Site History
Great Gospel originally launched in 2000, when I was designing under the pseudonym Garnet/Faris, and went through 4 layouts before it went on an 'unintentional hiatus' and eventually closed down around 2003. During it's short lifetime the site cemented a large fan base and a reputation for being one of the largest and most in-depth Aerith shrines on the Internet at that time. Before its death Great Gospel attracted over 10,000 visitors and won numerous awards.
Great Gospel took a prolonged hiatus due to my being at university, though it was more social obligation than study that kept my attention away from the net! During this time my host ayume.nu must have closed down and by a stroke of bad luck my HTML files were lost when my computer contracted a virus, so I could not restore the site even though I half wanted to.
Now my wild and crazy uni days are over and I am currently working as part of a webteam for an UK based organisation. My work has rekindled my love for webdesign and HTML coding, so I have decided to pour myself back into the web and reopen my much loved site dedicated to Aerith. I am currently in the process of retaking, and adding to, the screenshots in the gallery and also rewriting all the content; so the site will be in a usable state of construction for some time. I would advise that you check back regularly to see what's been added, as there is a lot planned!
Why Aerith?
Aerith Gainsborough, or Aeris as she will always be known to me, is easily my all time favourite character from the gaming medium, which seemed as good a reason as any to make a site about her when I was a teenager. I have to admit I have never seen her the way other Aerith-fans do, as a pure-hearted and angelic martyr, this to me is just as ridiculous as the opinion that she is a slut!
I see Aerith's personality as a realistic mix of both positive and negative traits that cannot be clearly defined; making her a very well rounded and well written character. It is this realism that draws so many people in, and the reason I can relate to her character so easily. I adore her character and I have always been intrigued by the affect her death has had on so many players, hence my extensive coverage of her supposed resurrection.
The reason I have chosen to reopen this site is, while I want to share the information and media I have collected over the years, I also want to debunk some of the myths surrounding Aerith's character using facts from the game rather than biased opinion as many sites do. I believe that she has been unjustly pigeon-holed as a character, by both those who love and loathe her. Represented as either a slut or a saint when she is neither of these things, and I have decided it's up to Great Gospel to set the record straight!
Current Design
Great Gospel is currently sporting it's fifth layout, I will eventually be hosting images of the pervious four layouts elsewhere on the domain.
This layout, entitled Renunion, marks the return of Great Gospel to the net after 5 years. It features a screen capture of Aerith as she appears in Advent Children, taken from the menu of the DVD, which has been altered in Photoshop with a few filter techniques. Fonts used are Zaphino (which was a bitch to find free online) and Georgia. The site itself was painstakingly coded to HTML 4.01 strict recomendation, but as I foolishly used frames for an index page (never again!) I've gone and shot myself in the foot!