Starlight Palace originally began as a Bishoujo Senshi Sailormoon fansite in December of 1996. When I think about the way the site originally looked, I am amazed at how far I have come. The original site was hosted by America Online and was little more than one of those endless single pages of text and images. In the Sailormoon fanfiction I was working on at the time, the main character, "Dejana," lived in a secret hideaway that I called Starlight Palace...so for my first website, I chose the title "Princess Dejana's Starlight Palace."
The original Starlight Palace eventually grew to include all the usual Sailormoon fansite stuff: fanfiction, images, information, etc. Eventually I wanted to include more topics other than Sailormoon. So, I changed the layout of the Sailormoon site and renamed it as "Midnight in the Moon Garden." That site became a subsite of the new Dejana's Starlight Palace 2.0, which would include fanstuff about other things I was interested in. Or so I thought.
I have always had a problem with having big plans for my website and never finishing any of them because I get distracted by other plans. There were lots of things I wanted to add to Starlight Palace, and I wanted to make them all as developed as my Sailormoon area, Midnight in the Moon Garden. Unfortunately, eventually I had to face the fact that that was never going to happen. I was in college and had little time for website maintenance as it is. In addition, there are a million fansites out there about any topic you might care to name. Anything I could do, someone else could do better. So, I decided to remake Starlight Palace into a site mainly for my own creations: My writing, artwork, and other programs and videos I was making. It was a difficult decision. Starlight Palace had been born as a fansite and to follow this path would mean getting rid of a lot of stuff that had been part of the site since it was created. However, I believe I made the right choice.
This decision led to Starlight Palace 3.0, activated in March of 2001. It still included stuff from the Sailormoon area of my old site, but only the stuff that I personally created, such as fanfics and fanart. This went well for a while as I hardly ever had to update anything. Eventually, my declining hit counter informed me that people are just not that interested in personal sites. I was not producing enough new work to keep visitors coming to Starlight Palace. In addition, when I looked at the gorgeous graphical layouts on many of the excellent fansites out there I felt that my web design skills were dying. Also, I missed the fun of anime fansite creation.
All these factors inspired me to once again remake Starlight Palace into its previous incarnation, version 4.0, activated March 17 2003. This was my first attempt at a full-graphics layout involving fancy image editing and interesting code. At the same time, I was basically returning to the concept I was working around with Starlight Palace 2.0, which was to use DSP as a home base for developed sites on different topics.
Unfortunately, I still didn't have the time for that kind of thing. Before I knew it, I had graduated from college, and the server DSP was hosted on was taken offline. On the positive side, as a member of the workforce I'm finally making enough money to make an old dream a reality: The purchase of my very own domain name and webserver. At long last, I have a .net address.
Now that DSP is back online, I have lots of big plans for its subsites. I am hoping that if I can limit myself to one or two projects at a time, I will actually be able to finish my ideas as polished sites. Once again I will be creating separate fansites to be linked to DSP, beginning with my current project, Tears of Pearls. I am thrilled to be making fansites again and I hope you will enjoy them!
As I start this, I wonder why the heck I'm making a page about me in the first place. I mean, who really cares? Is anyone going to read this? Does anyone actually read "About Me" pages? Well, anyway....
If you hadn't guessed, Dejana Talis isn't my real name, but I'd like it to be, someday. I hate my real name so I'm not going to say what it is. In December of 2003 I graduated from the College of St. Scholastica (CSS), in my hometown, majoring in Computer Information Systems (CIS). After graduation I was hired into the internal computer support department of a large international corporation, and have been working there since January of 2004.
I joined the Internet universe in September of 1996, and started making websites around December of that year. Several huge overhauls and server changes later, my website has finally evolved into Dejana's Starlight Palace on its own domain!
So, what else? Well, I am of course an obsessed anime fan. I started with Sailormoon but I've expanded my horizons to include many other varied anime. Also, I enjoy reading, drawing, and writing stories. I'm crazy about fantasy/sci-fi stuff, as well as the medieval (wow I can't believe I figured out how to spell that) and Renaissance periods of history. Above all, what is most important to me in life is my friends. I don't have many, but the few best friends I have are everything to me and I would do anything for any of them. Also I am proud to say I am the roots of a tree of anime fans that keeps growing, and now stretches across the border into another country.
One last thing. Even if you never know it, because I usually keep the evidence well hidden, I am the strangest person you could ever meet. I swear it. I don't mean the weirdest, or the craziest, or any of those things....just the strangest. Think about that before you consider arguing that fact with me.
That's about it for now. If you really want to get to know me, I'm often to be found on the message boards at ASMR.