I created this topic because I'm sure a lot of you are curious about who the Administrator of such amazing forums could possibly be. Allow me to introduce you to... ME!
About Me:My name is Amanda and I'm 12 years old, but I guess you already knew that. I have brown eyes and long brown hair which I usually keep tied in a ponytail. I'm very into sports; I can swim, ride a bike, climb trees like a squirrel, skate-board, and run really fast. I'm actually thinking of joining the cross country team when I'm old enough. I
used to do ballet when I was 5, but I stopped when my parents wanted me to learn to play the piano. I've been playing it ever since. I have a little brother named Alexander (Alex for short) who's almost eight. Sometimes he's annoying, but at other times he can be really sweet. I also have a black and white cat named Hunter, two hamsters, and two bunnies I got for Christmas!
I love reading, and some of my favorite books include the Twilight, His Dark Materials, and Warriors series. I'm also pretty good at drawing. Check out my fan art gallery for some of my latest sketches and doodles.
I'm a video-game addict as well. My favorite videogames are Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Smash Bros., and Guitar Hero. My favorite TV shows are iCarly, Drake and Josh, SpongeBob SquarePants, and House. My all-time favorite Disney movies are all three Lion King movies (
), Balto 1 & 2, Bambi 1 & 2, Finding Nemo, Brother Bear, The Fox and the Hound, and Mulan. My favorite non-Disney movies are Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Transformers, Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Golden Compass, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and a whole lot more.
My favorite songs are Reflection by Christina Aguilera and I Will Be Here For You by Michael W. Smith.
And now for the story of how I became a TLK addict:
My Story:The Lion King has had a great influence on me my entire life, although I never knew it. My parents told me that it was the first movie I ever watched. Even though I was only 2 years old, strangely, I actually remember watching it. I remember sitting in the living room surrounded by my toys and every once in a while I would glance up to see how the movie was progressing. I didn't understand anything, but I remember loving it anyway. I know I used to really admire Mufasa, but sadly pretty much everything else about that memory is vague.
My next memory is a little clearer. I was 6 years old, and it was the first time I'd seen Simba's Pride. I was at a friend's house. I remember liking the sequel a little, but not as much as the first movie. My favorite character was Kiara. I used to think she was very pretty.
I don't know how I survived the next 4 years without having anything to do with TLK at all, but somehow, I did. Even though I hadn't watched it for more than 8 years, I still loved The Lion King a lot. If someone had asked me what my favorite Disney movie was, I would probably have said The Lion King. Still, not having watched the movie ever since I was a baby, I didn't really understand why people liked it so much, and so, never properly got to experience it for the true magic that it is. All that changed one day in fifth grade...
It was the day of school before winter break. I was sitting in the auditorium with all the other fifth graders because the choir was going to sing some Christmas carols before everyone went home. There were lots of nice songs and many people sang along, but near the end, the choir announced that they were going to sing us a special surprise. It was the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" from The Lion King. From the moment they started singing, I was captivated. It seemed like something in me that had been locked inside of me had finally opened up. It was the most beautiful song I had ever heard in my entire life. It sounded like something out of a dream. Everyone else was obviously loving it too because they were cheering like mad. Some were actually standing up and singing. Soon everyone was standing up, including me. Being shorter than most kids my age, I had to stand on my toes to just get a glimpse of the tops of the choirs' heads. But I could still hear their wonderful music, and that was all I needed. When the song ended, everyone went wild. I just stood there with my heart thudding, amazed.
On the way home everybody on the bus sang the song again. I didn't join in. I was quietly staring out the window, the music still reverberating inside my head. I made a mental note to find that song again on the internet as soon as I got home. Twenty minutes later, I was busy searching "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on Google and immediately got millions of hits. I clicked one of the first ones - a YouTube video. When I was done listening to it, I decided I might as well listen to some other TLK songs as well. They all sounded amazing. I particularly liked "The Circle of Life" and "I Just Can't Wait To Be King". CoL brought tears to my eyes the first time I watched it (later my Mom asked me if I'd had a bad day at school) and IJCWTBK was so catchy I was pretty much clicking my fingers together in my sleep.
