While walking among the budding flowers in the mysterious woods, you found a shimmering golden blossom in the hidden clearing. Suddenly, your surroundings began to glow, and you found yourself magically transported...! In the blink of an eye, you find yourself in a massive palace, filled with ornate columns and all the luxuries anyone could ever wish for. There is a family crest looming above the vast main hall, emblazoned with an emblem of the brilliant sun. You recognize it as the emblem of her majesty, Princess Rhoan.
Surely this must be where the royal family lives...? It’s awfully empty, however: no feasts or revelry. Something seems to echo through the place, and yet it is dead silent.
nudges you to look at a great portrait looming over the banquet hall, depicting an ethereal young girl by her winged steed. You quietly recognize the serene figure’s visage- Rhoan. It’s the very same Princess who reigns over Clovenglade, eagerly celebrated by the people of the town, but there’s a date of death underneath the great painting...
Rhoan Clovenglade had lived and died three hundred years ago. And yet, she still reigns in memory alone.
What does it mean, for a memory to rule you? In a way, this whole section of my website, this land, is a monument to memory. This is my own “palace” to house something long dead. I have conflicted feelings on nostalgia- I want to look forward, I don’t want to be caught in a loop of wishing and wishing for the past. It’s an easily exploitable feeling. But I think it’s beautiful to use it, to carry your influences with you, to bring something new. Create the things you love and enjoy, and carry that forward into the future. We can’t go back to the places we left behind, after all. Take inspiration, but don’t be chained to it. We can make something even better. That is the nature of art!
For a long time, I thought Bella Sara had been forgotten, an obscure little memory from an obscure time and place. But as I poured over old footage, youtube playthroughs, retrospectives, and more as inspriration for the land of Clovenglade, I realized that more remembered the old game than I realized. Some time after I initially created this shrine, there was coincidentally a huge boom in Bella Sara archival efforts, and so much more of the original site is archived and upkept on the Bella Sara Digital Archive now, a project kept up out of love. North of North has been freed from the site's original profit incentive and now in the hooves of its community. There is always hope.
Yes, the original Bella Sara is gone, and I may never see it again, at least in the idealized, remembered form I regard so fondly. And it does sadden me that, unlike with other games I did actually get to revisit before their ends, I never got a proper goodbye. But at the same time, I’m glad it’s what motivated me to create Clovenglade. I had a lot of fun and learned so much about the capabilities of code and web design. I created my own farewell, the one I never had, and it has become my favorite section of my website, and things have only gotten more promising for the land of my hazily-remembered horse girl dreams in the time since. This is what we can do if we take things into our own hands and create! In many ways, as I expand Clovenglade, with cards and games and features, it has grown beyond the original "shrine" it once was. It has become its own game, a Virtual World in its own right. A place you can visit, for a time. It is the proudest I have ever been in my art.
When I decided to make my own website, I did it on a whim. I didn't know what to add, or what I wanted to do with it. I just knew I was having fun. That decision I made on that chilly February morning changed my life, and how I think about the internet. The most heartening thing is when people tell me that my website has somehow inspired them to create their own- be it friends, strangers, or anyone, really. It makes me happier than anything. This is exactly what everything I do is striving for.
Our love and creativity will set us free, and carry us into a future all our own. The internet is ours.
You wander to the great hall at the center of the palace, at your side.
A grand balcony extends outward from where you stand, and you can see the town and the mountains and the sea... It all looks so tiny from here. With the festival in full swing like this, you wonder if the denizens of Rhoan's domain are looking up at the castle now. While you’re here, why not step onto the balcony and send off some magical fireworks?
