I agree with everyone to an extent. It's really hard to tell what is copying these days because very little is ever truly brand new. What I would consider theft from my own shrines is laying a shrine out exactly like mine, or taking my ideas, rewording them, and claiming them as your own. Take my Tidus site for example. While having a section on Yuna, Jecht, Auron, Blitzball, and the voice actor would be on any Tidus site, I've thought up unique things to discuss over the years: Is Tidus the Main Character of FFX?, how I feel Tidus' fear of being alone is his motivation and drive for most things he does, how I believe Tidus is more of a Time Mage than a physical Melee attacker in-game, etc. If another Tidus shrine popped up with these ideas, I'd be annoyed. What makes those sections unique? They're based on my own interpretation of the character and events in the game. They are highly opinionated.
dubiousdisc wrote:I'm also gonna be the devil's advocate here (my own advocate?) and say that adding a page about why you like a certain thing does not a personal shrine make. Unless you have something really unique to say, those pages are mostly gonna sound the same no matter who's writing them, in my opinion. "I've always liked X since the first time I saw it", "I find X very fascinating", "I identify with X a lot because Y Z", I mean - those things are pretty universal, so if you don't have an interesting story to share, I don't think this sort of page adds anything particularly personal to your site. That is of course not to say you shouldn't have this page if you want to have it, just that I don't think that it can magically turn an uninspired work into a personal one by just tacking it on.
I have to agree with dubs here. I've seen these "Appeal" or "Why?" pages on shrine after shrine. I've stopped including them on my own sites. Rather than put all your opinions and thoughts about the character on this one page, why not spread them out across the entire shrine?
My thoughts on shrines these days are this: With Wikis and official sites, information on anything is so easy to find. Building a fan site with just information is a waste of my personal time. That's why my sites are so reflective. Don't get me wrong. All opinions are supported with facts, and I do aim to inform the visitor, but when I write articles, I try to prove something with each piece. I don't want a page of just straight facts, rehashing events from the game. On my Reiko site, I wrote a "Mother" page, and instead of just writing that she was a mother, how she became a mother, and what happened to her baby, I also wrote about whether I felt she was a good mother, in the traditional sense of the word. On my Tidus site, I have a "Dreams" page where I could have just written what occurs in the Dreams, but I decided to also write about what I feel like the Dreams mean: that Tidus has issues with his father, clearly materializing in his dreams. On my Knuckles site, I wrote an "Echidna" page, explaining what an Echidna is. Instead of just talking about what the animal is, I also decided to theorize why Sega might have chosen an Echidna, and how Knuckles' abilities fit the animal.
These thoughts are what make my sites unique, in my opinion. The trick is mixing it with fact so your sites aren't completely opinionated, clearly marking your opinions with words like, "I think..." so visitors don't take your opinions as fact, and backing up your opinions with fact so that your sites are grounded.
I'm working on my upcoming shrines and got to looking at them. I've been building them similar to my first shrine (http://sky-dreams.net) but I don't just want a repeat of what I already have online (especially for my DBZ shrine) and copy that format.
I don't want my all my new shrines to look like I had a lack of original ideas and needed inspiration from everyone else.
