Wow

The premise: a handful of mystical treasures are scattered across a land from their original post, bringing darkness everywhere. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy journeys with a girl in touch with nature and her pet bird, and a strong, broadsword-wielding older man, to recover these treasures.

And guess what? I’m not describing PoDW!

There’s this anime I’ve caught on TV a few times–I’d never really paid attention past seeing that the art’s pretty. It’s called Deltra Quest or something along those lines. Instead of Ren’s pouch and the secret niche on the Wraith, there’s a magic belt that the main character wears that the seven scattered jewels are fit into. They’ve found the first two as of today’s episode.

I simultaneously am amused and annoyed by shows that completely rip off the PoDW premise, most likely inadvertently, and then get a lot more attention than PoDW ever did.

Just for the record

I’M FEMALE!

I swear, I am a 25-year-old human being of the female variety. It’s simultaneously funny and frustrating that, despite different indicators across the site that point to the webmaster being a girl, people still make that mistake. I understand that my name, which appears at the bottom of every page in the disclaimer, is one that many western readers won’t have come across–that’s because it’s Indian, as am I. It’s a very common Indian female first name. Run the name of Smitha through Google Images if you don’t believe me.

But I also don’t understand why people assume a webmaster is male if the gender isn’t immediately obvious (and I HAVE had it in the FAQ for several years, actually–“Your site’s awesome, man!“/”Thank you! But I’m female, actually”). I think the content I wrote for the site years ago is most decidedly effeminate in tone (just click “the old blog” in the category/tag list and read the older entries to see for yourself), though I’m not very girly by nature and my writing style’s become less superfluous and more focused as the years have gone on. Occasionally, though, if I gush about something geeky or just awesome, there’s seriously no way to think I’m male.

Want more proof? Here’s me in a print club booth with some friends, and with the other female cast members of this year’s musical (added 05apr2007 because the previous image wasn’t that flattering; I’m in the purple fleece to the lower right). See? Totally female.

I hope this clears things up, though I don’t doubt that people will continue to make this mistake in the future. I just wish people wouldn’t assume when there’s no reason at all to make that assumption.

Reflection

I’ve decided to go ahead and import all the entries from the old “obsessive PoDW fangirl heyday” blog (and I finished as of 2:45 AM, early Monday! Thank god we have Monday off). I’m faced with the burden of formatting and publishing each one individually, to add a subject line and remove excessive HTML and the like (and remove the name of former employers which I stupidly referenced by name)…not bothering with broken image tags or old e-mail addresses, though. The only way to contact me these days is through the contact page, which I think/hope you all know.

Referencing the “obsessive fangirl” bit from above…there are some truly choice (and by choice, I mean horribly humiliating) things I wrote 5-6 years ago. My whole online writing style back then was a lot sillier and online-dorky, and I actually wrote a post in September 2001 saying that I would gladly take Dark Water over Osama Bin Laden any day (I’ve made it a private post for now, so nobody can read it and laugh at me, and while I decide if I should delete it or save it for a laugh sometime way down the road)–but I guess that’s part of growing up, right? I’ve gone through a lot since then (college graduation, starting to work, moving abroad, having friends and relatives pass away, other sobering/maturing experiences), and I’m just five years older–everyone’s always growing and changing, though, so I really shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I’m just really self-conscious, and also really critical of unhealthily obsessive fans that give us more well-rounded fans a bad name…and I’m now realizing that I used to be one of those fans. I guess I need to lighten up, though.

Anyway…I’m debating now about formatting and importing all my old website updates (from the updates.html pages)…but I’m thinking that’ll come later, after the more important stuff goes up. Right now, all that’s left is putting up the updates that have been amassing in my e-mail inbox for the last year, and the site will be ready to go live. If you hadn’t noticed already (which I’m guessing is nearly all of you, because I don’t think anyone actually visits this blog–hah!), this is the new layout, but the links don’t work. For the two or three of you who do visit–surprise!

deviantART fanart

I have no idea why I never thought to do an image search on dA for fanart before–because it turns out there’s quite a bit!

Some of my favorite examples:

– These two casting images (heroes, villains) by wulvesblood
Ren and Tula surrounded by dark water by risingzan
really bright and stylistically creative group image by Sweet-Babboo
Niddler by SquirrelHunter17
painted portrait of Mer by dan-arbro
adorable Ren sketch by allegory 1107
lanceart’s gallery, with various sketches and even inked pages for a possible PoDW comic!

There’s a lot of other good stuff, too–this is just a small sampling. Search for “pirates of dark water” or “pirates of darkwater.” It makes me want to do some PoDW fanart–it’s been a long, long time since I’ve done any personal artwork.

Bulgarian info

There is every chance that this could be outdated–I’m finally on the verge* of putting the site online, but all that remains is ironing out the issues with the WordPress template for the index blog, and actually putting up all the content updates. Maria Deninska very kindly sent me an e-mail in November that I’m only now putting up, and in it, she passed on the great news that PoDW is on the air in Bulgaria! (That would explain the large number of hits from Bulgaria that this site has gotten. I was really curious about that.)

PoDW is airing on the national channel, Kanal 1, during the JETIX animation programming block. There’s more info at the Bulgarian-language website for the TV channel. The series is on every Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 AM, Eastern European time. However, I just checked it today and didn’t see the name listed. I’m not at all familiar with Bulgarian, though, so I could be mistaken.

Here’s an article on PoDW written for its 10th anniversary by Nenko Genov, a big fan in Bulgaria who I’m friends with and who’s sent some really good contributions for the site over the years.

* “on the verge” = “another 6 months from now”…sorry it’s taken so long! I’m the webmaster and graphic designer of my prefecture’s JET group, and I’ve had a lot on my plate lately