Wasp Nest

This website will no longer be updated, but you can still check out my new website if you'd like!

These are areas of the site that share information about me, my friends, etc.

• About me
• Goals
• My partner in crime
• Now
• Uses
• Social links
• System

I'm Wasp, or at least that's the name I use online! Here are some other facts about me, in no particular order:

• I speak French as my second language, and I also know a bit of Brazilian Portuguese! I'm learning the basics of Russian currently as well.
• I'm a major furry and most of the art I make is furry art, I also have a tendency to collect fursonas! I really want to make my own fursuit someday.
• I'm proudly LGBTQ+, specifically nonbinary/multigender, butch (for the most part, DID makes this complicated) and on the aroace spectrum!
• I'm neurodivergent/mentally ill (autism, ADHD, DID) and disabled (joint issues, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, etc.).
• I'm mostly of Canadian French descent, though I also have some Indigenous ancestry that my family is disconnected from, which I am trying to respectfully learn more about and reconnect to.

My partner also makes art, you can find links to her stuff on my page for her!

My current big hyperfixations at the moment are QSMP, Cozy Grove, and The Legend of Zelda (specificaly Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom). You can find more of the stuff I'm interested in within the fandoms section below!

• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
• Nimona
• Killing Eve (not the last season though, that sucked)
• Final Space
• Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts
• The Amazing Digital Circus
• Bojack Horseman
• Rick and Morty
• Tuca and Bertie
• Loki
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians (the show)
• Resident Alien

• Beastars
• Cells At Work
• Brand New Animal
• Dungeon Meshi
• Solo Leveling

• The Locked Tomb trilogy by Tamsyn Muir
• The Teixcalaan series by Arkady Martine
• The Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness
• The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
• The Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan

• QSMP
• Slimecicle
• Unus Annus
• Markiplier
• Jacksepticeye
• Technoblade
• Ranboo
• Generation Loss
• PointCrow

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom
• Undertale/Deltarune
• Stardew Valley
• Night in the Woods
• Subnautica
• Angels With Scaly Wings
• Cozy Grove
• Cult of the Lamb

• Cetaceans
• Marine biology and oceanography
• Abnormal psychology
• Parasitology
• Astrophysics
• Language learning (obviously)
• Furry fandom

This page is for my current goals (often financial) and how you can support me in achieving them if you'd like.

Currently, I need to pay off debt I took on because student loans did not give me enough funding to cover my last semester and I had to get a private loan to afford it. As of May 28th, 2024, I still have $1345 CAD in debt from this to pay off.

I am disabled, so unfortunately it is very difficult to find a job that is an okay fit for me.

Current progress: $299 CAD out of $1345 CAD, or 22.2%.

Please do not donate if you are struggling with money yourself! I've listed ways to help support me below that don't require money as well, go look at those instead.

• Donate to me on Ko-fi
• Donate to me through PayPal
• Donate to me on a weekly basis on Liberapay
• Tip me on my Neocities profile
• Order a commission, I do coding customs for Toyhouse as well as furry art (I can also draw humans)
• Buy something from my Ko-fi shop, which has pay-what-you-want Toyhouse HTML layouts and website templates
• If my UFO/OTA folder on Toyhouse has characters up for offer, you can offer to buy them (favoriting and commenting on them also helps their visibility)

These ways may unfortunately require social media. Being an artist/creative online these days is hard.

• Follow my social media accounts where I post my art and like/reblog/boost my art posts to help my art get more visibility
• Boost my mutual aid post and commission post on Mastodon to help them get more visibility

If I manage to save up more than I need for this goal, the rest will go towards monthly bills, saving up for wisdom teeth removal, and saving up to go visit my long-distance partner.

This page fills you in on what's currently going on in my life, sort of like what I'd tell a friend I hadn't seen in a year to get them up to speed on what's been happening.

• Tears of the Kingdom
• Paleo Pines
• Cozy Grove
• Cult of the Lamb

• Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous

• Finding a job that I can actually do
• Improving my French and Portuguese
• Improving my art skills
• Improving my writing (most of which I won't share here, sadly)
• Getting ready for Art Fight 2024
• Getting ready for season 4 of the WebSMP

• Finish the misclick family shrine
• Add more themes to the styleswitcher

$299 CAD / $1345 CAD, or 22.2%. You can learn more about this on my goals page.

You can find out more on our system page.

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They asked, "Do you love her to death?" I said, "Speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life."

Arabic poem, author unknown

Total time since I started dating my partner: .

My partner and I met sometime in early January of 2020. Our first DMs to each other were on February 2, 2020. On April 12, 2020, we decided to enter a relationship. At the time I'm writing this, it's been over three years together, and I couldn't be happier.

While we're still long-distance unfortunately (being broke sucks), I still eagerly await the day I get to see her in person. I truly do not know what I would do without her, or where I would be had I never met her. She makes me feel safe enough that I've fallen asleep on call with her after having panic attacks and breakdowns, because just her presence comforts me.

Anyways, this is super cheesy and gushy, but I don't care, I fucking love her!

Some neat facts about my partner:

• She's part of a lore-based Minecraft SMP called the Web SMP, her character goes by Kara and uses a cane (mobility aid user representation, hell yeah!).
• She made a mobility aid texture pack for Minecraft, which is what she uses on the Web SMP. Currently, it only adds canes, but she plans to add more in the future!
• Her name is Samus, a reference to the character from Metroid.
• Technically, we are only together now because I kicked her off my Discord server shortly after meeting (she was in another Discord server that I'd had an argument with someone in and I assumed she would take their side), before this she was planning to leave because she found me offputting... After confronting me and me apologizing and explaining, she chose to stay in the server out of spite, and eventually we ended up developing feelings for each other. Super weird to think about this being the event that led to me dating the love of my life, but I'm glad it happened, I guess!
• She has a Southern accent and it's fucking adorable and makes me swoon.
• She bought me a pig plushie for Christmas in our first year of dating. Said plushie's name is Piggy (I am very creative, I know), and now I can't sleep without her.
• She got me a replica of the mermaid pendant from Stardew Valley for our one-year anniversary, which I now wear every time I go out! Though I dropped the original at one point (it was made of glass, so it broke), it immediately got replaced and the new one is clay, so it shouldn't break if I'm being clumsy. Plus I got her one as well so we match!
• She got me into watching Technoblade, who was her comfort YouTuber. Because of this and the fact that she picked up a lot of his speaking mannerisms, my first impression of Technoblade was "wait this is just the male version of my partner." Which meant I quickly also became obsessed with Technoblade.
• Our relationship started out as a queerplatonic relationship, since we are both on the aromantic spectrum!
• It was also the first relationship I was in since realizing I was asexual (she is too - we're asexual for asexual, trans for trans, and aromantic for aromantic), and she helped me work through a lot of my internalized acephobia.
• While I have DID, the system is collectively dating her - we all agree she's one of the best things to ever happen to us.

• Her website
• Tumblr
• Mastodon
• YouTube
• Ko-Fi
• Pixel art commissions (highly recommend commissioning her)
• Art Fight
• Toyhouse
• Pillowfort

• Toyhouse
• Ko-fi
• Mastodon
• Tumblr
• Pillowfort
• Bluesky
• Sheezy.art

This is the page for information on our system. If you don't know what that is, check out this video by the Rings System on YouTube, which explains DID/OSDD-1 (we have DID).

We prefer parts language, though we don't mind the term "alters".

Some parts will set up pages for themselves with short bios, these will be more or less detailed depending on the part and how much time they've had to work on it.

Parts that feel comfortable listing themselves here:

• Phoenix (he/they/xe/it), queer arospec nonbinary butch
• Jupiter (she/it), butch agender aroace lesbian
• Felix (she/him), transmasculine asexual
• Emily (she/they/xe), fem nonbinary woman
• Ash (he/him), butch agender asexual lesbian
• Harrow (he/him), nonbinary asexual lesbian
• Faolan (he/him), asexual straight transmasculine enby
• Niko (it/he), femme transmasculine asexual
• Eden (they/them), bigender aroace
• Jupes (xe/they), aroace nonbinary lesbian
• Percy (he/him), straight transgender man

Here you can find various software, tools, and resources I use!

• 11ty/Eleventy (static site generator that I use to keep the site's layout consistent without having to copy and paste a ton of stuff)
• VSCodium for editing the site
• W3schools for reference
• Neocities for web hosting

• Previously used Krita for digital 2D art, now I use Clip Studio Paint
• Blender for 3D art and animation
• Wacom Intuos Draw Small (2015) pen tablet for digital 2D art
• Mechanical pencils and generic sketchbook for traditional drawings
• InkBlot Art for posting and sharing my art
• Artistree for handling art commissions
• Radiorunner's curriculum for the solo artist for learning art

• Notion and Obsidian for organization and note-taking
• Busuu and Clozemaster for language learning (initially used Duolingo, but now they're replacing some of their workers with AI so I don't trust the quality of their courses anymore)
• Mauril for learning Canadian French
• Tusaalanga for learning Inuktut
• Learn Mi'gmaq and Mi'gmaq Online Talking Dictionary for learning Mi'gmaq
• Ko-fi and Liberapay for taking donations (and on Ko-fi, offering PWYW downloads in my shop and handling coding custom commissions)
• Herbco for buying my partner tea when she least expects it (mainly putting this here because I keep forgetting the site)
• DIS-SOS for useful coping skills for DID/CPTSD
• Lighthouse for journalling with DID

Whatever you're looking for, it isn't here. Or it moved. Or a link was mistyped. Or Wasp messed something up on their end.

Anyways, you can go back to the homepage, if you'd like.

These are areas of the site that are dedicated to specific interests of mine. Warning: anything to do with bugs (stick insects, entomology, anything that has an insect or arachnid in the name) will likely have pictures of insects and/or arachnids.

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons
• Stick insects
• Misclick family (QSMP)

Welcome to Avalon! Note: this page is still a work in progress.

Friend code: SW-3938-5356-1881

Dream address: DA-9851-7225-9091

I got Animal Crossing: New Horizons in April of 2020, as a gift to go along with the new Nintendo Switch Lite I'd purchased for myself because... quarantine, why else? The only Animal Crossing game I'd ever played before was City Folks on the Wii, and I'd been obsessed with it growing up. I quickly became obsessed with New Horizons, despite its (many) shortcomings - it provided me with an escape during a rough period in my life (my partner and I also started dating around this time which helped me too, haha).

Scoot and Ketchup were some of my first villagers, and I instantly fell in love with them. They were basically my emotional support ducks. I'm still trying to find them for my current island!

This is my little web shrine dedicated to Juanaflippa from the QSMP and her family. Will also include Codeflippa because I am unreasonably attached to her and she can do no wrong in my eyes, and also Gegg because I love him and he forever lives on in my heart.

Quick note: when I talk about Slimecicle or ElMariana, I am talking about the characters they play, not the content creators themselves. I also do not speak Spanish and have not watched Mariana's streams, so I may be unaware of lore that occurred on his stream. This shrine contains spoilers.

The QSMP is a lore-based Minecraft server, similar to the Dream SMP if you've ever heard of that, except it's modded, multilingual (there's a live translate mod on the server), and it's run by Quackity instead of Dream.

In April, the egg event started, which was where creators from both of the languages on the SMP at the time (English and Spanish) were paired up and given a task to take care of an egg from a dragon that had supposedly left the island (QSMP takes place on an island called Quesadilla Island, for the most part, and the Island is managed by a strange entity called the Federation). These eggs are played by admins, who communicate by placing down signs rather than speaking. In order to keep the eggs alive and happy, tasks needed to be done regularly - stuff like "give the baby your favorite food" and "sing the baby a lullaby".

Juanaflippa was one of these eggs, assigned to Slimecicle and ElMariana. They seemed to instantly take this as a challenge to become the most dysfunctional Minecraft family possible. Arguments about divorce even took place, but eventually, it seemed things were getting better, and Slimecicle was getting better at parenting.

Then, one fateful day, Mariana misclicked on Juanaflippa's egg bed (they place down beds to represent the eggs when they're not online), killing her.

Slimecicle (who had, uh, placed a baby monitor on Mariana while they did the deed the day before - that's right, they roleplayed gay Minecraft sex, and they've done this multiple times again since and it's the bane of my existence) learned of this the next day and went on a rampage trying to kill the other eggs in the hopes that if other parents lost their eggs too, the admins would have to reset the egg event. Luckily, even though Slimecicle has canonically committed child murder on the QSMP twice before this, he's actually quite bad at it and the other parents were already suspicious of him. He got himself blown up, shot at, and tased (mostly by the eggs he was trying to kill) multiple times before finally the others managed to calm him down. It was suggested that a trial could be held to bring Juanaflippa back, and Slimecicle immediately convinced multiple people (Quackity, Foolish, JaidenAnimations, BadBoyHalo, Tilin who was Quackity's egg daughter, and FitMC) to be his lawyers.

ElMariana was represented at the trial by Roier, a fellow Spanish speaker. Finally, the court decides to briefly imprison both Slimecicle and Mariana for 10 minutes and bring back Juanaflippa (though they broke out of jail early), and the two made up.

In Slimecicle's very next stream, he accidentally killed Tilin, who he was taking care of (Quackity was a neglectful parent and Tilin was Juanaflippa's best friend), due to a sweeping edge bug on the server which was only identified as a bug much later during the elections arc. He put himself in self-imposed exile (or "eggxile") due to this, promising Juanaflippa that he wouldn't return until he had made it right and found a way to revive Tilin. Juanaflippa was left in the care of Mariana, who accidentally killed her the very next day due to the same sweeping edge bug. This was her final death.

