What Moonlight means to me (share your thoughts as well)

[Emerald]

Maybe I'm just in a particularly wistful mood at the moment, but I've been thinking recently of exactly how much this show has meant and continues to mean for me and others.

I know many people probably scratch their head at the level of devotion this show has engendered in some fans and think to themselves "It's only a TV show". Whilst that is obviously a very valid point in some respects, to many of us, including myself, Moonlight has become so much more than that.

If you asked me to clarify why I love this show and the characters so much, I honestly couldn't tell you. Let's face it, it's not like Moonlight was the greatest ever produced Vampire show, there were problems with continuity in writing (exactly how old are Mick and Josef again? ) and the occasional shoddy production value, for example. Despite all it's problems though, somehow the show itself and the characters in particular managed to completely capture my heart.

Beyond just being another TV show, Moonlight has been a life line to me. Some of you are already aware of this, but a 25 year plus struggle with anorexia nervosa has left me dealing with a number of permanent health issues. I've been in recovery now for over four years and whilst my weight and current nutritional status could be considered healthy, unfortunately the damage has already been done. I have good days and bad days, but I spend a fair chunk of my life now either in pain or sick and exhausted or a combination of all three. I don't work and my RL social life is very limited.

Moonlight and it's characters not only managed to reawaken a creative side of me I thought had been all but lost completely, it has also provided me with many hours of wonderful distraction from chronic pain and illness, given me the opportunity to meet people and actually engage in at least some form of social activity and helped me to feel at least somewhat useful, even if just for providing someone with a moments worth of entertainment through amateur Fan Art or Writing.

So people might say "it's only a TV show", but for some of us at least sharing our love of this one little TV show has meant the difference between a life spent in isolation and chronic ill health and a life that is tolerable, with at least one bright spot in it to hang onto.

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Ok now share what Moonlight means to you

[redwinter101]

Emerald, in so many ways, my experience is very similar to yours. I can only really hazard a guess as to why this particular show has had such a huge effect on me, but, whatever the reason, it has been nothing short of life-changing (and anyone who wants to wank that is more than welcome).

It isn't just that I love the show and these wonderful characters - but through this show I have broadened my horizons, made friends all around the world, and, like you, rediscovered a creative urge that I thought long-since dead.

I have had more fun as a result of Moonlight than I would ever have thought possible. And I think that's pretty amazing.

Red

[Catmoon]

Who knows why a particular show and it's characters touches us? It makes no sense to me. I never cared about vampires in my life before now, and I still don't read 'em or watch 'em outside of ML. Yet I've created complex Original Characters of my own for the first time in my life and enjoy playing with my own vamp mythos. I love cop/dectective shows and books, I've been interested in them since childhood and been into several fandoms for them. Yet none of them inspired me or gifted me with wonderful and entertaining muses. The only two shows to ever do that were ML the vampire show (hated vamps) and a show about a Navy Admiral and a genuis quantum physicist (like military even less and science? Not me) I often scratch my head at the weirdness of it. Oh, and Josef? Not my type. Mick was, though. Without my even realizing it, Josef got under my skin and took me over and now half the time I'm like, Mick who??

Like Emerald, I also deal with chronic pain, so I don't go out socializing very often. Mostly I'm home in bed when I'm not working. My life would be very boring if not for ML, and it helps distract me from my health issues as well.

Great thread, Em!

[cassysj]

In my life I've been passionately touched by several shows, I also work in the television business so that may be part of it. Moonlight is the only one where I've moved from just a reader of fanfic to a participant in anything. If you told me a year ago I'd be photographing a doll essay of stories, writing fanfic and making banners. I'd say you were insane, need some help and don't know me at all.

I'm very physically healthy but due to severe shyness do not really interact well with people I haven't known for a long time. Walking into a room of people I haven't met is terrifying for me and sometimes, I just can't do it. The stress of that can activate my OCD symptoms which are aggravated by the fact that I have a lot of food issues and often can't eat around others. So if you see me at a convention and I don't go out to dinner it's not you, it's me.

Moonlight is the first show I've been an active participant in message boards. I've rarely if ever posted in any other fandom. I'm not a fan of the vampire genre. I did enjoy Buffy/Angel fandom but not to this level. I felt kicked in the teeth when the show was cancelled and I know there are a million reasons why a show gets cancelled. After all my company has cancelled shows.

Honestly it was about a week before the cancellation announcement I remember seeing a promo on CBS that said something about only 2 more episodes and that felt strange to me. I tried to pass it off in my head as just meaning 2 more this season but it bothered me and when the announcement came I was sad and angry but not shocked.

Moonlight has definitely allowed me to interact with people in a way I never have before.


Off topic Catmoon - was your Navy admiral and Quantum scientist Quantum Leap?? I ask because that was my first serious fandom and I'm going to a QL convention in California next month.

