fandoms, accomplishments, and what it means to be a part of this world

Okay the title is poetic (and incomprehensible to anyone but me. no you will not know the meaning by the end of this. or idk maybe you will I can be very longwinded and rambly.) and all, but this basically just a life update + vent post. LMAO

Don't worry, the vent part is at the very end and clearly skippable! And, this is actually a rather happy post, all things considered.

AMAZING NEWS GUYS!!! The very first two "true" fandom events I've been a part of has concluded with major success!!! RBB and RSG were both such fun events to participate in, and got me doing so many things I've never thought I could ever do (Write multiple fics in one week, make some art, MAKE A WHOLE VISUAL NOVEL IN POWERPOINT. IN TWELVE HOURS. THAT ALSO GOT DUBBED HOLY SHIT THIS IS STILL SO INSANE TO ME. i still cry thinking about it omfg i love my friends guys). The experiences I've gained and the people I've met are all things I am so very grateful for. I know that these events will impact me for years to come both in ways that I can feel and in ways I could probably never even dream of. Thank you so much to the amazing people who hosted the events (Rina and the other RBB mods, MARA. SELFHOSTING GYE WEEK WAS SO INSANE OF YOU.) and to the similarly amazing people who participated in this event. It was so vibrant and full of joy and made creating such a beautiful experience.

That said, this is Dark's Journal. And this is a vent post.

NOT ABOUT THE EVENTS THE EVENTS WERE GREAT just about the stuff I've discovered about myself along the way.

(^. .^) THE VENT BEGINS. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. (^. .^)Ⳋ

I had to write this by hand because the feelings got to be a little too much. The only stationary I could comfortably reach were the cutesy pocket sized notebook and Hatsune Miku themed highlighters I got for my birthday. Sorry to the person that gifted me these LMAO I know you're gonna read this eventually.

Growing up, I was the standard definition of a 'gifted kid'. I got good grades, had a "skill" i was endlessly praised for, and was generally lauded to be better.

A very egotistical view, but that's exactly what I was. An egotistical, selfish little kid.

And then I found out I actually wasn't that special and it sent me down the 'burnt out gifted kid' pipeline.

Because honestly, what's the point of doing anything at all if you weren't good at it? What's the point of trying if you can't be the best. What's the point. There was no point.

sigh. i promise my life story is relevant to this vent i SWEAR.

This mentality grew on me like mold. It stuck to me for so long, that even now, I keep having to peel pieces of it off of myself. It's so inherently ingrained into my being that it feels like me, because I can recognize that most, if not all, of my behavior stems from it.

I live only through acknowledgment. I thrive through the attention. My entire self worth hinges on how other people view me, and if they have a negative perception of me then what's even the point of trying to improve myself? I'm still an extremely compulsive liar, habitually embellishing random details to make myself seem just a tad bit more impressive than I actually am. I did it here too. Did you know that I stopped writing this message by hand barely even halfway through? I was called to dinner, and after I came back, felt too bored of the thought. But it made me look impressive right? Even for a second? It made this look all the more sincere, did it not? That I wrote such a thing by hand and later transcribed it digitally.

yay for undiagnosed mental illnesses guys! i swear im going to be medicated soon. so long as i get over my fear of phone calls and actually talking to people.

Anyways. I've grown out of a lot of the worst parts of myself. Maybe. The self-consciousness is still there. I still feel that self-loathing, that ever-present feeling of "I will never be enough" and "there are always people better than me", but its. better.

A big part of this is actually fandom!!!!! Yay fandom!!! Go join fandom guys it will change you im so serious!!!

Okay that's a bit of an exaggeration. It's more to do with the fact that I've met people who can... actually understand me and my efforts.

Over the years I've lost a lot of friends (majorly due to my own faults but that's not a topic for today) and gained new ones, but none of them like the same things I do, or do the same things I do. This made it really hard for me to get that external validation that I so crave, but it also made my ego grow to the size of the atmosphere. Because I was special. Because I could do things they can't.

