To all of you lovely wee lads and lassies out there:

Just out of sheer, unbridled curiousity, I wanna know; what was your first Aeon viewing like? Which season, which episode, what were your thoughts and opinions, were you eating breakfast at the time? Most importantly, what was it about the show that got you hooked? Tell me your indoctrination story! This is a question everyone can answer and i'll be dissapointed if you don't. Yes, very dissapointed indeed.

Here's my story:

Twas many years ago during an Mtv All Animation Weekend. There was B&B, The Head(remember that show?) and of course, Liquid Television. My first view of the inside of those kissing mouths hit me like a brick. After thirty seconds I remembered to swallow the wad of Cherios in my mouth. I was hooked. I stared at the screen like a stunned carp for the remainder of the 5 shorts.(They were all being shown one after the other, not one installment per show like they origionally aired) I never saw Aeon again (until the third season) but I would spend hours at a time wondering what the hell i'd seen. I was convinced there was more plot to the show, perhaps shown in previous episodes. The strange thing is, years later, i couldn't remember Aeon ever having died. I guess my imagination sort of took over. I think I was ten at the time.

O.K. Now it's your turn.

p.s.Yes, I did play in the backyard pretending to be Aeon.

-- Frostbite (Foo@bar.com), November 01, 1998

Answers

Good thread... I remember being vaguely interested in the quirky adult-themed animation thing about a year ago. I was really getting into MTV's Oddities, which was running in cycles at 1AM on a kiddies' television network called YTV. I'd remembered reading or hearing something about Fon Flux, so when I saw it on the channel listings right after Oddities I decided to start watching it during Conan O'Brien commercial breaks. I expected a sort of futuristic espionage serial. The first scene I saw was at the beginning of "Reraizure" in the prison. I thought to myself, this is definitely strange. I tuned back in to see some weird guy dumping bottles off a platform in the sky. DEFINITELY STRANGE. A couple weeks later I watched a few bits and pieces of Ether Drift Theory... I remember being impressed with some of the dialogue... later still, I decided to watch End Sinister in its entirety. I thoroughly enjoyed it. From that point on, I would be watching on a weekly basis. At one point I decided to do a search for "Aeon Flux" and came across the Rach/Logan ep guide for Utopia or Deuteronopia. I was truly amazed at some of the ideas being thrown around by those guys. The enigma of Fon Flux was starting to take meaning! I can still recall the feeling I got when a guy on the old Fon Flux chatroom gave me his take on The Purge's last scene. Shivers ran down my spine! From then on I began to realise just how ahead of its time this series was.

-- Spofforth (Spofforth@hotmail.com), November 01, 1998.

Well let's see. I was brobably about 10 as well. I am now 15. (16 on the 24th!!) I had a babysitter, and she watched Liquid Television with us. I had never seen the show, and we were up late. The episode was "Tide." The thing I remember most about it was the RU-486 sucking Trevor's nipple scene. I mean, I was ten, and this was weird! I remember some shooting, too, and that was cool. I didn't understand this twisted show, but I liked it.

I think the next time I saw it was playing in a punk store in LA (on vacation) called Atomic Garage. I was getting some DC shoes, and my mom was freakin out as she watched it. Then, in NYC, again, vacation, they played a marathon. I was up till like 2:30 am watching it. This was the first time I saw all the 3rd season ep's. But the thing that pissed me off was the clips that they showed during the commercial weren't happening in the shows! They were actually from the shorts (the best Fon) and I wanted to see that heavy gunfire!

Almost a year later from NYC, I own all the videos, and try to turn my friends on to it constantly. I even go so far as borrowing their math sheets and drawing Fon on it. I can draw a pretty good Fon face, ya'know. If I ever get a scanner, I'll try to send it out.

THE END

-- Owen Black (Ob200bpm@aol.com), November 01, 1998.

I remember seeing a 3rd season episode when I was 10, it was a month before my eleventh birthday, anyway. My sister had watched Mtv like she always did and then she went downstairs to her room. I was left upstairs watching Mtv pretty late for my age. Then a show comes on, the Purge to be exact, I was stunned. Here was this chick in a little leather chasing a big fat guy. Then some weird guy,trevor, stunned him and put a stick figure in his body. Then I see a women rip out one of these and implant a firecracker popsicle instead. I was confused when I saw Aeon. Then the cabbage seen really messed me up. Then at the end a stick figure got out of a shell and a little baby started to dance. I was dazed and confused. Now getting out of little kid mode. Ever since that I was always thinking about that show. If I hadn't seen that show at that time I might be like the other kids in town, puritans. Thank you Peter Chung you saved me. Now when ever my friends come over I watch the videos and send them e-mail pics of Aeon.

