The prevailing attitude was: "OUR forum/show/favorite actor is better than YOUR forum/show/favorite actor" (and that problem, unfortunately, hasn't ever quite gone away, either). It troubled both Astraea and me, because we both posted regularly on the Hercules and Xena forums, and we had friends on both forums. So we invented Deb U as a sort of goofy way to get others to make friends on both forums, as well.

The premise of Deb U was that the "Debs" (predominately female members of the Hercules forum) were to bravely sally forth over to the Xena forum and "debauch" as many of the predominately male (at that time) members of that forum as they could. Like I said, it was goofy! :)

Our first official "debauchee" was Cathbad (oh, Cathbad was a VERY willing debauchee! ). He was followed by another Xenite debauchee named "Visitor", and then more followed. Our first Deb was a poster from the Hercules forum named "CharityNoelle". Cleya was also one of the earliest Debs, and I believe her proud "acquisition" was a Xenite guy named "Randar".

More and more people joined in on Deb U's doings, and Deb U started to take on a life of its own as I established various "levels" of Deb-hood. About a couple of months after we had started Deb U, a very creative newbie Australian poster on the Herc forum named "Xenona" came up with all these titles for various "instructors" (and other stuff) at Deb U. Xenona was the one who also came up with the title of "Chancellor" (an Aussie term for the head of an educational institution, I presume), and she designated three Chancellors for Deb U -- myself and Astraea, and also Hebea, as we three happened to be the most frequent posters on the Herc forum at that time.

The names of many of the Deb U instructors whom Xenona designated were mostly names of people with whom Xenona was familiar through the Hercules Chatroom on IRC. A few of these designated instructors, amusingly, didn't really have that much to do with the scandalous Deb U... um... "activities" on the forum.

From the beginning, Astraea and I encouraged our Debs to dis us Chancellors at every opportunity -- the reason being that "Deb" stood for "debaucherette" -- NOT "debutante"! lol! When Deb U went co-ed, the word "Deb" then also came to stand for "debaucher" (the male equivalent of a debaucherette).

Our Debs were BAD, and we wanted to keep 'em that way! (Another good reason for Deb U to go co-ed! ) Astraea and I also didn't want the title of "Chancellor" ever to turn into something lofty, like "Forum Queen" or anything like that. We never took ourselves that seriously (although we always tried to behave in a "dignified" manner befitting the title -- as do the new Chancellors today who carry on the torch). We Chancellors were there to be abused by the Debs -- and we frequently cracked up over the ingenious forms of goofy "abuse" which our Debs dreamed up. :)

So, in retrospective... Deb U's first purpose was to try to encourage more interaction between the members of the Hercules forum and their neighbors over on the Xena forum. Deb U's second purpose was to serve as a goofy, friendship-making game that shy newbies could instantly jump into and join in on without ever feeling that they had to do any "homework" first before posting on the Hercules forum. And Deb U's third (and most important) purpose, was to have FUN! :)