Faithful deviants:

I owe you an explanation. For those that kept up with ~da-agon's news and happenings (or lack thereof), you undoubtedly noticed that after the announcement of the Oct. Traditional Art contest, agon more or less died.

Why did this happen? For a number of reasons. Primarily, I became discouraged when I received noticed from the deviantART News staff that the site would no longer approve news posts related in any way to groups on-site.

Secondarily, I was becoming more involved with things in real life, like college application and enjoying the fall of my senior year of high school. Around mid Oct., I decided to leave deviantART temporarily in order to straighten things out in my life and enjoy more "me" time. To my shame, I neglected ~da-agon and you in doing so by forgetting about agon entirely.

I knew subconsciously the group had come to an impasse, though, as our primarily line of publicity (exposure through deviantART News) had been cut. The last time I logged into ~da-agon was just before I went on hiatus myself, and we had received no submissions whatsoever for the contest.

At this time, with the Christmas holiday passed and the new year approaching, I have made amends in that I took care of *nyxwise by finally fulfilling my promise of a three month subscription for her stellar work in winning our most recent and last contest. Subsequently, I checked again and found out that no submissions were entered for the Traditional Art contest back in Oct., so that cleared my conscience, to an extent.

Ultimately though, the point of this letter is to let each of you know that your dedication to ~da-agon and all that it stands for is and will be eternally appreciated beyond what you could know. If only for a short time, I was able to energize a fundamental element of the community's soul on deviantART through both the ideals in art itself and human charity.

After almost a complete year, ~da-agon has run under different leaders with eight different contests and over $140 awarded in contest winnings. Not bad at all, I'd say.

So now ~da-agon is closed, possibly forever. I no longer have the ability to fund contest prizes, and as far as I know agon's other team members are heavily involved in personal affairs of their own.

While this marks the end of ~da-agon under my guidance, I leave the door open to anyone who thinks that he or she is dedicated enough to bring back agon's heart, something I myself would love to see. If you are interested in taking the reins of ~da-agon now or at any point in the future, simply note me, *yokom, and I'll get you everything you need, including agon's password.

We've all got lives to live, though, and I've taken up enough of your time already with this overly lengthy letter. Farewell, and God bless.

Sincerely, Tom Shakely (*yokom)
with team members `coshdaddy, *pumpa, and *silhouet