-- Cliff Leslie (ComdrBlood@aol.com), November 01, 1998.

Well, it all started some long time ago in about 1991 or 92.

I don't know how, why, or what, but I watched the first mind-blasting season of Liquid Television when it originally debuted. From the show open ("Love Shack" or one of those other opens) drained down into the LTV bottle, I was hooked. Theme music by Mark Mothersbaugh! (Devo) It was, of course, then that that first blast from Fon's gun went off and the rest is history. I couldn't stop talking about LTV for the next 4 years on whatever newsgroup or mailing list existed at the time. Still amazing. I still wish they would release all of the first two seasons of LTV in their original form; not the compilation crap. Glad they released all the Fon stuff. Worth it.

I remember hearing about the Liquid Television T-shirt, too. Should have got one when or if they existed.

Here's to future Chung work.

-LiQUiD

-- Kevin Holy (at895@cleveland.freenet.edu), November 03, 1998.

Heehee. 10 seems to be the magical number. ^_^

-- Frostbite (foo@bar.com), November 03, 1998.

It was Goodchild Tower that got me into Aeon Flux. Definitely. I was lucky, very lucky, in the way things lined up for me. I had come home late after a long session in the Architecture Studio (my future major) and I flipped through the channels on TV. This was February (I think) of last year.

By sheerest luck I flipped onto MTV at the very beginning of an Aeon- o-thon. I believe the exact shot was the one of Aeon crouching by a wall with Goodchild Tower in the background. Being a great fan of San'Elia and Futurist architecture, this building intrigued me. The incredible architecture kept me watching for the next ten minutes. By then I grew interested in the mysterious harridan Aeon Flux - and she kept me interested for the next five hours. And all the days after that, too, as a matter of fact ...

-- Charles Martin (cmmartin@princeton.edu), November 04, 1998.

Believe it or not the first time I saw Aeon, and was, hooked, was when I saw a half a second image of her in a MTV commercial. It was in 1992 or 1993, and I was watching video's, when a commercial come on advertising for MTV, flashing a whole bunch of images of what you can see on MTV, then this image of a woman with black hair, and the coolest hairstyle I,ve ever seen, pointed her gun at me and fired. That was it!!!! I wanted to know who this lady was, what her name was, where did she live. I didn't know what to make of it, all I knew was I wanted to see her again, my imagination ran wild. I would look at the TV listings for MTV to see if I could guess what I saw in that commercial, I would describe the image to everyone, and nobody knew what I was talking about. Then, in 1994 when I slept over a friends house, on Saturday morning I saw the same lady with the black hair and the cool hairstyle, on MTV in the short called "tide". Even though I didn,t have all the answers about Aeon Flux, at least I finally knew her name, and over the years I,ve collected all the Aeon episodes on VHS, I still don't have all the answers about Aeon, but she the coolest thing to watch.

-- Marcus Simon (dmsimon@hotmail.com), November 05, 1998.

Back in 1992 I used to go swimming on wednesdays and while I waiting for my family to bundle in to the car, I switched on the TV and saw one of the later episodes of the first season. I had no idea what was going on so was waiting for someone to say something, and then it ended! I was frantic that I had only been able to witness a minute or so of this great looking stuff, so I was very relieved a couple of weeks later when I was able to see the whole thing. Season two followed quickly, but I managed to have several taping accidents so only possessed 'Tide' and 'War' which had to keep me going for five years before, by chance, I saw an advert for the first video. Now I'm just snapping up anything Aeon that makes it to the UK. :-)

-- Philip Mills (philip.mills@cableinet.co.uk), November 06, 1998.

I was in that rare adolescent phase of trying to fit in with the rest of the class. Since they all watched MTV, I decided to watch it as well. And what was the first show I watched? "Aeon Flux", of course. It was "The Purge", and I just remember being transfixed by the animation. The story really caught me, too, well at least the portion i saw...the final sequence game show thing. I thought Aeon was such a cool character...so I watched it again the next week, etc, and became so into it. The other people in my class, who normally didn't watch AF, now began to watch it, and came to me the next day to help them understand the episode the night before.

