Editorial by Chris

April 17, 2000

When you surf the World Wide Web long enough, you come to one inevitable conclusion: most of the websites out there suck. I mean they suck in every respect: graphically, design wise, and content wise. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Rand' Fantasy & Anime Homepage wasn't anything pretty to look at, and it was poorly designed during the first year. However, the one thing it did have was original content (almost all of which is now here).

I visit most websites and find nothing but fan pages that just say "Fushigi Yugi rules!" and "Gundam Wing kicks ass!" They'll have a few pictures, maybe an animated gif of a super-deformed Gundam. Perhaps a link here or there, but not much more. What then, is the point of having a website if you don't TELL PEOPLE WHY you love a series. If you're trying to spread fandom, you don't accomplish anything with what you currently have. If I want to learn about Fushigi Yugi before investing in the series and visit thirty websites that say "it rules", then I know nothing more than when I started. At least here Lore and myself are trying to spread fandom through reliable information on each series.

The only thing that bothers me more than cheap looking websites are websites that claim ownership of pictures or steal content from other websites. I visit plenty of websites that say things like "don't steal my Gundam pics." What is there to steal? Did you, the crappy designer with your Geocities page actually draw the storyboard or animate the cel for that Gundam pic? Well, if the answer is yes, then you should have a better looking website. If the answer is no, then YOU DON'T OWN THE DAMNED PICTURE. Get it straight people. You can't tell people to not steal what you don't own yourself.

Now, as for stealing content, that really gets me angry. Recently I visited a website that shall remain nameless that had suspicious Gundam content. Graphics looked familiar, as did text. Upon closer investigation, I saw that the content had been stolen from Gundam Project, which I consider to be the best English Gundam site. Seeing the content from there on this crappy little site got me really angry (enough to right this rant as a spur of the moment). This website in question also covered various other series, and that content sounded like it was stolen as well.

If you're going to make a website, do us in the net community a favor: put some work in it. Just slapping together some page on Geocities with a cheap midi and a star background does nothing to further spreading the good word about anime or fantasy. Don't attempt to hoard graphics you don't own, and don't steal things from other websites. Make something that you're proud of and think people will like.

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