Why The Heck would you make a site about dragons?

I built my site revolving around dragons because I have always had an interest in that particular mythological creature. Since a very young age I have had a deep connection and love for dragons and snakes, collecting as many dragon related items as I could I inevitably obtained a large sum of books and history revolving around the creatures.

When I eventually gained access to the internet I quickly discovered many others online who had a fascination with dragons like myself and from that point on I lurked on many dragon themed sites such as AFD and others, enjoying the dicussions, art, and opinions that I found within said sites.

But I found that due to an inherent shyness on my part I could not partake in many discussions, considering the dragon communities that I had discovered to be a symbolic family I wanted greatly to do my part to contribute to my follow dragon lovers.

As I could not bring myself to interact socially I begin writing, first writing stories about my own particular dragons, and information pertaining to them, then information pertaining to mythological dragons of earth, I compiled my writings into a site and updated frequently building from a primitive format to what you see before you. (still primitive..)

The point of making my web page focus on dragons was to encourage a love for those fantastical creatures and to do my active role in supporting the online Draconic society, this site exists for those who enjoy dragons to come and meet, share experiences, explore and generally have fun, and for the non-believer a look into the world of dragons from a new perspective.

What was that past nonsense about a New Altfandra?

Altfandra was a nickname for a site called Alt Fan Dragons, which once existed at the domain name dragonfire.org. A saved archive of the entire site is available at the site dmbh.org. Alt Fan Dragons was a central hub for dragon lovers to gather exchange information and access similar themed sites, it had a newsgroup, forum, active chat, member gallery and indepth collection of dragon themed links.

Around the year 2000 the site vanished from the internet. Many prior members as well as new fans of dragons made community sites to accomodate for the disapperence. Alt Fan Dragons was one of the first dragon themed sites I found online and as a result had a special place in my heart.

Back in my younger more idealistic days I envisioned a central community site which would act as a hub for dragon society on the web and work in unison with other community sites to unite dragon lovers in beliefs and resources.

I created the blueprints of such a site and presented it to present admins with some enthusiam, however due to the complexity of such a task and my lack of webdesign skills, it was deemed a unrealistic goal, rather then abandon that past idealistic dream entirely I left the blueprints up to inspire future webdesigners to consider a similar task, a link to the blueprints still exists at the bottom of this web sites main page, but for the most part, I believe that I achieved most of my goal in the creation of my alternate site Dragons Valley.

What's with that Dragons Valley thing?

In the past I would often jump into online dragon communities to try to talk and partake in the interesting discussions, unfortunately shyness would always overcome me and for this I felt great guilt. I spent several years silently lurking on the great dragon communities of the day, always wanting to join in, but too nervous. I was once moderator of the forums on a site known as Dragons Empire, but had to relinquish my title due to personal priorities. The admin there, Nargus was very understanding of this and for that I thank him.

During the spring of 2007 I obtained the means to create a dragon themed community site, this was called Dragons Valley or DV for short, due to budgeting difficulties I could not give it it's own distinct domain, as a result it was integrated into my current site, Jafira's Lair.

DV was originally constructed of phpnuke software, however since the base software I constructed it from was out of date there were a variety of flaws, I worked many sleepless nights correcting the errors when not in classes's or working, and in time it seemed that the community would be successful, sadly something went horribly wrong with my server, a problem I blame on a bot hacking into DV's mail and using it for spam.

As a result of the spam bots actions using my servers mail, DV was blacklisted and email was no longer able to be sent or received from it. This made registration or communication impossible and thus swiftly made the dragon community useless.

As a result of weeks of insomnia and work on the community I had an extreme emotional breakdown which I am not proud of, and as a result secluded from activities on the internet for some months, In the spring of 2008 around the annaversary of it's demise, Dragons Valley was rebuilt and returned online with it's own domain and much more superior then it's prodecessor.

Why does this site have so much junk?

To much free time, For the most part I prefer the site to be dominantly dragon themed, however there are some other subjects such as philosophy or rants that I may want to touch upon, as well as humorous stories or art that my friends may construct.

As this site is in a sense my home on the net I felt it acceptable to include other aspects of my life. For the most part, to some extent this site is a digital bible to me, all that I am is here in one way or another, to focus only on dragons would be to limiting, I wanted more variety, for better or for worse.

WTF is Draconity & otherkinism?

Otherkinism is an obscure belief that a person is connected spiritually in one way or another with a nonehuman form, information and resources on otherkinism can be found at the site, http://www.otherkin.net. As for Draconity, it is another word for dragonkin, believing oneself to be connected spiritually with dragons in one form or another, information on such can be found by reading Baxil's Draconity Faq. or by visiting the Dragon Resource Project.

I myself after many ups and downs find that I philisophically and spiritually apply myself to the dragonkin catagory due to my personal percieved spirituality concerning dragons. As a result, in addition to dragon information, my site and community caters to those who may have similar beliefs, as well as as those who simply have an interest in dragons.

As a traditional cautionary disclaimer, this is not roleplaying or D&D related, but rather referring to personal spiritual beliefs and perspectives.

