Manifesto
Manifesto
This page serves more as a summary of how and why this website came to be, and just my general feelings as of right now with the state of the online world. Bechno Kid's and Petra's manifestos were inspirations to write my own, and it'll probably grow and shape itself over time as I refine my thoughts.
My history with online has always been ... very entrenched in community? I lived in places like Club Penguin and DeviantART and made some wonderful connections over the years (a few people which I managed to reconnect with from my old 2012 days on DA; I was deep into the OC/Canon Bleach community back then). I thrived in places like that, loved playing on various doll site games and the Barbie flash games and all of that, Webkinz, Jetix TV flash games, etc.
I still thrive on Tumblr, which has been my hellhole (affectionate) since 2012 and still going strong on my original blog since then; my blog has always felt like a little website in itself, considering themes really allowed me to explore my creativity across my personal blog and my roleplay blogs. Truthfully, Tumblr is really the last bastion of a social media that I'm truly active on anyway, like many others I've also grown tired with the state of social media, in both the form of a lack of personalization, and that it feels a lot more hostile overall (corporate greed etc. blah blah).
I doubt I will ever drop social media altogether, since I find joy in being able to see what my mutuals and friends are interacting with and reblogging and talking about, even the most mundane of things ... but I'm naturally a very low energy person, so it's a flux between wanting to engage and keep up with everything, and drowning and burning out of energy.
Community will always keep me engaged, but I wanted to find more personalized corners that are me.
I've heard of Neocities from a tumblr roleplay mutual who made his own a year or two ago, which I thought was really cool as well, but never pursued it further—the idea of making a website was cool ... but the coding wasn't. At that time I also got into making carrds, and still do have my own personal one (and the many templates I've made for the Tumblr RPC); I love Carrd for its flexibility and ease of access to all people alike without any coding required, but ... it doesn't hit like a Tumblr theme does. You have no idea how annoyed I was seeing that in-line images aren't a thing!
My tumblr theme is as close to a website as I had then, but even so a lot of my links went out to other sites (Bluesky, Carrd, Toyhouse), and there's no true, centralized info hub ... that's me. I think the push that finally made me consider it was people talking about another wave of staff layoffs at Tumblr (god knows it's a cyclical thing at this rate for Tumblr to go through its annual 'it might die' phase), and having exported out my blog ... some part of me finally caved to looking back into Neocities, and making this site on the same day too.
Nostalgia doesn't drive me, and I'm not seeking it since I never grew up on stuff like Geocities when my time was spent in Webkinz and Club Penguin. I just miss customization that most places have stripped away (DeviantART and its stupid overhaul due to Wordpress buying it, Tumblr now redirecting to mobile views instead of themes), and wanted a learning opportunity to improve my coding.
So, here I am now. I doubt this site will fully replace some places (there's no way in hell I'm transferring my entire Toyhouse over considering that's a culmination of years of my own artwork and commissions in images, and there's only so much JPEG crunching that can make up for a 1GB space limit), but it'll be the most complete place that showcases my interests. And honestly I like the slowness of everything, even though I still find myself eagerly scrolling through and peeping around what my neighbours are doing when there are new updates to their sites ... there's something cozier about it. I like looking through what other people did with their websites! I love seeing people expressing themselves!
It's been a happy journey so far, and I'm a person that thrives in finding problems to solve in code—even if frustrating, it itches some part of my brain in having something to chew on and hammer at and look forward to working on, even if I'll be sad when most of my site is done and only needs patching or updating here and there. Even so, I built this with my own two hands and a lot of help from other wonderful people listed in my credits, and this will be a living site that always can have a new bud growing in.
This is a bunch of disjointed thoughts to summarize that this site is a little collection of what makes me who I am, and a collection of what I enjoy. I'm glad to have a little corner of respite away from everything else, and I hope that if you got to the end of this, that you enjoy your time here (even if it is just me babbling about random stuff or recipes I like or my OCs).