And then I introduced my friend to writing, and they got better than me in the span of an year. And then I met a friend in uni who knew nothing about webdev, and they also got better than me in the span of an year.

They did so well. I'm so proud of them. I'm so fucking jealous.

Well, I'm not jealous now (?) But I truly felt such visceral and instinctual jealousy when I first noticed these improvements. It was so annoying. It was so exhausting. I'm so tired of myself.

This may also just be a side effect of my undiagnosed and unmedicated mental illnesses, but I can never really get better at anything. I get a burst of motivation for two weeks, improve rapidly, and then immediately start stalling; which is when I'll lose interest in whatever I was doing at the time. Forever mediocre. Jack of all trades, master of none, not even better than a master of one.

That was my self-perception for so long. I am mediocre. I will never live up to my full potential. I am lazy, unmotivated, and I lie so much that I can't keep any of my promises.

And then fandom happened. And I met people. And I was proven wrong again and again and again.

I can do things. I do have skill. I can.

I don't think I'm at that point where I can conceivably say that "I am not lazy" or "I am not mediocre" or "I am special". But I can say that I am capable. And that feels enough. For now, anyways.

I've kept my promises. I've accomplished my goals. I am not a fraud. I will be okay.

Someday, I will be kinder to myself. I will promise myself that, because I am someone who can fulfill promises.

Oh my fuck that was so unbearably sentimental. Ough whatever you came here knowing that this website is my journal and that this is a vent post. If you cringe then that is your fault, not mine.

no i'm not dead I DID NOT DIE I'M STILL HERE I SWEAR

I'M CRYING IT'S BEEN EXACTLY A YEAR I DID NOT REALIZE SEKFBFWIGN :sob: :sob:

I think I just need to come to terms with the fact that I am not a consistent and disciplined person, and the only way I would ever be that person is in my dreams. A very sad thing, but something I have to come to terms with nonetheless.

The past year has been very important to me. Not academically, but personally. I started a KR Webnovel called "Even If I Fall Into A Ghost Story, I Stil Have To Work", and it changed the course of my life.

Not because of the novel- not that the novel is not great, it is and probably will be forever near and dear to my heart- but because it allowed me to... find my place in the world?

Basically, I was scrolling on tumblr (as you do after you finish life changing pieces of media that you need more content for) and I came across a post. It was a link to a discord where they were attempting to make the very first fanzine for the novel, with the server open to the public.

I didn't really think much of it when i joined. I thought it would be like the rest of the giant servers I was in, something I would occasionally regard with mild disinterest every time I get pinged or whatever. And for a month(?), it was exactly that.

On the 14th of April (exact date because I just checked), I somehow got pulled into a conversation with the handful of actually active people on the server, and my life changed.

Not immediately, not visibly, but nine months after that moment, I can very confidently say that I've become a different person due to that experience. Because through that server, and the subsequent fandom spaces I've joined, I have met such amazing and wonderful people who have changed me for the better.

My confidence has improved, and so have my social skills! Hell, I'm now the Social Media Moderator for that very zine (psst. check out Dayzine Inc., it's really freaking cool.)! I've actually written and published fanfics, and I've gotten my first fanart too! I would never have been able to do any of that before, would never have even dreamed of it!

I think that, no matter where I go, and however far into the future I live, I will forever remember and be grateful to those people.

OKAY SENTIMENTALITY TIME OVER IT'S GOTTEN TOO PERSONAL I LOST TOO MUCH AURA

Talking about the minimal changes to the site, we now have an entry page!!! There really isn't any particular reason for it I just wanted a welcome mat to my house y'know. Thank you to Tom Is Loading for the VHS Effect tutorial & Niklas Ziermann for the Old Terminal Screen Effect (that's probably not in use currently but is the end goal) it's really nice go check it out guys.

I will post more. later. not in a year though. maybe a week? or two. but if we're gonna be honest it's probably going to be a month. don't count on me.