Slimecicle was shown the footage of Juanaflippa's death during his journey by Cucurucho, also known as the QSMP Census Bureau (a strange entity working for the Federation). When he finally got to his destination, he summoned Little Jesus (him and Satan are characters played by another content creator on the QSMP called elrubius, they seem to both have great power though it's not clear what their motives are) and asked him to revive Juanaflippa and Tilin. Little Jesus said he'd look into it, it seems the answer was no in the end as neither egg was ever revived.

More will be added to this shrine in future.

Welcome to my stick insect page!

Stick insects are insects belonging to the order Phasmatodea. They're found on all continents except for Antarctica, but they tend to be most abundant near the equator. Many species are parthenogenic, meaning females of the species can reproduce asexually, and thus there are some species that are all female. Some species can reproduce both asexually and sexually as well! A stick insect (or a leaf insect, as leaf insects are also members of the same order) may also be referred to as a phasmid.

There is incredible diversity and variation among stick insect species. The smallest species known is about 0.8 inches long, while the largest species known (one that hasn't been been given a scientific name yet at the time of writing this, since we discovered it so recently) can grow up to 25 inches in total length. While all phasmids share similar methods of camouflage and are often unnoticed by predators, some have additional anti-predator adaptations. These include swaying from side to side (to mimic a branch swaying in the wind - this is the origin of the behavior in the "Get stickbugged" meme), flashing bright colors or producing loud noises when startled, imitating ants or scorpions when threatened, swinging legs equipped with sharp spines capable of drawing blood at the threat, releasing defensive secretions, or simply regurgitating their stomach contents to repulse predators.

Otto, my first stick insect.

I got my first stick insect from my brother in June of 2023, as he had two at the time and decided he only wanted one after all - I took the other one. His name was Otto, and since he was already quite old at the time my brother got him, he has since passed away from old age as of September 3, 2023. Though I only got to spend a couple months with him, I miss him quite a lot. While I use he/him pronouns for Otto out of habit, he was a female, since he produced eggs.

Otto left me tons of nymphs, though - a few of these are with my brother now. I hung onto two of them, which passed away from old age as well around February, but left me some eggs before they passed, and I am holding onto one. My partner has affectionately dubbed these nymphs the Ottolettes.

Since stick insects are so short-lived, often only living to a couple of months at most, I doubt I will raise more after this egg hatches (if it hatches).

One of the nymphs - she used to fit on the tip of my finger!

My stick insects are Annam walking sticks, also known as Vietnamese walking sticks (scientific name is Medauroidea extradentata, used to be Baculum extradentatum but the name was changed at some point). This species does contain both males and females, but also has the ability to reproduce through parthenogenesis so females are more common than males. Otto came from a pet store that may have been keeping males in the same enclosure with him, but I am unsure as males are quite rare in the species, and it's unknown how old he was exactly and if he had reached reproductive maturity while at the pet store. I will only know for sure once the nymphs reach adulthood (males of the species are smaller than females and exhibit some other differences in appearance as well... and also they won't lay eggs).

Vietnamese walking sticks are, as their name suggests, native to Vietnam. They're usually about 4 to 5 inches in length as adults. Some sources incorrectly claim that males of the species have wings, but in fact, neither males nor females have wings, unlike some other species of stick insects. Males do, however, have a thinner body than females, and females have two horns on their head while males do not.

In captivity, they can be fed with blackberry/bramble leaves (only the older leaves - newer leaves are not good for them to eat), oak leaves, hawthorn leaves, rose leaves, hazel leaves, and red maple leaves. During the winter, if it is impossible to find even bramble leaves, they can be fed organic romaine lettuce (organic specifically, as otherwise the leaves may have been treated with insecticide or other pesticides). There was actually a study done on diets for the Annam walking stick which showed that organic romaine lettuce is a viable food source during winter. It is, however, best to give them a variety for a balanced diet. From anecdotal reports, it seems they tend to prefer blackberry/bramble leaves. Ideally, leaves shouldn't be collected from right beside a road (they may be contaminated by traffic fumes), and they shouldn't be collected from anywhere you suspect might have been treated with pesticides. I collect leaves from the outskirts of the forest behind my backyard.

Generally, a stick insect's enclosure should be 3 times their length in height (they often hang from the top of their enclosure when molting and having this space is vital to them being able to crawl out of their old skin successfully) and twice their length in both the width and length of the enclosure. If keeping more than one stick insect, it is important to increase the horizontal dimensions of their enclosure.

Some different stick insect species can be kept together (not all), but it is never a good idea to keep stick insects with leaf insects. Leaf insects are especially fragile even for phasmids, and stick insects don't have the braincells required to realize that the thing that looks like a leaf isn't actually a leaf. They will eat the leaf insects. Do not try it.

Annam walking sticks can lay hundreds of eggs across their lifespan, even though they reach reproductive age at 3 months of age and only live for about 5 to 7 months on average. If not disposed of properly, a lot of these eggs will hatch, and they can often overwhelm unexperienced keepers. It's a good idea to search through the enclosure each day for eggs, and to crush them before disposing of them, as unless you live in Vietnam or in the surrounding area, Annam walking sticks are an invasive species (and they also are a little more hardy than other stick insects - it may be possible for their eggs, which take a few months to hatch, to survive a winter, particularly a mild one). This should be done daily for a couple reasons: firstly, they lay a lot of eggs, and secondly, if you crush an egg that has partially developed, you might find the remains of what almost looks like a fully-formed nymph on your hands, and that's a very unsettling experience (I also recommend using tissue paper to crush them, not your bare hands - it will get messy). You can also stick the eggs in the freezer for about a week and then dispose of them, but personally, I prefer to crush them so I know for sure that none of them will hatch.

When nymphs do hatch, they're super tiny, often able to fit on a fingertip, and should generally not be handled unless they walk onto your hand. They can be super fragile. If you really need to handle them, you can do so with the tip of a soft paintbrush. Stick insects usually climb upwards to look for food, so if they seem to not be finding the food you provide, you can try placing them on the plant itself and they usually won't crawl off.

As with other insects, stick insects breathe through what are called spiracles - respiratory openings found on their thorax and abdomen. This means, especially with nymphs, that it is very important to make sure there are no sources of water that they can fall into (they are too stupid to climb out even if that is possible and will drown). Water can be provided by misting the leaves they feed on, which also provides the benefit of keeping the humidity in their enclosure high so that they can successfully molt. Humidity should not be too high, though, as that can lead to the growth of mold and fungus, and stick insects can suffer from fungal infections. How often to mist the enclosure might vary, but as long as the insects are molting successfully, their skin doesn't look cracked or dry when viewed up close, and there's no mold growth in the enclosure, you're probably misting it a good amount and should keep doing what you're doing. If they're having issues molting or their skin looks cracked or dry, increase misting frequency. If there's any mold growth, decrease misting frequency (and also clean their enclosure immediately).

Stick insects may occasionally lose a leg or two during molts (or have one leg come out of the molt looking a little funny). This is usually not a problem, as they will regain it during the next molt (unless they're done molting, in which case they'll probably function fine without the leg anyways). If the insect has their mobility affected by the loss of their legs, that's where it becomes an issue.

Stick insects should also be handled with care to avoid having them lose legs due to improper handling. Generally, avoid grabbing them. Instead, put your hand in front of them and wait for them to walk onto it. They may choose to avoid walking onto your hand, and that's also fine. Otto only ever walked onto my hand three times in total.

These are areas of the site that contain information about or are related to the site itself.

• Accessibility
• Credits
• Updates

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Hosted with Neocities.

• Fonts: OpenDyslexic and Atkinson Hyperlegible
• Autumn background: Freepik
• Pride backgrounds: theprideful on Tumblr
• Code syntax highlighting theme: Shades of Purple theme for prism.js by Ahmad Awais
• Site icon base: HoneyDipply on DeviantArt
• Animal Crossing pixels: this Tumblr post which lists the original source as being pisicatz by Ouka
• Lightbox on art pages: GLightbox
• Mastodon widget on homepage: Kian Ryan's code on Github
• Freezeframe and Status.cafe widget: both implemented with the help of tutorials from Bechnokid

These are RSS feeds for my blog, social media, stuff like that.

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Here's where you can see archives of update logs for previous months.

• Updates for September 2024

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• Updates for July 2024

• Updates for June 2024

• Updates for May 2024

• Updates for April 2024

• Updates for March 2024

• Updates for February 2024

• Updates for January 2024

• Updates for December 2023

• Updates for November 2023

• Updates for October 2023

• Updates for September 2023

• Updates for August 2023

• Updates for July 2023

• Updates for June 2023

A list of pretty much every page on this website.

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  • My partner in crime
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Hello, I'm Ash! I'm a butch agender asexual lesbian, and probably one of the most frequent fronters in the system. I usually use he/him pronouns, but I am fine with she/her as well. I prefer gender-neutral terms, and dislike being referred to as a man or a woman.

My role within the system is that of a protector, though I usually don't have to worry about that too much nowadays, since our communication is much better and the others have gotten better at enforcing our boundaries. I'm generally pretty friendly, but I prefer to hang out with close friends of the system rather than get to know new people, because I have low patience for weird behaviour/toxicity and I go into protective mode quite fast. I'm also pretty blunt, which doesn't help. If someone wants to befriend the system, they will eventually meet me and have to pass the vibe check.

Once someone's passed the vibe check, though, I can be pretty extroverted!

You can find me on Tumblr under the username catgirl-rabies.

Hello, I'm Emily! I'm a fem nonbinary woman, and I use she/they/xe pronouns.

You can find me on Tumblr under the username opossumfem.

Hello, I'm Felix! I'm a transmasculine asexual, and I use she/him pronouns.

I'm generally a pretty cheerful guy, though I don't front very often.

You can find me on Tumblr under the username heavensenttwink.

Hello, I'm Jupiter! I'm a butch agender aroace lesbian, and I use she/it pronouns. I don't front as often anymore, but I used to be the host of our system.

You can find me on Tumblr under the username twinkofthewild.

Hello, I'm Phoenix! I'm a queer arospec nonbinary butch, and I use he/they/xe/it pronouns. I'm one of the parts who works on this site most frequently.

My role within the system is that of a protector and caregiver, so I'm often cofronting or at least near front when littles or age-sliders are fronting.

You can find me on Tumblr under the username supreme-fire-chicken.

Click to view the image in a bigger size, as well as information like who owns the character (if it was done for a commission or art trade).

Click to view the image in a bigger size, as well as information like who owns the character (if it was done for a commission or art trade).

Click to view the image in a bigger size, as well as information like who owns the character (if it was done for a commission or art trade).

These are areas of the site that are focused on stuff made by others that I've found and collected, or links to other cool/useful/important sites.

• Cool websites
• Free Palestine (resources for helping Palestine)
• Graphics (warning for flashing images)
• Links
• Music

If you are negatively affected by flashing or certain GIFs and the buttons to toggle GIFs on and off don't work, here is how you turn off GIFs autoplaying in your browser.

While I will never knowingly link to websites with objectionable content (promoting bigotry, misinformation, conspiracy theories, etc.), it's possible I may have missed something, and I don't have time to review every site listed here to make sure they haven't put up harmful content since I added them. If you have strong evidence that one of the sites I've linked to here is harmful, please contact me at punkwasp@protonmail.com with sources so I can look into it.

This webpage serves to collect resources related to helping Palestine.

• eSims for Gaza
• Palestine Children's Relief Fund
• Shop Palestine (online store where your purchases support artisans in Palestine and in refugee camps in Lebanon, proceeds go to Middle East Children’s Alliance's work supporting Palestinian children)
• Donate direct aid to Gaza (run by a longtime activist and volunteer who has been carrying out donations and humanitarian projects in Gaza since 2021)
• Buy from the Hirbawi factory (this is the last kufiya factory in Palestine that is still active, purchasing helps support the Palestinian economy, which has not been in a great state for a while)
• Donate to Islamic Relief Canada's Palestine Emergency Appeal
• Donate to Palestine Action to help bring down Israel's weapons trade
• Donate to the Gofundme for medical expenses for Hisham, a Palestinian-Irish-American who was shot in an anti-Palestinian hate crime in Burlington, Vermont
• Donate to Medical Aid for Palestinians
• Donate to Gisha, an Israeli organization that protects Palestinians' rights to the freedom of movement

• Click to help Palestine daily (this site seems to use funds from ad revenue to raise money for various causes)
• Attend an upcoming protest for Palestine (remember to mask up, COVID isn't over - check that it will be safe for protestors to wear masks first, though)
• Sign a petition to urge governments to invoke the genocide convention to stop the war on Gaza
• Sign a petition from Amnesty calling for a ceasefire
• Check this list of ways to demand a ceasefire in Gaza
• Check out Independent Jewish Voices Canada and their campaigns to help Palestine
• Join Palestine Action to help bring down Israel's weapons trade
• Sign the petition for Canada to take urgent action for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza
• Download these posters to print out and put up in your area and/or share on socials to build awareness
• Join the BDS boycott
• Check out resources and ways to help from Justice For All

• Palestinian literature recommendations
• Decolonize Palestine
• The Palestine Academy's Palestine 101

Here are some graphics!

These are all linked back to their creators if you click on them (credit is important and I will not put graphics here without crediting the source, I encourage you to do the same)!

Created by me:

Created by meidomatsuri on Tumblr:

Created by lastpageofmemebase on Tumblr:

Created by Alyx Wijers:

Created by emeowly.gay:

Created by rainy.gay:

Created by plasticdino:

Created by pinkvampyr:

This is where stuff like webrings, fanlistings, virtual pets, etc. go.