[Catmoon]

Off topic Catmoon - was your Navy admiral and Quantum scientist Quantum Leap?? I ask because that was my first serious fandom and I'm going to a QL convention in California next month.

Ooh -- I'm jealous! Yes it was, Al and Sam were my first muses. Whoa... maybe we know each other?! :shock:

{insert weird twilight zone music}

[Fleur de Lisa]

I don't think I truly realized what Moonlight meant to me until late last year. I love the camaraderie, the friends I have made, the fun I have had--that all goes without saying. However, it also helped me through what could have been an extremely difficult year. My father died last June, and only looking back now, ML was my saving grace. Having a safe place to escape to--whether by watching the show, reading the fics, or laughing hysterically while posting--was a godsend.

I had some place easy and stress-free to escape to, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I couldn't be bummed, and I didn't worry for those moments I was immersing myself in the ML universe. And for that I will always be grateful.

[nayp]

To this day, I have no clue why this show became some important to me. If I look back at the last few years, major changes in my at life at this age. Lost my job as an AVP in mortgage lending (suprise!!!) after 23 years in the banking industry, my husband's and my parents all going through major health and medical issues, teenage daughters suddenly being taked over by the body snatchers, leaving in their place 16 and 18 year old rocket scientists that know everything and you now are as dumb as a stump. I starting watching the show about episode 3, when husband and kids went to the HS football game, and I was sick, and well, it all started. Now, I am showing my age, but Alex just made me think of Don Johnson during the Miami Vice craze, he just at that it factor.

Every week fell more in love with show, but I do believe the reason the show was so special, is because of the people we met on the web sites. Yes, we all loved shows that were cancelled, but with the internet, you suddenly become friends that share a love, that being Moonlight. I do believe fans of Moonlight, and not members of Moonlight site's, got over Moonlight a lot better. So many fans, starting fighting for show, and fans became family. Now, I realize Moonlight is never coming back, but we still can enjoy what Moonlight was. This site gives you so many amazing story tellers,( I don't think a second season would have been this enjoyable or creative), people that have fun and just get nuts, keeping up on the actors and their new careers.

So Moonlight is just Moonlight, and really something I hope I never forget.

[wpgrace]

I don't DO a lot of tv... so I am utterly astonished at my reaction to Moonlight... still astonished a whole year later.

My connection seems more shallow than y'all's too... and I was never artistic in the first place, so no reawakening there for me as for some of y'all... tho I gotta say, I LOVE reading YOUR stories and watching YOUR videos...

I found Moonlight by accident. My husband had the kids out (for once-- by Friday I often feel like the old woman in the shoe) and I had time alone... it was the Friday night after Halloween and I turned on the tube thinking I could find a good scary movie, maybe even a vampire movie...

I channel surfed and ended up on CBS about the time Mick and Terrence were finding no blood in the blood in the morgue. So I thought I HAD found a vampire movie, tho didn't realize Mick was a vampire... yet. I got a phone call (grrrr!) and so the next scene I saw, Beth rang his doorbell and he buzzed her in, which was way cool, but not as cool as the scene that then unfolded. Damn!

So I was hooked there and then... when I discovered at the end that it was a tv series and there were scenes for the next week (yay!!! )... that was that. Appointment tv... and the rest of the family liked it too.

But why I went online and found you good people and still mope about the cancellation and now have Alex-withdrawal? I think partly Mick... he was truly an amazing fictional character who triumphs over evil, even the evil within himself, and does it in such a classy--yet determined and powerful-- way. But also Alex; that voice really got me. Really.

Our big issue last year was fighting the school on behalf of our autistic child over an incident that threatened to really damage him. It was a bitter battle, and my first. We won some of it and lost some of it, and I will have more fights in the years to come... but that Friday night fix of Mick, and Alex's voice, calmed me down, distracted me and gave me a moment of quiet in my week. Cause I don't get much quiet around here, even when I'm not fighting the schools.

And Redwinter, I can't imagine why anyone would want to "wank" anything you say. I have never come across a more classy, elegant, gentlewoman, one who gives as good smart-ass as she gets. Perfect. It would take a black heart to diss you.

[coco]

I've been thinking about this all day.......

I've never been so wrapped up in a TV show before in my life. Never joined a fandom before and never been so distressed when the show was cancelled before it's time BUT it's what I've gained from the people I've met on the boards or in person that has helped me the most. I've had a lot of personal losses in my life and family stress for a good number of years and for a while it was getting too much and I lost myself a little. Thankfully, I came across my first ML board and things have changed for me greatly since then. Now I don't have the same kind of personal stress as although these things are still happening around me, I now have a place to come to and relax and have fun and switch off from them. I get to just be Claire and have fun and be with others who enjoy the same things as me.