Brief on Jafira's Draconity: 1999-2007

I became interested in dragons at a young age, always believing myself to have been different I grew up believing myself to have been a dragon. However under societal pressure I attempted to suppress that particular aspect of myself for most of my youth. However in my late teen years under much frustration, I ceased suppressing such beliefs and instead embraced them.

Through dreams, meditations, and feelings I started to peace together information on a perceived alternate life as a western styled dragon known as Korageth. This was not related to D&D, in any way, I was never a role player, rather, it was based on recurring dreams, unexplainable "flashbacks" or visions, as well as irrational feelings and sensations leaning towards the subject.

At the age of sixteen or seventeen for reasons unknown to me, two additional "dragon" guides, or persona's known as Jafira and Veltra appeared to me. I feared that I may have been going insane as having two new sentient beings within my minds eye was obviously not natural.

I begun to search for an explanation. I started first with psychology, I read up on multiple personality disorder, or more appropriately multiple dissociative disorder, and even went so far as to take a class in psychology to learn more, much of the psychological explanation made sense, but it did not fully explain my irrational connections or feelings towards the mythological dragon.

Considering myself to be both rational, but equally a New Age Pagan Hippy, I felt that there had to be an alternative spiritual aspect with higher meaning then a mere disorder. I chose in the end, a spiritual explanation based on my perceptions, you the reader based on your own perceptions are welcome to accept the mental disorder or spiritual rational, as the truth can never truly be known.

I am open to both the spiritual and rational explanations. In any case, having chosen the spiritual rational to my connection, I researched over the internet until the point that I had discovered a site called Alt-Fan-Dragons, which explained a lot. Ironically, weeks after I had first discovered AFD, the site vanished.

Having lost access to the resources and community of AltFanDra, but still trying to discover what was wrong with me on a spiritual level, I begun to search for more clues, finding Baxils Draconity Faq, and finding it to be closely matching my perceived dragon beliefs, I begun to associate myself as dragonkin, however I was still perplexed by the fact that I seemed to have two additional separate draconic aspects rather then one.

I later came to the conclusion that the two "dragons", Jafira and Veltra were simply representations of my personality, with that conclusion obtained, they soon vanished from my minds eye, and I felt a bit more whole, and sane, or at least as sane as someone like myself could be declared.

Shortly afterwards, I begun writing fictional stories based loosely around the past images and scenes that had come to me through meditations and dreams and eventually begin to falsely believe the stories I wrote to be true, this was early in my period of awakening and inevitably caused me to make many foolish and unsubstantiated assumptions about my draconity.

In time I met a friends who aided greatly in helping me to understand myself better. With their assistance I was reassured that I was not insane, they taught me, and although some where younger then me I respected them as mentors. Some time after discovering a site known as Tysha's Dragon Forum and reading great discussions within it, I dedicated myself to doing all that I could for dragonkin society on the web.

Jafira's Stories:

The sites stories are based on another world, or the home world of my personal dragons, The stories are set in a valley called Tycosiana, the occupants are dragons, and anthromorphic foxes and wolves, the stories have value only as fictional portrayals of how I percieved events had unfolded in such a world, they have little relation to how I would perceive actual dragons on this or other worlds were they to exist. Aside from Korageth's biography, most of the stories were created for entertainment purposes. However, the three dragon persona's portrayed as characters (Korageth in particular ) do have a deep sentimental and spiritual value to me.

Site History: 2001- 2008

The site Jafira's Lair was begun in late 2001, and appeared online in 2002, two years after I had begun studies forweb design, it started as a primitive repository for my stories and art, but was fairly lame, In the fall of 2003 I reformatted it to it's current appearance and got a proboards forum, which inevitable failed due to lack of advertising and general nonsense, for the remainder of 03 I remained largely unknown in my corner of the web.

In the summer of 2004 I updated my site with a livejournal, guestbook, The NEO Altfandra Project, and an enhanced messageboard, I made a minimal effort to advertise but fell into obscurity due to my timidness, summer of 05 until present I've been making general updates and improving the site and stories, and of course today in 2008 six years later I still remained relatively unknown. For the beginning or 2009, I returned to many of my sites outdated pages and rewrote them with more spiritual honestly and less percieved fiction, as well as became more honest with myself and my writtings.

The Forum: The forum currently located on Dragons Valley is slow at the time of my writing this, that slowness is my own fault due to a lack of advertising and activity, though I am hoping to someday have it become more active as a gathering social point for dragon related discussion of all sorts. At current my friends Skyla and Mojo Lahojo are moderators and at the moment.

Contact: Contact information can be found on the main page, I'm open to discussion at anytime and am eager to meet new people, however have trouble intiating conversations, so may take some time to warm up, please be patient.

How do I become a member of your evil dragon cult?: Simply by liking dragons, though if you send me fanart of my dragon persona's I'll grant a position of power in my New World Order, should I ever decide to form said evil cult.

Is Jafira Insane ?: Yes..

Revised: 07/05/2012 .

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