Acing The Internet:

Previous site | Index | Next site

NeoSSG:

Neocreatives webring:

Magical ring:

Transmasculine Ring:

Xenics of the Net Webring:

Bucket Webring: previous site, index, next site

Thoughts Webring: index

Transmasculine Pride Webring: previous, index, next

Autists Online Webring:

Transing the Internet Webring:

I will remember Technoblade forever

Here you can find some musicians I think deserve more support! I also have a playlist on Spotify with songs from many of these artists. I recommend buying their music on Bandcamp if you can, since that helps to financially support them!

• Quinn Hills - you might know Quinn Hills as being the sister of Joe Hills (a member of Hermitcraft), she is a transgender woman who makes music and also offers song commissions! Her debut single, "A PRAYER FOR NOBODY", "channels Quinn’s feelings of helplessness and rage in the face of abuse through a devilish mixture of hypnotic drum beats, wailing vocals, bombastic guitar, and parochial organ. Quinn affectionately calls this track 'danceable trauma.'" It's a really good song. Quinn is also just a really cool person in general. My partner and I spent Valentine's Day in 2023 watching one of her Twitch streams where she did a "concert" of sorts and it was very neat! You can also find Quinn on Bandcamp.
• Hiyimi - a UK-based independent composer and producer who mainly produces electronic pop and EDM-inspired tracks using synthesized vocals! I recommend their songs "Here's To Us", "Go Ahead, Replace Me", "Let Me Know", and "This Is My Town" (which there is also an acoustic version of). Hiyimi is also a member of a Minecraft lore-based SMP that my partner is on, called the WebSMP! You can also find them on Bandcamp.
• Shrinebird - I'm honestly not sure how to describe Shrinebird's music, the Bandcamp tags seem to usually be ambient, alternative, lo-fi, and hip-hop so there's that. I really recommend "Webcam (I Am Buried Under The Fibre Optics)"! You can also find Shrinebird on Bandcamp. It also created and runs the WebSMP!

These are areas of the site that are focused on stuff I've made.

• Art
• Blog
• Commissions
• Grimoire
• Projects
• Resources
• Templates

Here are examples of my art, sorted by year! If you're interested in commissioning me, check out my Artistree for more information and to order!

• 2024
• 2023
• 2022

This is my personal blog where I post about pretty much anything that interests me. Things you might find written about here include disability, mental health, neurodivergency, and LGBTQ+ issues.

You should be able to subscribe to the RSS feed as well, if you'd like.

You should also check out my thoughts page.

Oh, and if you enjoy my blog or have gotten any use out of it, please consider tipping me on my Ko-Fi page!

• Where the Heck Have I Been? - written on May 29, 2024, about 1 min reading time
• Four years of long distance - written on Apr 13, 2024, about 5 min reading time
• My Totally Unbiased Ranking of Five Social Media Platforms - written on Mar 18, 2024, about 9 min reading time
• Life Update - written on Mar 5, 2024, about 1 min reading time
• Looking Back on January - written on Feb 1, 2024, about 1 min reading time
• Moving Back To Neocities (and Other Stuff) - written on Jan 21, 2024, about 2 min reading time
• 2023 Year in Review - written on Dec 16, 2023, about 7 min reading time
• Focusing on what matters most - written on Dec 7, 2023, about 2 min reading time
• Looking Back on November - written on Dec 3, 2023, about 2 min reading time
• (Re)starting Transition - written on Nov 10, 2023, about 3 min reading time

Here you can find all of my commission links, both for art (prices start at $15 CAD for an icon, can only be ordered on Artistree) and for coding (only available on Ko-fi)! Make sure to contact me if you have any questions. Check my art page or my code templates page for more examples of my work. Terms of service and pricing are below.

• Ko-fi
• Artistree

• I reserve the right to refuse any commission for any reason without question.
• Clients are not permitted, under any circumstance, to use any part of their commissioned artwork for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
• Clients are not permitted, under any circumstance, to use any part of their commissioned artwork for AI art.
• Clients are entitled to one revision on the basic sketch, and one revision on the colors/shading. After that, only changes to minor details will be done.
• It is the client's responsibility to provide as much detail as is necessary for the commission. By commissioning me, you acknowledge that I may take artistic license on anything not clearly specified in your request or in reference images provided.
• I reserve the right to display the commissioned piece on my website(s), online galleries, and in my portfolios. If the character is an original character, you will be credited accordingly.
• You may use the commissioned work for personal use only (this includes avatars, signatures, wallpapers, etc.), but credit must be given.
• I reserve the rights to the artwork, so you may not use the commissioned work for any projects (commercial or nonprofit) without express permission, nor redistribute the artwork as your own.
• Clients must give visible credit to me when sharing their commissioned work (a link to my Toyhouse profile, my Artistree profile, or my website is fine). I may include a signature on the final work as well.
• I will send the final commissioned work via Artistree. Please check your messages on the platform regularly. I cannot be held responsible for a client failing to check their messages if I have delivered on time.
• You are free to ask me for updates on your commission, though I will always send a guaranteed update after the basic sketch is done and wait for your feedback before continuing.
• My deadline for commissions is currently 7 calendar days (starting when payment is received). Most commissions will be completed faster than this, however, but that is the official deadline.
• If I have missed the deadline, you are entitled to a partial refund depending on when the commission is actually completed (5% for each day past the deadline, up to 100%).
• You reserve the right to be notified of any delays.
• I can refund 100% of the payment only if I have not started work. If I have started work and have not yet gotten further than the basic sketch, I can refund 50% of the payment.
• If I cancel a project, I will refund 100%.
• Any sort of harassment will not be tolerated.
• There may be slight differences between the samples in my gallery and the illustration you will receive.
• It is your responsibility to keep a copy of your commissioned work for personal use, as while I take measures to preserve my own copies of my work, I cannot guarantee that computer failure, accidental deletion of the files, or loss of the files will not happen on my end.

Welcome to my grimoire! I am a practicing witch, so this is where I'll collect resources and information related to that.

Specifically, I am a witch who has dabbled in Hellenismos (Greek paganism) and Asatru (Norse paganism), and my craft has a heavy focus on divination and dreams. There will be other stuff here as well, but please do not expect everything I say or share here to apply to your path.

New sections will get added as I have time to write them up.

As you might have seen above, religion and spirituality is quite complex for me! I have always been fascinated by the subject, despite a rocky introduction to religion (I was raised initially in a very strict sect of Christianity, which my parents later left when I came out as transgender). Theology in particular interests me; I think the diversity of beliefs explaining existence and life is one of humanity's greatest strengths.

I collect a lot of resources on religion for that reason, so here I'll link some related to my practice.

• Hellenion - a religious organization dedicated to the revival and practice of Hellenic polytheism
• Skald's Keep - explorations in Norse heathenry
• The Longship - a beginner's guide to heathenry
• The Accessible Heathenry Project - aims to make public domain texts on Heathenry available to the people with reading disabilities, and to those who learn more effectively by listening than reading
• Lārhūs Fyrnsida - resources for the specific regional tradition of Anglo-Saxon Heathenry
• Dr. Jackson Crawford's YouTube channel - a university professor, published author, and specialist in Old Norse who regularly uploads YouTube videos that cover a wide range of topics pertaining to the ancient, pre-Christian peoples of Scandinavia and Iceland
• Study Buddhism - an extensive source of Buddhist teachings

Below I'll talk a little bit more about my religion and spirituality.

I found Hellenismos shortly after leaving Christianity, and practiced for a few years. My partner is a Norse heathen, so when I met her, I pretty much just added that to my practice. I mainly work with Ares, Aphrodite, and Odin.

Fun fact: I perceive Ares and Aphrodite as parental figures in a way, and every time I got a tarot reading done by someone else who is unaware of this, at some point they always went, "You know, I feel like Ares and Aphrodite see you as their child of sorts." I don't work with Them as often anymore, but I still hold a special place in my heart for Them.

Sometimes in polytheism you'll have periods of time where you work more with a certain God, and periods of time where you work more with another God - this is perfectly fine and normal. Ares and Aphrodite specifically supported me during a transition into adulthood where I felt incredibly alone, but now that I'm not struggling as much, our relationship has changed.

My relationship with Odin is more like that of a mentor and a mentee. When I do tarot readings, it's often to ask Him for wisdom or clarification on what I need to do next. The Hanged Man tarot card shows up a lot when He's around (in the myths, Odin hung Himself from the world tree, Yggdrasil, pierced Himself with His spear, and peered into the Well of Urd below for nine days and nine nights in order to gain the wisdom of the runes).

Practicing Hellenismos and heathenry at the same time is pretty interesting, because Hellenismos feels much more formal, if that makes any sense? In Hellenismos, it's common to wash your hands to purify yourself before making offerings to the Theoi (Gods) or performing rituals in Their honor, but in heathenry, while I usually do wash my hands before making offerings to Odin (He seems to like coffee in particular in my experience), it doesn't seem that it matters quite as much.

Then there's witchcraft, which you'll learn more about my relationship with throughout the rest of this page.

I mostly practice divination with tarot cards. My deck is the Cosmic Slumber Tarot by Tille Walden (I told you dreams were important in my craft earlier).

If you're interested in learning tarot, Labyrinthos' list of tarot card meanings is a good place to start.

A sigil, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, is a type of symbol used in magic. The modern usage usually refers to sigils used in chaos magic specifically, which are symbols meant to represent a desired outcome.

Often, sigils are created by writing an intention, then selecting certain letters from this statement and rearranging them in all sorts of ways to create the symbol. There is no one correct way to do this. Next, the sigil is charged in some way - I won't list all the possibilities for that here because there are a lot of different ways to do this sort of thing in magic. Personally, I like meditation, visualization, stuff like that. Then you leave the sigil be. According to some, it's best if you push all memory of the sigil into your subconscious, in fact, and I find that my experience lines up with this. Then again, I have memory issues, so I forget about most of my sigils shortly after making them. Some also believe that sigils may need to be recharged every so often (if the type of work you're trying to accomplish is ongoing or a long-term goal), usually using the same method used to charge them originally.

This post by grey-sorcery on Tumblr gives a great overview of the process of making a sigil.

Personally, I like to make sigils using an online tool called Sigil Engine and then save the images on my PC, each with the intention as their filename. They then get used as my desktop wallpapers (I often have it set up to cycle through the images from one folder).

There are also people who creates sigils and share them with others to use, Sigils By Strange is a great source for this and even has a Ko-fi where they take sigil requests (though they don't seem to be active as of September 14, 2023).

I've included a sigil below as both an example and a neat bonus for anyone visiting this page who wants it. The intention I set for this is "Anyone who downloads this sigil is blessed with good fortune." If you don't want this sigil's effects, don't worry, it won't do anything. This is also an example of how it's good to be specific with your intentions. Much like how some people prefer that others don't pray for them, there are probably some people who prefer that others don't make sigils for them. By choosing my specific wording, I'm basically ensuring that people have a say in whether or not they use this sigil.

I could have still been even more specific: what kind of good fortune, and in what timeframe?

Sigils also can't accomplish everything (like saying you become a millionaire this week is most likely not going to work), but they can make some processes easier, especially if you're also using non-magical ways of reaching the goal.

I've got a lot of projects going on, so this may not always be up to date, but here's what I'm currently working on!

I have so many things planned for this website it's kind of ridiculous. I'll try to list some ideas below that I'm currently working on or plan to implement soon!

• Shrine for Pixel Cat's End
• French and Portuguese translations of index page and about page
• Improving accessibility (ongoing)
• Pages on witchcraft and paganism (I am a Hellenic/Norse pagan and a witch)
• Stick insect page
• Fursona page
• Game collection page

The Art Hive Studio is a website hosted on Marigold Town, meant to provide artists with resources and feature some artists in bimonthly exhibitions!

This will be a collection of resources made by me. Stuff made by other folks will be added later.

• Font selector code HTML - the HTML portion of code I made to implement a working font selector on this webpage
• Font selector code JavaScript - the JavaScript portion of code I made to implement a working font selector on this webpage
• Implementing a GIF toggle in HTML - code snippet from my website that I created with the help of Bechnokid's tutorial on freezeframe.js to implement a working GIF toggle. Please note that this code snippet uses classes while Bechnokid's tutorial uses IDs
• Social Media Growth Guide - a free pay-what-you-want PDF I created to help artists, streamers, and other creative types with growth on social media. Obviously we all hate most social media here but if you happen to be someone who unfortunately depends on it to boost your creative work, maybe this guide will help you a bit
• Ocean Material Blender Cycles - a material I made in Blender forever ago to render an ocean

Here are some free to use templates and layouts that I've made for you to use on your website!

Before we get into it, though, here are some important things to know:

• I am self-taught. That means that these templates are not guaranteed to be free of issues. I do my best, but I may not catch every issue.
• There is credit provided within the templates, but if you're linking back to my website in some way, you don't have to keep it. You can move it around and stuff too! Note: when I have provided credit to the creator of some asset being used in the code (like a background image), you must keep that credit there in some way.
• You're always allowed to inspect my code on other pages and copy it! If you're curious how I did something, or you want to copy a snippet of my code, go for it!
• You are free to edit any of these templates however you'd like! I don't mind at all.
• Not everyone's stances on all of these things will be the same! Please do check other people's rules or notes for how they'd like their templates to be used before assuming they're the same as mine.

