Thanks to them, I have pretty banners. Arigato.
1) Professor Jon Mott of the OU Political Science Department. He made creation of a webpage an optional assignment (well, the assignment itself wasn't optional, but you didn't have to use the webpage for those points), and started me on all this.
2) Angelfire for making the creation of my first webpage very nice and painless. I would strongly recommend them for anyone just starting out; they've got the best basic editor I've seen. The Geocities basic editor is okay, but doesn't allow enough colors as far as I'm concerned, and the Fortunecity one confused the hell out of me, not that it's even available now.
3) Rachel, sex books, Animerica and Watase-sama, for jointly inspiring me to make the couples page. It started with various sex books stating that women aren't aroused visually the way men are; the other senses and the mind are more important. Romance novels are the female equivalent of Playboy, etc. (Most exclude the option of liking men with men.) Rachel observed that even for straight women, pictures of women are more sexual than pictures of men; you put yourself in the woman's place. I'm not sure how universal that is, but whatever blows your skirt up. My favorite option is my own, though. Animerica reviewed a Sailor Moon artbook and called the pictures of Usagi and Mamoru together "sexy;" I looked at them and thought "Yeah, they are. Are there any like that for good series?" Turns out there were. I found several for Fushigi Yuugi and a few for Kenshin, Orange Road and Ranma. That was how it started.
4) Watase-Megami-sama, the official Goddess of Art in my pantheon, for existing. Also for all those images of Tamahome and Miaka, which I enjoy for personal and webgoddess-related reasons.
5) All of the people I give links to on my other pages, for providing the images I use.
6) Fortunecity for providing me with enough space to let my page roam the prairies, free, the way God meant it to. Not only that, but unlike Geocities, they let my colors do what they want. They have a scary, confusing basic editor, but I just make my pages in HTML there.
7) Gavin, for praising my page and for checking it repeatedly the time Fortunecity crashed, then letting me know when it started working so I could go back to work. Also for signing my guestbook.
8) Akane, who I don't know personally but who did (a) inspire me to make the Shinji and Kaworu page, (b) sign my guestbook, and (c) link to me!!! I can't tell you how happy that made me.
9) Webrings, for getting me traffic.
10) Banner exchanges, for getting me more traffic.
11)
Thanks to them, I have pretty banners. Arigato.
12) Infinite Fish - Rollover MegaCoder for doing the javascript code on my front page for me. I still had to create both the original image and the highlight effect, but this is SUCH a nifty tool. Visit the main page too, there's more coolness where this came from.
Oh, and just about every linkware archive on the web, particularly Moyra's Web Jewels and Structures for making me realize my page really sucked on the face of it. I haven't used any of their graphics, though I might eventually, and I haven't even tried to compete in their league (I don't have the tools, the art talent, or the interest in abstract patterns... I like the anime flavor of my page), but it spurred me to start messing around. And one of these, probably Moyra's page, actually had the link to the Infinite Fish coder.