For what it's worth, unless this entire site just up and disappears, I'm probably still working on it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

MAJOR SITE UPDATE INCOMING!!!

Psst. You see that bar with radio buttons up there? Click em- :3
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Annndd you just changed the site theme!!! Congrats!!!

Thank you Kevin Powell for all you have done for the world you are an amazing man.

Yes! As the linked video explains, this theme switcher is entirely reliant on the CSS :has() property, and is only reliant on JavaScript to store and load the selected themes using your browsers memory so that it remembers what theme you had. Without JavaScript, moving through pages after you set a theme would be annoying, but you should still be able to select a theme still!!

Truthfully, I wanted to streamline this process by using the menu autoload script to load in the themes too, but I don't really trust my JavaScript skills so it's gonna be there for a while.

And!!! If your browser cannot support the CSS :has() property, the JavaScript has a fallback!! If your browser has neither... I'm sorry, I don't think I can help you there...

All themes currently available are; The Strawberry Light Theme (default), the Strawberry Dark Theme (my fav!), the Minimalist Light Theme, and the Minimalist Dark Theme. I plan on doing a Kiwi(maybe?) Theme and a Blueberry Theme later on.

Fun fact, originally, this site was supposed to be blue, but I changed my mind after seeing some strawberry stickers and how cute they were. I don't actually like strawberries (the berry itself, I love strawberry flavored stuff) that much. Does this make me a fraud? I like blueberries only a normal amount too. Golden Kiwis can get it though.

And with that, I now have a whole 'nother project of me just procrastinating working on my shrine pages!!! I promise, I do have a plan, it's just in my code editor!!! Promise!!!

To the people who have seen the blank WIP pages, no you have not.

The page flashes a bit when it's loading, but I think that's inevitable? I tried to put a transition delay on it, I don't know if it worked or not. Something for the future.

I think that I've been relatively productive this month. I got some cool things done. It's all in time for my semester to start up again too.

I want to start crocheting again. I was on RedNote and saw so many cool crochet patterns. I'mma steal all of them :3!!

I cannot stop sneezing. I have run out of tissues. Send help.

HAPPY BELATED NEW YEARS!!!!

I totally didn't forget that New Years was a thing. Totally.

Lately, I've just been doing very small things around the site, though it's not for anything that's currently public.

I have this whole 'laundry list' of things to do so that I don't forget what I need again. It's kinda long and full of complicated things.

In a move that absolutely no one could have anticipated, my mess of a CSS file has started bugging me. Especially now that I have started to work on in my imagination themes for the site and I realized that all of my very hacky wish-washy coding has come back to bite me in the ass.

Oh well. I did this to myself.

For public changes, I have been tinkering around with the layout of my writing page. Now, it should show the 'tags' of the story on hover. This is also the moment that I realized that I am a shit writer and have no idea what is even going on half the time, so most of these tags are subject to change in the future when I get a better grip on myself.

You know I had the grand plans of putting in a search bar? What was I thinking? Crazy, right?

In my next semester, I have a robotics class. Wish me luck. I need it.

Finally figured out what RSS feeds are. Are you proud of me?

Local idiot finally figured out how to scream into the void loud enough to annoy people.

No, but in all seriousness, this was so hard? For no reason?

Not the setting up of the feed, but the styling??? The pretty-feeds looked so pretty but I could not figure out for the life of me how they worked? The RSS is very prettily styled now :3

I still don't know how they work, and I still don't really know how an RSS is implemented. Like, I know how it is in *theory*, I know that it works in *theory*, but it just seems so deceptively simple that I'm just wondering if I fucked up massively somewhere.

If I did, please tell me, please. I will die of embarrasement otherwise.

Anywaysss, you can subscribe to my RSS now!! It's there! You can do it!!!

If you're tuning in for the first time and have no fucking idea what I'm talking about, then AboutFeeds can help ya!

I need to make some changes still, This site is so janky out back, please don't look at the css file I beg.

I really really hope nothing breaks.