Live preview

Code

Live preview

Code

Live preview

Code

This is my page for tutorials and guides! They're sorted by date, newest first. Not all will be on HTML/CSS/JavaScript, but quite a few will.

Oh, and if you enjoy my tutorials or have gotten any use out of them, please consider tipping me on my Ko-Fi page!

• Eleventy Tutorial - written on Aug 15, 2023, about 8 min reading time

Fiddled with CSS a bit, updated some links.

Updated goal progress!

Compressed some images and other resources for better loading times, fixed some errors with incorrect HTML, and fixed alt-text issues with some images on the art page.

Edited goals page because I realized I haven't updated it to reflect my actual current goal yet, so it was out of date. Also updated goal progress, and some links!

Updated blog theme, added new blog post, updated index to remove some unnecessary JavaScript.

Updated goal progress!

Compressed some images and other resources for better loading times, fixed some errors with incorrect HTML, and fixed alt-text issues with some images on the art page.

Edited goals page because I realized I haven't updated it to reflect my actual current goal yet, so it was out of date. Also updated goal progress, and some links!

Edited social links page and links to my accounts on the Fediverse. Also edited the help Palestine page to simply link to the sources for vetted fundraisers rather than try to display them all because there are a lot and it's probably more convenient to just look at the lists that have already been organized.

Added new art and updated index page!

Added more fundraisers for Palestine, updated stylesheets, and a TON more in the process of moving the main site back to leprd.space.

New blog post up!

It's been a while since I've updated here, so I figure I should make a post sharing what's been going on for me recently!

• No luck in my job search yet, unfortunately
• Some health scares with family members: one is being tested for cancer currently, and half of the medical professionals involved have been really noncommunicative and unprofessional about it (snapping at her for expressing concern, etc.) but it does seem like it's not cancer and we should be getting definitive results soon
• I'm getting ready for Art Fight 2024, because the site tends to get less stable the closer we get to the actual event and so I've been taking some time to make sure my characters' profiles are all set up how I like them and stuff! I also made a hitlist form so feel free to fill that out if you'd like an attack from me. You can also check out my Art Fight profile if you'd like!
• I've been slowly working my way through submissions to Acing The Internet
• I plan to work on some new stuff for the Art Hive Studio very soon!
• I will be joining a Minecraft survival multiplayer server (SMP) called the WebSMP soon for their fourth season! Hopefully I'll be able to get back to streaming by the time that starts, haha.
• I was going to set up Ayano's HTML comment widget on this site, but apparently Neocities' new content security policy blocks it now unless you're a supporter. Maybe I should have kept the main site on Leprd? I honestly have no idea at this point, there's a lot of stuff I'd need to move back over anyways, but it might be easier.

Added new art, updated CSS and layout (much happier with how it looks now), added Mastodon widget to the homepage, etc. Planning to write a blog post soon too talking about stuff that's happened in my life since I last posted!

Edited social links page, now page, and some CSS.

Four years ago, on April 12th, 2020, my partner and I started dating.

We're long distance, both broke, and started dating right before pandemic restrictions went into full swing, so we're celebrating our four year anniversary having never met face to face.

It's strange, knowing you want to spend the rest of your life with someone who you've never been in the same country as.

We met on a Discord server for people on the aromantic spectrum, ironically. From that server, she ended up joining mine. But at the time, she found me off-putting, and was planning to leave my server.

Until I banned her from it.

See, I'd provoked a fight in the aromantic Discord server, and, with everyone there pissed at me, I panicked and banned any of them who had joined my Discord server. I didn't know that my soon-to-be partner wasn't even friends with any of the folks I'd started this argument with.

Luckily, she happened to have added me as a friend on Discord shortly before this happened... so I woke up to a baffled message from her asking me why she'd been removed from the server. I embarrassedly explained, and she - to my surprise - took my side and asked to rejoin my server, so I invited her back.

Sometimes I think back on how embarrassed I was for her to have seen me act that way, completely unaware of how differently things would have turned out had she not.

Over the next month or so, we started getting to know each other better. We became friends, and it became increasingly obvious that she was interested in me (she asked me at one point what I wanted in my ideal queerplatonic relationship, I believe unprompted). Eventually, she asked me to be her queerplatonic partner, and I said yes - but with some disclaimers.

At the time, I'd never been in a relationship that had lasted more than three months, let alone a long-distance one. My last three major relationships before this had ended terribly, too, and I had grown accustomed to having my boundaries repeatedly broken and then being treated as a monster any time I failed to suppress my frustration and anger about this. In fact, I'd begun to believe I was an angry, volatile, and overall terrible person.

So shortly into this new relationship, I warned my partner of my tendency to lash out - and just in case what she'd already seen wasn't enough to convince her, I even sent her screenshots of other times I'd lashed out at people, including exes.

She didn't seem to be fazed, which made me a little concerned for her.

Eventually, about a month after we began our queerplatonic relationship, we decided we wanted to define our relationship as romantic instead. Neither of us care very much about the distinction between queerplatonic and romantic at this point, to be honest, but back then, it seemed important. Things went well for another month or so.

Then I fucked up.

For a variety of reasons, I was feeling very paranoid at this time. I made a dumb choice that exacerbated the paranoia for a bit, and while paranoid, I became convinced that she was going to hurt me somehow and it wouldn't work out anyways, so I... dumped her.

It is worth noting that this was very much an issue of my mental state, not anything she was doing wrong. I'd actually reached out to her ex before this, while paranoid, to ask him if he'd had any bad experiences with her, and he - despite having just learned that his ex he got dumped by recently was now dating someone else - immediately reassured me that she wasn't that type of person at all.

Anyways, I sent the message, immediately began bawling, went to my mom and told her what had happened (this was how she learned I was dating my partner, by the way - I hadn't been sure how she would react to me dating someone I met online) and she talked me through the full-on mental breakdown I was having and encouraged me to message my partner again, explain fully what had happened, and be really honest about my feelings for her. So I did, and my partner and I got on call and talked, and luckily for me, she understood and was willing to forgive me... as long as it never happened again (it hasn't).

The next month went by without incident. And the month after that, too. And the month after that. We would get on call each night and just talk about anything and everything, for upwards of four hours, every single day. In fact, we... still do that. We are the embodiment of every meme you've ever seen about long-distance lesbian relationships. If you calculate all that time spent on call together, it comes out to 5844 hours in total, at least. Holy fuck.

Each month, I remember feeling surprised - she hadn't dumped me yet, and I hadn't gotten mad at her. In fact, I was... happy. Like, consistently happy. When issues arose, I could just talk to her, and we'd work it out. She never invalidated my feelings or pushed my boundaries. When I had traumatic flashbacks, she'd stay up on call with me to reassure me.

For our first Valentine's Day together, she got me a pig plushie, which I very creatively named Piggy and then immediately got so attached to I cannot sleep without her in my arms. And for our one-year anniversary, she got me a replica of the mermaid pendant from the game Stardew Valley (which is a pendant you give to a villager when you want to marry them). I sadly don't have the original, as it was glass and I dropped it because I'm clumsy, but it did last over a year at least! I bought us both a clay version of the pendant shortly after, which we both still have. Plus, I still have the note she attached to it:

(She was going by Hazel at the time, but now goes by either Samus or Kara)

When I discovered I had DID, she supported me and did her best to get to know each alter and make sure we all felt loved and supported by her. When I was living in an unsafe area while attending university, she did her best to help me, even when it was just being on the phone with me as I fell asleep because I didn't feel safe in my room. When a guy I'd befriended at university kept pushing my boundaries, she helped me calm down from a panic attack and told him to leave me alone (and he did, surprisingly). When I worked at a toxic workplace that was wreaking havoc on both my mental and physical health, she helped me work up the courage to quit. When I felt weird about my body, either because of gender dysphoria or my eating issues, she reassured me and was there for me while I worked through those issues.

I cannot begin to fathom a world without her in my life.

So anyways, in conclusion, my partner is:

• Amazing
• Hot
• Gorgeous
• Stunning
• Beautiful
• Pretty
• Talented
• Cute
• Adorable
• And many more things I won't list here because otherwise this list would be incredibly long!

Added an anime section to the fandoms list on the about page.

Added new tutorials page! Also updated goal progress.

Added new art!

New blog post to commemorate my four-year-anniversary with my partner! Also added a link to a new Discord server I made on my social links page.

Fixed up lightbox on the art archive pages. Also updated layout and main page.

I mentioned in my last post that I planned to try out some different social media platforms due to the Tumblr CEO going full mask-off as a raging transmisogynist.

This is a big deal, since I've been on Tumblr for nearly a decade now, and while I've considered leaving before, they've never fucked up quite badly enough to make me want to leave. They did delete my blog a while back with no warning and then quickly gave it back, but even that wasn't enough to make me leave.

I never did get an explanation for that. The only thing I can think of is that apparently a lot of BIPOC were getting their blogs randomly nuked at the time and I had been more open than usual about reconnecting to my Indigenous heritage on that blog...

But eventually, Tumblr went too far with their fuck-ups:

• They wrongfully marked my partner's blog as mature (she is a trans woman), but when I posted about it, the @humans account quickly messaged me to help, and by the time they messaged, the blog was unflagged for some reason, so me and my partner moved on.
• A month later, my partner's blog was wrongfully marked as mature again. I made another frustrated post, with a screenshot of my DMs from the @humans account attached as proof this had already happened before, because I wanted evidence of the situation. The @humans account messaged me telling me, in a passive aggressive way, to not post about this and to simply message them instead. I apologized despite feeling quite suspicious of them at this point, and the blog was unflagged.
• A popular transfem blogger by the username predstrogen had her blog nuked on Tumblr, and the Tumblr CEO decided to publicly respond to the asks he was getting from confused users, which immediately made everything worse because his answer was just... so bad. He responded to criticism by privately messaging transfem users to argue with them, reblogging posts from and following TERFs, and following predstrogen onto Twitter to not only harass her, but to list the usernames of sideblogs she had that were not linked to her main blog (so, revealing private information without her consent), in order to argue that her sideblogs having NSFW URLs was somehow a reason to suspend her.
• He also vaguely threatened legal action and getting the FBI involved over predstrogen making a laughably cartoonish "threat of violence" against him (search up "car hammer explosion" on Tumblr, there are now so many memes about it).
• They also decided to partner with AI companies, and made choosing to not let your posts be used for AI an opt-out system, rather than opt-in. Also, the scrape already took place before the opt-out system, and included private blogs and people's messages! So who knows if the AI companies will even respect it!

This and the rampant toxicity on Tumblr (you don't want to know how many anons I've gotten telling me to kill myself, and I'm not even a popular blogger) combined finally pushed me to decide once and for all that I'm, at the very least, going to move my main social media presence off of Tumblr.

So, who are the contenders for my new social media platform of choice?

Out of all the options, Mastodon is the one I have the most experience with. I moved from Twitter to there in November of 2022 and never looked back (technically, I do still have a Twitter account, but it's gathering dust as we speak). Unfortunately, I also eventually forgot it existed a little, so I haven't used it consistently in quite a bit.

• Decentralized and open-source, which means I can find an instance that suits my specific needs (and I have, in the form of mastodon.art), and I could also make my own (but I won't)
• Since instances are generally small, I can trust the moderators of my instance to moderate other instances that are harmful (hate speech, etc.), and to moderate bad actors or toxic folks fast (so fast, in one instance, that I submitted a report about someone being ableist towards me and got a response from my instance admin within a minute letting me know she'd banned them from our instance)
• Engagement is pretty high, and it's usually actual engagement, not bots
• Adding alt-text to images is highly encouraged, and if your image lacks alt-text, people often won't boost it - which resulted into me getting into the habit of adding alt-text on other platforms, too, not just Mastodon
• You can ask for help if you can't think of alt-text for an image and other people will suggest stuff for you!
• Lots of furries
• Mutual aid posts do well on many instances (though some instances are weird about them or will report them, unfortunately)
• Tumblr-style discourse isn't really a thing, though there is still drama
• No "quote-tweets" or anything similar - if you want to add your two cents, you'll have to reply directly

• Not very much fandom presence
• Age ranges seem to tend to skew higher, which might be an issue if you're a younger person and want to socialize with people who are mostly your age
• There is still discourse, the major one I've seen being that a Black user made a blocklist of instances he'd received racist harassment from or that he didn't think were safe and those instances... instantly proved him right. My instance gets flack as well because it sided with the Black user and happens to be relatively large, so if another instance is blocked by it, that limits their reach. But, like... maybe instances that don't deal with racism well (or are run by racist admins) should have their reach limited... just a thought...

I joined this platform more recently, mostly because my partner likes it a lot.

• Alt-text on images is encouraged
• User-created feeds that you can bookmark and follow
• User-created blocklists that you can subscribe to
• Looks pretty good for artists and creators, honestly
• One of the bigger, less niche sites
• You can set your website to be your handle (so for instance, instead of my handle being @punkwasp.bsky.social, it's @punkwasp.neocities.org)

• Feels a little more... corporate, compared to other alternatives
• I've seen posts with clearly non-sexual nudity (ex. a butt) get marked as pornography by moderation
• Haven't seen anything about their plans to monetize the site yet, which makes me a little worried because a site of that size HAS to be expensive to run
• One of their selling points was that they would eventually be a decentralized platform and be able to connect to the Fediverse - still no word on that yet, though, and I believe to run your own instance you have to get approval from them

I joined this one in December 2023, back when there was a big issue with funding, and I'm happy to see it seems to be doing much better now!