-- TGoodchild (LaTiNcAt16@aol.com), November 06, 1998.

Well, I'm 17 now. I think it was three summers ago that I first started watching. I had heard about Flux now and then, from commercials perhaps or just online. Then one day I was in a chat room on AOL and somebody had a screen name with "AeonFlux" in it. So we talked about it for a bit, the person told me what time it was on (it was only on Saturday mornings at 3:30 by then) so I watched it. The first episode I saw was "Ether Drift Theory," and I haven't seen it since (haven't picked up Operative Terminus yet). I was just amazed with the ending - the way the key just missed being locked into the device. I talked about it non-stop that whole weekend (at least). So I watched it, week after week. I often fell asleep during it. I love reminiscing about staying up so preposterously late to watch the show, and then just falling asleep as soon as it came on. Two other episodes I definitely saw at the time were "The Purge" and "End Sinister." I don't remember the rest. The next summer I got the first video, and since Aeon was no longer on MTV, I watched the entire thing every single Friday night for the whole summer (well, almost). Of course, I fell asleep almost every time. In fact, I didn't actually _see_ the whole tape until like the 10th viewing.

If nothing else, "The Purge" had me absolutely hooked. More specifically, the obese boy at the food booths did. His song disturbs the crap out of me - "Cold meat, mutton pies, tell me when your mother dies, I'll be there to bury her." The chilling exchange between him and Aeon "You're not a Breen," "You do not exist." And the sounds of the people eating.

So here I am, another video and Eye Spy later, soon Mission Infinite and The Herodotus File. I watched Gravity, Thanatophobia, and Leisure last night and they're even better than I remember. Here's hoping for a season four. Thanks for listening.

-- J.P. McDevitt (JuntMonkey@aol.com), November 15, 1998.

A few years ago.. say 95 or 96ish.. I would occassionally find myself watching late night tv - and swearing at myself, because I should have gone to bed at least two or three hours ago. Then I would flip past YTV (I live in canada) and they would have.. like.. this coool stuff playing (it was either the Head or AEon Flux). I had another friend who had similiar experiences. I only ever saw one complete episode, the rest were small fragments, many of which I would see more than once. Just a few weeks ago, that friend gave me the AEon Flux Complete video set as a gift - and watching them now, I realize it wasn't just lack of sleep. They really didn't make sense But I've rarely been so delightfully confused

-- James keller (james_keller@bigfoot.com), December 21, 1998.

I wish I had friends like that! :-)

-- Philip Mills (philip.mills@cableinet.co.uk), December 21, 1998.

I hear of Aeon quite a bit when I was young....around 14 or so. But I at that point I was a closet-case with a fear of the real world and sex..(gotta love repressive religion)...so I avoided it for a bit. I finally saw a piece of First Season, when the Breen and Monican are fighting over the antidote for the Trevor disease. I also some of the Maxx. But when I finally got to college was when Aeon Flux really got to me. My first episode was, like many others, The Purge. Freaked me out! But I only saw some of it. But I new I had to see more. The next one I saw was The Demiurge.....and when I saw that I knew that Aeon Flux was a special show. Next I saw Rerasuire and then Ether Drift Theory. Aeon was there during a great change in my life and I apreaciate that. It's philosophy on life and it's dealing with the important issues and great symbolism makes it a pleasure to watch over and over today.

-- Plutar Circavus (karl.wolf@unisys.com), January 14, 1999.

i guess i was maybe 12? something like that -i'm 21 right now... i was living in this small town in centrel cal and i was obssesed by art and punk. (i was really into dead kennedy's) yeah so i saw it really late -in the summer. it was the very first episode -when they where still showing it broken up on L.T. i kept watching for weeks as the story unfolded. i didn't tape them... but i would run them over again and again in my head.. i was drawing elongated figures at the time so that's what sucked my in... but the architecture ...the costumes.. and the MOVEMENT of people FASINATED me..

in latter years i became deeper and deeper into art and films (i started art college at 16 and got to be a film major and back again) aeon flux was constantly on my mind

i got into german expressionism (shiele,klimt,kolwitz) french existinialism (satre, camus, beckett, pinter) bauhus and futurist achitecture,kurt vonnaguat and the films of einstien, kubrick, felline, gillaim all because of peter chung...

these all being the main elements of aeon flux of course..... i watch them all at least every two weeks still...

excuse my spelling....

