what makes a good shrine?

[tesseractcube]

apologies if this topic fits somewhere else!

i was wondering what people think makes good or interesting features for a shrine page towards any given topic. i ask because i'm currently working on a shrine for a video game and i want to make it in-depth, but i'm not completely sure how to go about it. so, it'd be nice to have a small discussion.

if anyone has any examples of shrines they like/have made, i would love to see them. thank you 

- a

[CeruleanSnake]

I'm very new to this still so I haven't exactly mastered a shrine but I've taken a look at many for examples. I've noticed some are pretty heavily detailed while others are quite minimal, there's even been some interesting takes on some like one shrine I found was just "leave an offering and get a cool stamp lol" (it was quite literally a shrine for a saint)

For me, I just created a fun page, that I might elaborate more on, but mostly it was just for my fav pokemon so I just threw up whatever. https://theceruleansnake.com/shrines/pokemon/kyogre

I think ultimately it's a place you can put whatever you like with no real rules to surround it.

[tesseractcube]

I think ultimately it's a place you can put whatever you like with no real rules to surround it.

i really like your shrine! i can feel how much you love your kyogre :)

and yeah, i guess shrines are pretty subjective, so i shouldn't overthink it that much  thanks for the input   
(now i need to stop procrastinating and actually make it...  )

- a

[CeruleanSnake]

i really like your shrine! i can feel how much you love your kyogre :)

Thanks! And true, that's what I eventually came to myself lol. A lot of shrines I came across were pretty unfinished anyway, so it's more a labour of love than anything honestly. But yeah throw in whatever you like and get creative, could even be just pictures only.

[Cco0orn]

About shrine for video games, you can put everything you want to show off! Like merchandise collection, information about your favourite characters, prints commercial and more! Cerulean Snake's shrine is a very good example for your favourite video game character.

My boyfriend and I made a shrine about a series called Kuru kuru Kururin, although it has many information and details but may it give you the reference if you want to write a website about favourite medias.

[tesseractcube]

About shrine for video games, you can put everything you want to show off! Like merchandise collection, information about your favourite characters, prints commercial and more! Cerulean Snake's shrine is a very good example for your favourite video game character.

My boyfriend and I made a shrine about a series called Kuru kuru Kururin, although it has many information and details but may it give you the reference if you want to write a website about favourite medias.

Thanks for the examples. Having examples is very helpful to us.  Kururin is a very cute looking bird, we will have to read y'alls website further.   

- P

[thiscat]

as someone who made a few shrines myself i feel like there is no
one way to create shrines they could be 1 page area
or they could be entire subwebsites of themselves they could
either show stuff related to you (like merch collections etc)
or be a place for information about the media
for me it doesnt really matter what you put as long
as it related to the topic of the shrine

[wygolvillage]

Shrines can be just about anything, dedicated to any topic.

Because of that freedom I like to get a bit maximalist. I always like to go above and beyond and include some kind of interactive feature that backs up the point I'm making in the text. I have some that are purely text but for the most part I like to make each shrine unique in some way. I added a Warrior Cats OC and "roleplay generator" on to my Warriors shrine because one of the main points of that shrine is that fan-creations and community are the true heart of "being a Warrior Cats fan", and OCs were and are a large part of that community. Other shrines of mine are partially pastiches of certain kinds of web-design (Clovenglade and the Angel Hare shrine I made) so I treat them like mini-websites and add games and interactive features and such, Clovenglade particularly comments on how virtual worlds can be second online homes so I wanted to make something that people would like to come back to, to play with every so often, like one of those old flash browser games. I've got an upcoming one about a video game, the shrine is mostly text but it has a feature where it asks for your name in order to use it to back up one of the essay's main theses.

...But I don't believe these things are necessary to have a good shrine. I have some that are purely essays with no interactive bits because it didn't feel necessary.

The true requirement is to just have something to say, or interesting information. I remember once I saw someone who had a bunch of shrine pages for different characters they liked and I was excited to dive into them because they were from some anime shows I hadn't watched, and I was curious to learn what these unfamiliar stories meant to this person. However... Each shrine page was basically just "THIS CHARACTER IS MY SKRUNKLY!!!!" and a bunch of emojies next to a picture of them. Which is fine, because a shrine can be anything, but it doesn't meet my personal requirements for a good/worthwhile shrine, as it was impossible to glean anything about the topic from it.

While I make things for myself first and foremost I do like to think about what a stranger would get from visiting and reading the page in question, so I like to make things interesting and informative, and experiment a little with my coding to make things that are extra enriching.

[konamiesque]

Ultimately a shrine is whatever you make of it, but to me I think that a truly good shrine should reflect your favorite parts about whatever it is you're making a shrine for.

As an example, I have a shrine on my website dedicated to my current special interest, Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha (really it's more of a mini-fansite contained within my main site but same difference). Since I get a lot of joy out of getting to infodump about DSRK, I have a page dedicated to briefing visitors on the series' setting, characters, story, etc. I like collecting merchandise, so I have a page showing off my collection. I made a music box page to show off the games' soundtracks because I like listening to them, I've got a writings page to show off the various extended reviews and analyses I've done, and so on.

Of course, a shrine doesn't have to be a massive undertaking, and I think that even the smallest of shrines can be good so long as there's care and passion behind them.