Jesse's Blog (j4yph0bic)

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Hello everyone! I’ve been working hard on this website these past days and finally everything’s up! So I thought it would be a good idea to summarize every change I’ve done here.

• Made the site more accessible: This was my priority! After playing around with CSS and customizing everything to my liking, I decided I was done with this website and moved on to work on my art site (I’ll talk more about this later!). In the past year I’ve started to make my art more accessible adding alt text everytime I can, especially to my full pieces, so it only made sense to make my art website accessible to screenreaders and keyboard users. Then I realized I should be doing that to my personal site too even if it’s just a hobby website! So here we are. I was nowhere close to being done with this website haha, I spent an entire day modifying my code to make everything as accessible as possible. I added an “skip to content” button, removed the web neko since it made keyboard navigation clunky, removed the marquees and moved the graphics to a graphic wall (I’ll miss them but it’s what had to be done!) and added alt text to all non-decorative images. I’m very happy that I figured out how to make everything work, and I really hope my efforts were worth it! But if any side of my site isn’t as accessible as the rest let me know in my neocities profile or in my guestbook :D I’ll try to fix everything!
• Added the graphics wall: I’m gonna be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of this section LOL but I wanted to have web graphics somewhere now that I removed the marquees. 
• Added dropdowns on the navigation menu: The nav was starting to be very cluttered and I would like to add more stuff in the future, so it was time to figure out how to make submenus. I decided to use a clickable dropdown instead of a hover dropdown to make it more accessible to keyboard users :D  Expect more sections to be added soon… hopefully LOL
• Made a sitemap: IDK I thought it would be nice to have everything organized and easy to access. You can find it on the footer of the main page (not on the footer of the blog)
• I still have to finish making the crochet gallery and the resources page… but it’ll be here ASAP

I think that’s all!

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I’ve also been working on my art site. You can actually find it on the navbar of the main page! Although it’s mostly empty for now, so you don’t have to go see it yet. That site is more “professional looking”, I did kind of a carrd-like layout so it looks less retro and more functional. My initial plan was using carrd anyway, but I’m not in a moment in which I can justify paying for a pro plan and the element limit was pissing me off, so, I decided to go back to my old portfolio neocities account and restart my site there. For many people, coding this from scratch would be very inconvenient, but I think making a static site from scratch has many positives, even if most of it could’ve been done on carrd anyway. 

First of all, I want to make subsections for all my projects. Doing that on a free carrd plan is near impossible and making a cool interactive site for people to engage with my projects is something I’d really like to do. Secondly, I can have a zonelets blog in it! And lastly, I just think coding my site is cool and it’s not like I plan to use it as a professional portfolio so it doesn’t really matter if it looks a bit too obviously hand coded by someone who’s obviously not a webdev lol 

There have been some inconveniences though. Well just one. The stupid art gallery. No matter how many times I try to code a fucking gallery it looks so bad and hard to navigate 😭 I’d like to add a little gallery with featured art for people who stumble upon my site for the first time, but ughhh it’s so hard to code something that looks good and is functional. I don’t know why galleries are something I struggle so much to code (is this a normal experience? or am I just dumb?), but I guess I’ll figure it out eventually… I hope so!

EDIT: Hey I figured it out! I found this gallery template which has been very helpful because I basically don’t have to code anything yippee! So now we also have a gallery section added :D This has been especially helpful for my art website though… It made everything so much easier and now I don’t have to worry about this again. I don’t plan to host my entire portfolio on neocities because that’d be too much work, too much storage needed, and I’m not that insane to do that to myself, but it’s great to be able to at least put a little gallery on there. END EDIT.

