sitely

Rose of May first came to life in the September of 2003, as my very first website to ever be fully written in English. It started off as nothing but a nameless page holding an essay on how I could relate to Tifa, the whole point behind which was to join this particular webclique called I Am: for that, you needed to choose a fictional character you identified yourself with and create an online page justifying your choice, and so I did.

After reading my own article countless times, I felt the sudden urge to build an actual shrine to Tifa Lockheart: however, I was quite anxious about exposing my both my fluency (or possible lack thereof) in English and knowledge on Final Fantasy VII and this particular character to the whole world. Eventually, and despite not having played the game in the longest time, this fear was overcome and I decided to get this place a proper name. In the meantime, I had already changed the layout once and added some doujinshi, as well as a very primitive "site" section. Along with its third "layout", once again in Div Layers, this shrine was baptized "Rose of May" (almost became "Fiery Rose") and I officially started replaying the game and writing actual content, in order to at least achieve the reputation of "mini-shrine". However, it soon became more than that, and, on October 7th, around fifteen days after its initial launch, Ari of MidgarNU, owner of a Reno shrine I had requested to affiliate with, offered to host Rose of May. Around that time, I met Jessi of My Light, who not only accepted to affiliate with me but also made this shrine's fourth layout (and many others after that, all credited in the Archive), which officially commemorated the move to the new host. Up until then, I had only worked with GeoCities, and I am very thankful to Ari for hosting Rose of May for around one year and a half.

As this shrine grew in size and importance, I gradually started losing interest in it: life took over and I really didn't have the required time or motivation anymore. Ever since its first birthday on September 22nd, 2004, Rose of May remained untouched. When Midgar.NU had a downtime in the beginning of 2005, I didn't even bother to move this shrine to my own domain. Rose of May was gone for good, or so you all thought: until I decided to bring it back to life, with fully rewritten content and a brand new style.

After all, this shrine is and probably always will be my best work, and I couldn't just let it die: I had promised myself not to, anyway. I'd like to thank all the people (visitors, affiliates, friends) who always supported me, this website and its definitive comeback. As of today, all I plan to do is keep Rose of May up, with no big future changes. I'd be happy if you enjoyed visiting this shrine half as much as I enjoyed building it.

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