Bring These Sites Back!

Talk with others about anything shrine-related, be it presentation, content or something else.
Todd
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Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Todd »

I thought this would be a fun discussion/memory activity. Do you remember any sites from the past that you would love to see return? They can, but don't have to be from Amassment members.

For me, there are a couple:

Jae, who actually just returned to Amassment recently, used to have a shrine to Beatrix from FF9 called Loss of Me. I don't remember too much about it other than I really dug it back in the day, haha. I think she also had a site to FF8's Irvine? Someone did. I was so happy to see that site pop up, but it didn't last long.

Speaking of FF9, there was a little Eiko site called Tiny Wings of Light. It was really cute and was a staple in the FF community for a long time.

Waaay back when, there was a shrine to Squall from FF8 called The Roaring Flame. That shrine is what actually inspired me to make my very first shrine. I would love to see Cristina and that site return someday, though it's been forever, so it's unlikely.

Sorry mine are all Final Fantasy. I was really obsessed with that series back in the day.
Andrea
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Andrea »

A lot of sites I would like to see return are also Final Fantasy and Square Enix related; there were a ton of them back in the day, and I would still consider many of them to be my favorite shrines despite being offline.

Water Nymph and Sharpshooter were two Yuna (FFX) shrines that covered her appearance in both FFX and FFX-2. When I first came across the site, I remember staying on the splash page forever, just listening to "Eternity ~Memories of Waves and Light~" play over and over again. The sites were informative and just beautiful with a lot of Flash involved. I admired them greatly, and still do. Wayback Machine still has parts of the site: splash page, Water Nymph, Sharpshooter. I still visit the archived pages sometimes. Definitely one of my favorite shrines—even now.

Unsung was another shrine I really loved, dedicated to RIkku (FFX) (Wayback Machine: here). It had lots of information, and the site had really lovely layouts over the years.

Rose of May was my favorite shrine to Tifa Lockhart (FFVII). It's been around for years, but when I went back to it a few days ago, it was gone (Wayback Machine: here). Similarly, I would like to see My Light, a shrine to Aerith Gainsborough (FFVII), and Calamity from the Skies, a shrine to Jenova (FVII), return. The latter's website is still up, but the content was taken down.

Aside from Final Fantasy, I also miss Hitherto, a shrine for Heather of Silent Hill.

There are also entire collectives that I'd like to see return, haha. Practically every one of Stacey Anne's (peach-arrow.NET) shrines: Grace for Zelda (The Legend of Zelda), Partners in Crime for Balthier and Fran (FFXII), Never Ever for Tifa Lockhart (FFVII), Strife for Cloud Strife (FFVII), Will for Denzel (FFVII).

Also Sarah's (winhill.ORG) sites: Trivial for the Deku race (The Legend of Zelda), Retrospect for Squall (FFVIII), Dearest for Ellone (FFVIII), Nostalgia for Winhill (FFVIII)—the last one inspired me to make a small shrine to Besaid way back when.

Other shrines I miss: Chirtza's (serenity-skies.NET) stuff, Tabita's (loveparody.NET) Naminé/Roxas shrines.

There are probably a lot more, but these are the ones that came to mind as soon as I saw the topic. Ah, memories. :content: :heart:
Last edited by Andrea on Tue Mar 29, 2016 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Jae
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Jae »

Todd, you've got impeccable memory! I had a lot of fun working on that Beatrix shrine, and I did have one for Irvine. The funny (and kind of sad) part about Beatrix is how I revived the old site for the one-page marathon, and then . . . let it die again when I stopped doing web design. Third time's the charm? There's a lot of sites that I want to bring back with "refurbished" content. You may have just given me direction for ideas!

As for the discussion, there are a few sites that come to mind, though I can't for the life of me recall the names or the domains they were hosted under. I'll stew on them a little more and see what I can come back with. I'm already feeling a lot of nostalgia in this topic. :ok:
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Andrea
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Andrea »

AdriCULOUS wrote:I'm friends with Sandy, who owned those Yuna shrines, but she got herself busy with her web development schooling and even fell ill, then altogether she just lost interest in hobby shrines/fansites and moved on to different interests. It was even the first (and complete) Yuna shrine that was launched back in those days and I also worshiped her shrine and her skills. She's currently here now, but other than that, I don't think she has plans to go back to shrining again. The only thing that's not changed is that she's still a gamer. ^^
That's AWESOME! What an incredibly small world, haha. Yeah, once I saw the message on driftingheart.NET, I went over and bookmarked her new site back then! I still follow her work to an extent, and I continue to be inspired by it. I'm glad she's doing well, and that she's still gaming and designing/creating—even if it's for a different purpose now. :heart:

And oh man, I also remember sakurazukamori.NET! I loved reading those shrines, and they're part of the reason why I got into Tokyo Babylon and X/1999 later on in late elementary/early middle school. Ah, good times.

Also going to add another shrine that I really loved: Dream Image for Tidus (FFX) (Wayback Machine: here). Many of Jenny's (royal-hours.NET) sites were fantastic; I miss them a lot.
Laura
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Laura »

OMG YES.

