My first website went online 24 years ago today!Β I was super excited about the Internet and being able to find and share information across the world, and I decided to make a website for my own art and stories.Β So in February 1998 I went to a bookstore, bought a book on HTML, read the book that night, and had a website up and running the next day.Β The site was called The Ethereal Fortress, from one of my stories, and the name was part of the inspiration for Ethereal Hearts.Β
In the mid 90’s, when I was in junior high, some of my friends came to school with some printouts of a Sailor Moon “website” that they had found on this thing called “the Internet”.Β We were so excited to learn about the Japanese version of Sailor Moon, beyond what was available at the time in English.Β When my family got access to the Internet a few years later, I immediately used it to look up Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors, and other anime.Β I also found anime and video game fan artists online, which inspired me to make my own site.Β My sister and I had been drawing our own version of comics (partially inspired by the old Nintendo Comics) since we were little.Β We also had a chain story that we wrote with our friends.Β When the Ethereal Fortress went online, it included these stories, some fan art, a couple anime fan sites, and a page dedicated to our old cats.Β After starting my site, I joined the Fan Art Mailing List (FAML) and Online Comic Artists Directory (OCAD), where I met many amazing artists and learned a lot from them.Β I was also one of the original members of Bay Area Artists Unite (BAAU), which was originally a meetup for the SF Bay Area members of OCAD.Β Β After I started cosplaying I added a cosplay page to my site in February 2000.Β I also started the Catboy Project, encouraging people to draw more catboys (since catgirls were popular, but you almost never saw catboys then).Β The Ethereal Fortress remained online until 2005.