Hi all! Happy day number two of my site being online, I guess? Hooray? Anyway, I'm writing here today to do a little bit of self-reflection and planning what's next for my site now that it's online. I seem to be very bothered by this site's visibility, if it's gaining traction or not, if someone's checking it every once in a while or not... I also wonder what would happen if it were to miraculously gain 'too much' visibility, which is something that would probably cause me to be a bit more diffident in what I post. Worrying about who sees me and how many people are seeing me is a thought that never seems to escape my mind everytime I decide to start a new life online and I always end up doing things for my followers instead of myself. But this isn't social media and this site is just an extension and/or migration of my online work, I'm not here on neocities to escape drama or something lmao.
I used to be on instagram (my at is @redqilin if you're curious about that) but I hate that platform so much, it's been over a year since I last interacted with my mutuals there (If I still have any lol) in the, uh, instagram gay yakuza fandom? I wasn't even in a bad place or anything really, the yakuza fandom, despite its flaws and mild quantity of straight cis males completely oblivious to the gayness of this whole franchise, is for now the best fandom I've had the pleasure of interacting with and being a part of, even if very briefly. Anyway, if I ever go back there to redirect my followers here and you're reading this right now, hi! I didn't leave because I had beef with anyone or got cancelled, I just really, REALLY hate social media and have no idea why some of you guys are so aware of it yet still choose to host your work there. Still love you guys though. (even if you might not remember me haha...)
Anyway, enough of that crap! I had to do some serious housekeeping right after the site went online and, unless I get any reports, it's pretty stable for now and doesn't appear to be broken or anything. Now that my mind is still fresh with html and css knowledge, I have to plan what to do next. As you can probably see, most of the 'important' pages are done and the other stuff I'm planning to do is more shrines (I found out they're my specialty kind of aha) and eventual revamps of pages I didn't like to begin with.
Something I'm kinda starting to dislike is the prominence of the Wii/old os inspired pages, which is an aesthetic that I love but I feel like I have a bit too many pages that are like that (particularly, I'd like to have a partially new layout for the characters page and a totally new diary page since. I'm really in a love-hate relationship with this one). I wanted to focus on being consistent but I don't think I dig that too much. My shrines are my favorite part of my site because of the variety and how I adapted them to the character I'm discussing while still keeping my personal aesthetic taste in them, so I need to do more of that I think.
Eventually I'll revamp a bit of everything since you can really tell which pages are the ones made earlier (ex. about me and collections) and the ones made later (ex. shrines, links).For now, the pages I'm unsatisfied with, completely or partially, are these:
that's like... most pages?? Am I too hard on myself? This site has been online for two days only!
I also need to post my old 2022 art... I actually used to put a lot of effort back then when I still had a social media presence, so I'm actually not ashamed of showing it, even if it does look wonky at times.
I thought the ones I already had were enough, but I might need others! My diary can't contain just everything I write and an entry like this would probably be more fitting for a newsletter or site info box. Another useful page would be a gamelog or a place to track and review media, even if I said previously that I probably would not keep up with it. I gave it some thought and realized that consuming media and games is a big part of my daily free time and I'm always excited to talk about new things I've played or watched and I always want to share my thoughts with someone. Recently I finished Yakuza Gaiden and I'm DYING!!! to talk about it, but where would I even write something like that?
So yeah, other useful pages would probably be:
DEFINITELY not pleasing other people and worrying about who sees what. This is my online place and I do what I want! I'm sure I want this to be my online art archive first and foremost so that's what I'm focusing on. I'll also do my best in fully enjoying talking about my favorite things so, of course, doing more shrines is another goal of mine!
There's already a list on my to-do section on the index but I'll elaborate some more here for commodity's sake and for personal reference later.
Okay, that's all for now! I'll go back to fix site issues and tell everyone whose button I put on my links that I did that. Augh, why do I have to wait a week to comment on pages? So unconvenient :c
I think I'm about to burn out (or I already have and can't accept that)... I've been working nonstop on my site for a whole month so it's really surprising how it's happening only now. I worked so hard mainly because I was scared i'd forget how to code but now that I've made so many pages I think I can safely say that I've learned it well and my knowledge isn't going to disappear magically in the next three days if I don't do it.
Anyway, ever since my Kiryu Shrine (which I'm still proud of and I still think it's fire) I've been really unhappy with how I stylize my pages. I think part of the problem is the fact that I haven't dedicated a whole day to drawing digitally in almost a week, so exclusively coding with no other creative outlet is kind of backfiring on me. I made the index today FINALLY and?? I don't fully hate how it looks, I coded it the exact way I sketched it but I'm not happy with it anymore. Still, I worked on it for a whole day so my morale would take another hit if I threw it in the bin completely. The same thing happened with my diary page, exactly like I envisioned it, still hate it. Even the fucking rucawa plush network joke arg page looks better and I did it in probably two hours or something. Eh, whatever.