Talking about the art site, I wanted my art blog to have an RSS feed in case anyone wants to keep up with the site without following me on socmed, but I didn't really know how to make rss feeds work. Well for some reason I decided to browse the zonelets site again and saw ZoneRSS…. So I decided to use it to set up my RSS feeds! As of now, I have 3 feeds to update: the personal blog/website feed, the media log feed and the art blog feed. Setting the RSS feeds up was honestly a pain in the ass (i even ended up using a zonelets theme for the feed because styling it with my messy css was near impossible), but I hope it's worth it anyway! Even if nobody uses it, I like knowing I have a quick way to update it effortlessly just in case someone wants to follow it :] I didn't know about rss feeds until i joined neocities, but I think they're pretty cool and I wanted to have one on my sites too. 

If you want to keep up with site updates you can follow the blog RSS as it's the one I’ll use for general site updates! The media log one will be used for media post updates only, duh. Also I’ll let you know when the art site is ready via blog post + RSS feed ! I'm very excited to set everything up and start my art site, since that website is something I take more seriously since it’s where I plan to put everything about all my webcomic projects! But while I work on it, and because I don’t really share art on this site, you can check out my art on my socials (they’re on the links out section). 

I think that’s all I’ve been up to now! I think now I’m gonna be working on new art, so I probably won’t be updating this site as much for now. See you later! :3

• I posted an outfit log, where I plan to post outfits I like :P
• I also added a crochet page with all my crochet crafts
• Lastly I did minor changes to other sections' CSS and layouts.

I'm planning a new update with my journal scans, a museum page with art pieces that inspire me and an itabag page for my itabag collection. These updates will take longer than this one though! But I assure you I'm working on them (;u;) 

Also new blog posts soon!

Lately I’ve been wanting to start dressing up in a way that makes me feel like I’m actually myself again. Today I want to talk more about it!

These past months I’ve had many issues with dressing in a way I actually feel comfortable in. I just default to wearing oversized hoodies and I don’t have fun at all with my style!

My personal style is very important to me. Expressing myself through clothing was very helpful to find myself and my gender identity, and to this day it’s one of the reasons why I can feel I belong in my body even if I’m pre-transition and very closeted, LOL. That’s why it makes me super sad to see that I’ve abandoned my personal style to dress in a way I don’t feel happy with just because I feel like “doing too much” will make me stand out. So what if I stand out! I want to have fun and be myself again!

This is why I decided to start posting OOTDs on this website. I know that posting my looks will motivate me to put more work into them again and turn it into a part of my routine. I hope this year I can finally start feeling pretty and comfortable in my body and my appearance again. I’m tired of always looking so boring and wearing the same things everyday! I want my looks to reflect who I am, not to look like I’m trying to go unnoticed.

Anyway, if I started to write this is to talk more about the styles I like wearing :D I’m not a fan of labeling everything as a "-core" or aesthetic and reducing everything to a marketable label, but whatever I like categorizing things so I’m just doing this for fun, don’t judge me for it!

Ouji fashion is so interesting to me! I love lolita fashion, but it’s something I could never wear because of dysphoria… So finding out about Ouji fashion made me so happy. Not only does it have the same Victorian inspiration and frilly pieces that I love in Lolita fashion, but it’s also an androgynous/masc fashion style I can feel comfortable in. I’ve been researching a little bit recently and I’ve found some brands that I like… but everything’s so expensive I think I won't be able to join this subculture until I save a considerable amount of money up LOL Despite that, I’d love to continue to follow this subculture from the distance until I can actually wear something. I’ll continue to research the style and learn more about it!

Personally I think I’d be a gothic ouji, although I really like old school ouji too! 

Okay, okay… I know how it sounds. But to be fair, I’ve always been into this style even before everyone started calling it Y2K, LOL (some pieces from my 2019 wardrobe are proof of that!). I love these streetwear focused styles because they’re easy to maintain and require little to no effort. They’re also cheap and you don’t need to fall victim to consumerism because old clothing can be modified and restyled to fit this style (contrary to what most people believe! trust me you don’t need to buy  thousands of shein y2k garments to dress like this). 

