Naia's 5th Anniversary Special!

Founded late-July/early-August 1997 at this very location!

    I know I don't usually celebrate page anniversaries, but one day I noticed my fifth was coming up and couldn't believe it myself!  This is a big enough anniversary to warrant a special, don't you agree?  So here it is, complete with trivia and a contest you can enter!
    For those of you who have been with me all along, I'd like to thank you for your support.  For those who have found me since, this is your chance to know where it all began :-) .
    I had no idea what I'd even put on a web page when I first came online.  I just knew I wanted one, and that I didn't want to bore people with some dinky page about myself.  I was running a club at the time called Backstabber Preservation Society (a fan club where Khyron's fans made up names and pretended to be T'sentrati. . . think Starfleet, but with no budget :-P ), and Naia Zifu was my name for the club.  I'd invented a family and backstory for her, which I thought much more interesting than my real life, so in late July of '97 I registered this as her own personal page.
    By early August, the first (primitive) version of this page was up. . . and yes, it was honestly one page at the beginning!  It was written entirely in character, with no mention of my real self whatsoever, leading many people to either think Naia was real, or that I was deluded and really thought I was her :-P .  Its first incarnation had a horrid bright-blue BG, a tiny biography of Naia-chan, and exactly three small sections on her interests: Khyron, "Gargoyles", and Pizzicato Five.  There were very few pics, and the ones there were, were tiny for space (Geocities gave out like 2MB then, if I remember).  Slowly I added content to both her bio and her interest sections, and it expanded to two pages.  Then came Max's shrine, the first real shrine of the page, attributed to Katherine, whom I treated as if we were totally separate people.  That was an illusion that would last. . . *thinks* a couple of years, I think. . . until I got sick of explaining it to people and started putting up my own profile as well.  Eventually, this page will feature little else but shrines, once I get off my lazy bum and enshrine the "Gargoyles" characters I like most.  I'm also considering mini-shrines to some characters I like, but know too little about or have too few pics of to make a full shrine.

Meaningless Trivia

• The name Naia Zifu came from a very unorthodox Scrabble game we used to play; anything counted so long as you could invent a pronunciation!  I gathered possibles from that game, and Alex helped me decide the best name.  *hugs him in gratitude*
• But I was on a long car trip when I wrote Naia's history, and didn't have the name list with me, so when I gave her a family on a whim, I invented theirs by writing down random letters (hence the long, odd names).
• Naia's appearance is an idealized version of myself; I based her face on mine (to the point of drawing with a mirror), but gave her the blue hair I've always wanted and a more ideal body type.  I'm more squeamish about being seen in glasses, however :-P .
• When I try to dye my real hair blue, it always turns green instead :-( .  (Anyone know a good quality deep-blue wig in Naia's style, or how to make one?)
• At one point I'd assigned "Robotech" voice-actors to Naia's family.  Quelt'san would've sounded like Zor Prime, while Kaeisuan would've sounded like Max.  (Maybe I should've told Cam Clarke that the time I wrote him!)
• Although Naia's Nifty T'sentrati Web Page began five years ago, my fics page is about a year younger, when the cult fame of my first fic inflated my ego into wanting one.
• Though I've been writing forever in one way or another, the first fic I put online was "Pretty T'sentrati Sailor Naia", based on a joke about how Quelt'san liked to see (and play with) Naia in a Mercury costume.
• At the time I wrote PTSN, the only real BSSM I'd seen was a R movie fansub a friend gave me. . . but you probably could guess that just by reading, since I think it really shows :-P .
• I'm infamous for taking bad, obscure in-jokes too far!  The joke with Taiki and Koduck came from a PBEM I used to run, from some quest Kunzite wanted to go on, but never did.  I joked he should take the Lights for the novelty of three people named Kou looking for Koduck, and it's persisted ever since.
• Honestly, I don't care much about RT or BSSM anymore, as shows.  It's just my affection (obsession!) for certain characters that keeps my interest.
• My secret for writing good fics is that I don't write about any characters 1) I don't own most or (preferably) all the series for, in case I have to reference, and 2) whose mind and soul I don't feel I can get into (for more realism).
• My favourite thing to do in fics and drawings is to play with characters' physical appearances. Mostly I have valid reasons, like to show changes or inner turmoil a character is going through, but playing with looks is fun for me, too, both fictional and IRL :-) .

How Well Do You Know Naia?

1. Naia's eyes are: a) blue  b) green  c) grey d) who can tell with the aqua tint you draw her in?
2. Her height at full size is: a) 6m  b) 10m  c) 12m  d) big enough to squish me underfoot
3. Her husband's name is: a) Khyron  b) Kaeisuan  c) Quelt'san d) who cares? she should leave him for Magdomilla, anyway!
4. Her favourite colour is: a) green  b) violet  c) dark blue  d) what colour is her hair again?
5. The type of ship she commanded was: a) Nupetiet-Vernitzs  b) Queadol-Magdomilla  c) Thuverl-Salan  d) O_O who can remember names like this?
6. Her favourite genre of movie is: a) romance  b) action  c) low-budget science-fiction  d) something with cheddar
7. Her feelings on humans are: a) likes them  b) lukewarm  c) dislikes most of them  d) improves a bit over time
8. Her job on Earth is: a) cosmetologist  b) teacher  c) journalist  d) T'sentrati rights activist
9. The town she runs in SITC is: a) Paranka  b) Sesannu  c) Baza Godai  d) T'sen-Mot (or at least, she was for creating it. . .)  *promptly gets beaten for saying so*
10. In FF, Naia (surprisingly) declared Nyankomago a: a) mother  b) friend  c) sister  d) no longer a micronian

Here For the Contest?

    Don't want to enter the contest?  Then what are you still doing here?   Go home!