The next day was winter break so I got up early and turned on my computer, desperate for more songs. I listened to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" once again, and then I listened to "Can You Feel The Love Tonight" and "Hakuna Matata". I remember thinking CYFTLT was
way too short, and that Hakuna Matata was a little bit of a disappointment. I hated the change in young Simba's voice; I'd also noticed his voice change in IJCWTBK, but over there it'd sounded good. I hadn't known about "Be Prepared" at this time, so I never listened to it.
After listening to all the songs I knew of, my thirst for TLK was still not quenched. My budding TLK-addictiveness was starting to kick in.
I needed more. Eventually I grew obsessed with young Simba and would Google him just to look at images of him. Since my printer was broken at that time, I used to frequently stay after school in the library just so I could print out images of Simba, naïvely thinking that there were very few images of him when there were in fact, millions. Once or twice the librarian caught me. She was confused, but told me not to waste the library’s computer ink like that. I was really disappointed, but I knew she was right. I kept the small stack of Simba images in my room after that and would sometimes take them out to look at them more closely. I still have those images, which now total more than a hundred, and occasionally refer to them when drawing fan arts.
After that small letdown, it finally occurred to me that although I was now deeply in love with TLK, I'd never even bothered watching the movie since my love for it first started. Sometimes, when I had nothing else to do, I would stay after school in the library and watch bits of it on YouTube. I had to mute it though, so no one would hear it, so you can imagine how awful that must have been. Still, because of that, I became even more obsessed with TLK, and some of my old memories of the first time I ever watched it were starting to come back.
By now, I was a serious TLK-o-holic. I just
couldn't get enough of The Lion King. Surprised that I didn't have the DVD lying around somewhere, I begged my parents to go buy both the movies for me. They did, and I watched them to my heart's delight. Meanwhile, I started downloading TLK games desktops and buying TLK merchandise like crazy. It was only when my parents refused to buy me any more things that I finally snapped out of it. Instead, I began searching online for Lion King sites other than the official ones. As you can imagine, the first one I discovered was lionking.org. I thought it was a pretty neat site, but when I visited the fan art gallery, my jaw literally dropped. The fan art there was beyond good. It was INCREDIBLE! I couldn't believe my eyes. How could anyone have drawn such masterpieces? It looked exactly like Disney had drawn them! So for the next few months, I practiced drawing TLK characters, especially Simba. I would refer to my stack of Simba images constantly, especially the clipart ones, but no matter how hard and long I worked on them, they refused to look like anything other than a pile of garbage. But I was still determined to draw them right, so in the many months I painstakingly practiced drawing Lion King characters, my drawings improved from this to this. Later I found out that some artists "cheated" and used Photoshop, so I convinced my parents to buy it for me as well.
As I said earlier, I used to look online for more Lion King sites a lot, and that's how I discovered "The Top Fifty Lion King Sites". Delighted, I visited each one in turn and signed the guestbooks there (if any), praising the owners for their amazing sites. To my disappointment and disbelief however, not a single one of them replied. I was heartbroken. Why had these people abandoned such wonderful sites? Had they not liked them? Had they decided they were too old to love TLK? I suddenly began to wonder if there were any active TLK sites
left, besides lionking.org. I immediately decided to find out. It wasn't until the next month that I found out that there
were active TLK sites out there. That was when I discovered MyLionKing.
I was busy browsing through some of my favorite sites in the "Top Fifty Lion King Sites". One of them, mylionking.com, was a personal favorite of mine, and I used to visit it quite often. I mostly went there to listen to the music or look at the pictures. I hadn't known that the site owner, Moka, was still updating the site at the time. Imagine my shock and amazement when I found out!