MAJOR WRITING PAGE UPDATE!!!

YAAAAA I DID IT!! I DID IT GUYSSS!!!! I DID THE THING!!!! THE THING I BUILT THIS WEBSITE FOR!!!!!

I HAVE ALL OF MY WRITINGS UP ON THIS WEBSITE NOW!!!!!

Growing up, I have honestly struggled to find a website that I wanted to write on. Something that could support the styling choices I wanted to make (like including a cover, boy oh boy was I obsessed with that part) and wasn't quote-unquote "serious" enough that I wouldn't get chased off with a broomstick for my third grade writing.

I had entertained the idea of making a website just for me, but I was small and barely even knew what the internet was aside from youtube, so I forgot about the idea almost immediately.

Years later, my third grade writing is now up on my very own website, built with my very own hands!!!

I've been getting so much better at this coding thing! I barely have to search up W3Schools anymore!!

I'm so proud of it? Unironically? It feels like a milestone.

I don't feel as pressured to write like this. Like, whenever I tried to use a platform like Wattpad or Quotev or AO3, there's this imaginary pressure to "do better" and "be better". I usually end up just deleting my works entirely after a year or so passes.

This time, I plan on just using this website as both a hosting and an archive for the things I wrote. You can look back and see the amount of progress I made.

Fun fact, 'The Scent Of Blood' can genuinely be traced to be one of the very first full short-stories I wrote. I found a random prompt online, got inspired, and then wrote. And I actually finished it! It's not a half-formed mess like the rest of my writings from that time!

To preserve this mediocrity and general cringe, I did very minimal editing on all the current one-shots that are available. I will be editing everything I post afterwards, but I want to preserve this one, at least.

In that line of thought, the dates attached to the story are the dates that the story- or chapter- had been written on, not the date it had been posted on, because I wanted to.

The covers were very obviously made with Canva. It took me both no effort at all, and more effort than I am embarrased to admit.

If you decide to read the short stories, then please leave a message in the guestbook! I would really love to hear your thoughts!

Moving on from my writings to a general life update, I PASSED ALL MY CLASSES!!! YAYY!!!!! It was the bare minimum passing mark, but YAYY!!!

I can now go back to crocheting without guilt. I have a commission I have been putting off because of exams, but I can do it now!

Okay guys, wrap it up. Yap session is over. See ya later!!

NEW BUTTONS! AGAIN!!

I UPDATED MY BUTTONS AGAIN!!!! THIS TIME, THEY'RE PERMANENT!!!

I learnt how to.... animate-ish(?) in Canva by just pseudo-creating frames for every different position of the supposed animation. Granted, there are probably better ways to do this, but I've already done it (and the third one is my favorite, Nishimiya Shoko my beloved) so theres really no point on revisiting my very odd process until like, maybe a year or so into the future when I want a new button. I'm going to change my blinkie too!

AND!! More excitingly!!! Theres going to be a whole new revamp on my writing page!! I'm moving all my OG works off of AO3 and only hosting fanfictions there -as god and the power of anime intended- and will now be hosting all my OG works (which isn't a lot, but eh) on this very website! Yippieee!!

I'm having some trouble deciding the layout for my chapater page and the actual story page though. Like, do you just. Make a link and paste the entire thing there in html??? Is that it??? Like huh??? It feels wrong??? But it's how the web works so??

So, anyways. I have big plans for my writing page, my A03 links are offline so beware of that.

Thank you for coming to my pointless yap session. Goodbye.

Shorter Paragraphs!!!

Oh? What's this? A sneaky little button? I wonder what that does!! Hmmmmm....
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Lol, okay, yeah, It just expands and collapses the paragraph text. (courtesy of WebDevSimplified) (oddly, this doesn't work in Opera? Which is so odd. Doesn't it also use webkit? Maybe it's a me thing, idk. It'll most likely get updated soon anyways.)

BUT!!! It's all done in CSS!!! It's sneakily a checkbox!!! How cool is that? Now you don't have to scroll through walls of text to get to the bottom!!!!

