I first learned about Thunderbirds in 2003, when I saw a commercial for it on the late TechTV. I thought, "Hmm, what are those things? Robots? Automatons? Guess I'll watch an episode and see...."

My initial impression: "Oh hey, they're puppets. Oh well...oh, COOL! It's just like Pop-up Video! Okay, maybe I'm not into the show that much, so I'll just watch it for the pop-ups. And because the guys in the spectacles is darned cute. How are they making the mouths move, anyway? That's weird. I wonder how old this show is? From the special effects, I'd say 1980's, late 70's at the latest...what? 1965?!!! Dang!" I also wanted to know why, if Thunderbirds was so darned famous worldwide, how come I had never even heard of it before now?

The original plan was to watch just long enough to figure out how the mouths worked then stop watching. But something happened to change all that: For one thing, I was slowly but surely falling in love with Thunderbirds, and Brains in particular. But more importantly, I went looking for fanfic, as I always do when I find a new show, and came across LMC's "Quarantine." Mind you, at this point I was so new to Thunderbirds that I had to keep looking up which Tracy boy was which, but the story blew me away nonetheless. It was this story that not only helped harden my core as a fan, but also went a long way to inspiring me to write Thunderbirds fic of my own.

I owe it all to you, Chris! Thanks!