legacyOG 2004

Somewhere in Fairfield, New Jersey, in the summer of 2004, a blond-haired, blue-eyed, self-described "jiggly elephant seal" named Jaime Wagemann got talked into joining eZabel by a friend named Dena, and immediately proceeded to carpet-bomb the site's News section with the most exhaustive Star Wars Expanded Universe commentary it had ever seen. His very first comment was a run-on sentence that covered meeting a bassist from Ophelia, his weakness for raven-haired women, and a claim to be "an encyclopedia of star wars info" — a claim he then spent the next six weeks proving beyond any reasonable doubt. He knew exactly when the Spaarti cloning cylinders were moved to Mount Tantiss on Wayland. He knew that Joruus C'baoth was assigned to guard the storehouse. He knew Admiral Thrawn fell at the hands of his bodyguard Rukh, that the word "Ewok" derives from "Wookie," and that Lucas originally planned a Wookiee battle for the first film but couldn't pull it off. He corrected people on clone trooper recruitment timelines, debated brotherman on whether the Empire could raise an army of normal humans, and had opinions about the Yuuzhan Vong that he delivered with the resigned disappointment of a man who'd been personally let down by a fictional alien species. superhero suggested iwz create a "geek" tag specifically for him, and honestly, it would have been appropriate.

But Jaime wasn't just a walking Wookieepedia. He was a musician — his band was literally called Legacy, his username's namesake — and he'd shared a drummer with Ophelia, which gave him and thatdarngirl an instant bond rooted in a shared, diplomatically understated lack of enthusiasm for that particular group. He was a writer who'd just finished his first novel and was trying to get it published while also applying to the Kubert Academy of Art, selling beloved comics on eBay to fund a potential move to Oregon, and cooking hibachi so enthusiastically he nearly sliced off his index finger — the one he used most for guitar and typing. He lurked in the Macking and Musings forums, attended the Warped Tour, read 29 photo albums' worth of pictures, and introduced himself to roughly every human on the site with the same endearing formula: "hi my names jaime im from fairfield whats up." He found a genuine friend in perrin, bonding over Timothy Zahn novels and AVP movies, driving an hour to hang out and watch films from his collection of over a hundred. He connected with tinser over Smallville and late-night conversations, swapping screen names and debating whether Tom Welling would cameo in Batman Begins. He read every Star Wars book up through the New Jedi Order, had lunch with the actress who played Aayla Secura at Comic-Con, made fan-made Star Wars trading cards hosted on Angelfire, and played Lord of the Rings cards both online and off. On Halloween 2004, he sent a goodbye — he was moving to Oregon in two days, and he didn't know when he'd be back online.

eZabel Personality Type: ENFP — "The Elephant Seal." Jaime arrived like a cannonball into a swimming pool, splashed enthusiastically in every direction for three months, befriended everyone within reach, dumped the entire contents of his brain into the News section, and then vanished to the Pacific Northwest before the water settled. He typed at the speed of thought with zero punctuation — Ian actually asked him to please use some — and his passion was so genuine it was impossible not to get pulled into whatever galactic timeline he was explaining. He was the rare person who could own a comic book store, play in a band, write a novel, draw professionally, and still describe himself as bad at everything that could land a corporate job — and mean it as a compliment.