It is customary for the President of the United States to give a "State of the Union" speech, and this usually happens right around the first or second week in February. It is a time when most people who are under the age of 20 turn off their TVs and decide that it's a good time to take a good book and go for a walk. Who am I kidding? Most teens probably fli[p the channel over to 4, plug in their Playststions and entertain themselves in ways that invite blisters on their thumbs.

What you gamesters miss is the President of the United States giving the Congress and the people of the country his assessment on the way things are going in the country. A report card for the year for the United States, if you will. In this speech, the president will remark about his policies, how they have or will change the lives of people. There might be an example or two taken from the audience. People instrumental to the policies will be pointed out, thanked, and praised for their work. The President will outline what he wants the Congress to tackle next, and where he wants the country to go. It can be a very rewarding speech.

Then there are State of the Union speeches given under the gloom of crisis or hard times. In 1991, President George Bush gave a State of the Union speech while US troops were in the first phases of Operation Desert Storm. Bush spoke about how proud he was of the men and women serving in the US military, and he was confident that they would prevail in the task he had set before them. In 1997, President Bill Clinton had to give a State of the Union speech under the shadow of the Lewinsky scandal which had just broke a couple of weeks before. In 1998, Clinton again gave a State of the Union speech, this time under the pressure of facing the body that on the one part had impeached him, and the other part that was in the process of conducting the trial for those impeachable offenses.

By now you are probably wondering why I have brought this up. In a recent editorial, I discussed the ideas raised by some former members of the Sailormoon online community that they themselves could and would bring down the community. They promised that something big would happen during the spring of last year, and I imagine a few people waited to see what earth-shattering event would take place. I did, out of curiosity.

But the appointed date came and went, and nothing. And people went back to their online lives. Not me. I for one, was disappointed. Not because I wanted the Sailormoon online community to go down in flames, but because once again, someone had come to my door selling apples and delivering radishes. What little integrity I still had placed with this group vanished, and their actions over the next year were not really surprising to me. After all, they'd sold me radishes.

One thing remained from all of this, however, and that was the hypothesis that one person, or a small group could bring down the Sailormoon online community. This issue was raised in the editorial "You Say There Was a Revolution" and in it, I state my counter-thesis, that the online community is like a group of fans of a rock band, and only the passage of time can erode this kind of fandom. I still believe I am right. In YSTWAR, I proposed my theory.

Now, I will prove it.

Just by the sheer number of active links at The Luna Foundation, you can see that the Sailormoon online community is not dead. In fact, places like the Amazoness Quartet and Bunny's Tour Through the Silver Millennium are celebrating their fourth year. Next year, The Luna Foundation will be celebrating its third year, and other sites, such as A Sailor Moon Romance, and Silver Moonlight are still growing strong, an indication that there is enough creativity and interest in Sailor Moon to continue for a very long time.

However, there are sites that have left the community. Starting back in 1998, the Pit of the Lunar Inquisition was closed, followed by Apatt and Rowena Lim leaving the SM Zone and the Sailor Moon Cyber-City respectively. The Kraiders have closed their sites, and many shrine sites, such as Bow to the Glaive, and WPR sites such as STAR, Desert River Reviews, and the Needleleaf Society have closed.

It seems as though the group calling for the apocalypse of the Sailormoon online community might be right if you look at the nimber of pages closed. There were between 10 and 20 sites on the Luna Foundation's links list that were found to be closed. With that in mind, one would think the people saying that the online community was dead might be right.

But if you look at what really has happened, you not only see that the "Bitches 5" were wrong in their claim to want to dest the Sailormoon online community, you'll also see that they were wrong in their quasi-secondary goal, which was, as they put it:

"Another thing that seems to bother me about this editorial is the way that he hints that the members of c.nu and 'our ilk' or the other members of the bitches 5, had no effect on the smc. This in truth, is not true. Members of the bitches 5 helped to increase the design standards of the SMC, and certain 'suze-isms' are now commonly found on other pages. "

I maintain that in fact, no such thing occured, and I would like proof that "certain 'suze-isms'" are found anywhere. They talk about how there is now an anti-SM clique, as though the anti-SM pages out there were inspired by them. I think Marc of Chan or SPB might have something to say about that, as in the case of Illumina and Marc of Chan, they've been around since about early 1998, and so kinda pre-date this whole clique nonsense.