Anyways, my last exam is in a few days. I should be studying, but it's the Java exam, soooo........

I'm most likely going to hold up my tradition of failing my Physics and Maths classes again. The exams were hard, but also easy enough that I know it was fully my fault that I failed :'C

Instead of studying, I'm just doing some updates on the website, like adding a new addition to the shrine (still no pages, sadly), and some overall.... somethings..? Even I don't know, honestly. I just do things as I see them.

I have some grand ideas for everything, but no skill to pull it off D:! That's what I'm trying to rectify, CS Degree and all.

My birthday passed several months ago and it was sorta funny that I didn't even bother to mention that? (aside from updating my age, lololol). People might say it's probably not so good for privacy to have my age on display, but it's fiiineee.... totally....

I want to do something, but I don't know what. If you have any ideas, lemme know! I wanna outsource my brainstorming process.

Thank you for visiting, and reading, and staying around! It means a lot to have someone listen to me ramble.

I would also really like it if you let me know in the guestbook! It doesn't even have to be a full comment, like, a string of hearts from an anonymous guest would make me happy too! I love engaging with people!!!

Bye! Until next time. Hopefully not after a year or something.

Don't you just love how I was MIA for like.... several months?

So I like completely fell off the deep end, whoops. I was originally going to update, especially since this was sort of a passion project for me, but then I overthought everything and ended up stressing myself out, so.

I have my final exam in two days, so it's obviously the best time to make some updates to my neocities. Obviously.

I learnt Java this semester. It's kinda fun, but so very annoying to work with, especially Java GUI elements, which was unfortunately a requirement in our end of semester assignment. I will forever have beef with JTables, the absolute bane of my existence.

On a more positive note, I made an ugly fanpage for my fav KPOP group and had an epiphany of "this. this is what I want to do in life." so that's good.

There's a lot of things that I wanted to do here and I forgot, but I remember putting all my writing on AO3 and I realized I didn't wanna do that since original works on A03 is a bit of a grey area, so I might just make a new page format to display my writings, with toggles to turn off styles or make it more contrasting or something. Yes, something for future me to explore, of course.

I really want to join a Game Jam or a RenPy Jam, whichever comes first, but while I can do the most basic of things I am so not good at actually coding, which is so sad, I've been doing this for over five years now, you'd think I'd somehow found a way to get out of tutorial hell but nooo-

I like doing writing challenges though, maybe I should do that again. I loved those.

Peace & Love on Planet Earth, or whatever Steven Universe said.

SHRINE!!.

THE SHRINE PAGE! THE MAIN REASON WHY I MADE THIS WEBSITE IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

Admittedly, it's still quite lacking, and since each image is supposed to lead to it's own showcase page in the future, it's also very incomplete. I just wanted to get this update out of the way before the cold dark hands of the student life drag me into it's murky depths. This way, I can make smaller scale updates, like populating the writing page, or making a shrine page for a specific fandom. Easy things.

I should probably also set up an RSS. Right. That it something I am supposed to be doing. Yay.

I've been having so much fun just surfing the neocities pages. I've also found a few webrings I would love to join! Maybe I can display them on the links page? Since there really isn't much space on the home page...

One of the subjects I'm going to be learning this semester is Discrete Mathematics. I heard it was hard. I really hope it isn't hard. The best I ever did on maths was a B grade.

Future Prospects.

So, apparently I'm just dumb. The scroll property works, it just took neocities a while to update it...

I changed the link wall and added a page nav, and moved my tamaNOTchi there. I also added some tags, and got myself a slightly better button!!! And a very cute blinkie that I had been planning on for so long!! Please use it. Please. I would love to see it be used!
My semester is starting soon, so I want to be a responsible person and say that I can't update this regularly anymore, but let's face it, I will procrastinate so hard I'd probably end up with a completly new website before my first week ends.

I'm a bit worried though, because I failed some subjects last semester, and I can't retake them yet. It's constantly haunting me. But it'll be fiiinee!!

