The Daria Shrine was created one August afternoon in 1999 by my then best friends Bridget and Larissa Simpson. The three of us had an abundance of creative energy and not too terribly much to do with our time when we weren't at math team practice or putting together our amateurish attempt at a zine. At approximately the same time, I started my own less specialized, fansite The Toon Obsession. We guest wrote for one another's sites, and Bridget spent one afternoon making The Obsession look like it wasn't put together by a twelve-year-old, for which I am eternally grateful, ut we were by-and-large solely responsible for the contents of our own pages.

And then, some time in late spring of 2001, I completely lost contact with them, and The Shrine became something of an orphan. I was hesitant to take over at first - I still had hope that one or both of them would come back to it, and I was still plenty busy with my own website at the time. But I had spent a fair amount of time in the Daria community and hated to see The Shrine left derelict, so, against my better judgment, I became its rather neglectful caretaker.

Now, every time I think of either site, I feel a little guilty. Some of that guilt is because I know how depressing it is to find out that a favourite site has fallen into disrepair, but, even more than that, it's because it was not so much drifting interest that forced me to drop the websites from my priorities as it was the five years of engineering school. I miss thinking of myself as a webmistress, writing up my opinions (as little as the count for anything) for the world to see, battling WebShell editors... I have an online journal, but it's not the same. Not at all. And I want to be a webmistress again.

It's been ten years this week since the sites first opened, and I need to force myself to start writing more often, so here is my promise to you, the non-existent readers:

One new update on both the Obsession and the Shrine every week, at least until next fall, when I will be going back to school. I'll start posting reviews, (other people's) fiction, Ponderings, all that. One new bit of content per site, per week.

I am also interested in possibly finding someone to help out around the Shrine, primarily to create new content. I don't expect a lot of applicants or anything, but these websites both mean a lot to me, so I am going to be a little picky and insist on getting to know a little about potential web partners before handing over the password and all that good stuff. But I would love to have a different perspective brought back to the site.

So, that's the deal. I'll post new content every week, starting with a brand new Pondering premiering next Tuesday on the Obsession, and you can continue to visit or ignore the sites as you like. Sound good? Good. See you then.