one Tuesday afternoon in October, the year 2002...
...a young lady sat down and uploaded to a free webhosting provider a little website she'd been working on for the last nine months. When the last file had finally finished transferring, she burst into a wide grin and scuttled off to announced the opening of her Arwen fansite, which was at the time known as Angel Descended, a less-than-stellar title suggested by her then-girlfriend.
Over the years, the fansite grew and grew, hopped from web address to web address before finding its final home at Middle-earth, and was given a much better name halfway through all this. And then, somehow, in the blink of an elven eye, Vespera had been online for ten years!
ten years and counting!
So...wow. Ten years. Ten whole years!
It's kind of terrifying, really. Ten years is a long time, and so much has happened since Vespera opened. The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy has long since finished, two amazing prequel fan films were released, a hotly debated musical appeared, The Hobbit celebrated its 75th anniversary with second breakfasts being had across the globe, and now we're looking forward to another sojourn back to Middle-earth in the form of The Hobbit trilogy with Peter Jackson once again at the helm. And let's not forget the posthumous release of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin.
Through all these amazing happenings, Vespera has been online, come update droughts or spyware debacles. And it's not yet "static" or "completed", and is definitely not going to be so any time soon! As long as our amazing fandom keeps expanding in the many, many ways it has over the past decade, Vespera too will keep changing and growing. I still hold Arwen Undómiel as one of the fictional characters dearest to my heart, I still love working on this site, and perhaps convincing other folks to love her as much as I do.
with gratitude...
Some thanks are in order, I think. Firstly to Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, for creating a beautiful, tragical, alive world in which I have lost myself time after time, and for creating Arwen herself. To Peter Jackson and to Liv Tyler, who brought her to life on the silver screen ten years ago now.
Much gratitude to Mary and her belated website RosieSamFrodo.Com, who offered to host Vespera the very same day it was opened; thank you for providing this little project with a home for five awesome years -- who knows if it would have even had made it through its first year without RSF.Com!
Super special thanks to my amazing affiliates who have come and gone over the years, especially to the lovely Nahid for her kindness!
Love and thanks to Blynk for the support and love in the early years (sing out loud; I've still got your back, sister), and Etienne for putting up with me for so long, too (melinyet, orenya). HUGE hugs and love to my neechan and my Wolf, who keep me sane when there's precious little sanity to be found in me.
And, of course, thank you so very, very much to everyone who has visited Vespera over the years, to everyone who has contributed in any way to the website, to those who have linked to it, given it awards, or whathaveyou. You are amazing, and you should always feel amazing! Gûr nîn glassui! Hantanyel órenyallo!
Let's aim for another ten years, shall we? ♥
~ Evenstar
30/9/2012