A MABSian History: Birth of An Oddity

Way back in the depths of time (13 October 1999 to be exact), a cynical, sardonic Aussie by the name of Rowan put up a website to house her Buffy and Angel fanfiction. A few months later, either in January or February 2000 (the exact date has been lost to the mists of time) a perky, clever, and astute American named Ames unveiled a fanfic archive. Months later, two worlds collided - Ames wrote to Rowan, Rowan wrote to Ames, fics were archived and amusing correspondence ensued.

Our duo found that they shared a respect and affinity for each other's webwork, the talent for banter, joy of writing and words in general, and a heckuva good friendship. One off-the-cuff comment ("Boy, we're quite the Mutual Admiration Society, aren't we?") and MABS was born - Mutually Admiring Buffy Sites.

Inevitably, MABSy subject lines multiplied like a bunch of ferrets in heat. Somewhere along the way, the germ of an idea infected the two - a webpage where they could tell everyone who could find it just which Buffy/Angel sites they really liked. The infection festered for months, disrupted by the occasional vacation, mandatory Olympic Games viewage, and general laziness.

One day the gods of MABSian Productivity struck, and Rowan and Ames found that they had both spent extremely nonproductive days designing buttons for this nonexistent webpage. They were exchanged (much in the way of the hippie "Have a Good Day" pins, except without the actual being real part), and placed on their respective websites with much snickering. After yet another bout of laziness, Rowan got inspired and a webpage was actually built! Then Ames came up with the actual goods - MABS was given a purpose and highly amusing content. The result is what you see here - MABS, opened in November 2000.

Therefore, may the wine of Mutual Admiration pour out like... well, really cheap wine at a really good party.