• Communities for different interests, so you can reblog stuff like your art to those communities to get it seen by more people
• Commenting on stuff you like is pretty common!
• Very fandom-focused
• I haven't seen any major discourse yet (fingers crossed)
• Messaging system exists
• You can put cool little badges on your profile
• NSFW content is fully allowed
• Blacklist and blocking system is pretty good
• There were a lot of worries about funding when I first joined, but since the end-of-year fundraiser they raised enough to stay online until summer of 2024, and interestingly, unlike previous times fundraisers took place, the site is continuing to raise a bit more each month (they have a monthly progress bar showing how close they are to covering operating costs for the month)
• Premium exists, and you can pay for features you want individually (avatar frames, ability to upload multiple avatars, image upload size doubled from 2MB to 4MB), plus you can add a one-time or recurring donation
• You can edit a post, and those edits will be visible on reblogs too.
• No way to reblog a post with commentary - you have to comment on the post, which I honestly prefer.
• No AI allowed

• Because they allow NSFW, they have to use a payment processor that charges them higher fees - which makes me a little more concerned about long-term viability of the platform
• Posting system can be a little weird, and making image posts is somewhat janky
• I've seen a lot more "fiction doesn't affect reality" types on here, and while blocking is a great solution to that, Pillowfort's site culture seems to be very against DNIs/BYFs. Which isn't a bad thing, those do definitely have their issues, but for my issue of wanting to stay far, far away from those types of people, it introduces an additional issue, because it's harder for me to check before following a person without digging through their profile (and I also don't want to do that). People don't seem to take blocking personally, but I am a little worried about befriending someone, then realizing they're that type and having to block them and then... feeling bad that they won't know why they got blocked. My solution so far has been to make a "Fort brochure" (a post listing some info about my "fort" or blog) which is then linked to in my profile and mentions that I try to block and not interact with those types. Hopefully it helps...
• No way to add alt-text to images that I've seen.

This is the most recent platform I've joined, and I had high hopes for it, but...

• You can use HTML, CSS, and markdown in posts! Which leads to you being able to do some pretty neat things, often referred to as "CSS crimes".
• You can add links to your profile and customize their visibility to be only visible to people you follow, or to your followers, or to everyone.
• You can make pinned posts.
• You can send people asks, including anonymous ones
• You can make multiple pages, which you can follow and comment from, and you can change your primary page
• People make userstyles and userscripts to customize the site, which is pretty cool
• You can bookmark tags and have a feed of tags you've bookmarked

• Apparently tag capitalization is determined by... the way the first person to use the tag capitalized it?
• Platform is losing money at a rate of anywhere from $10k to $40k USD each month (I believe there was only one month that they made net profit, and that was one of the Twitter exoduses)
• Staff have created a sort of weird, parasocial relationship with their users, to the point where criticizing them often gets you yelled at
• A member of staff bragged at one point about how Cloudflare forgot to start billing them for hosting after a free year of services they got and how they essentially cost Cloudflare money by never mentioning this... which is wildly unprofessional and also... I don't think they realize that Cloudflare can absolutely come after them for that money. Like they still owe Cloudflare money. They might even be in legal trouble for bragging publicly about how they never reached out to Cloudflare to correct this. Dear lord.
• Staff pays themselves salaries of $94k USD a year (adjusted from initial salaries of $87k USD a year, to account for cost of living increases). There are four staff. This adds up to $376k a year, or a bit over $31k a month, just spent on their salaries. They justify this by saying that the standard salary for their job titles is much higher, but... that doesn't exactly apply to a startup that is hemorhaging tens of thousands of dollars each month.
• The above is while users who make much less than staff does talk about putting themselves in a bad spot financially in order to pay for Cohost Plus and try to help staff keep the website afloat.
• Staff seems to refuse to accept any sort of volunteer labour.
• There is only one moderator for a site of currently 30k active users, meaning many reports haven't been responded to for weeks.
• To delete your account, you have to email support and wait for them to get around to it.
• Staff has repeatedly prioritized implementing features that make no difference in the financials of the site (asks, for instance), over features that would bring in revenue (eggbux, which would be a subscription service similar to Patreon or Ko-fi)
• Staff says they want to be transparent about financials, but then goes months between financial updates and reports financials in such a weird, inconsistent, confusing way that it's hard to actually get a clear picture of the financial situation
• Honestly just read this and this because this person explains the issues much better than I could

I joined this one around when I joined Mastodon, and honestly, I have a... pretty strong bias towards it.

• Accepts NSFW art
• Any NSFW or gore art needs to be behind a NSFW or gore filter, as well as having a minimum of three descriptive CWs so people know what it is before they click
• No AI allowed
• There's a creator's spoiler, for when your art isn't NSFW or gore but you feel like it should be filtered anyways - you also need to add a minimum of three descriptive CWs for this
• Communities are a thing
• You can make commission posts
• You can customize your profile quite a bit
• They've got a feature similar to Ko-fi and Patreon rolling out soon, called Instar (commissions, shops, tipping, etc.)
• Very transparent about financials
• They have a volunteer team, and when paid positions open, people on the volunteer team or from within the company are given preference, which is cool
• No sexualized art of minors or of "dubcon/noncon" allowed
• You can customize your page
• Ability to blacklist certain tags
• It's clear that everyone involved in running the platform has a lot of passion for it

• Technical issues sometimes, like the home feed outage
• Some people struggle a lot with finding descriptive and not-redundant CWs to put on their art
• No way to add alt-text yet that I know of

So if I had to rank these sites (in order of most liked to least liked, top to bottom):

1. InkBlot Art
2. Mastodon
3. Pillowfort
4. Bluesky
5. Cohost

Really, the only one I flat-out dislike at the moment is Cohost, and it's more because of how it's being managed, because I really like everything else about the site. You know when you see something and you just know it could have been amazing if the people running it had made better decisions? That's how I feel about Cohost, which is why I dislike it so strongly. I want to see it succeed, but I don't trust the people running it to actually make that happen.

I could have also included Spacehey, but honestly, I haven't used it enough because some of the vibes from people on there are just... off. That's the best way I can explain it.

I feel like I updated this site for a while pretty consistently, then forgot it existed.

So! Here's a bit of an update on what I'm up to:

• Working on some more "professional" projects, which won't be shared here because they'd be linked to my IRL identity
• Listening to Just Roll With It for the first time, I love it so far
• Working on two small Twine (interactive fiction) projects, one of which will be shared here when it's done
• Due to Tumblr's CEO being transmisogynistic and also the fact that Tumblr has partnerships with AI companies now, I am considering other options, including Cohost, Pillowfort, Bluesky, and Mastodon (still maintaining a Tumblr presence for now so my decision to opt out will be respected, because I don't know how deleting my account would affect that)
• I turn 23 years old next week, which is... weird to think about
• I've been playing a lot more Cozy Grove recently, and I'm trying to work on getting all the achievements possible in the games I own (or at least most of them)

That's about it for now.

Added new art and a new blog post.

Fixed up some art that was sized incorrectly, added a new blog post, edited social links, edited now page, added new links to partner's page.

Added new art and fixed some webring links.

Added music page.

Updated fundraising goal progress.

This will probably be a short post, but I wanted to make another monthly recap!

In January 2024, I:

• Moved my website back to Neocities
• Applied for a LOT of jobs
• Added a website directory to the Art Hive Studio
• Started working more on my French skills using Busuu and Clozemaster (stopped using Duolingo because of the AI stuff)
• Started a new volunteer position
• Started watching the new Percy Jackson show with my mom
• Got 21.6% of the way to my fundraising goal (more info here)
• Reached 100K views on Neocities (yeah this doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things, but I think it's neat)

I think in 2024, I'm mostly hoping to become financially stable and independent, and to be able to go visit my partner (we're long distance and have been since April 2020 - due to financial issues for both of us, we've never met in person, because we live in two different countries). Hopefully everything goes as planned.

After quite a while of being on leprd.space (I moved my website there from Neocities back in August), I recently decided this month to move my website back to Neocities.

There are a couple reasons for this:

• I don't like CPanel and just looking at it makes my brain hurt
• FTP/SFTP is really unintuitive to me and feels even clunkier than the Neocities file directory interface
• PHP is cool and all, but it's complicated to set up a live preview with Visual Studio Code (which is what I use)
• I could not wrap my head around SQL no matter how hard I tried

In the end, it mostly boils down to one thing: web development is a fun hobby for me, not a job. I don't want it to ever feel like one, even when I occasionally put out pay-what-you-want HTML templates for Neocities and Toyhouse. Introducing so much complexity to it made it feel like a struggle and worsened my already-existing burnout, which I had been slowly recovering from before that point. It also began to feel like an obligation, which I absolutely don't want.

So I've moved back to my previous setup with Neocities and the 11ty/Eleventy static site generator, though I have also learned how to use the command line interface with Neocities for updating my site more easily.

Other stuff that has happened recently:

• Started making art in Blender 3D again, you can check the results out on my art page.
• Finally got a doctor to take me seriously about my chronic migraines after years of struggling with them - did you know there are medications specifically for migraines? Also, did you know migraines aren't just headaches (they're actually a neurological condition, the headaches are just one possible symptom)? Anyways, the medication works perfectly, and no drowsiness either (which I normally get from pain meds)!
• Still applying for jobs, haven't heard anything back yet unfortunately.
• Stopped using Duolingo because of the situation with AI (they replaced some human translators with AI), now I'm using Busuu and Clozemaster. Honestly, Busuu is much better than I expected.
• My stick insect nymphs are nearly full-grown adults! I think the two oldest ones just have one more moult to go.
• Started watching the Percy Jackson and the Olympians show with my mom, it's decent so far and I love the casting. The script does seem a little bland at times, but nowhere near what the movie was like (my mom remembers hating the movie, but she loves the show). Plus, it's a Disney show, so some of that blandness feels expected (I don't know how to explain that, just... you know. Some Disney shows feel really bland at times). I'm also rereading the book series now (and then I'm going to reread Heroes of Olympus)!

New blog post. Added custom sorting to website buttons. Added an alter page for Felix. Updated fundraising goal progress.

Added pagination to blog. Updated how website buttons are handled in Eleventy (they're now part of a JSON array, I'm going to add some custom sorting to that later). Separated art into pages for each year.

Small updates to Eleventy setup and how redirects are being handled.

Now using Sass for handling CSS files for this site and minifying them before generating the final ones! Also updated goal progress and added some more social links to my about page.

Restructured sitemap page using the Eleventy navigation plugin, also moved blog posts from Bearblog over to here because keeping the blog feed updated is easier that way.

Added a page with resources for the free Palestine movement, as well as some graphics to my graphics page expressing solidarity with Palestine.

Added a new pay-what-you-want website template. Also added styleswitcher and bi pride stylesheet.

Added new art.

Added Neocreatives webring widget to links page.

Added some new art to the art page, added some individual alter pages to the system page, updated about page, updated partner page, and got the more text-heavy pages on the site working with reader mode. Made a new poll as well (in the Currently section of the sidebar), updated the uses page, and updated the index. Also updated the webrings and how they display (still gotta remember to contact the webring owners about the new URL).

Updated goal page and fiddled around with CSS a bit.

Added a uses page, redid the art page, and added art examples to the commissions page. Also added some images to the misclick family shrine and added a website carbon badge on the sidebar under stats!

Moved the site back over to Neocities, and am now using Eleventy again as my static site generator. Also added a now page, restructured the site a bit, and edited CSS. Added hit counter and last updated widget as well.

I figured I'd make a little "year in review" post to sort of go over everything significant that happened this year, and oh boy, did things ever happen.

During this month, I enrolled in what would end up being my last semester of university for financial reasons. I've jumped around from program to program quite a bit because of my impulsiveness, and so I never really made much progress towards my bachelor's degree, though I have definitely learned some things and explored a lot.

Before my last semester of university, I'd decided I wanted to pursue medical school (obviously, this isn't going to work out). I still have a major interest in biology, particularly marine biology, health sciences, and parasitology (which I think is very underrated).

Not much happened this month, besides trying to prepare for my last semester of university. The last semester of school I'd done was before I'd been prescribed ADHD medication, so I was both hopeful and incredibly nervous at the same time.

My last semester of university started, with me taking health studies, human physiology, chemistry, English, and statistics. Everything was going pretty well at first, but for me, the first part of classes always tends to go deceptively well before I end up falling behind.

I also turned 22 during this month, and chose to stop going to therapy due to financial issues, which was meant to be temporary but has lasted much longer than I expected. Unfortunately, insurance does not cover my therapist, and neither does our public healthcare (so much for being Canadian), but they are the only therapist I've met who has any knowledge about DID at all. On the bright side, therapy with them did help me out a lot in terms of system communication and stuff like that.

I found out about the QSMP this month and started watching it, mainly Slimecicle's point of view! I quickly became obsessed.

During this month, I set up my current fundraising goal on Ko-fi, since government student loans didn't cover all of my tuition (resulting in me having to take out a private loan to cover the rest) and I very much needed to get my wisdom teeth removed since they're impacted and keep getting irritated and infected. The goal was originally higher, since I hadn't seen a dentist in a while for financial reasons and I had a tooth that had been loose for over two years at this point which I thought would need to be taken care of.

I also got my first donation on Ko-fi from WelshPixie, which I'm still insanely thankful for!

Exams went terribly, except for English, which I tend to do well in. I realized I wouldn't be able to continue without accommodations at this point, but universities here require a psychoeducational assessment for that, which costs about $4000 out of pocket and is not covered by our healthcare system. So even though I've been officially diagnosed with ADHD, autism, etc. and have documentation to prove it in all of those cases, I would not be able to access accommodations. Even if I were able to, at this point I've spent three years in university and have very little to show for it - why continue to waste my time? Ultimately, though it felt like a failure on my part, I chose to drop out.