I miss a lot of Slayers sites that aren't online anymore. Boiling Point (ruby-wings.net/lina) was a great little Lina shrine and I was so sad to see it go. There was also a Martina shrine at 3oclockfairy. I also REALLY miss Amelia's Fortress. :(

I miss PrettySenshi.com and all of her sites! I've been linking to her on my site(s) for as long as I can remember and I think we used to chat now and then too, she was awesome. :) Same goes for Shiori's sites at Time-Stranger.net.

There's actually a lot of sites I've seen disappear over the last 10 years (or longer in some cases). :( I'll post here when I think of more. XD
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by nyxmidnight »

AdriCULOUS wrote:
Andrea wrote: There were a few sites that came to my mind: SakurazukamoriNET - a collective of CLAMP shrines (mostly Tokyo Babylon-related) with very, very beautiful designs (though I didn't like how the text was slightly transparent to the background that it's really hard to read),
OMG I REMEMBER THAT. I was in end of highschool/college at the time and she was my inspiration. I was never good at graphic layouts, tho XD
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Emma
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Emma »

I miss a lot of the old Bleach sites - I loved that Isshin shrine, Mack Daddy. ;-; All of the sites at losstarot.net. I also think there was a November 11 shrine from Darker Than Black at one point, but I'm not sure if I've just hallucinated that or what but I wish it were real and still around.

Also seconding a lot already mentioned in this post - peach-arrow, royal-hours, winhill, etc.
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Lethe
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Lethe »

(This post is a mess; my thoughts are jumbled right now.)

Wow, thanks, everyone, for digging up those links. I spent so much time during my adolescence browsing all these shrines, and remember so many of these FF shrines in particular, and I... am still spending a fair amount of time crawling them from time to time via Wayback Machine. But I didn't remember all the URLs, and there's only so much you can dig up by crawling affiliate lists. LOL

omg Water Nymph and Sharpshooter I REMEMBER THAT SPLASH PAGE DOWN TO THE LOADING BAR

THE RIKKU SHRINE AND ALL ITS LAYOUTS

ALL THE TIFA AND AERITH SHRINES ALL OF THEM

Dream Image was also one of my favourite shrine names for Tidus.

All the CLAMP shrines!!

sob all my beloved Naminé shrines .____. The Soliloquy and Monologue duo. ;_; (I know Monologue lives on in Chrissy's gorgeous Drift though.) I need even more Kingdom Hearts shrines because the thing is a giant mess now, and it'd be lovely to see shrines cover the many fragments that make up the series haha.

Speaking of Bleach shrines, I remember a lot of them from when the series was in its early stages... There was an Orihime shrine I really loved. ;_; And I don't know whether this was a different shrine, but one wrote extensively about Uryuu/Orihime scenes and pointed out so many scenes I wouldn't have picked up on back then...

I've always loved shrines that point out things I wouldn't have noticed myself (especially with information being so limited back then, no Wikis, no replays on YouTube, not as many FAQs), and many old shrines did that for me.

FF and CLAMP aside, I miss a lot of shrines to subjects that haven't really made it to ~the new age~. I browsed a wealth of past The Legend of Dragoon shrines before starting my Rose shrine, and I'm so sad I wasn't there to befriend the people who created them (not like I knew the game back then though). I'm sure Miranda shrines like Moonlight made me be kinder to certain characters when I eventually experienced or reexperienced the story myself, or at least made me pay more attention to them, thus giving me the chance to learn understand those overlooked characters. Even just the fact that there's a shrine for a character (which equates appreciation of said character) did so much for me.

Or Star Ocean 3 shrines like Insolence, where probably most of the content consists of... optional scenes??? I think? I remember reading this as a teen and going "wtf where did you get all this info from, is this fanfiction".

Lost Lenore, an Izumi Rio shrine, had super gorgeous graphics, and I loved the shrine name so much. *_*

MY REAL OLD SCHOOL LOVE THOUGH - Angel Sanctuary. If I could bring one shrine back, "Per Aspera Ad Astra" (here), a shrine to Alexiel and Lucifer, would be one of the first to come to mind. I'm pretty sure the shrine was similar to Larissa's death wish in that it just dove into analysis and interpretation right away... I learned so many amazing things just from reading that.

On the same note, I think one of my very first introduction to shrines was a domain (German, most likely) called something like tokyo-love-story. I visited it all the time, partly because it kept changing layouts, several of which depicted immensely minor characters. It also housed shrines to those minor characters: Sevothtarte (called White World) and Barbiel from Angel Sanctuary, for example - characters I didn't like or didn't even notice when reading the manga back then. And the layouts were stunning. That left such a deep impression on me... And I'm sure that curiosity had a big impact on me wanting to make my own shrines.

Another shrine I sorely miss due to its sheer wealth of information spanning multiple sources is the Digimon Adventure Hikari/Takeru shrine. I forgot its name; I know Elysa knows it. WHY IS IT GONE WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
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Destinie
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Destinie »

I know I've mentioned this around here before but back when I was getting into shrines again I came across this really extensive Fae (?) shrine from Tsubasa that really, really inspired me. I forget who owned it but it had a HUGE essay on his name that I found incredibly fascinating. I forget what it was called and who owned it. ~sigh~
Cherri
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Re: Bring These Sites Back!

Post by Cherri »

There was a FF12 Basch shrine called Carpe Diem, I adored that one. But one day it was gone. Broke my heart. a bunch of older shrines are now gone and that upsets me. I understand people move on and such. It's just sad to see them go.
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