Okay.
Not to sound old, but-
I have been doing Sailormoon fanart for A Long Time™️ (and to save my sanity here- I’m speaking in internet years)
I’m a Chibimoon fan, and it has never been a popular hill to die on. People hate her, and I don’t care. I get Rini yelled in my face, and I. Do. Not. Care.
But back when I did- I had a 100% wholesome chibimoon dedicated webpage that I html coded myself (in friggen notes) and uploaded to a free FORTUNECITY site. There I displayed a wide variety of chibimoon fanart, mostly mine, but also gathered from other artists I had been desperately hoarding. All of it had been dug for over time (Netscaaaape), then the artists sought out to ask for permission to post, collected into a gallery where I made clickable thumbnails, and finally uploaded it through an ftp-
Dude- There was work involved y’all. This was pre-Pinterest, pre-Instagram, pre anything that posted photos for.
And the webpage was terrible, I can admit that, it’s fine. There was flashy fake glitter stuff, I had a guestbook and counter. Bad art made into page links, irrelevant song and poetry quotes. (But I did not have a midi play!) Most of what I was drawing back then was a weird mishmash of tracing the anime and learning anatomy, so it ain’t great, but everyone starts somewhere.
Still-
There was a lot of it. A LOT. And there still is! I’ve never stopped making it. I still draw sailor moon art all the damn time. It’s my therapy when I’m art blocked, it’s my doodles. I still upload stuff to random places (depending on what lets me) to this day.
I’ve been doing this for 20 years.
My art names have changed, but not drastically, and while thankfully improving, the art style itself isn’t all that different. I’ve been told I’m easy to spot. So yknow what I don’t get??
It’s nowhere. The art isn’t floating around online, I can’t find any of it.
I should be so embarrassed by it. It should be an absolute pain, running facefirst into that awful shit- and with so much regret. I taught myself enough html to do the absolutely ridiculous coordinates of an image map (omg the numbers) but- but it’s not anywhere!
When I haven’t looked at my old crap in awhile, sure, I’m relieved at this fact. Cause yikes (and I still have it stored, it’s good to know how dare I’ve come).
But after days of cruising through 3 hours of really, really awful sailor moon art (yes I do this), I’m kinda, mildly insulted because I should be one of those. I should be standing accounted amongst those who are shamed!
I recognize so many of the old artists that I once knew, and most of them have been plagiarized to death on overseas websites because they aren’t really around anymore. If anyone else was around at that time and into Sailor Moon, I had a very pink and very goofy ‘Child of the Crystal World’ website. It was all I knew about my Pink fucking Princess on about thirty separate page clicks.
So- best guess is- either someone is following behind me and cleaning up my online fingerprint- or (most likely) Im feeling ignored and entitled from years worth of effort and it’s gurgling back up like a clogged, invalidating garbage disposal of paint and crayons.
