November, 2003's Fucking O-Link-u! Honoree:
 Shrine to My Lover

One of the earliest inspirations for Fuckin' Otaku was in fact a site made probably sometime around 1998, when Fushigi Yuugi was still popular. One girl by the name of Sarah embraced both the FY fandom and her own insanity, and was compelled to create a Tasuki shrine like no other... a shrine to her lover, Tasuki.

The shrine has elements of humor in it, from the "click HERE to enter" splash page with an arrow pointing at Tasuki's crotch, to the other sections of the site that deal in close-to-Cats on Mars-level zaniness (but without being funny). Surely, one can't blame the girl for immersing herself in the world of anime fandom, as so many others have. But Shrine to My Lover destroys all boundaries of sanity in a few particular sections: the How We Met section and the Tasuki's Birthday Party section, both of which feature multi-chapter self-insertion fanfics and photoshopped images of Sarah (Bob) with her lover, Tasuki. Twisted. Ironically, we stumbled upon this site at the home of the Anti Crazy Sarah association. I suppose we're not the only ones to go "WTF?"

Before you go and say "Tommy, how can you be sure this isn't an attempt at humor?" let me tell you that I'm sure it is. However, that doesn't change the fact that this girl went to the trouble of photoshopping pictures of Tasuki into pictures of her dancing ballet, standing in her room, KISSING HIM, and, uh, throwing him a birthday party complete with his own hand-made birthday cake (left). Who throws their favorite anime character a birthday party? Crazy Sarah, apparently. The party scene is chock-full of other guests, including Sarah's friend Crazy Ed and Chichiri. Well, those are pretty much the only two. It's nice, though, that Chichiri came to Tasuki's birthday party; I guess the other seishi haven't come to Tasuki's birthday parties since he tried to rape Miaka in OVA 2.

So, what the fuck was she thinking? If, like plenty of other anime fans, she made this page in a haze of somethingorother that she now deeply regrets, I don't blame her. But, well, she did choose to keep the site up all these years. Now, I'm not saying that Sarah deserves our scorn, our flames, our hatred -- if anything, she deserves our sympathy and pity. Haven't we all done things we've regretted in our foolish youth? Every single one of us has dirty, dark secrets we wouldn't want the world to know about, be it some porno movies in college, a dead hooker in the river, or, in her case, a Tasuki cake and a mountain of old fanfiction. Show her mercy, and don't attack her; she's already dead on the inside.

In summation, I would like to thank Val for finding this link, the Anti Crazy Sarah Association for making it easy for Val to find the link again after I lost it, and Sarah (Bob) for her psychoses. I would also like to thank Val for giving me the courage to go after a five-year-old website with the memorable quip "If Seanbaby can make fun of 1986 ten-year-old Nintendo Power readers, then you can go after a five-year-old website." Good thing there's no statute of limitations on humor. Here's to the death of Fushigi Yuugi's popularity and fandom (1996-1999), and that's a toast being made by someone calling himself Chiriko.