-- neut (neutron@null.net), September 10, 1999.

this whole affair had to grow on me some: the first time i laid eyes on Fon Flux was WAY back in the day, i mean we're talkin ANCIENT history here, when it first debuted on Liquid Television - 'yes, this is definitely different' i remember thinking, and i was interested in finding out just WHAT WAS going on here, but i didn't get into it enough to keep watching and find out, and i probably forgot about the whole thing. i vaguely remember the tongue gymnastics opening scene from Gravity when it first aired and i said, oh yeah, this is that one real mysterious progressive cartoon with the chick ( :-] ), but i didn't know this was the 2nd season already and i didn't see any more for a long time. years passed. and dang, i'm not quite sure but i think Utopia or Deuteronopia was the first 3rd season i saw, and i said NOW this is getting interesting; secret rooms under beds, dimension-scrambling suspenders, and a friggin DOOR through this guy and he's still alive, not to mention the blash attitude his captor exhibits concerning all this! i was really struck by Chung's architectural style and aesthetic sense; i remember being impressed with the design of the vertical stair/ladder that Trevor climbs down on from under his bed! i probably saw more 3rd season, but i don't remember... more years passed. i finally got into it enough to record when MTV had a flux-a-thon in '96, and dang it, i missed U or D and A Last Time for Everything. every once in a while i would watch the tapes, and it kept growing on me each time. just recently i watched my MTV recorded tapes again and now i'm thinking damn! is this ever THE shit, cause now i can apprectiate the many levels and aspects of this cartoonish genius... my parents just got a computer with internet accessing capabilities and through the many websites devoted to this i learned of the official tapes and - o me GOSH! a SOUNDTRACK! cause i had tried to record the brief musical segments from the tv onto cassette a few years ago. so now i consider myself really lucky because when i bought the official tapes i still hadn't seen any of the 2nd season or A Last Time for Everything, and as of this writing i still haven't watched Night or War, tehehee! ( sorry, i know this is a mean thing to say ) ironic that a show which holds up so well through repeated viewing only had one full-length season produced.

-- neobe 316 (neobe@kscable.com), December 02, 1999.

Eep! You all make me feel so old!

I first saw Fon Flux back when it was a part of MTV's Liquid Television. I didn't see every episode - I only remember seeing Gravity, Tide & War. Then I saw most of the 3rd season when it was off on its own. It wasn't that I necessarily was staying up to watch it - more a case of my being an insomniac and channel surfing to find something interesting. Anyway, if it debuted back around '91, then I was around 28 or 29 when I first saw it.

I actually didn't care much for it at first - it struck me as too violent. When they added dialogue and the plots got intricate, I became more of a fan.

I grew up on stuff like Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, etc. and I've always been interested in animated shows. I don't think much of most of the crap they have on for kids these days, but I do/did enjoy Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, Aaah! Real Monsters, Reboot, The Simpsons, Futurama and Dilbert to name a few. So Liquid Television was a natural attraction for me.

So now that you've heard the Fon Flux experience from the 'Tween' point of view...(I refuse to think of myself as a baby boomer, and I'm certainly to old to be Generation X)

-- Stephen Fuller (stepfull@aol.com), January 22, 2000.

I don't remember what episode I saw first, probably one of the tamer ones, like A Last Time For Everything or Thanatophobia. All I know is, it used to be on right after Oddities: The Maxx, at like, 8:00. I was deeply, deeply in love with that show. "Many are the darkling forgotten facets of our minds, and boundless is our secret fascination with them...Now, draw back the canvas curtain and behold the wonderment of MTv's Oddities." I Loved the openings of those two shows...particularly Aeon Flux. "You can't give it, can't even buy it, and you just don't get it." I must have been like 8 or something, and it was the coolest animated thing I had ever seen. It still is.

-- Kiru Banzai (keelyrew@netscape.net), January 24, 2000.