I also created my Neocities website this month, and my younger brother gave me one of his stick insects to take care of, Otto!

I got really obsessed with building my personal website this month. I even created the Acing The Internet webring!

My family, however, seems to have been cursed when it comes to medical stuff this year. During July, while working outside in the heat, my mother fainted and broke her arm. She had to be rushed to the emergency room, where they put a cast on that initially fit okay but started to cut off circulation as the injury swelled. When she went back to have this fixed, the new cast ended up giving her the same problem and causing a lot of pain.

She ended up cutting off the cast herself the day before her appointment to have it removed, which I thought would get her scolded by the doctor (though I was in support still, because the cast was clearly doing more harm than good). Surprisingly, the doctor didn't care. Their response was essentially "Yeah, understandable, no big deal."

It seems that she's having less issues with the arm now, though I think it still causes her some pain unfortunately. She's also the type of person who hates not being able to do things on her own - which doesn't go so well when you combine it with a family that's forgetful and has issues remembering to help out around the house. I'm surprised she didn't strain the injury at some point, actually.

On that note, if anyone has tips for remembering to do chores and staying on top of them, especially with ADHD, please email me!

I started learning about and working more on accessibility and mobile responsiveness for my website this month, and I also wrote my first blog post on web accessibility!

I also moved my website over to leprd.space so I could experiment with PHP, though I maintain a landing page on Neocities as well.

On Toyhouse, I started making some HTML templates for people to use, which has gone pretty well. Most of them are free to use, but they've gotten me more followers and tips on Ko-fi even so, which is pretty neat.

My first dentist appointment in years happened this month, and it turns out my teeth are actually pretty okay, nowhere near as fucked up as I originally thought they were. The tooth that was loose? It was a baby tooth that somehow never fell out, because the corresponding adult tooth came in at a weird angle and didn't push it out. I have another baby tooth that had the exact same thing happen as well. They should have fallen out when I was twelve, but instead I had to yank the loose one out myself at twenty-two (the other one will be removed by my dentist at some point).

The dentist said my wisdom teeth should definitely get removed, because they're almost impossible for me to clean thoroughly at the angle they're at and they are impacted (which means they got stuck under another tooth and only erupted partially). Other than that, I only have two teeth that are crooked enough to impact my ability to keep them clean, and my options for that are either braces or just straight-up removing them - which probably costs less (and the weird position they're in, where they're behind other teeth, means it probably would look less weird, not more, if they were removed). I haven't made a decision on that yet, but I am working on saving up to get the wisdom teeth removed.

During this month, I started work on the Art Hive Studio, a part of Marigold Town! I also started trying to feed the birds outside in my backyard (using only appropriate food, of course) - none have landed on me yet, but the blue jays have landed right next to me on the deck!

In sadder news, my stick insect, Otto, passed away during September. He (I refer to him with he/him pronouns, though he was female, like most stick insects of his species) left me a ton of nymphs, though, who I've affectionately dubbed the Ottolettes. I currently have four of the Ottolettes, who are growing quite fast and will probably start laying eggs in a month or two. My younger brother has one of the Ottolettes as well, who he's named Clark. I also now have a shrine for my stick insects.

The Art Hive Studio had its first ever exhibition, and I joined Pixel Cat's End!

I also wrote another blog post on accessibility and mobile responsiveness.

In the good news for this month, I got my first two art commissions - one for digital currency on my art commissions thread on Pixel Cat's End, and the other for real money through my Artistree.

In the bad news for this month, my family's bad medical luck struck again, and my sibling was hospitalized and ended up in the ICU. Turns out they had undiagnosed type 1 diabetes, and none of us knew. They went into what's called "diabetic ketoacidosis" after their blood sugar levels went insanely high, where acids called ketones end up accumulating in the bloodstream. If they hadn't displayed the worrying symptoms that led us to take them to the emergency room (they are semiverbal and often unable to communicate their internal experiences to us), they would have likely died within the next 24 hours.

This was, to put it lightly, a terrifying fucking experience.

Anyways, they stabilized quickly and were able to be discharged within a few days, and now they are doing much, much better. So I guess this is a PSA - if you have any history of diabetes in your family (doesn't matter if it's type 1 or type 2), research the symptoms and go get tested. It's more common than you might think for people to go years without knowing they have diabetes (sometimes only finding out when hospitalized), and uncontrolled diabetes can cause a lot of damage. You can even test yourself at home, though you can't diagnose yourself (but it can still let you know at least if something's wrong).

Don't listen to the stigma about type 2 diabetes, either. There's lots of evidence to suggest that many risk factors for type 2 diabetes are out of your control (this podcast goes over that in more detail), skinny people can develop type 2 as well, and besides that, stigma can actually lead to people with type 2 avoiding treatment that they desperately need (doctor's appointments, for example).

2023 is nearly over!

During this month, I took inventory of my goals and cut back a bit on the things I'm pursuing. This included officially abandoning Twitch and YouTube. You can read more about my reasoning for these choices in this blog post.

I also got a referral from my family doctor to a trans-friendly endocrinologist, so I can go back on testosterone. I talked more about this decision in this blog post, but at the time of writing that, I hadn't yet gotten up the courage to bring this up to my family doctor. He responded quite well, thankfully. The endocrinologist he referred me to apparently doesn't have a super long wait-list, at least not according to a friend who was prescribed testosterone by them. Maybe a few months to a bit less than a year? I don't know, but I'm hoping it's only a few months. I'm going to call their office next week too to double-check that they got the referral, because I seem to have bad luck with that sort of thing.

In other news, I've been considering converting to Judaism again. I mean, I had been considering that on and off for the past few years, but I thought I had finally decided for sure that I wouldn't convert. It makes no sense that it's calling to me again now of all times, too, because I've been seeing insane levels of antisemitism online in response to recent events.[^1]

I think if I do convert, I will likely convert through the Reconstructionist or Reform movements. Who knows, though?

I've also made a lot of progress on the outline of my interactive fiction game this month. Not so much on the writing, but that's fine, I'm not rushing myself to get a demo out. I would like to have the demo out by March 2024, though we'll see how that goes and maybe readjust as we go along.

[^1]: I am not Zionist, and I fully support the free Palestine movement. I don't think criticizing Israel or even believing that it shouldn't exist is antisemitic. There are, however, quite a few white gentiles who are using the movement as a shield for antisemitism, and that is inexcusable.

For the last year or so, I've been spreading myself increasingly thin, trying to juggle multiple projects at a time. Twitch streaming, my YouTube channel, improving my art and taking art commissions, learning to code both for my own websites and for Toyhouse HTML templates, my interactive fiction novel, and some other projects I haven't mentioned here.

I tend to pick up a lot of projects and creative pursuits, but this is probably the worst it's been in a while.

Some things have to go, and there's no way around that.

So first: I am no longer streaming on Twitch. Which feels frustrating to say, because I've been literally $12 away from the payout threshold on there for over a year, but quite frankly, it's not the most important project to me right now and it's not something I want to focus on anymore. Maybe at some point I'll return, but it won't be on the same channel - I'll probably start from scratch if I end up coming back.

Next, my YouTube channel is not going to get much more use either. It already wasn't being used very frequently, but I'm making it official here and pronouncing it dead. Maybe I'll return to YouTube at some point, but it will be a different kind of content and on a different channel.

When it comes to coding, I have sort of mixed feelings. I am still quite proud of the websites I've built, and making HTML templates for Toyhouse got my Ko-fi quite a lot of followers. However, I've also received some transphobia, and outside of the 32-Bit Cafe, I honestly don't feel super comfortable in web revival communities. I mean, I have a lot of social anxiety, so I don't feel comfortable in most communities, but I've seen a surprising amount of toxicity in the web revival community in particular. Bad-faith arguments, stuff like that.

I also have seen my website get... a surprising amount of views and followers, honestly, considering I came to Neocities being like "Ooh, it's like Carrd but I can play with the HTML/CSS/JS." I didn't expect anyone to actually care too much about my website. While this has been great in some ways, it's also been nervewracking, especially when I've gotten dragged into drama (and often misgendered in the process). Or had my views completely misrepresented no matter how clear I try to be about them.

I will keep my websites up, but I'll probably only be updating my main website about once a month, and I might make some edits to the submission process for the Art Hive studio to make it less stressful to deal with. I think I'll also respond to applications for the Acing The Internet webring about once a month.

I might also cut down on the amount of pages on my main website, too. That will hopefully make it easier to maintain.

For Toyhouse layouts, I'll probably still release one or two of those each month, but no more than that.

When it comes to my art, I'm still pursuing my art-related goals, but I might try to make my practice more frequent and more sustainable by working on more small sketches.

Interactive fiction, and writing in general, is going to take more priority. Writing has been a major part of my life since I was young, and it makes me incredibly happy. I want to pursue more of what makes me happy, I think. If something stresses me out more than it makes me happy... it's not worth it.

Content warning: towards the end of the post I discuss a family member being in the ICU and medical professionals being, to put it lightly, a pain in the ass. If you're not in the proper headspace to hear about that, you'll want to stop reading after the paragraph about Twitch and YouTube.

November was... a very eventful month, to say the least.

In positive news, I got my first ever art commission for real money, which I'm still super proud of. I feel like I've come a long way since I started taking art seriously, especially in shading and rendering which is the main aspect I'm trying to improve currently. I do still struggle a bit with anatomy, though, so I'll have to force myself to work on some more fullbodies and practice that more.

Another project of mine, the Art Hive studio, now has open submissions for the December exhibition. I likely won't include my own art in this exhibition, as doing that twice in a row would feel a little odd. However, if you were featured in the October exhibition, I encourage you to submit your art again if you'd like to do so! Any sort of visual art can be featured, including photography, pictures of physical crafts you've made, digital art, etc.

I also got back to streaming this month, though I quickly got knocked back off track by events in my life. I also made a new YouTube video on the recent updates for Minecraft, and if you don't want to watch that on YouTube because of the whole situation with ads, you can also watch it and all my other videos on my PeerTube channel, which is synced automatically with my YouTube channel. PeerTube is part of the Fediverse (think Mastodon, PixelFed, etc.), so it's decentralized and there are no ads. The server I'm on is currently struggling to keep up with expenses, though - video hosting is not cheap. If you'd like to help support them, it looks like they're in need of about $60 a month currently, and their Open Collective page has more information on how to help!

In more negative news, one of my siblings was in the ICU for a few days recently. They are fine now, but I'm still incredibly angry at the medical professionals involved for how they handled the situation. We didn't get anything adequately explained to us until over 24 hours after my sibling was initially admitted to the hospital, a person with a sprained ankle was given priority over my sibling (who had signs of internal bleeding and would have likely died if we hadn't taken them to the emergency room upon noticing these signs) by the triage nurse, and our family doctor, despite telling us my sibling was at risk for developing the condition that caused this, failed to follow up on the issue or investigate any of the symptoms we were telling him about that were related to this condition. My sibling is semi-verbal and wouldn't have been able to communicate any symptoms that weren't outwardly visible, too.

Luckily, it's a condition that can be kept under control and it now is being managed. I'm trying to focus more on that than my anger.

Some more positive news to end this blog post with: I joined Pixel Cat's End towards the end of October! It's been really fun so far, and I enjoy adventuring a lot in particular. Here's my profile, feel free to add me as a friend if you'd like!

New blog post. Updated some broken links. Overhauled site theme and color palette. Added a system page. Cleaned up cool websites list (having a lot of websites there is nice, but it gets hard to keep track of and I'm worried about accidentally linking to a website with offensive content or something on it).

New blog post. Also updated goals page, about page, and some other pages. Removed a few pages that would take too much energy for me to keep up with them. Restructured site layout, so some links might break - check the sitemap if you need to update any or if you're looking for a specific page.

New blog post. Also updated goal progress.

I've been putting this off for a long time now, but I think I'm going to finally talk to my family doctor this week about resuming transition.

As in, gender-affirming care. I want to go back on testosterone. It's been way too long now.

Quick recap for those who don't know: I came out as transgender at thirteen, started testosterone at fourteen, and then went off it at seventeen because I was constantly getting exposed to TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) propaganda and there was... a lot going on in my life at the time, and I really desperately wanted to believe that the issues in my life could all be pinned on one convenient reason to blame, regardless of whether it made any sense. I haven't gone back on it since, because it turns out my gender was more complicated than I initially thought (I'm nonbinary and do still identify with womanhood), but I think I've also just been scared. I think the self-doubt from that period of time really got to me.

I am currently twenty-two years old, and my therapist who has been treating me for DID and PTSD wrote me a referral letter for top surgery almost a year ago now, so I've also been waiting for a response on that as well from the surgeon. I'll need to have more money saved up for that, though. My government covers the surgery, technically, but they don't cover liposuction because they see it as "nonessential" and this surgeon in particular will not do the surgery without liposuction because he believes it is essential to having a half-decent result. I have no clue if that's actually true or not (I'm betting on not), but this is the only surgeon in my region who does top surgery, and because of that my government won't cover top surgery if I travel to get it done somewhere else. It's a weird situation.

