On the topic of online waifu shrines

If you're reading this, I assume you might be part of some anime-themed community (if you're not, I applaud your bravery to open a link with the word "waifu" in the title). If you're part of some anime community, you might even like some characters! Some less, some more than others, and some...

Yeah, some of them might be the character. The one that you like the most, the one that you associate the most with yourself. That feeling of caring for someone, even though they're digital. During ye olde days of the internet, that phenomenon was called a "waifu" (alternatively a husbando, if your fave was not a girl), a word coined by the fans of the anime Azumanga Daioh, during a scene where one of the characters, teacher Kimura, proudly proclaims that a girl in a picture is his wife.

Kimura-sensei - Mai Waifu

Mai waifu (´ L_` )

The above is the link to that video, please add yt embeds!

Recently, while the word has mostly fallen out of use, there's still a dedicated sub community of people that have and care for their waifus. And what better way to commemorate their love and care, than with a website.

Screenshot from the Internet Archive

Enter 2016. A young prefetcher stumbles upon a website called waifu.pl. Scrolling through the website he sees a lengthy list of pages, all dedicated to some character. Interested with the concept, he kept scrolling, and scrolling, and visiting these websites...

Usually, the websites fell into one of three categories:

First, you had the serious websites. They ranged from being dedicated to popular characters like Konata Izumi, Hatsune Miku, Makise Kurisu...

Excerpt of hatsunemiku.waifu.pl. You know I had to include it, as someone who owns miku.place

...to even relatively obscure characters, like for example, Windows NT-tan.

Excerpt of nt.waifu.pl. There's something poetic about an operating systems engineer falling in love with an OS.

Some were better designed, some were only a static image. But for all of them there was one thing they had in common. All of them were made by someone who was absolutely enamored with the character.

And while that may sound creepy and sad, to me it's somehow... cute in a way. Liking a character so much, you make an entire website dedicated to them. That takes creativity, no matter if it's "wasted" or not.

It contributes to keeping the internet weird is something that's incredibly dear to me. It encourages exploring, it encourages fun.

Excerpt from ayashikiime.waifu.pl. The text in Japanese talks about ghosts.

But back to the topic on hand, the 2nd type of websites you'd see in places like these, are joke sites.

Weird places like these are a magnet to people doing them for shits and giggles. But even then, they're cool! You have pages for characters like Snoop Dogg, the red sniper from TF2 or even someone called Mr Hardy. Apparently he's a physics teacher, go figure!

Excerpt from red.waifu.pl

Even though these websites are made to make fun out of shrine websites, they're still made in good faith. None of them are inflammatory, none of them insult the pages that people make for real, or the people alone for that matter. It's people having lighthearted fun, and that's good!

Excerpt from hardy.waifu.pl. I never liked physics, so I cannot relate.

Finally though, the third type of pages you'd come across are ones that were made but were left unfinished. No image, no site. Just a blank canvas that was waiting to be filled. These are the most sad to me to be honest.

Excerpt from remus.waifu.pl.

You've claimed a website for your character. Turn on notepad, make something! Even if it is just an image on a black background. Let your creativity speak!

That being said though, you might have spotted something while reading. I've taken every single screenshot of waifu.pl from the Internet Archive.

Sadly the website mysteriously vanished from the internet, due to something I can assume is only a lack of interest from the owners, or a lack of funding. Dozens upon dozens of sites were lost, which is a complete shame. They were fun to explore!

Of course, that's not to say that there's no place to make a shrine for your favorite anime character. For example, in the place of waifu.pl, we got waifu.ist!

Excerpt of waifu.ist from... today! The last update to a page was an hour ago!

waifu.ist is still brimming with life, despite being such a niche concept. It warms my heart honestly.

You have pages for people like Mr. Tenna, who was only released as part of Deltarune chapter 3 (which you should play!!!) like +/- a week ago.

Excerpt of tenna.waifu.ist

Despite the word "waifu" falling out of circulation and being mostly considered "cringe", you still have people making sites for all sorts of characters, real sites, joke sites... Doesn't matter, it's a small weird corner of the internet that's still living its slow but interesting life.

Excerpt of hanyuu.waifu.ist. I'm honestly as scared of Oyashiro-sama as the creator is.

This brings me to the final part of this small foray into this corner of the internet. Do you have a character you like? Make a website for them! You don't have to be a worshipper, or be seriously in love with them, liking them is enough!

I even made one for my original character Ata, she even has her own domain!

Excerpt of ata.moe. Look, it's me!

Leave a mark of yourself and whoever you like on the internet for others to see! It's fun! It keeps the internet weird! We all want the internet to be weird, right?

Thank you so much for reading this blog post. It was written mostly to test out leaflet.pub, and I've had a ton of fun writing and playing around with it! Great job on the platform~!

Until next time! -prefetcher

[1] - until the eventual shut down of the server. But even then, it's kept around by the Internet Archive, right?

Post Scriptum - or rather, an honorary mention

The writing of this blog post was in part inspired by the first ever site I've seen on waifu.pl, which kind of doesn't fall into any of the above categories. It's, uh, for a lack of a better word, specific.

Enter cirno.waifu.pl.

Excerpt of, uh, this.

When you've entered the site you got greeted by an embed leading you to a quite frankly, surreal and disturbing youtube video of someone's room PLASTERED in Cirno merch. The video was filmed with pretty much no lighting, no anything, other than a disco ball glowing in random colors.

A still from the "Cute-chan" video. I'll never get this damn room out of my mind

Saying the room was plastered in it is not enough. You just... have to see it. There isn't a single inch that's not nine-ballified. It's beyond me to describe it.

While the video alone is unlisted, you can still view it. I've stored the link, just for you, doesn't that make you happy?

Cute-Chan

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Another thing that you'd see, or rather hear on the website is a- KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. Oh, sorry. A flash embed of a knocking sound effect-KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK that felt like it was coming-KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK from within your house. Hearing it still makes me jump, even though I absolutely expect it.

All of this was paired with an ominous, small black-on-black text that read "Transcendence of twin dimensions.".

This website left a long lasting memory and impression on me, in a sort of weird charming way. It's creepy and surreal. Something you'd only see on a random website buried deep inside of some random sub community.

And I love every part of it.