... Right?

I already have some ideas on how the shrine page will be structured... But I don't know what I'm gonna do, so you can look forward to that!!

Ya know? Something about making this website made me realize... I can say whatever I want!! Which means!!! I can info dump on all my favorite characters and novels all I want!!!! And no one can leave!!!! Yay!!!

Link Wall Makes An Appearance!!

You heard it right, folks! The famed wall of buttons and blinkies has made it's debut!! It's quite sparse since I haven't really gotten many yet, especialy the blinkies, but it works!!! I also have my own button!!! It's.... functional!!! Yep!!

Don't be scared! Link my site! It won't hurt you!

Special thanks to hillhouse for providing the autoload script for the navigation so that it would be consistent among all pages. I was actually trying so hard to find a solution to that.

Apparently the css property for scroll-behaviour: smooth; doesn't work??? That's so annoying. It works locally, but nowhere else. Is there an alternative? Guess I'll just have to find out somehow...

As for general updates, the one page not made right now is the shrine, so that's going to be next. What to put first though.... I've seen so many cool shrines to all my favorite pieces of media already....

Maybe something along the lines of a wiki or a showcase. Lord knows I'm always trying to get the timelines right.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. The admission fee will be $1000. Pay up.

Changes To Writing Page, Small Features.

I populated the writing page. It took so long because I was looking for a place to host the stories themselves, then just looped back straight to AO3. It's not really a place for original works, but since I have some very minor place on writing fanfictions anyways, I still plan on doing so.

Only One-Shots are available, and even then, I didn't get around to posting everything, so there's only four available, but I will be updating that later when I have more motivation.

The Guestbook works now! Yayy!!! It didn't take so long to set up, thankfully.

Changed the back to top button to an actual button that's fixed to the bottom right of the page.

Visitor Count!! And Online Count!!! They can both be found at the bottom of this page, above the button sliders. Maybe I'll move it someday.

I don't think there's anything more to say? I spent the majority of the day going on several sidequests when all I wanted to do was to update the Writing page. I think I'll take a break from that and make the Link Wall, finally. I have some button and blinky ideas so, that's something to look forward to!

New Pages!!

I made a new page!! It's filled with CONTENT!!!! Non-existent content, but it's there!!!!

There's the non-existent shrine and link wall pages meant to be populated later, but the star of the show is the writing page, where there is a giant block of lorem ipsum so that I could get a visual!

I also separated the navigation links from the profile block. It's something I wanted to do before, but it became a necessity after I changed the buttons and made them look wonky on mobile. RESPONSIVENESS FOR THE WIN!

I spent such an insanely long time trying to make the sticky sidebar to still work, I am so dumb. The fix was so simple and I spent an hour trying to find it. I want to cry.

But it's done!! And now I can goof off and start populating the shrines or something. I already have so many things planned....

Is it really a requirement to have an RSS feed? Like, I know it's easier, but it seems kinda hard to implement?? Hm. I'll just put that into my to-do for now- OHMYGOD I FORGOT ABOUT THE GUESTBOOK AAAAGHHH I WAS GOING TO DO THAT TODAY!!! FUUUUU-

Second Impressions.

I made an infinitely scrolling button slider!!!! Well, made is a strong word. I mostly just copied over and changed a bit of LunDev's code to make it fit the mobile versions better.

The background is still a bit... meh, but only when you're veiwing this on a gigantic screen (to which, my condolences), would the textures look kinda odd since they (annoyingly, irritatingly) don't match up very well, but my stubborn idiotic self likes it a bit too much to change it. Hopefully, the universe will be kind to me and lets me find a better, cuter alternative.

For prosperities sake!

First Impressions!

This website is the Notebook template made by Kalechips!! It's really cute and easy to use, and the only thing limiting me right now is my own CSS skills! I hope to make this a very cute website in the near future!!
I hope I can live up to this beauty of a template...
This website is currently under construction as we speak.