I'm glad my therapist wrote me the referral, though. They're also transgender, and they helped me get to a point in my ability to communicate with the rest of my system where we could confidently say we wanted top surgery. DID has also, honestly, given me a lot of anxiety about moving forward with transition; because if I might be a different part of me tomorrow, who knows what that part might want? Hell, I could even split new parts who want completely different things from me. Looking back, this may have been a factor in me going off testosterone as a teenager, as one specific part, Phoenix, was the host for most of that time period. Phoenix has much stronger dysphoria than the rest of us (which, it turns out, doesn't mean the rest of us don't have dysphoria), so when the situation he split to protect us from stopped, the rest of us suddenly felt much less strongly about testosterone than we were used to feeling, and we mistakenly assumed this meant we actually didn't want to be on testosterone anymore.

I don't think I feel comfortable fully explaining the situation with DID to my family doctor (I'm not formally diagnosed, because an evaluation costs about $4000 out of pocket and I have so many other things I need to save up for - but my therapist is treating me under the assumption that I do have it, and it's been more helpful than any other therapy I've ever had, so that says a lot), but I am going to try and talk about my discussions with my therapist to him and, you know, give him as much information as necessary so that he has a better idea of what's going on exactly. Hopefully he'll be okay with prescribing me testosterone himself, since he is able to do that here, and I'll try to bring along resources, my past prescriptions for testosterone, bloodwork, my surgery referral letter from my therapist, stuff like that so that he feels comfortable doing so, but if not, waiting a year or two to be referred to an endocrinologist is better than nothing, I guess.

Also, the current political climate is scaring me, quite honestly. When I first came out as transgender, I was out to pretty much my entire high school, and while there was definitely a lot of ignorance and some transphobia, it was nowhere near the level it's at now. I don't want to keep putting off transition out of fear and risk not being able to restart it as easily in the future.

IMPORTANT NOTE

This post was written a month after the events of October 7th. It does not reflect my current views. I learned much more about the history of Palestine and Israel after writing this, including the killing of Rachel Corrie, the fact that the Palestinian death toll is at well over thirty thousand (the vast majority civilians, and the majority of those civilians being women and children), the fact that illegal Israeli settlements are still being built in the West Bank, the fact that Hamas was going to hold their first elections with the Palestinian Authority which would've likely resulted in Hamas losing and the West Bank and Gaza once again being united but Israel vetoed it and immediately after Hamas started planning October 7th, the fact that Palestinians living in Israel have been yelled at by Israelis for so much as voicing concern over the disproportionate punishment of Palestinians, and the fact that Zionists seem to be fine with Israel killing civilians and not even trying to save the fucking hostages, meanwhile Hamas has repeatedly offered to let the hostages go and has only been met with more violence.

Media coverage, meanwhile, turns a blind eye to Israel's crimes, and the US has even denounced the ICC for announcing they'd be looking into arrest warrants for Israeli leaders (important to note they also are looking into arrest warrants for Hamas, and even the Gaza media office - controlled by Hamas - at least acknowledged that they were grateful the ICC was taking Israeli crimes seriously, while the US and Israel have mentioned nothing about the arrest warrants for Hamas. This isn't about holding Hamas accountable, it's about genocide). Israel also bombed an Iranian embassy in Syria (which it also illegally occupies part of, by the way) unprovoked and then played the victim when Iran (legally, under international law) retaliated (and their retaliation was constrained and small). So now Iran is under more sanctions from the US, which make it incredibly hard for the population to afford to live. Some Iranians can't even afford medical care.

At the time of updating this (2024-05-28), Israel, after told to stop its invasion of Rafah (the only place for Gazans to evacuate), immediately bombed refugee camps in Rafah. Footage shows people, families, children, burnt and even decapitated. Israel attacked at night, so people had to search for their family members' body parts with their phone flashlights.

The original post I made here is, in short, a shitty post and one I should have never made. It is not my place to sit comfortably an ocean away in a country that is not at war and lecture Palestinians about how they should fight for their freedom. Hamas's actions may have been a violation of international law, but Israel's actions amount to genocide and apartheid under international law and are ultimately the root cause of this mess. Hamas is, at most, a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

I have removed the original post for these reasons, as I do not want to contribute to the spread of "both sides" rhetoric. If you can, please check out the following links and help in whatever ways you can. Free Palestine, and land back everywhere.

• Gaza Funds - spotlights different fundraisers from Gazans impacted by the genocide
• el-shab-hussein's Vetted Fundraiser Masterpost on Tumblr - vetted masterposts of fundraisers for Gazan families, some for Sudanese families also listed (as Sudan is also going through a genocide), if you can't donate reblogging still helps
• Click daily to help Palestine - this site lets you click daily to raise money for Palestine (generated by ad revenue), it is trustworthy and also has similar pages for other issues in the Arab world

New art uploaded. Edited projects, goals, commission information, and partner page. Also added a new shrine for the "misclick family" on the QSMP and added some more stuff to the butch/femme page.

Wrote two new blog posts, (Re)starting Transition and An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

Wrote a new blog post, Looking Back On October. Moved webring widgets, fanlistings, cliques, and virtual pets to the new links page.

It's nearly the end of the month now, so here's another one of my monthly log posts!

My backyard has quite a few different birds: chickadees, nuthatches, bluejays, ravens, you name it. Recently, I've been going outside every now and then with some seeds and/or peanuts to feed them. I used to go to a nature reserve to do this, but social anxiety is a dick lately and there's plenty of them in my backyard anyways (plus a squirrel who keeps investigating me from a safe distance).

Note that I have done my research on this: I bring out sunflower seeds for the smaller birds (chickadees, nuthatches) and have checked that those are safe to feed them. For the corvids (bluejays and ravens - yes, bluejays are corvids), peanuts are actually quite nutritious and good for them, and bluejays in particular are known to prefer peanuts over pretty much any other food you offer them. Common sense applies here, too: don't give processed foods to wildlife, even if the foods would be safe for them otherwise (processed foods aren't even that good for us usually, but they can do far more harm to wildlife). Anything that's salted, roasted, whatever, is probably not good for wildlife. Go for the plain options.

So far, the chickadees and nuthatches in my backyard are quite skittish. I can hear them nearby chirping up a storm, but I usually don't see them. The squirrel has come near my feet to investigate me, but usually runs off the second he realizes I've noticed him.

I don't recommend trying to feed or hand-feed squirrels, by the way. I've done it myself, sure, but I'm keenly aware of the risks I'm taking. If you've ever been out in the woods and heard something that sounded almost like a drill, that might've not been a woodpecker but instead a squirrel gnashing its teeth together (they do that when they're angry, usually at other squirrels from what I've witnessed). A bite from a squirrel is pretty much guaranteed to be painful as hell. I've already had one nibble my finger, thankfully without biting down hard or hurting me at all (I don't know what he was trying to do, actually, he just very gently took hold of my finger between his teeth, tried to pull it away, and then seemingly realized it was attached to me and ran off). They can also carry rabies, which is basically guaranteed death if you get it (in a lot of places, people who work with animals are required to be vaccinated against rabies, but the average person is most likely not). Like, we can give a person with rabies all the best treatment in the world, and 99% of the time, it will not work. Vaccination immediately after exposure is highly successful at preventing it (100% success if given before symptoms appear), but that requires the person who just got bit to get their ass to a hospital immediately (within ten days at most). The first person known to have survived rabies without this vaccination is a girl who was put into a medically induced coma and given antiviral medications, this treatment being now known as the Milwaukee protocol, but while it's been tried again to do this multiple times since, no one else has survived (and that girl had to relearn how to walk and things like that so...). That's not even mentioning the risk of parasites, ticks, other diseases, or the squirrel becoming too used to humans and becoming a problem (which can also happen with corvids too).

Anyone who read through that last paragraph in full is probably wondering why I mentioned I've done it myself despite knowing all those risks. To answer: I have poor impulse control. I used to work at an animal shelter, and there was a dog brought in that had bit my boss (a Husky, not a pitbull; not exactly the dog you think of when picturing that sort of scenario). This dog's face was covered in my boss's blood and still, when I went near the cage and the dog whimpered and cried, I genuinely wanted to go in to comfort him, knowing full well he would probably bite me too.

Basically, I fit the stereotype of "white woman who will happily interact with dangerous animals being fully aware of the risks".

Anyways, the corvids are a bit more interested in me, though the ravens don't come very close to me (which is fine, I don't intend to try and hand-feed them). The bluejay perches in the branches above me to investigate, and has nearly landed in my hand before (he changed his mind at the last second). He blends in surprisingly well, too, despite him being so colorful and the surrounding woods being so drab and colorless. There have been multiple times I haven't noticed him there despite looking right in the direction of where he was perching.

I've also seen a few bald eagles flying overhead recently, which was pretty cool.

Main project that I finished up this month was my website featuring artists and providing helpful resources, the Art Hive Studio. The October exhibition is still up if you'd like to go check it out, and submissions for the next exhibition will open on December 1st!

I've been considering a lot more what exactly I want to do with my website and the web projects I make recently, too. Honestly, all the work I've been doing on them has been burning me out a bit (I've been changing the layout for my main website way too often, too), and I find the web revival community is often portrayed as a way less toxic alternative to social media when I've honestly found that many of the same issues I had with social media are present here too. My website and my work getting more attention has been overwhelming at times, especially being openly transgender in the space. Talking about the issue of web accessibility hasn't helped, either; there are plenty of people who have been nothing but supportive, sure, but there are a lot of people who go out of their way to interpret my words in bad faith and assume blatantly untrue things about me and what my goals are when I talk about the issue.

I'm not yet sure how I want to deal with this issue going forward, but I do want to focus more on things that bring me joy, not things that stress me out. This might be hard, because most of my ideas for things to add to my website or new projects tend to focus on things that can help others and I'm certainly not going to stop doing that altogether, but I'm also going to work on a lot more things that are just for me.

Job hunting sucks. Gas and transportation are complicated right now, so I've been looking for those crappy work-from-home call center jobs despite my auditory processing issues because honestly, I'm desperate at this point and I'll take what I can get. None of the jobs I've applied for have gone anywhere, though.

I'm also trying to work on my programming skills and portfolio, so maybe I can at least do freelancing for that. Ideally, I want to be able to start a career in some area of programming, it's just hard keeping track of what specifically I need to learn and thinking of projects I could both actually accomplish and add to my portfolio.

Financial stuff is hard too, because there's a lot of stuff I need to prioritize saving up for at the moment (paying off debt, paying for wisdom teeth removal since they're impacted at the moment and prone to getting infected, etc.), but really all I want long-term is to be able to go meet my partner in person (we've been long-distance for over three years) and eventually move in with her. She was working on converting an old bus into a tiny home for us for a bit, but due to some issues that bus is no longer in her possession, and it's surprisingly hard to find old buses for that purpose (I think they're called skoolies). I don't really care what we end up living in, though. I mean, I'd like to not be homeless, but beyond that, I'm not picky.

Alas, I have to be a responsible adult and focus on taking care of the debt and the wisdom teeth removal before I focus on that, and she keeps telling me to focus on those things and not to worry about the rest, that she'll take care of it. I'm really lucky to have her, even when we're separated by thousands of kilometers.

Anyways, that's the monthly log for this month. Hopefully November will be better.

Neat fact about me: one of my hobbies is learning languages.

My family is mostly Canadian French (Acadian, not Québécois), so French is probably the language I know the best at the moment besides English, my native language. In high school, I also picked up a bit of Brazilian Portuguese through Duolingo, and for the most part, I can write in both languages and generally have okay reading and listening comprehension, though I still struggle more than I would like to admit, especially with holding a conversation (searching for the words I want is hard).

Recently, I've also been working on the basics of Russian on and off, because I just think it's a very pretty language. There are some other languages I want to learn in the future too (Mi'kmaq because I have Mi'kmaq ancestry, Nunavimmiutut or Inuktitut because I have some Inuit cousins and would like to learn more about their culture, Hebrew and Arabic because I think they're pretty, etc.), but for now I'm keeping the list of languages I'm actively working on learning to three so I'm not too overwhelmed.

For the most part, I've been doing this without a real plan in place, but recently, I came up with a sort of strategy that I'd like to share.

If you have ever tried to learn a language, you have probably heard of immersion. I have an advantage here with French: I know people in real life who speak the Acadian dialect I want to learn. I can just ask my mom to speak to me only in French if I want to practice my conversation skills, so that's pretty easy. However, this doesn't work for Brazilian Portuguese or Russian.

I've developed a plan for increasing my exposure to content in all of my target languages nonetheless. For French, on top of conversational practice, I use an app called Mauril which is targeted at newcomers to Canada who need to learn either French or English. It uses content from CBC (English) and Radio-Canada (French) to test listening comprehension, asking questions in the target language about the material you just watched. Because of this, the content is actually stuff that native speakers of the language would watch, and it's also broken up by difficulty level too. There's a lot of content for each difficulty level.

For all three languages, I also keep playlists on YouTube dedicated to interesting content in the languages. This honestly is usually science content. Kurzgesagt on YouTube has French and Portuguese channels where the popular videos from their main channels are translated, Dirty Biology is a cool French channel that tackles topics like how journalists are a bit racist about Hong Kong's architecture, Ciência Todo Dia is a Portuguese science education channel, and for Russian channels I've found Alpha Centauri and SciOne which are also science-focused.

It's not as simple as just watching these videos in my target languages and hoping to improve, though. There has to be some kind of strategy to this sort of learning. What I do is watching each video three times: first, with subtitles off to see how much I comprehend already. Next, I put subtitles on in the target language and watch the video again, seeing how much I understand now (sometimes I'll only pick up on a word being said when I notice it in the subtitles, so this helps me notice words I missed when watching without subtitles). Finally, I set the subtitles to auto-translate to English (usually there aren't English subtitles already provided, but that's fine), and watch the video a final time, so if there's anything I still didn't understand, I now understand it.

