The Lemures Files
  Guest Article: October 12, 1999

Why Not?

By: MrHighwind

You know, all this time I never thought that I'd have an entire Lemures article within me waiting to be written, but recent complaints about the mass-closure of several top-notch Sailormoon websites has prompted me to write this.

First of all, according to a recent article, the reason most of the venerated Sailormoon webmasters are shutting down their sites is because that's the latest trend. Okay, let's quibble over semantics for a moment: In order for something to be a trend, a mass amount of people must follow it. Seriously, how many pages are shutting down...about ten? That's hardly enough to consider it a trend. However, if you take the amount of the Sailormoon Webpage Elite (for lack of a better term) into account, ten people is actually quite a few of them, which could constitute it as a fad after all. There's just one problem.

It's absurd.

I find it very hard to believe that people who have poured their hearts and souls into their pages, all out of love for Sailormoon, would simply give everything up because that's what everyone else is doing.

Face it, people. Sailormoon is not only over, it's been over for a good three and a half years now, the manga longer than that. There's not much new you can say about it unless you really feel like delving into the vastly different world that is Sera Myu or DiC/MIXX translations. Sooner or later, it happens to everyone. Creativity runs dry. The biggest problem is that the mass of people out there in webland don't seem to understand this. They'll see that a page has been left stagnant for a couple months and send a nasty letter to the page owner telling them to update their page...although not nearly as politely as that.

Yeah, the first course of action would be simple. Ignore them. But then more people flame, and more and more and more. (Believe me, there's no shortage of stupid people out there in netland, or anywhere else for that matter.) Soon the amount of mail one receives simply because they haven't updated or finished a particular section becomes overwhelming that creating a page ceases to be fun. After all, why have these people spent so much time on their pages in the first place? Was it for the free fish? Yeah, right. They did it because they wanted to. These people, these 'webpage elite' if you will, are the ones who have paid us the greatest service to Sailormoon, and how do we repay them? We whine and bitch and moan because they have lives too and they'd like to move on.

Hitoshi Doi, Janelle, Apatt, Mara K, Ruk, Jupe, Jackie Chiang, Rowena and all the other SM gurus have given us accurate information without fail, inspiration for our own sites, for those of us who have them, and in the cases of the SM Toolbox and Team Venus, lovely graphics and backgrounds for those of us who haven't the talent or the tools to create them ourselves, not to mention tutorials so we could learn for ourselves if we wanted to.

And now a large percentage of the above listed have decided to move on. Guess what, that's how life is. You grow up, constantly changing. Yes, people grow out of Sailormoon, but it's not as much of a mental maturity thing as some have implied. Maturing is gathering life experiences, learning that there is more to anime than Sailormoon, and quite possibly liking that anime better. Sailormoon is merely a foothold in the anime world. And many have grown out of Sailormoon and moved onto better anime (better being in the most subjective of senses), but does that mean that they hate Sailormoon all of a sudden? Not necessarily. I'm sure that they, like me (even though I still rank Sailormoon my second favorite anime), will always look back on it like an old friend. Very much in the way that some of us used to like Transformers or He-Man when we were little, but grew out of it, but still remember those days fondly, (I'm not ashamed to admit, when I was young I liked She-Ra. Nowadays I call it my "shoujo roots," just as Transformers, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and Go-Bots were my mecha roots) they can also see Sailormoon as such.

But then factor in those who refuse to understand this and send flame after flame whining about the stagnancy of a page, or the fact that the owner no longer deems Sailormoon their favorite anime of all time, regardless of whether or not they have come to hate it or still like it but simply have found better anime. If anything will squeeze the joy out of webpage making, these people will.

But these are people that have given several years for US! They not only created their pages because they were fun, but because they wanted to educate US on a show that they loved! So now that they want to move on, do we really want to hold them down and insist that they cater to us and us alone for the rest of their lives?

Well, I'm not that selfish. I'm going to do what we all should do. I'm going to support their decision and understand that only they know what is best for them, so if this is it, then this is it. I'm going to make them proud of what they have done instead of having them leave the SM community with a chip on their shoulder.

This tribute is to you.

RUK: No, Uranus isn't my favorite Senshi. In fact, she ranks pretty damn low, but I always enjoyed your page because you had completely unique psychological observations that the common man could never come up with. I'll miss your intelligence and wit.

JANELLE: God bless you for leading me to the deity that is Fushigi Yuugi. ^_^ Thank you for answering all my questions that I ever had about Sailormoon, even though they were all really obscure facts that no normal person would know. You put up with stupid people for a long time, and the fact that you didn't kill someone in a fit of insanity is nothing less than commendable. ^_^ But seriously, I know I speak for many when I say that you're gravely misunderstoodand. I've never met another who is so tolerant of adversity and willing to listen to others even when they didn't agree with you. (Does the Top Ten Reasons Mercury is Better than Neptune list ring a bell? ^_^) I mean, while everyone else bitched me out for even thinking such a travesty, you actually listened, and even agreed on some points, even though at that time you hated Mercury with an unrivaled passion.

MARA K: Believe it or not, you were the one who inspired me to make my own webpage. When I first came across Pluto Planet Power, I decided there and then that I would make a page good enough to deserve your Pluto Planet Award. I can't say enough good things about your incredible talent at webpage design. I hope that it really pays off in life, but knowing your talent, I'm sure it will. Team Venus was of great help to me, since I'm not the most adept person in the world at making webpage graphics and backgrounds. You are a smart and talented person, and I'm glad that you created PPP and Team Venus for all of us out here in Moonieland. You will be sorely missed by me and many others, I'm sure.

As for Jupe and all the others who have moved on, your sites are influential, inspirational and fantastic, even though I never knew any of you personally. Best of luck to all of you in life. I'm sad you're moving on, but you have every right to do so if you feel that is best. Thank you for your contributions. I only hope that one day my page can be as good as any of yours.


Comments on this article can be sent to: MrHighwind.

Comments made on this page are opinions of the author. They are not necessarily shared by Tripod and the Amazoness Quartet.


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