To get back to KoI, I can only say that the desire to make this the Jadeite site on the net is what really made me get off my lazy butt and learn html (now if I just had the time to redesign my other sites too...)
My page about Jeddy-chan has sure grown... When I say page, singular, it's exactly what I mean. The seed to KoI was one single page at my personal site, dedicated to my favorite villain. After a while, I realized that one had to scroll an awful lot, and split the page into two. I figured, this project was almost done by then, but decided to go on a last wild goose-chase to dig up eventual interesting Jadeite links I might have overseen. Can safely say this is the birth-moment of KoI, though it wasn't launched until a few months later.
Didn't find even a dozen sites, and most of them, well, plain sucked. There were a few gems, but none of them had enough of what I really wanted to see namely tons and tons of written information and opinions ^_^ Love reading, and written content will for me always be the most important thing in a character shrine.
After some thinking, and the realization that no, my personal site would probably never become the new Sailor Senshi Page, I decided to specialize myself. Always put off writing Chibiusa's profile anyway...
After having spent most of Christmas filing on the layout, since I for once wanted to do something more then just heap links and texts upon each other, I re-wrote the profile and began with the bio. Soon, I could add information about his voices, relations to other charas, the stone jadeite and magical powers. Put up a few wallpapers and *wince* a Winamp-skin of mine, linked my fav sites and signed up for a Geocities account.
Then came what I've fondly baptized the 'Never-ending hunt for fanworks', which has continued to this very day. I wrote to more or less every (good) artist and writer I stumbled upon, asking them to please let me use their creations in my tiny, unknown shrine. Surprisingly, most of them said yes.
After a few months, my mother decided to surprise me with a scanner *glomps mommy* and I could finally put up an image gallery. Then things just snowballed on...
Today, King of Illusion has managed to almost fill my server-space, has several times gone over the bandwidth limit, and is beginning to come close to my visions of how I want it to look ^_^ It has also acquired some measure of recognition, judging from my tracker stats. My Jadeite obsession is still going strong, has in fact probably increased since I began to seriously try and get inside his head.
I'm far from done yet, but the insane updating schedule I've kept (every second day, for months!) will not return.
My year in Germany taught me many things, among them the patience to actually hand-code stuff in Notepad. Proved to me that the audience can wait for a while without abandoning a site forever... thought they rather not *grin*
It also showed me how dangerously close to getting sick of Jadeite and Sailor Moon I had come. No worries though, after my sabbatical year I'm sizzling with energy and ideas!
Things I will do one day, even if I have to sell my soul for it:
10.000 visitors... Wow, remember the day I was in ecstasy when my counter climbed to the wondrous heights of one thousand visitors.
The shrine and I have come a long way over the last one and a half year, and I can only hope my interest holds (anything else is at the moment very unlikely) for at least twice the time!
At this place, I would once more like to express my appreciation to all fanartists, ficwriters, reviewers and other people who have helped me with KoI. In particular everyone who signed the Guestbook or wrote me a mail... can't tell how many bleak days have been saved by something like that.
/Dancing Moon, self-proclaimed Jadeite no Miko and certifiable obsessed with the Frozen One and all things related.
Disclaimer: Sailor Moon © of Naoko Takeuchi.