Ack! Death to Reboot! OK, that's not true. I like the third season (and I love Hexadecimal) but Reboot features that which I hate above all else: The Snappy One-liner. AAUGGGGHHHH!!! I HATE those! When I watch a show I want characters to TALK to each other, not QUIP at each other. I'm sorry, but for me The Catchy One-liner represents the unoriginality and utter craposity of TV and Movies today. Thank you for letting me bitch.

-- Frostbite (krisrooks@bellsouth.net), January 24, 2000.

To be honest, when I first saw AF I didn`t care for it. I was about 14 at the time, and thought that the art was ugly, the music bad, and the characters weren`t worth caring about. Looking back on it, I think the S&M elements probably turned me off more than anything. But I kept hearing all these good things about the show, so I decided to look past the "shock value" and give it another try. But it was too late, MTV cancelled the show. I had missed my window of opportunity. Years later, I was flipping through the channels, looking for something to chill to during the witching hour. Noticing an Aeon Flux marathon in my TV listings, I said to myself "Hey, isn`t that the really interesting show they killed after a brief run?". So, I started to watch, beginning with "Utopia or Deuteronpia", and it blew my mind! The art, animation, music, characters, and above all the writing, were 10 times better than I had remembered! Man, was I ever dumb! So I watched in stunned awe, and before I knew it, it was 5 AM and I had just seen the entire 3rd season. It left an impression on my mind, raising all sorts of questions about free will, the nature of time, is genetic engineering really possible (this was before everyone knew about GMO`s and Dolly the sheep). By the time I was able to buy the tapes, the show was like an old friend. That is, I thought that I knew it pretty well. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this site, and it opened my eyes yet again. Now I know that the experience of Aeon Flux varies from person to person, and that it`s a much deeper show than meets the eye. Now I have seen the light, I`m a believer! :)

-- Paul D. Gilbreath (gilbreathfamily@worldnet.att.net), January 29, 2000.

I used to come home LATE on Saturday night- after being with friends and having a few drinks, so when I'd turn on MTV, I'd usually catch this really odd, violent, silent cartoon. I'm not sure if it's the kind of thing you need to see drunk or what, but it was confusing and intriguing enough, that I kept turning it on. Then I started rushing home on Saturdays to make sure I didn't miss the beginning - if you miss one thing - you could miss everything. Twisted, odd things appeal to me, even though initially I was a bit shocked by the violence and weird perspective, it started to grow on me. I now have a book and the full set of Aeon videos...and I still want more!!!! Everytime I watch a video, it's always different and I like watching people squirm when they watch them...hmmm...maybe Aeon has made me a bit twisted too ; )

-- Kris (kristiw@earthlink.net), February 04, 2000.

You know, I kinda got emotional, almost choked up reading all your "first time's", they hit home. My first time, if you care, was late at night in the summer, here in Phx, late at night is the only time you can stand. I had spent the summer working out, till I got down to about 114lbs, I felt great, and I was very attracted to this tall thin blonde guy, who, like me, had not dated recently. We were friends because a mutual friend of ours had committed suicide, and we drew close through our despair over it. So, it's hot out, I had on shorts, and a halter top for working out, and we are high, which I also was not doing then, I got up to go to the kitchen and I see him smiling and watching t.v., as if I should look, I see this weird mtv spy-girl, running around, and I'm thinking, what's this? cartoon/porn, and he thinks I'm supposed to do what? I kinda felt angry, it was the demiurge one, and then they started to kiss, and I felt, wow, this is really capturing passion, and I sat down and was totally confused, and next time on the tread mill, I'm Fon flux.

-- Barb e. (Suesuesbeo@aol.com), April 05, 2000.

I was about 11 when i started to watch it and now i'm 18. I don't recall what episode caught my attention...but i had karate on tues or wend and when i got home and turned on the tv there she was on LMTV..i was amazed by the amimation..i really hadn't seen anything like it before..i was a smurf girl or shera and heman hehe...so i was intrigued by the animation the characters...the way they moved the ideas...the imagination was free to roam in this new world i had discoverd and it had endless doors to go through..from then on i watched aeon flux every week and when it went off the air i was a contiual watcher...staying up late in the nite to see my heroine...i often pretended i was aeon as i'm sure alot have:o)..killing bad guys...saving the world hehe...hey wait i still do that hehe.

-- Lady Morgan (Aeonfluxfan1@Aol.com), April 06, 2000.