Donovan raping Guts. Lot of people were pissed at him, though.

Mage said:

it was hilarious when Walter put up "new scans" that turned out to be coke bottles and Donovan raping Guts. Lot of people were pissed at him, though.

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Oh yeah, hehe. That was for episode 180, the big fight with Zodd. Literally hundreds of lurkers came out from the woodwork to explain in detail what a dick I was for not giving them their free scans. It was awesome.

No one's yet mentioned how classy a title "Black Sun Over Midland" is. I can't think of a cooler website name.

Walter said:

Oh yeah, hehe. That was for episode 180, the big fight with Zodd. Literally hundreds of lurkers came out from the woodwork to explain in detail what a dick I was for not giving them their free scans. It was awesome.

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The translation prank pullled just a few months ago is a great example of how much we've grown
good times

No one's yet mentioned how classy a title "Black Sun Over Midland" is. I can't think of a cooler website name.

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mmhmm, damn good title.

Though I never bothered with the forums on BSOM, I enjoyed that site for a long, long time.

Gotta love that the guys responsible for the localization of the Dreamcast game gave a special thanks to BSOM in the instruction book. Maybe in the credits after the game too, but I'm not sure, it's been a long time since I've beaten that game.

Mage said:

I didn't post too much (or did I? I was kind of immature back then) since I usually didn't have anything worthwhile to add...as for memories...it was hilarious when Walter put up "new scans" that turned out to be coke bottles and Donovan raping Guts. Lot of people were pissed at him, though.

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Holy shit, I forgot about that untill you mentioned it.

Walter said:

No one's yet mentioned how classy a title "Black Sun Over Midland" is. I can't think of a cooler website name.

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Indeed it was.

that was one of my first stops after I had seen the Berserk anime... man was I missed after that last episode....

BOB said:

Always loved the responses for questions about a second season, ranemaka just couldn't hold it

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I totally forgot most discussions from those days.

I remember my first post being, in response to the sparse excerpts on BSOM, "where's the rest of the manga?!", and no one ever replied....

has everyone forgotten TEH_HOLLEY_VAMP? what about that one guy who pretended to be 3 different people?

and was it Icelord that gave me the room to make my first (and only to date) attempts at translations? Arcticnightfall... and totally can't remember anything else....

Good times, good times...

I think I must have discovered Berserk just as BSOM was reaching an ending. I remember the site still existed at that point, but I don't think the boards were in use at all by then. I do remember reading through Articnightfall though.

Walter said:

No one's yet mentioned how classy a title "Black Sun Over Midland" is. I can't think of a cooler website name.

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Yes, I always loved that title.

Slightly Green said:

I totally forgot most discussions from those days.

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oh, good. I'm not the only one.

Slightly Green said:

and was it Icelord that gave me the room to make my first (and only to date) attempts at translations? Arcticnightfall... and totally can't remember anything else....

Good times, good times...

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Ah yes, that I _do_ remember. Back about 10-20 screen names ago, right?

BSOM was one of those sites that I recognized, but never really delved too deeply into. And I was fairly internet naive those days, it's only recently I've actually become somewhat comfortable posting on forums. I saw the BBS link back then as some gateway into some hellish dimension .

Wow, makes me sad I hadn't discovered it back in the day. Nice to know even the more productive members of the forum were immature at some point in time. Gives me hope that some day I'll graduate from being a severed head .

That format is a little intimidating though. I kinda missed that era of BBS organization.

For the record, here's Skull_Knight's old, inactive SK.net account. He was one of the first to register on this board, the 13th member to be exact.

BSOM was pretty much the dawn of the Berserk English/International community as it has been said. What's amazing to me is that a lot of the information present back then on the site is still mostly valid to this day (not being too picky), and that some notions that were clear and well understood by key members at the time (thanks in a large part to Olivier, needless to say) didn't become common knowledge but rather regressed, to the point that in 2003 on SK.net some people were ignoring stuff widely known on BSOM in 2000... Hopefully that's been fixed though.

It's a shame the site went down of course, I had backed up most of what is available through the Wayback Machine last year in order to put up some half-assed mirror but it was all lost in a recent HDD crash. Never posted there myself anyway, was too busy playing EverQuest back then and by the time I decided to get involved in an online Berserk community it had already declined and SK.net arisen.

holy crap... i didn't know where else to put this. but yeah. figured id use some old posting of my own.

found a site thats totally new to me! has anyone else been here?

http://www.berserk-blutrache.de/

I think I remember stumbling onto BSOM about 4 or 5 years ago when I was in 8th or 9th grade. It was when the Dreamcast game came out and I was looking up stuff about it. At the time I didn't even know a manga existed and I just browsed the site for a couple minutes. What I find kinda freaky is that SCSU is about 40 to 50 miles away from me >>.