Week 1: The Neocities Experience
Uh, Hello! This is the first issue of The (Sometimes) Weekly Bloog! To cut the about page of this blog short, I wouldn’t say it’s a diary, moreso my freeflow of thoughts I’m too anxious to share with people in person. Reviews, rants and OC interviews will be labelled as otherwise.
Anyways, I haven’t had an all too interesting week, so I’ve decided to record my experience of being on neocities and my summer holidays coding experience.
It started with me needing something to do. My initial plan was to finally make myself a vtuber model, (This summer has made me give up on this idea. I’m just going to use a png tuber now. My computer wouldn't be able to run all the assets anyways. I'll also be using it for my monsterprom mod) and I happen to stumble upon https://localghost.dev/ page on making your desktop layout cuter. This is a very cute page. Anyways, there's a link to neocities there and I’m like “OMG a free website That's so cool!!!” I had tried to do my own just on notepad, but it was kind of pointless with nowhere to host it. I browse some really cool websites for a few days and decide I’m finally going to make a proper web portfolio that can properly meet my creative needs.
I lurk on reddit to find some more inspiration and find more interesting on java things I can add, hovering sfx, music players, float things. And I came across someones comments were just very negative things about new users and their usage of templates. (TO CLARIFY!!! THIS WAS A SINGLE PERSON!!! THE COMMUNITY THERE IS VERY NICE AND SUPER SUPPORTIVE!!!).
I’m not quite sure why it's such a frowned upon thing? These things exist for beginners. It’s a starting point. You don’t necessarily have to throw yourself into the deep end of the pool to learn to swim; there’s no shame in starting with the shallow part. and as someone with a lot of failed projects, that exact sort of mindset is something that kills motivation within a week. Use templates. Don’t feel bad about it. I used the sadgirl template when I started and kept the 3 bar layout until I decided it didn’t suit me anymore and removed it from the code. I’ve then managed to do a good few pages since then from scratch; my about me, my tamagotchi page(i think i broke my oc page :/) and most likely most of my shrines and personal hobby pages. Are they the most ultra aesthetic perfect things ever that's changing the web development game? No, but I’m still very proud of them. I don’t think I felt as excited as when I figured out how to make my tamagotchi profile boxes line up horizontally in a long while. Discovering how to properly use floats so I can size my images properly was a huge step for me. It’s nice of course to do these things alone but everyone starts somewhere.
A minor artist whose youtube posts pop up on my homepage made a massive post apologising about “accidently stealing someones art style” in response to someone else making a “callout post” about it. I could tell this artist was about 12, and the caller-outer was about 7 maybe? I was sleuthing and trying to figure out how they were affiliated with whoever they were speaking on behalf of and they’re very clearly not old enough to be online as much as they are. Children need to be monitored online, but that's not the point I'm making right now. The artist in question (the artstyle haver who likely has no idea this is happening) has a note in their bio saying “no heavy inspo of my art”. Listen. You CANNOT own an artstyle. Not to instruct people on how they should feel, but you should be flattered that younger people are being inspired by your work!!! Being told things like this stunted my growth as an artist so badly because I was so afraid of being yelled at for drawing like my favourite artist, so I never really ended up developing in art until recently. It’s why I have so little to share. Dont make bad art, dont use references, dont browse pinterest, don't look at work of artists you’re inspired by or it’s “cheating”. That was the artistic landscape I grew up with and I’d hate that for the next generation (that feels weird to say, I'm not THAT old), especially with how hard being in the creative industry is right now.
There’s absolutely more concerning things you should be worried about than aspiring artists “stealing” your art (fuck genai in any and all capacities) (to clarify, this person didn’t trace any of their art, they just drew their own characters with a similar thick lineart and highlights)
I’m just hoping that their bio is outdated because they do have tutorials on how to draw like them? I don’t know. I might be a bit old for tween youtube drama. Jeez, do gacha-tubers still exist? That was the shit back in my day. Those and yandere fangirls. We really don’t see much of those anymore. Makes me sad. Bonus points if you know about peak BGMedia lore. (I know I just had a whole rant about gatekeeping being cringe but if your extent of knowledge is M to the B I cannot count you in the BGM nostalgia group. I’m sorry. )
…
I was supposed to be talking about the website building experience.
I like it a lot more now since I've had so much time to work on it. It feels like my personality and the theming I want comes through a lot more with the bookshelves and falling stars. I’m really proud of it, even if it’s not super revolutionary or ultra aesthetic. I’ve had a good time relearning html, it’s something.
I might as well get distracted tell this story now.
In about Year 8 or 9 at school (13 to 14-ish), we have a cover teacher for ICT. Right off the bat, she’s not very nice to anyone. I was a very meek teen, people tended to have to ask me to repeat myself, even my good friend. I speak what I think is quite loudly, or loud enough for this teacher to hear me.
She takes the register and it gets to my name quite quickly, as I’m quite high up on it. I respond, thinking that she’s heard me and is trying to figure out how to pronounce the name of person after me, who had quite a hard name to pronounce, it stumped most new teachers. We wait a few seconds and she’s like “Um hello?? Where is (my name)?!”. I start panicking and raise my hand to let her know I’m there with an “I’m sorry you didn’t hear me.” She starts yelling at me. A lot. The usual teacher-drunk-on-power things.
My friend tries to cut in and explain I just tend to speak quietly but this teacher is not having. She yells at them and then me to the point where I can feel myself starting to cry, so I get up to leave the room and get to opening the door when the teacher LEAPS out of her seat and grabs my arm, PULLING me back into the room while continuing to yell at me.
At this point it's me trying to wrestle this very large adult woman off me while she continues to yell and drag me away from the door until another student has to pull her off of me and me out of the room, where I fall down the stairs in an effort to get as far away from the room as quickly as possible.
I wasn’t hurt thankfully but the student that pulled her off me and my good friend accompany me to the headteachers office, where they explain what happened while I spend the next 45 minutes crying until my mum comes to pick me up. She’s obviously incredibly pissed off, and yells at my headteacher whose also not happy, as this teacher tended to be lighthearted and make jokes even when things got really bad. Basically she’s just like, we won't hire her again, sorry that happened. I don’t go into school for the next week and play on my 3ds and never think about html coding until the year 2025.
No idea what happened to this cover teacher woman. I don’t like to outwardly pray for people’s downfall but I hope things are going unpleasantly or she’s changed her ways. Maybe I’ll make a post dedicated to my interactions with my headteacher. They’re quite funny in hindsight but her alluding 13 year old me ate too much was very much not at the time.
So basically, outside of trying and failing to make web portfolios on things like wordpress and wix, I’ve not really touched much code (outside of 3ds modding now that I think about it (I don’t think rpg maker really counts either)) until this summer.
I think for the most part what I have to do is continue adding my hobby pages. The Tamagotchi page is pretty much a self-sustaining thing I can copy and paste every few days. The same with my personal posts page, so everything that should be regularly updated is easy to fit in with my college schedule. I’m very excitedly working on dialogue and fun facts for the Yo-Kai Watch page.
I’m probably going to end things here, my hand is beginning to ache from the amount of typing I’ve been speedrunning through, and I need them to finish the homework I should have finished over the summer.
Thank you for reading.
Song of the Week: One Step at a Time by Alohaii
It just perfectly encapsulates the end of the summer, which feels a lot more solid with me going back to college soon. Less so with the weather, it’s already very grey again. Please listen to the whole album. It made my summer last year and was a gem to go through again.