Even if I dress in dark colors and take a lot of inspiration from alternative subcultures, I don’t think I belong to any of them, but if I had to choose a subculture it’d be the 2020 ekid/eboy. I was 15 when this subculture emerged and it has clearly affected my fashion style permanently, from hanging chains on my pants to oversized graphic t-shirts and chunky platforms (I still want a pair of demonia boots lol)… I was too chronically online back then but the trends I liked stayed in my style in a more toned down way to this day.

I think my style ended up being influenced and mixed with other trends and J-fashion elements, but I can’t forget how my egirl era influenced how I dress today. I thought I should mention it somewhere because I dress like this too often to not say anything about it! Sometimes there aren’t specific labels to describe your style and that’s fine and normallll

EDIT: I’ve been informed that my current fashion style is usually labeled as twilightcore (as in, the twilight saga) and I don’t even know what to say LMAOOO, this is so funny I can’t 😭

I loveeee talking about fashion and about my personal style (in case you hadn’t noticed)…. I really like trying new things, but I think this is what I wear the most! Or what I used to wear a year ago, before I lost my motivation… But I promise I will change that this year 😤This is the year in which I wear all the clothes I own again and have fun doing it! Wearing boring hoodies is sooooo 2025, it’s time to go back to having fun!

Anyway, that’s all! I want to write another entry about makeup styles I like :D But that’s a topic for another day, so I’ll end this entry here… See you next time!

• New digital collection section with picrews and graphics
• Some layout changes here and there idk...

You might not have noticed, but in the footer of my main page, there’s a graveyard section now. I put it there to move all the pages I retire or discontinue… For now it just happened to the crochet section LOL

I know the crochet page was kinda new but I wasn’t happy with the format and tbh I don’t really care about sharing my crochet stuff that much anyway! I’ll keep sharing the journals and outfits for now though👍 (btw I promise I’m still working on scanning the journal, once it’s done I’ll post it!) 

I find html galleries super annoying to deal with and I never figured out how I wanted the crochet gallery to look like, it was pissing me off so I just decided to discontinue the page for now… IDK, I’ve also been thinking about this website lately and what kind of stuff i want to put in it (website manifesto coming soon btw)… i kinda want it to be a place with everything I like and things that make me happy, and that might mean not sharing everything I do! I might revive the crochet section if I ever figure out how to improve it, so not saying things that go to the graveyard will never come back LMAO but for now i don’t want to keep overthinking it :P

This website and my art site have been giving me headaches for a while… some shitty things happened and coding them is time consuming. i want this hobby to keep being fun, that’s why i think retiring sections makes sense, but instead of deleting them I’m just hiding them so they can still be viewed if you want to ! 

Anyway i don’t think i need to justify me but i wanted to write about it. In other news, I’m still working on the new museum section which I’m very proud of so far, I’ll post it once I put more things in it! It’s basically a collection of artists and pieces that I like.. I really like having, like, a directory of things I like and find inspiring, so that’s something cool i’m planning to add. As I said, still working on the journal scanning part of the journals page, it might take a while because my scanner is slow and there are many pages + i have to censor personal info and stuff afterwards >.< The itabags section, despite not being in the menu anymore, I’m working on it! I’m just moving pins around and changing bags so I kinda just have 1 finished bag atm :’) since it probably won’t be ready for a while, i decided it’d be better to remove it until it’s actually ready. I want to tweak some things here and there and improve the layout too but I don't promise anything LOL. Also, I might expand the about section and add some more things like quiz results and more fun stuff!

Well this was supposed to be a short update, so I don’t have anything else to say! I’ve been away from this site for some days, but I also think it makes sense to not update often and take my time so I can make better updates with more and better content (god i hate that word but ykwim). If I ever disappear for too long, I assure you I’m still working on stuff, and if you want to know what I’m up to i’m always on status.cafe and bsky ! That’s all for now, see you later! <3

I added new(old) Picrews to the digital collection and my most recent Pocket Camp card to the AC Shrine :]

I think I will be doing little updates like this from now on, I have more fun with the site when I take it easy and add things I like seeing on it !

Some minor layout changes, new outfit in the outfit log and new resources/bookmark pages (1 and 2)

Added a resources page and updated the outfit log

I finally posted my journal scans!