It happened on May 15th. By now, I was 11 years old. I was on the home page of the site, scrolling down, when a large image caught my eye. It was a Cinco de Mayo picture, and right above it were the words "Happy Cinco de Mayo, everyone!!' But more importantly, it was written May 5th,
2008. That meant that the site owner had written that 10 days ago, which meant he hadn't forgotten about his site! I was so happy I practically screamed with joy. All this time, I'd been so sad about how such a good site could go to waste, but as it turned out, it hadn't! I quickly went to the forums and immediately signed up, becoming only the second person after Moka to do so. In time, the site became more active and more people started joining. Happy to say, I'm still an active member there, and I've made lots of friends there as well.
After that small discovery, I resumed my search for active TLK sites with higher hopes. Finding out the MLK was still active proved that not
all the TLK sites were dead. Perhaps there were more that I hadn't yet discovered.
The next active site I found was Melanie's. I'm not exactly sure how this happened. I just remember stumbling on it one day and liking it a lot. It was kid-friendly and seemed like a lot of hard work had been put into it. After going through her site, I found the Guestbook and signed it, saying how much I loved her site. I scrolled down to take a look at the other signatures. Again, I was surprised to see that they had been written quite recently. This site was obviously very popular. Then, I saw Melanie's signature. Once again, I was overjoyed at finding out that the site owner hadn't abandoned her site after all. When I reached the end of the page, I saw a tiny link at the bottom that said "Want your own free site? Try Freewebs.com". This had never occurred to me. Why browse through sites when you can create one of your own? Besides, it was
free!After consulting with my parents, I immediately clicked it and filled out the required information. When it asked me for my site URL, I thought a moment. I wanted a really good Lion King site, better than all the others. It had to be the
ultimate Lion King site. I typed that in. Somehow, I didn't like it. I needed the title to be more about my love for TLK, not about how much TLK stuff it contained. Eventually I settled on Lion King Obsession, a name resembling that of another site I'd visited. I remember briefly hesitating and considered calling it Lion King Addiction instead so people wouldn't think I was copying, but I decided not to because it sounded dumb. Besides, lots of other sites had similar names and no one thought
that was plagiarism. I now realize that this was wrong, but by then I was already building my site and it was too late.
Site building was easy because Freewebs, as well as being completely free, allowed you to build websites without any knowledge of HTML at all. I made fast friends with Melanie and through her site, I was able to connect with other active Freewebs sites. It was through the most active one of them, LionPaws, that I made all the friends I currently have including Serra20, thelionpride556, Nalafan101, and many, many others. I still own Lion King Obsession, and it's already really popular. Click here to visit it, and please sign the Guestbook!
You're probably wondering if I forgot to mention The Lion King 1½. I didn't. In fact, I only found out about it a few months ago while I was visiting Lion King Source. I was so surprised I nearly fell off of my chair. According to the site, the 'midquel' had been out since February 2004, when I was 7, and I hadn't even known about it then! I was embarrassed, so I asked my parents to buy it for me as well. I watched it 5 days later, and I instantly loved it. That movie never failed to crack me up.
This site, unfortunately, doesn't have much of a story to it. I just randomly decided to create it one day while I was browsing through my favorite forums. From the moment I announced these forums to everyone I knew of, they became an instant success. They still remain, to this day, really popular. Thanks guys! I owe you lots!
So that's the story of how I came to love The Lion King. Even now, a few people at school still hum the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" every once in a while, but it's not as popular anymore. But when we do, kids in the older or younger grades make weird faces at us, but we just shake our heads and smile secretly at each other. I have the feeling us sixth graders are going to remember that day we were all singing in the auditorium in fifth grade for a long, long time. I know I will.
That day transformed me. It made me who I am today. If that day had never happened, I would never have loved The Lion King as I do now. My life would have been so much more different. Since then, I haven't told anyone about my obsession but my family and my two best friends at school. They thought it was a little strange at first, but they accepted it as being a part of who I am. That movie changed me forever. And it all began with one song.
Any Questions?Well, that's all I have to say about me! If you want to know anything else, PM me, ask me in my den.
Thanks,
Amanda
Administrator of LKOF
lionkingobsession@yahoo.com
Subject: About the Admin 
Sun Mar 08, 2009 2:46 am
Have an interesting story there! Your site name really suites your obsession! 