In fact, the people saying they were going to bring down the Sailormoon community not only admit that they were joking about the whole thing: "But with Liz's and my "huffing and puffing" there was some damage done, which in my opinion, is funny, because it started out as a joke", but they actually help me prove my point a bit later when they say: "How many of the smc pages that were popular a year ago are still up an running? How many are up but haven't been updated in a year? While companies are trying to cash in on this anime boom, it's dead, much like the craze of pokemon cards. I'm not going to say that I helped bring down pokemon, but just look around, and then say that your sailor moon community is just as strong as it was the year before."

That may be true, but the crux of the issue is not that a lot of sites have gone down, but why have they done so. Let's take a look....

From STAR:

"Okay, guys, I'm afraid I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news: due to lack of free time (school, finishing other sites, homework, field hockey, etc.) I've decided to close down S.T.A.R. temporarily."

People who were there also know that Apat and Rowena Lim left the SMC in part because of a lack of time, and a lack of interest in the series. The same was true of Bow to the Glaive.

Time plays a part in other ways as well. Take the following article from The Surfers' Guide to Good Sailor Moon Pages (March, 1999) which indicates that in some cases, people simply begin to feel that their pages are not fun anymore:

"Lately many of the so-called 'SM elite' are leaving the so-called SM community in droves. Witness how few of the popular sites are updated these days. Examples? Try Pluto Planet Power, Millennium, SM Cyber City, SM Zone, Ai Wa Energy, Eien Sailormoon, The Haruka Tenoh Shrine, Mamoru Guide , any Kraiders site. Look at their updates page and see when was the last time any of them were updated! Some of these popular web masters such as Ben Goodger of Millenium, Ruk of Turbulence, and Rowena Lim of SM Cyber City have already indicated their loss of of interest for the BSSM itself.

Why are they leaving? We can only speculate of course, the reason why anyone would want to make an SM page in the first place is generally for fun. It is fun to make a new web site, promote it, to see that counter rolling ever more rapidly, then to get fan mails, awards, recognition etc. But after all that where do you go?

After your web site has achieved as much popularity as you could ever hope to have, what next? You may want to retain or even expand on that popularity until yours is the most popular site in the so-called "SM community", but some of the popular web masters seem to want to move on instead. After all, once you have enough popularity why would you need more? It is so much of a muchness. Once you have popularity in the SM community there isn't a lot you can do with it. It's nice to have, but there is no practical value.

This trend could be a good thing or not, depends how yo look at it. On the plus side with these "SM Gods" gone, their sites no longer updated, newer sites will have a chance to shine as people drift way from the sites they normally visit regularly. There are countless of other sites that have gone unnoticed for too long. On the other side of the coin is that the SM community will be a poorer place without these "popular" sites. We have come to love and cherish some of their unique features, be they Mara's graphics, Ben's layout and java scripts, Ruk's writings, Apatt's zaniness, or Rowena's in depth information. Newer sites will have a hard time making up for those, if we are to lose them. But one shouldn't bemoan those losses. As long as new sites continue to spring up there will no doubt be a new class of "elites" with their own unique approach to web site construction to replace those who have left."

This article just made my point. With the elites of the community bowing out, there is room at the top for other sites to step in. While I won't name sites specifically, I believe that process has already begun. With the influx of interest that the new dubbed episodes give to the community, not only is the community alive, it is thriving and getting stronger. Now, not only will time be the only thing that slows the Sailormoon online community down, but it will be a LONG time before it does so.

And that is the state of the Sailormoon online community.

Artemis

(comments welcome - please email me at [email protected] and I will post your comments here as well.)