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I Made This!
by xgirl
A Final Update MessageSigning Off on May 20, 2003Well, fellow fans and awesome supporters — the official end has come for me and this website. With this update, I have finally finished all of my TXF reviews and can therefore call my project complete. I've also made some minor changes to the layout, paying "homage" to the monochrome frames design that I had up for a year before one of my previous free hosting services pulled the plug on the "free" part. Further on that point, this site will remain up for as long as I can get free webhosting, but I'm no longer planning any additional material for it. [Although — since part of the reason I developed the site in the first place was to learn the techniques of website creation for my RL endeavours (and I do it from scratch — I'm one of the few out there who actually "hand writes" her HTML code), I may come back and fiddle with the design if I get so inspired. That's not extremely likely, considering the effort that I just expended on making these few small changes to the layout (this site has simply grown into too many pages!), but anything's possible.] Anyway — regardless of whether you were an xgirlsfanfic list "charter member" or just a regular visitor, I would like to express my profound thanks for your support. It was easy to maintain my interest in this project when the show was still on (or, more importantly, when it was still watchable in my eyes), but it's been a struggle for me over the past couple of years. Each time that I thought about posting a message along the lines of "I'm so done — sorry about the incomplete set of reviews", I felt a subsequent surge of "no, no, no, that's not right". I never fooled myself into thinking that it would be a life and death thing for any of you if I were to quit, but I do realize that some of you are in a different phase of fandom than I am. Basically, I didn't want my lack of enthusiasm to affect your enjoyment of what I had promised to deliver. For one thing, I used to visit a couple of review sites on a regular basis and recall feeling disappointed when the reviewer ultimately didn't complete the entire collection. So to all of you who have hung around (through some pretty dry periods, I must say) — wow, you may not have known it, but you pushed, pulled, and dragged me to the finish line. Visitors from Around the WorldAs some of you may remember, I had to find myself a new web stats/counter service several weeks ago. In saying goodbye, I want to share one particular statistic that has continually amazed me. From March 2001 through April 2003, this site registered hits from eighty-two countries, ranging from Argentina to Zimbabwe. The person from Zimbabwe didn't exactly spend hours entranced with my creations, but the list of exotic locales that have generated hits against this site just proves how "connected" the world is these days. In terms of visitor host domains, by far the most intriguing one I've ever seen listed is quantico.usmc.mil. Curious animal that I am, I found out that this is the home of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab website... and would you believe that they have a set of documentation called the "X-Files"?? You Can Still Email MeOutside of doing away with free forwarding, my email service hasn't changed too much since I first signed up for it in 1998. Obviously, I can't make any guarantees, but I anticipate being "reachable" via xgirl@mindless.com for some time yet. Feedback of any sort is still appreciated, and it's always nice to reminisce with a fellow fan, so don't hesitate to drop me a line if you get the urge. Anyway, to all of my past, present, and future visitors: may all your obsessions be as fulfilling as TXF has been for me. You'll see some evidence of moaning and groaning and complaining on this site about the eventual degeneration of the show, but I don't regret having been a fan when it was great. At its best, there was much to like about The X-Files. That's the way I'd prefer to remember the show and my involvement with it.
Stories, Reviews, Articles & ImagesThis website is a permanent archive of my on-line involvement with The X-Files, an approximate four year period dating from 1999 through 2003. The majority of the content was established in the first couple of years; since 2001, I've been mostly labouring over the completion of a full set of episode reviews. Originally designed to house my fanfic, this website offers my stories in various formats, along with side notes regarding how they came to be written. If you aren't familiar with my stuff, I suggest you head straight to my fiction page and go from there. All stories are available in plain text (the best way to save them if you want to print them out), in HTML (web pages formatted for visitors browsing the site) and in two eBook formats (one being an HTML executable file that you can download and browse off-line with full graphics). Aside from that, there's a section of non-fiction material with a few articles about TXF fanfic writers, readers and the whole phenomenon of "feedback" that you can access from my non-fiction page. They were a lot of fun to put together and a bit of a hoot to read, if I do say so myself!
For those of you interested in creativity of the "picture" kind, I've got a series of custom images that can be found on my images page. Essentially a series of photo manipulations to accompany my stories, I've also turned some of them into desktop wallpapers designed to appeal to varying tastes. One final note for those who are curious about the quote at the bottom of my pages. "That which fascinates us is by definition true" is something that Arthur Dales said in The Unnatural. I think it sums up not only Mulder's obsessions, but our own as well — in the fanfic world and beyond. Main Site/Backup SiteMy mirror site at topcities was pulled in late January 2004. (Don't know why. Can't find out.) The site that you are currently viewing will be the only one that will be available from now on; unfortunately, I'm not motivated enough to go searching for another free service provider. Technical MattersThis site has been optimized for viewing with the latest versions of Internet Explorer, at a minimum of 800x600 resolution (I specifically test at the medium font size setting). For the sake of seeing the images at their best, it would help if your monitor can display at least 16-bit high color. (The pictures would appear to be pretty darn ugly otherwise.) Every browser has its quirks and I've seen the results myself in terms of how my site views on different ones, but I've given up trying to address the "variations". Suffice to say, when it comes to positioning, spacing and/or fonts, you may be seeing something other than what I've intended if your browser isn't a current version of IE.
One request for those who want to archive: use the plain text versions rather than the HTML pages. You will find links to these here:
Crossing Lines (83K) As a small measure of thanks for the hard work undertaken by the people out there who thought enough of my stories to archive them, I'd like to salute the individuals behind the following sites. (As far as I can tell, they're no longer around or have changed their focus — in any case, I no longer have any up-to-date links for them.)
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(By the way, the "exotic locales" also apply to email. During these four years, I've had people contact me from such faraway places as Australia, Malaysia, Israel, Lithuania, Sri Lanka, Germany, Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden and Finland.)
