Welcome to a little page dedicated to the Starlight Pops second anniversary! Yay! I know it's not much this year, but in all honesty this is all that I had the time (and the creative energy) to hack out this time around. ^^;;

You may be thinking, what's with all the green and black? No, this isn't the Halloween Special, sillies. ^^ I just happen to love the combination of green and black and white, and it is a nice refreshing change from the normal pink and purple and white, isn't it? Plus I was dead-set on using one of my all-time favorite pics of the Starlights for this special, and green and black happen to be the colors that go with the pic. (*points to the upper right corner*) Look, aren't they pretty? Don't they look like they could kick your arse?

Anyway, this lil' page is just my shameless excuse to wax nostalgic about the past year at Pops. The biggest change was that the site moved to paid hosting and became part of Kinmoku.net in August. Since the move, this site has seen its monthly hits (and its monthly bandwidth consumption) nearly doubled. Plus, the entire site was also re-designed to make it ultra-spartan, clean-looking, and fast-loading. You never have and you never will find incredibly beautiful, advanced, or complicated graphics and coding at Starlight Pops. I have decided that it's best to keep such an incredibly text-intensive site in the simple layout style that it has now, to make reading and browsing easier for visitors.

As for other major changes... Blah, I remember spending my entire Thanksgiving break scanning, editing, and uploading doujinshi pics! But apparently the effort paid off since the doujinshi gallery has gotten a lot of praise and popularity. The Live Concert section was redesigned and filled with tons of desktop wallpapers, video clip downloads, and KiSS dolls for everyone's enjoyment. Most of the text-intensive articles in the Harmony and the Melody sections were revised to include images, so that the unbroken blocks of text wouldn't be too overwhelming. And finally, due to the suggestions of actually honest and critical website reviewers, I ditched the long-maligned aqua highlight in the links throughout the site and replaced it with a simple underline. (Well, except for in the gallery section and a few of the lyrics files, which I haven't found time to go through and change yet.)

Oh yeah, and I myself managed to produce a grand total of only two Starlights fanfics this year... But readers tell me that the wait for Kinmokusei Story was worth it. And yes, the sequel is underway.

But that's all right, because an amazing range of talented authors and artists have contributed tons of fanfics and fanart to this site, bringing the archive totals up to 86 fics and 182 works of art. Unless I've messed up my counting... And yes, I do keep a running tally on the site map.

Speaking of numbers... The Gallery of Starlights images has 2042 images in it as of today! (Again, unless I messed up my counting or my addition...) Images have been constantly added throughout the year, and I bet y'all can guess that the gallery will continue to grow with time.

But has every section of the site been growing? Er, no. I haven't cranked out any new Soda Pops articles for a year, with the exception of the annual Halloween Special.

When Starlight Pops was first uploaded on May 28th two years ago, it was a dinky little site hosted for free on Angelfire and consisting of only a few HTML files divided into three sections - Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm. I even originally spelled "rhythm" wrong, but you can see today that I like the spelling "rhythym" so much that the directory name is still spelled that way. M'eh, it's more symmetrical my way. ^_^ And from the first week the site existed, I began my habit of updating at least bi-weekly with new material to add every time; using this lil' method, I've made this site grow into the behemoth that it is today. First I added a couple of manga scans in the Harmony section and then the image collection began to grow until it demanded a directory of its own; then I started adding a few multimedia files here and there, and finally the Live Concert section was born.

Throughout it all, however, this site would NEVER have grown as large as it is today without the constant constributions of others. Visitors submit fanart, fanfics, commentary and criticisms, guest articles, new and insightful information, Musical Déjà Vu additions, and even gallery images without fail every week. This site is not as much my creation as it is a Starlights-centric hodgepodge of various forms of fan worship created by myself and many, many others. Through this site I've also met more than a few dear online friends who share my love of the Starlights (and of Sailor Moon and of fanficcing and of many other things...)

So I basically owe a BIG FLAMING GROVELING-ON-MY-KNEES THANK YOU to:
Every artist who has contributed fanart,
Every author who has contributed fanfics,
Every site owner credited throughout the galleries who has so kindly given me permission to use their scans or screencaps,
Every person who has contributed desktop wallpaper or KiSS dolls or video clips or anything else to the multimedia archive,
Every fan who has ever contributed extra commentary or information to my original articles,
Every visitor who has helped me correct and refine my information,
And every wonderful soul who has given me compliments, support, and honest criticisms over the past two years.

You don't have to look around this site very much to see how much of the content isn't originally created by me, but has been generously donated by someone else. I'm very proud of all the information I've written, articles I've created, fanfics I've authored, and special features that I've included in this site. But this site could never have grown as large as it has without all the incredible contributions from others... So thanks, guys. I owe y'all big time.

And I do hope that Starlight Pops will continue to grow and expand throughout the coming year. I want this site to be a place where all Starlights fans can contribute something, and express their fandom somehow. And I have all of you guys to thank for making it just that over the past two years, and for, I'm certain, continuing to keep that vision in mind in the future.

Thanks for taking the time to read this self-gratifying page.

~ Kotetsu, 5/28/02

Seiya: Ummmm... We don't get to say anything?

Taiki: I'd like to add that I am very impressed by the way that the webmistress has managed to constantly write throughout this site over the past two years and never once has she ever used the word "woot."

Yaten: I like me. My goal for next year is to have more picture of me in the gallery.

Mr. Bigglesworth: Meeeeeeeeeoooooooowwwwww....

101 Baby Llamas: Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!

Fonchito Guiterez: The problem with the past, hombres, is that--

All Three Lights: (in unison) It never dies.