I'm going on a trip to Venice with my friends tomorrow so hopefully it'll recharge my creative vein a little. Anyway, I'm conflicted on whether I should play Yakuza before bed or go to bed immediately... I want to see Kiryu but I gotta wake up early tomorrow...
Unexpected event of the last hour... Quantum Foam Sounds, one of my favorite youtube channels ever dedicated to posting obscure music and full albums, has been terminated by youtube, unsurprisingly. It's honestly a bummer and I hope they only got suspended because I listened to a bunch of the albums they used to post and now I can't remember what those were. It was my main source for finding new music and I always listened to a new album on my trips home from university. I was looking for the full soundtrack for the nintendo 3ds they posted and when I saw it wasn't in the first results when I searched it up, I already knew what had happened. another release of theirs was an album called 'water aromatherapy' whose artist I just can't remember (it's a japanese musician), and it's frustrating because I love that album and it's literally what I NEEDED today after a shitty day. Ugh, I hope they come back. :c I was going to put their channel in my links page too...
I'll keep it brief because I kinda hope more people will read about this...
Today, I decided to play Yume Nikki online with a friend as kind of a blind
experience for both, as she's never played the game ever and has seen only
a screenshot of two of the worlds, and I've only ever watched gameplays. It's been
a while since I saw one too, I'm mostly familiar with the areas visually but not
as much when it comes to actually exploring. So it was fun for a bit to alternate
between taking the lead and following the leader. Three hours into the game, we
got 8 power-ups together and were trying to get the Uboa event, I got it and
she didn't and gave up.
I was going around the snow world trying to reach my friend who was in the pink sea, when somebody by the (abbreviated) name of 'fra' started to follow me around! I didn't really know at the time how the party stuff worked, I was playing as a guest and made a user later. I thought it was kind of funny how they kept following me, I kept convincing myself it was just a coincidence, that we were going in the same direction and wasn't really sure whether they could see me or not. This was because when I tried showing my friend that I've made another friend, they couldn't see them. So I was kind of sad we couldn't be a party of three.
Anyway, we only wandered the snow world and pink world together, they were trying to talk to me on the global chat, but for some reason my guest session had something wrong with it and I couldn't type in anything!! I even tried asking my friend if she could reply to them for me. So eventually I gave up, went to save, and made an account so I could actually communicate with them. They said their goodbyes after and when I logged back in, I couldn't find them anymore. I was able to type in chat, but I was too afraid to ask if they were still around. So I got a bit sad I couldn't bring myself to do something that is so ridiculously easy (but not for me, sob sob).
You as the reader, might be a little confused by how elated this whole encounter made me feel. Why did I care so much and why couldn't I even bring myself to type something as simple as 'hey fra///, you still there? we met in the pink sea!'? Well, online interactions have always been difficult for me. I'm definitely the kind of person that probably would have believed all that early internet fearmongering about how only predators want to talk to you or some shit. Hearing online fandom horror stories from my close friend and having poor experiences myself didn't help at all. So, for me, connecting for such a brief time with someone I couldn't even reply to and only follow or do my power-up action to communicate (which they also taught me! so, thank you!) felt really nice. The simplicity of it all was the best part of it, probably. Even when I was a f2p kid on mmos way back when, I just couldn't make any friends, because everyone was either way too good, they had paid accounts or just wanted to make a fool out of me. So having such a simple friendly interaction with someone I couldn't have had a single thing in common with, except for the fact that at the same time, at 10:20 PM CET circa, on november 11th of 2023, we were playing Yume Nikki online, felt so nice. I know all of this probably sounds really weird to most of you, you yourself might be someone who still uses social media and is used to online interaction, speaking with mutuals, even having online friends. But to me, those things are myths. I've never formed a real connection with anyone during my whole life online. hell, online interaction to me as a socially anxious and autistic person is three times more difficult than real life interaction, believe it or not. So, sometimes having a nice interaction like this, in an online psychedelic dream exploration game with the only street cred you can have is how many power-ups you've already obtained, felt like a ray of hope to me. Maybe, sometimes, online interactions can be positive!
This is the only screenshot I managed to get to remember this interaction. fra///, if you're reading this or you're still out there, I had a blast even if it was only a couple of minutes in the pink sea/snow world. Maybe we'll play again sometime! (or maybe you're thinking to yourself that I'm an absolute idiot, if there's the one in a million chance that you're reading this atm. Oh well.)