I've never had so much fun making fan vids for my favourite TV show and knowing that others enjoy them too

I've gained fantastic new friendships with people I met on the boards and hope to gain a lot more friendships in June too

I will be forever grateful to Moonlight for that

[Gothmyst]

In January 2007, I had lost the most wonderful person in my life after 50 years: my Mom. I had been her caregiver since July 2006, and I watched her die at home, which is the most horrible, miserable experience of my life. I went into a very bad depression, and by September 2007 really didn't give a fig about much of anything.

Moonlight came along. I'd been a vampire fan since I was six years old, I ended up at age 23 working for Christopher Lee for five years during and after my college days in the late 70s, so I watched the show, and something snapped back into place. That show made me happy. I got online and started looking for others, and there they were, wonderful friends, some of whom I still am very close to. I have gone to many different sites, even been a mod of some, and have always felt that I had something to contribute, and was made to feel welcome.

It's been a year and half now since that little show has been on, and I am grateful to Moonlight for what it has given me. I've had the great pleasure of meeting Jason and Trevor, of seeing Alex at the Paley, but most of all, meeting a lot of spectacular people at conventions who share my love of the show. I watch the DVD with great happiness, savoring each gem of an episode, and watching it again on the Sci Fi Channel. It's the little show that could, and has, been a wonderful gift.

Goth

[redwinter101]

So I'm feeling a little wistful. Rijane is here visiting - snoozing on my sofa while Fever plays in the background. We are surrounded by the beauty that is ML - and all it brought into my life. Friendship, fellow travellers, inspiration, a rediscovering of passion for writing and that thread of creativity. And love - for Mick most of all, but for the joy of these characters and their stories.

Red

[seamus3333]

I fell in love. If you expect me to explain that to you, you overestimate my abilities. By the end of episode four, Fever, Mick St. John had me, heart and soul, body and mind. I suffered for and with him. With willing suspension of disbelief, this noble, wicked, honorable creature was real. Some part of my mind realized that the acting ability of AOL made this possible and I will watch anything he does in the future, but it is Mick that has my heart.

[darkstarrising]

What does Moonlight mean to me? More than I can say, and perhaps more than it should....

Like many of you, I tuned in and was hooked. Why? Em is right...it was flawed, but at the same time magical....

Friday night became sacred...watching the hero rise to the challenge, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. Yet the hero was flawed as well and that made him all the more appealing and believable. He was everyman, yet one with a secret.

The supporting characters were a part of him: Coraline, beautiful, dark, mysterious, had captured his heart and took his soul. Josef, his opposite, yet his brother, each balancing the other in their undead lives. Beth, a child he saved, a woman he came to love.

As an ensemble cast, you couldn't ask for better chemistry. That's part of what made it work....

But mostly, the magic of Moonlight is that it was a love story, not just one, but several...Coraline and Mick, Josef and Sarah, Mick and Beth. The joys and sorrows of each of these relationships touched us all.

I'm a pretty ordinary person, working a 9 to 5 job, with a family and all the run of the mill traumas that come with it. But the real magic of Moonlight for me was that it sparked my imagination, something that had lain dormant all the years on that 9 to 5 job. I found that there were others out there who also felt the magic and responded to it....those of you who have tapped into your own talents and allowed them to shine. Those who tell stories, those that write poetry, those that are graphic artists....all of your gifts have been a pleasure to behold.

And so I tried to express in my own way, in my own stories, how that magic can still be alive for all of us....

As I explained to grace the other night, how odd it was that the story of a vampire in modern day LA, brought to life by an actor I'd never heard of, ultimately set me free. For that, I will always be grateful.

[mitzie]

This is difficult for me to respond to! But I believe in honesty above all, so here goes. I have PTSD from severe abuse throughout my childhood, teen years and my first marriage. I, like Beth in the show, blocked it all from my conscious mind. I was 36 yrs.old when it came back to me and fell like a ton of bricks on my head. I was working a full-time job, taking care of my 2 kids and was living with my soon-to-be second husband, Tony. I started having severe panic attacks, started calling in to work sick(which I never did) because fear started to consume me. I soon had to quit my job. It got to the point of not being able to leave my home at all even when Tony was with me. I became suicidal, and I finally realized I needed real help. Long story short( ), I have been on medication and in therapy ever since then. I have also had a long string of physical problems which have left me in pain a lot of the time. Because of the emotional and physical issues I don't get around much anymore, I am on disability. When Moonlight came along I had already made a lot of progress emotionally; but this show brought forward my real inner self and strength. Moonlight reached into my soul and grabbed me. I never in my wildest imagination thought I would be on a fansite for any show!! I am now able to go out into the world and talk to people without that all-consuming fear, I smile, I laugh...who would have thought??!! Now I am on this site with all you lovely people and I feel blessed somehow that I was given this second chance to become whole again. Moonlight saved my life and forever changed it!! I have never felt so free in my entire life. Thank you Moonlight! Thank you wonderful people here for having me here where I feel so at peace and where Moonlight still lives on!!!!


Love and Peace and Moonlight Forever,
mitzie

[darkstarrising]

*dsr mitzie*