Last Updated: 21/09/2023

Shrines

"Fandom culture is a culture of high emotion that leads to all kinds of very specific modes of textual productivity and social interaction." — biz barkley. (understanding snapewives: religion, fandom, sociology & erotica)

What is a shrine?

My Shrines

I am so excited to share my two shrines! I'm sure you can see my skills at web stuff sharply increase over the last few months lol.

Kimi to Boku (Anime series)

Wile E Coyote (Animated Character)

In Progress

Wile E. Coyote (American Animated Character)

Looney Tunes: Back in Action (Live-Action Hybrid Animated Movie)

Puppets, Puppeteers, and Puppetry (Storytelling Medium)

What is a shrine?

**Above:** An example shrine for Yukko, a character from the XXXholic animanga series. It's called "Butterfly," and was created by Saya from silverblood.net.

A shrine is described by Fanlore.org as,

A small website dedicated to a single character. These were very common fanworks in online fandoms during the 1990s. Pairing shrines, devoted to a particular pairing, also exist.

These fanpages or "shrines" were created primarily at a time where we didn't have fandom wikis or simulcasting and instant translations. They were a digital repository for series-related news, speculation, character discussion, and even hosted fanworks created by the webmaster or other fans within their circles.

Now that fandom is so heavily commodified and normalised, there isn't the same kind of demand for these sites as the 24/7 entertainment news cycle continues to churn out all the information you could ever need, but there's something... Different about seeing a fan's lovingly crafted HTML page, as what they choose to include or exclude will say a whole lot more about why they're passionate about something than just a verbatim Wikipedia page. I think with the centralization of the internet on websites like Tumblr and Twitter and the loss of those old Geocities sites and Yahoo Groups the act of carving out a designated space to talk about your favorite thing ever isn't quite lost, but nowhere near as common or popular as it was fifteen years ago.

There is a fantastic site called Amassment.org, an older site dedicated to building, sharing, and hosting shrines and fanlistings. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated since 2017, and the Amassment Twitter hasn’t been updated since 2022, nor has there been any new posts on the forum since 2022 either. The site is still up and available to browse, though many of the links are dead/broken.

So what do you put in a shrine?

When people say you can put anything in a shrine, you really can put anything. However, I've always found that really unhelpful and leads to decision paralysis. Here's a list of stuff I add to mine (with a focus on character or fictional series shrines):

Character profiles and/or fun facts.

Actor, voice actor, puppeteer, musician, artist, or other creator information

Screenshots, official art, and merch.

Other movies, music, or media that relates to the character

Your own fanart! I know it's a scary thought, but you made it out of love and that alone is enough to appreciate!

Shoutouts to fanartists! Double check that they're okay with you hosting their art, and always make sure to link back to their actual profile (not just Google or deviantArt as a blanket credit)

I am by no means an expert, I've only just made my first one recently, but it's something that everyone on Neocities seems to be talking about with little directions, instructions, or finished examples!