Some months ago I wrote an entry about the fashion styles that I like, and today I want to update you and tell you about how the process to find my definitive style and build my wardrobe is going!

I think I don’t struggle to know what I like. I’ve had a clear idea of what I like since 2020 and a pretty defined style since 2023 (when I stopped trying to fit into gender binaries and let myself dress in ways I actually enjoyed!), but I tend to like a wide range of aesthetics, I don’t like putting myself in a box and that leaves me wanting to own clothing of many different styles… which is hard when you’re not rich, don’t have a lot of space and don’t want to own things that are hard to combine with each other LOL

I've been looking for fashion inspo of different substyles I like, and since I can’t commit to an aesthetic, everything is kinda of a mess… which is cool. I like mixing stuff and coming up with a style that works for me! But after looking at so many pins on Pinterest, now I need to reorganize my closet and see what already works before I try to thrift new pieces 🧐

Having fashion as a hobby can very easily turn into having shopping as a hobby though. It’s not in my plans to give in to overconsumerism, buy tons of fast fashion nor change my entire wardrobe every two months, but I hate to admit that even when scrolling through Vinted, I realize I bookmark more items than I can realistically buy! I love thrifting but I don't want to buy more than I have space for u.u I want to choose pieces different enough from what I already own, pieces that I genuinely want for my closet and that can’t be replaced by something that I already own.

Since the last time I wrote here, I think my taste has pretty much stayed the same or pretty similar, but I’ve found new places to take inspiration from.

I still enjoy the so-called Tiktok Y2K stuff… I think that’s, like, my everyday wear since 2020. Baggy jeans, oversized hoodies and t-shirts, jorts, chunky platforms… Those are essentials of my casual, everyday closet. I think that’s my most basic style, but it works for me! Although I’m trying to make it a bit more interesting and accessorize it more often, I'm very lazy and I usually just go for something comfy :P

I’ve mentioned being into j-fashion and wanting to join a certain style: Ouji fashion. My process getting into ouji fashion is being messy because of reasons I’ll talk about later, but while I researched ouji and EGL, I inevitably came across other styles like fairy kei, visual kei and jirai kei. Jirai kei was one of those styles I thought I’d never be into because of its feminine pieces and overall being a style I don’t see myself wearing… until I found out about subcul and tenshi kaiwai. Subcul is very much its own thing, and I won’t disrespect an entire fashion subculture by comparing it to a 2020 microtrend LOL, but it definitely has elements that remind me of western 2020 alt fashion, like the oversized/baggy silhouette, black and pink palettes, exaggerated makeup, etc, etc. Even though I’m not a big fan of the Official Jirai Brands™because they’re overpriced 100% polyester fast fashion, I think I’d like to take inspiration from its makeup trends and overall silhouette, color palettes, accessorizing, etc. I would never call myself jirai danshi/subcul/tenshi kaiwai, but I can appreciate it and draw inspiration from it while also making it my own thing!

Going back to talking about Ouji, I’m afraid I have the same issue with it as I have with Jirai: everything is 100% polyester and I honestly don’t trust these brands being as ethical and slow fashion as they claim to be. Despite that, I really, really would like to wear this style, so I’m willing to build most of my wardrobe from 2nd hand sites and collect older pieces… which seems like a nightmare, but that’s the thing with EGL, right? It’s a slow hobby, building your closet takes time, and coming across your dream pieces can be near impossible… 

My preferred substyles are sweet and old school, but I also like gothic coords because who doesn’t like looking like a Victorian vampire lmfaooo.. Anyway, IDK how long it’d take me to get the few pieces I like (I don’t want to be a lifestyle ouji, I’m fine with owning a few pieces for when I feel like feeling fancy LOL), but I haven’t given up on the idea, it’s just that it’s not available for me rn (expensive) and I want to wait and not buy the cheapest Taobao options just to feel accomplished. I’ll get into this style step by step, not rushing through the process and learning to be patient.

