Welcome to ramenbowie v3.0! It seems I haven't learned much from my previous foray into neocities! I overcommitted and overengineered this whole thing again. But I have strategically went about it this time. let me explain.

I had No Clue what to use my website for. I had a few attempts at writing blog posts, but the sheer pressure (self-imposed dw) of making things polished and somewhat worthwhile writing/reading has left a bunch of those posts in the dust. Also, I got real busy in 2023 and my life went batshit wild in 2024. I think I just barely, BARELY settled into a normal life again. I come renewed with a fresh drive for creation <3<3<3

I realised neocities might finally work for me, and give me the push to properly ditch social media:

• I built a journaling habit and hoo boy I sure write a lot of words. I want to digitalise and share some of the insights that come out of it
• I wanted to revisit my older fics, but always found it clumsy sharing thoughts on them on social media
• I also wanted to build a rec list that doesn't get buried between shitposts
• I am running away from an AI infested internet
• I've become even more of a hermit online

For the past year, I've been on a solo game dev "adventure" and I mostly kept that separate from my fandom account because, uh, I didn't want the people I networked with to see Rodi's ass first thing when they search me up. But I had a pretty strong longing for sharing the development process somewhere, so I ended up making a gamedev bluesky.

And that's when I realised. wow! this fucking sucks! I am not going about this the right way. I have little to no desire to constantly follow others, write something snappy in 240ish chars and remember which hashtags went with it, to like and comment, etc etc, because I am already so busy with making a whole game. I took "touch grass" to heart and I've developed a timeline allergy (except for tumblr, for some reason. it might be because i never browse it fully awake). You usually don't have a good time if you don't play by the platform's rules.

So no real devlogs happened. I even thought of doing a dev retrospective after the release, AND making it a video?? while I had no video editing experience (bar the trailers I made for the game), without knowing how to run a yt channel. so, yeah. that obviously didn't fly.

I had some success with Steam's community news feature, where I was more comfy to write more about the development, yet uncomfortable enough to feel the pressure of communicating to potential buyers and reviewers. AUGH! so close.

I think I'm against any sort of expectations, platform or user-base imposed. So let me throw all of those out the window. This is muh website. Now, to get rid of the self-expectations...

This was a lesson in friction (not the fun kind)

Problem 1: updating the site

I use VS code for 99% of my coding. It's what I've built every iteration of my site in.

Something I didn't expect was to absolutely LOATHE writing longform content in it. That's how all those unfinished blog posts met their demise. I though I just hated writing on a laptop.

Though curiously enough, I had no issues writing in notepad, even though it's a suckass program compared to VS code. I wouldn't ever code something in notepad (but if push comes to shove I definitely use that at work to patch shit lol), but writing?? hell yeah. I learned I love a no-fluff text editor.

But I have another big problem, inspiration almost never hits at my laptop. It's more like whenever I'm half into the shower, stretching out with my phone to note ideas down, while avoiding all the water drops on the screen. Or lately, I've just been brain dumping whenever I'm on public transport.

I was also in the middle of collecting all of my writing in one spot, shared across all my devices. Those outlines, plots and scenes were getting real messy and lost and it was a headache to write for bfh and mimosa. Obsidian is a pretty flexible but simple editor, and it's cross-platform, and it has sync, and it's privacy-first, so I went with it. It works like a charm for me! ymmv (I don't use any plugins besides "copy as html" when posting to ao3. I just like writing in markdown :])

So finally, I have 1 (one) place to do my writing, whether it's for the fic or website.

Zola, the previous static site generator I was using also had markdown support for the page content. I liked that! I think what didn't work for me was the rest of the tool. I struggled to tweak my website to my og vision, just because the documentation was so sparse for it, and my css was dogshit, and I was using sass instead of css for some reason (?????????) ...so out of depth

Sorry for being a javascript/npm hater in my 2023 post. I was younger and stupider and needed to go to jupiter.

Problem 2: THE SITE

Nothing frustrated me more than not being able to code the damn thing!!!!! I may not be a web dev but I am a stubborn dev dammit, and if I can't hit the functionality and look for what I'm making, I just get exhausted and drop it.

I came across this beautiful oc site generator on tumblr and found out about 11ty (eleventy) through it. I was Intrigued, but my snob ass didn't want to use node js, so I didn't think more of it.

BUT it stuck with me. It has all I ever wanted from an oc knowledgebase... stuff I was already building in my private obsidian vault: character, location and plot information, all linking together and presented in a familiar Toyhouse format.

I installed node js (didn't die) and started toying with 11ty. And I had a better time! And there were way more templates and documentation to steal/learn from. And now, found at the end of the year, killing time before my next gig, I feel warmed up enough to use it for this site!

But I still don't know what to use the damn thing for!! (besides the oc knowledgebase, which is cool but a monumental effort to bring 10 years of info up to date. Gotta take small steps...)

Problem 3: using the site

I wanted to feel excited about this! And I want others to find whimsy in browsing it. I gotta fill it up with stuff, without making it all from scratch. hmm...

Recently, ao3 has been pretty spotty in uptime. If this site goes down, my 7+ years of writing go down with it. ...Time to port the fics!

Part of my writing should be up here now, AND here's where the fun bit comes! I wrote an annotation functionality to insert A/Ns right into the fic, director's commentary style. I'll start using it by both gushing and laughing at critiquing my 19 year old self's writing skills in anthologia's first chapter. I was so proud of that one, and I still love it. I think it's healthy to reflect back on your work, and I hope it entertains others as well!

Okay, what about the self-imposed restriction of quality blogging. uhhhh Just copy what you loved about twitter and what you were too scared to do on tumblr and make it floaty! This should help with the update frequency as well, when I just want to drop some random thing in here.

oh yeah, i can do this too:

And, of course, that oc knowledgebase. Soon(tm)

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ok ok ok I'm happy with how this all works. Let's marvel at the fruits of my weeklong labour.

Itvara here is showing a gross oversimplification of it. I can give some more deets in later posts how each component works (the chapter highlights were pretty funky to work out). If there's something specific you'd love to hear more about, tell me in the guestbook!