Technically,
this still *is* Axel's site, but due to unavoidable circumstances (let's say
Axel's been letting his eyes stray to where they shouldn't have) he has passed
over the responsibilities of administering this site to his friend Myssa. Ano, Asuka-san, can I?
Actually, I don't really know where to start. A year and a half or so ago, I was a bored college girl, who didn't know what fanfiction was, and was even less aware that there were whole online communities devoted to writing fanfics about particularly well-known anime series. The idea was intriguing to me, to say the least, so on a whim I started poking around the Net for a, shall we say, "sample" of these kinds of stories. It took several false starts (at the time, I was just taking my first steps into the foreign world we now take for granted called the Internet), I happened to chance upon a story that was about an anime series that had peaked my interest. That anime was, of course, Neon Genesis Evangelion.
It's kind of funny. Back then, I never entertained the thought of writing any type of fanfiction, much more administering a website (or in my case, websites) that focused primarily on such. In other words, I wanted to see, but didn't want to participate.
But, I found myself liking what I read. So much so, that I wrote the author to tell him how much I enjoyed his story. He wrote back, and told me he was glad that I appreciated what he wrote as much as I did. On his urging, I started to look for more stories of the type that he had written... In fact, he even suggested two specific stories to me, and gave me the means to contact the authors of those fanfics, should I happen to like those too. And I *did* like those stories. Excited, I wrote to those two fanfic authors, and... And, well, the rest is history as they say.
The story I first read? Well, it was this little piece called "I Will Not Run Away". The author? Andrew Huang, of course. And the stories he recommended to me? Well, both were written by authors who would soon become my close friends... One is Alain Gravel, or Rakna to the greater world in general, writer of (the infamous, some might say) the epic-length story "The One That I Love Is...". And the other, as you might guess, is Guillaume Lebigot, more famously know as Axel Terizaki, writer of "The Child of Love".
Moo... Has it been that long? It seems only yesterday...
You know, it's funny... I never pictured myself administering a site, much more *this* site. This is Axel's baby, after all, and, despite being more web-wise than when I first wrote to Axel and Alain, I find myself intimidated by the sheer complexity of this place, not to mention a little anxious; there's this constant fear that I might not be able to live up to Axel's expectations when he gave me responsibility for Asuka's Notebook. Still, I'd like to try, so that I can prove that to myself I'm worthy of his trust. After all the kindness he's given me over the past year, I think that it's just right for me to do my best. For him. For Alain. And for myself.
Oh, one more thing...
The "Rei" part of my webname is a derivative of my real surname, Reyes. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the EVA character Ayanami Rei, though it wouldn't be too surprising if people thought of it that way, considering that I *am* an EVA fanfic writer. Just wanted everyone to know...