From researching ouji, I also found out that I really like aristo fashion! I think that style is way more flexible though, and I don’t care that much about following it strictly, but some aristo pieces made their way into my wishlist along with the ouji pieces I want to search for LOL. I think both styles are super pretty and they make me feel comfortable since they’re very androgynous :D I’m very happy I got into these styles, even if it’s hard to build a wardrobe around them, I feel like I finally found something that really resonates with me. (Not saying my other styles don’t resonate with me but! I think I’ve always felt like these styles were just a fantasy and not something I could genuinely wear, so yeah, it’s like finally allowing myself to get into something I’ve been loving since forever!)

Because of nostalgia and because I found out about fairy kei, I ended up finding my last new source of inspiration; to be more precise I rediscovered it: Pastel goth. Yeah, the poser goth style! But IDC, dressing like this was my dream as a kid and I can make it work well enough with things I already own, thrifting and DIYing, so I will make my inner child happy! It’s in my plans to start making oversized crochet sweaters with pastel goth motifs, tbh I’m very excited to start those projects, so I will for sure share them in this blog when I finish them :3c

I think these have been the most relevant evolutions of my style. I think I stayed pretty much the same, I just found new sources of inspiration and researched more subcultures and fashion styles that I liked, and now I have a clearer idea of what I’d like to wear and where to find it!

Aside from building my Ouji wardrobe, which is definitely going to take more time and effort, I think I already have a pretty solid wardrobe with enough variety to make all my styles work! But I still want to have more statement pieces, which I’ll get via thrifting of course.

I’m definitely not perfect, and I can’t promise I won’t buy fast fashion ever again, but I want to reduce my impact while still enjoying fashion and my preferred styles. As I said, I’ll try to make my current closet work and thrift everything else, create a capsule wardrobe that works for me specifically, a capsule wardrobe according to my criteria and taste! I want to curate my color palettes to stay within what I would actually wear, but still have fun with silhouettes, patterns and prints! 

There’s already tons of clothing in the world. Buying 2nd hand is always the best option, so let’s do that as much as we can! No brand is guaranteed to be 100% ethical, so reducing our consumption, thrifting and DIYing are the most sustainable options.

I like enjoying fashion, and that definitely comes from my love for character design, alternative looks, exaggerated aesthetics and things outside of the norm; but at the same time I don’t like consuming mindlessly. As I said, I’m not perfect and I might make irresponsible purchases sometimes, but I like to be more conscious of my consumption habits and to enjoy things like fashion from a less consumerist perspective.

I said at the beginning of this entry that having fashion as a hobby can quickly turn into having shopping as a hobby, and I think that’s relevant here too. If you’re someone like me, someone who enjoys aesthetics and fashion way too much (LOL), please reconsider how much you like buying vs wearing and expressing yourself. Rediscover your closet. Try new combinations. Experiment with your hair and makeup too! Try every possibility, that’s what makes fashion fun!

I’m very passionate about fashion and expressing myself through it + makeup. I’m not a minimalist at all, and I definitely own more than I actually need. I’m a collector and I like owning pretty useless things…. and that also shows through my fashion styles. I’m trying to learn to balance my love for these things and reducing my purchases and the impact of my consumption.

I like talking about fashion because it’s a way to show my love for it without impulsively buying new stuff or whatever! These blog entries are another form of self expression to me, so even if you didn’t read everything I wrote here, it’s fine, I had fun writing it.

I’m sorry if I went a bit off topic by the end of this entry, everytime I talk about fashion I feel the need to justify myself and let you know I’m not encouraging people to buy more stuff, nor am I bragging about all the new garments I plan to buy… I started this entry being excited about my new inspirations and styles and ended up losing a bit of that excitement by the end of the entry haha… But I promise I’m still feeling great about having found the styles I genuinely enjoy and trying to build my wardrobe around them. I’ll just be patient and do it in the least harmful way!

Anyway, that’s all for now. I hope you had fun reading this, I really enjoyed rambling here! See you next time… byeee!