Shrines in Progress

[Todd]

Have you ever wanted to shrine something while you were experiencing the medium, or do you always wait until you have completed playing/reading/watching before you begin working on a shrine? For example, say you are five volumes into a 20+ volume manga. Would you consider making a shrine to a character up to that point in the manga and adding and editing pages as you continue reading?

I think a site like this could be really interesting for many reasons: 1) Your passion and perception is fresh while you're going through it. 2) You site will be a living, growing, active piece of work. 3) It'd be interesting to compare what you thought about a character or event at a certain place in the series, and how you felt about that subject when you finished the series.

[Robin]

I like the idea of a "living" shrine. Unfortunately, I think I would suffer delayed embarrassment about all the old stuff I thought... "ugh I can't believe I thought those two would end up as a couple." "wow how did I _not_ see this super-obvious foreshadowing?" xD

Currently, I like to compile content as I go and congeal it all into shrine content at the end of my watching/playing--that way, I can reference all my old conceptions without all the herp derp and with more canon context. But I can see how one could organize a shrine by series season and help the reader experience the media moment by moment... :)

[Crystal]

I generally avoid making a shrine for something until I've finished watching/reading/playing whatever my subject is from so I don't feel like I have to constantly update it, but I really badly want to do a shrine for Regina Mills/The Evil Queen from Once Upon a Time which is still on going. I might attempt it, but I have a lot of sites already, all of which need work so I don't know if I could actually do such a thing.

[Anise]

I have. I started my Hizumi shrine sometime between Volume 13 and 14 of Spiral. At that time the series was still being released and scanlations weren't readily available. It was a lot of finding translations and many of them ended up being inaccurate. As a result a number of things were rewritten. I think it's more difficult because the characters grow and you learn more and your original analysis may not be correct or maybe they do something that makes you stop wanting to create a shrine to them.

For this reason I usually wait until I'm far enough that I'm confident I still like them after some growth. Then I follow a similar method as Robin and type up or write down bullet points as I go and then organize them into sections.

[dubiousdisc]

It depends on whether it's reasonable and possible to wait until the end. I mostly make sites to game characters, so as such I can usually wait until I'm done playing and then I can see if I still like the things that I was thinking to write about. If the game is really long and I'm past 50% completion, though, I might start making things while still playing (and heavily edit them later, so I can talk about the things I thought while it was in progress and how it actually was). Usually I try to wait just in case the plot ends up flopping, the characterization is destroyed, and it turns out I don't really want to talk about it. XD

[Larissa]

I feel like this kind of thing would be better suited to a liveblog rather than a fansite. Maybe it's because I liveblog a lot of different things as I experience them (games, tv shows, movies, etc) and that format allows me to talk about how I'm interpreting the plot and characters at that point in time. My opinions almost always change by the time I finish something!

My Squall site actually came out of one such liveblog, and the format of the resulting site reflects that, but I didn't start on the site until I finished the game, and I don't think I could have coherently written about Squall if I started it any sooner. Still, my in-the-moment liveblog posts served as a great basis for what later became fleshed-out pieces.

Also, like dubiousdisc mentioned, there's always the chance of the plot flopping and/or not liking the character by the time you finish something. While that might be an interesting premise for a fansite (a character you like initially, but who you end up not liking by the end) it's something of a gamble. I think this is part of why it's really hard to make fansites to in-progress series -- there's always the chance a plot twist will retcon your entire site. (I've been there!)

[Lethe]

Adding to what dubiousdisc said: If the subject itself is still ongoing, sure, I'd shrine a subject if I enjoyed it - the scanlation example Anise brought up or the TV series Crystal is following. If it's a series that's ongoing or finished and I haven't reached the end/caught up with what's available yet, I don't think I'd start shrining before finishing it... unless it's a series without much development (usually episodic), for example Detective Conan. Or if it's a series where I've experienced up to a certain point, but don't feel like continuing (or at least not continuing anytime soon).

I really like what Larissa did by converting a liveblog to a shrine, and the peculiarities of the previous liveblog format really show in the shrine.

But with or without liveblog, I feel like "3) It'd be interesting to compare what you thought about a character or event at a certain place in the series, and how you felt about that subject when you finished the series." is perfectly doable even if you wait before shrining, even if it's from an ex-post perspective? I can't speak for others, but feelings and thoughts I had while experiencing something for the first time do stick with me, so I can reach for them and evaluate/compare them later on.

I think for me, the biggest argument against it is because of how highly I value structure. One of my favourite parts about shrining is rearranging my notes and "finishing the brainstorming" to structure the site, so that I will know how to set it up (which affects the layout and the navigation), which topics to address and in which order (especially if the topics are connected, since I want to avoid repetition). An element of a subject may turn out to be connected to other things as you read/watch/play, or you may find a different context to address it in, along with other elements, so I'd rather do that from an ex-post perspective with as much information on hand as possible.

[Destinie]

Hmm...interesting question! I think I do this. There's a lot of shrines that I made after I finished the game/manga/etc but then there's others that I start while in the process. I think my Ur shrine and my Dynamic Duo site I am working on are like that. Now I may start making them but the site isn't really online until I "finish" the content so in some cases the site will be up after I finish the medium.

A live blog idea would be really interesting...

What if there was a shrine that was basically like a twitter feed that was made up of your thoughts while experiencing the medium and character? 140 character long essays hahaha

[dubiousdisc]

The idea of the liveblog and even Destinie's twitter feed is really, really interesting! In fact, I think that from now on I'll start keeping track of things like that! :D If nothing else, it can be a great starting point - if then I don't decide to make a shrine, not much was lost, I wrote down a few thoughts, big deal!

[Destinie]

The idea of the liveblog and even Destinie's twitter feed is really, really interesting! In fact, I think that from now on I'll start keeping track of things like that! :D If nothing else, it can be a great starting point - if then I don't decide to make a shrine, not much was lost, I wrote down a few thoughts, big deal!

Yeah! I'm actually debating on making a shrine where it's written in small blurbs like this, like an explorer's notebook. I wanted to expand my Sigilyph shrine and I wanted to try something new and different.