For reading comprehension, I look for news websites in my target language, as well as taking advantage of a thing I already do naturally: Wikipedia rabbit holes. If I'm already looking at a Wikipedia page on something that interests me, I can click on the dropdown listing the other languages that the page is available in and read it in one of my target languages, if that's available. When I encounter a sentence I don't understand, I look up the translation, then I make a flashcard for it in Anki. There are... a lot of ways to use Anki for language learning, so I'm not going to go over that in this post.

Finally, for writing practice, I plan to start writing blog posts in my target languages here, as well as translating my English ones into those languages. I encourage native speakers to contact me via email with corrections, if you'd like, and I'll probably find spaces online where I can share the posts and receive corrections as well. I'm not sure when I'll start doing this for Russian, since I am still very much at the beginner stage and currently learning how to say things like "She eats" and "This is my house", but I'll get there eventually.

"Wait, what about speaking practice?"

At the moment, I've been struggling with greater-than-usual social anxiety for about a year now (I can barely get myself to speak to new people in English, let alone my target languages). While I'm still going to be pestering my mom to chat with me in French, speaking practice for Portuguese and Russian is going on the backburner for now. However, I do have plans for how I will approach this when I'm ready. There are lots of online communities for finding language exchange partners, so I'll likely find native speakers of my target languages that way and set up voice calls with them. I also stream on Twitch sometimes, and have set up channel point rewards in the past that involved me speaking in either Portuguese or French only for five minutes, so I'll likely revisit that idea at some point.

Another advantage I have in learning languages is that I am a major fan of the QSMP, a lore-based Minecraft multiplayer server run by a Minecraft YouTuber named Quackity. He's a bilingual speaker of English and Spanish, so the unique part about this server is that it's multilingual and features a live translate mod. Not only has this server introduced content creators and their fans from the Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English communities to each other, but it's also a great excuse for me to try watching the Portuguese and French streamers and see how much I can understand from what they say. My partner has recently gotten into it as well and makes me translate the Portuguese streamers for her (they do usually set the captions in game to be English so English viewers will understand them, but of course, automatically generated captions do have limitations), which is another good way for me to practice my listening comprehension.

That about sums up my strategy for learning these languages going forward. I'll probably make adjustments to this too as I test it out and learn what works and what doesn't. For now, though, this is my plan.

Honestly, didn't think I was going to make another post about accessibility and mobile responsiveness, especially not so soon (here's my first one). I've seen a lot more discussion about it in the web revival space, though, so I'd like to talk about it a bit - namely responding to some common arguments against it.

A quick summary of points, if you'd like to jump around in this post:

• "But this website is just for me!"
• "Phones and other mobile devices result in mindless scrolling!"
• "Accessibility and mobile responsiveness are too difficult!"
• "Not every website is for everyone!"

To tell you the truth, this argument is starting to annoy me, because it seems pretty obvious to me that there's nuance here. My website is mostly just for me as well, and I understand that making a website accessible and responsive takes time. Sometimes I'm too tired to add alt text to images, so I add an empty alt attribute and leave it for the time being. Sometimes I notice an element of my website doesn't work on phones and simply note it down to fix it when I'm not exhausted. This is something I do as a hobby, after all - I'm not getting paid to maintain my website. I obviously do not think an individual deciding that accessibility and mobile responsiveness on their website are not their top priorities or even priorities at all is a bad thing.

However, our personal websites are not just seen and used by us as the webmasters. They're hosted publicly and are seen by the world. For example, if you have flashing GIFs on your homepage with no warning and no way to turn them off, you put certain visitors at risk of dangerous seizures. It is not a case of "Don't like, don't look", because a person who experiences photosensitive seizures has no way to know that your website can potentially cause them physical harm. Making this hypothetical situation worse, a person having a seizure may have difficulty clicking off of the webpage that is causing the seizure. This is just one, very specific example of how lack of accessibility can harm people, and it's not even hard to fix - simply hiding flashing GIFs under a details element and warning that there are flashing GIFs in the summary of the details element eliminates the problem.

Besides that, when most people in a space respond to concerns about accessibility or mobile responsiveness by treating it as an unreasonable concern or even somehow harmful to them, disabled people see this. And it doesn't exactly make us feel very welcome in web revival spaces, even though we have valuable things to contribute to these very spaces.

TL;DR: you don't have an obligation to make your personal website perfectly accessible and mobile responsive, but you shouldn't be acting as if genuine concerns about accessibility from disabled people are a personal attack. Or referring to it as (and yes, a person I used to follow on Neocities actually used this term) "elitism". Doing so is just ableism, plain and simple.

This one is so ridiculous, I barely know where to start.

Phones and tablets are not inherently addictive any more than a PC or laptop is. Many social media apps are designed to keep users on the app for as long as possible, but this is not a fault of the device being used to access that app. Besides that, mobile devices are more affordable for many people in the world and more accessible for some disabled people as well (I've mentioned before that when I have migraines or bad fatigue days, it's much easier for me to browse the internet on my phone while laying down than it is to sit up at my PC, as my migraines and fatigue tend to get worse when I'm in an upright position). There's no reason to act like using a PC or laptop instead of a mobile device makes you superior to anyone else.

There are literally so many resources out there on both of these topics, and besides that, they're really not that difficult. Making a mobile responsive layout for my site was one of the easiest parts of building my website, actually. Media queries are not that hard. The Accessible Net Directory created by pinkvampyr has a whole page dedicated to resources, the Responsive Web Directory created by kalechips also has a page listing resources, and there are tons of people who have made mobile responsive templates that are FREE TO USE:

• Kalechips' layout thrift store
• Eggramen's CSS test pages
• My free-to-use templates
• w3school's responsive CSS templates
• Owl's F2U Website Templates

The above is by no means an exhaustive list, either.

That's absolutely true, but when the vast majority of webmasters in a space use this to justify not adding even minor tweaks for accessibility and responsiveness that would be easy and completely viable to add, it still becomes an issue, because that makes the space as a whole unwelcoming to disabled people and mobile users. It is disproportionately disabled people and mobile users that are affected by this, and that makes it a problem.

Repeat after me, folks: an inaccessible web is not a free web.

Beyond that, it's honestly frustrating to constantly see people make a big stink over how they don't want to make their site accessible or mobile responsiveness. It's gotten to the point that I don't explore personal websites on places like Neocities as much, because half the time, I immediately see a statement insulting mobile users (ex. "Don't be a phone chump! Buy a PC!").

Or, I find a post the webmaster has written that's just complaining about how people like me voicing our concerns about accessibility and mobile responsiveness and sharing how it directly impacts us and our experiences in these spaces... makes them feel bad. They decide that this discomfort - despite all the disclaimers that us talking about this issue is not meant to shame any webmasters or imply that everyone needs to have a 100% accessible and responsive website right now or else they're a bad person - means that we're forcing our opinions on them, or pressuring them. This happens regardless of how nicely or gently we phrase our posts about the issue. It's incredibly hurtful to share how an issue negatively impacts you while clarifying that you're not trying to shame or attack anyone, and immediately have people twist your words and accuse you of "elitism".

Anyways, this isn't a super well-written post and it's more a bit of a rant, but I wanted to get some of my frustrations out because I've been growing increasingly disappointed with the way issues like this are handled since I made my website back in June of 2023 (just four months ago). I even do my best to provide resources on my site and help people who are struggling with making their site accessible and mobile responsive because it's such an important topic to me that I'm fully willing to go out of my way to help people who don't know where to start. Many people are very supportive of efforts to make the web revival more accessible, too, but it's still draining to see the dismissive and flat-out hurtful responses.

I'm incredibly grateful to those who care about and support web accessibility and responsiveness, you are amazing. And if you have questions about these issues, you are free to contact me (I may take a little while to respond and I make no guarantees that I'll have the answers to your questions, but I do enjoy trying to help people with this stuff) or check out the resources I listed earlier in this post.

For some reason when I made my first monthly log post I put the name of the current month in the title instead of the past month, I guess I'll just keep going with that.

Anyways, I've been getting more comfortable with identifying as multigender recently. Even though the genders of parts in the system vary wildly and many of us are multigender even on an individual level, I constantly feel like I'm having to pick either "woman" or "man", never both, and if I pick either of those it feels like people automatically ignore my other genders and focus on just that one. Not to mention the difficulty of using multiple pronoun sets and getting people to actually use them all equally... Especially it/its pronouns. People treat those like using them would be just as bad as calling me a slur. I don't know how to explain to people that it's still misgendering when you avoid calling someone by the pronouns you know it wants to be called!

I've made some more free to use Toyhouse and Neocities templates, as well as some pay to use ones for Toyhouse because I am sadly still unemployed. It's pretty fun fiddling around with Bootstrap, I've been learning a lot recently.

I also posted about this in my last post, but a project I've been working on to help support artists, the Art Hive Studio, is now live! I'm really hoping it goes well, and I'm super excited to see the submissions for the first exhibition (those are open from today until October 10th). If you have any art-related resources for that to suggest, please feel free to contact me!

In my last monthly log, I mentioned my stick insects, the Ottolettes (named after their parent, Otto!). They're doing pretty well, and my brother has given me more of Otto's nymphs that he happened to have, so we're up to 11 or 12 of them right now I think. Some of them have gotten quite big, and they're pretty happy walking all over my arms and exploring. I've gotta try and get some good pictures to put on the stick insect shrine page.

Oh, and I tested this out on the Art Hive Studio website so you can see it in action there if you refresh the page, but I wrote code in PHP to automatically randomize the pronoun set that the website uses to refer to me, since I wrote anything referring to me in third person so I could get gender euphoria from the correct pronouns being used. Now I get even more gender euphoria, because they're actually being used equally! Yay!

For this month going forward, I think I'm going to try to relax a little more. I feel like I haven't actually been giving myself much downtime this month. I was forced to today and yesterday at least, but that's because I forgot to get my ADHD meds renewed and I ran out of them, haha. Certainly makes me feel grateful that I was finally prescribed ADHD meds that work last year, and also makes me wonder how the absolute fuck I survived to the age of twenty-one with unmedicated ADHD. Even medicated, it's still an issue, but at least when medicated I don't feel like everything I try to do is so boring I want to literally cry or punch something. Like, I had no clue before these meds that that wasn't a normal experience! They've helped me so much, honestly anyone who fearmongers about them can kiss my ass - and that's considering that the first ADHD meds I was prescribed sent me into a psychotic episode. I am fully aware of the risks of medication, but there needs to be balance when we talk about these things. Just because something was bad for you, does not mean it is bad for everyone else. We need to be able to recognize the diversity of different experiences and not prioritize any one experience over another (that means I fully support people with ADHD who don't want to be medicated, or anyone with any mental health disorder who doesn't want to be medicated for it - and I also support anyone who feels that medication has helped them immensely, or whose feelings on the subject are more complicated). Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I also want to add some more LGBTQ+ pages to the website this month when I get the chance. Right now I've just got pansexuality and bisexuality, because that's what most of our system identifies as aside from a few parts who are probably lesbians. Honestly, writing those pages up was weird, because there's so much intracommunity discourse between those specific identities in particular and I just... did not want to piss anyone off. I've definitely experienced biphobia and transphobia from pansexual folks, but I don't think that means the word itself is bad, if that makes any sense? I've also received harassment from some bisexual folks who insisted I was too scared to label myself as bisexual even though I literally use both terms and have proudly identified as bisexual for much longer than I've identified as pansexual and usually describe myself as either just bisexual or both bisexual AND pansexual. So I felt like I was trying to do a balancing act not trying to piss off anyone on either side of the discourse, but I think really, no matter what definition I put for either label, someone would get mad - so I tried to put the most common definitions I've seen without seeming like I was too biased toward one or the other.

Anyways, it seems that so far, no discourse has been sparked, thank God! I'm a bit undecided on what identity I want to make a page for next, though, so I've put up a poll on my website so that other people can make the decision for me. Love being able to use polls for stuff like this.

I think that's all for this blog post, at least that's all I can think of for now!

Updated goals page to reflect current progress (now 4.1% of the way there!). Added to media log page as well with my thoughts on season two of Loki so far.

Updated goals page to reflect current progress. Added new photo of one of my stick insect nymphs to the stick insects page. Wrote a new blog post, My Language Learning Strategy. Added new buttons to the graphics page. Also removed Spotify embed from the partner page to save bandwidth.

Added a new sitemap. Added two new LGBTQ+ pages, one on transgender identity and one on butch/femme identity. Changed site poll. Added media log page to put my thoughts and opinions on various media I've enjoyed (or not enjoyed). Added new website buttons to the cool websites page, as well as a disclaimer that I may not agree with everything on these sites.

Added new art to the art page. Updated my partner page as well and also added an RSS feeds page.

Wrote a new blog post (mostly a rant if I'm being honest): On Accessibility, Mobile Responsiveness, and the Personal Web. Also fixed some issues with the CSS.

Restructured CSS files to optimize loading and make dark mode the default, also made some changes to optimize loading of JavaScript and image files. Added the Magical Ring. Added new guestbook which is hosted externally because hosting it here was a pain in the ass and I realized that IP addresses of everyone commenting being stored as-is in a plain text file was... probably not great for security. My attempts to implement hashing of the IP addresses ended up just breaking the guestbook, so I figure it's easier to host it externally.

Removed webgarden pots page and system page for now. Updated CSS a bit. Restructured some parts of the site to fix issues like heading levels not following a logical order, etc. Added new art. Edited phrasing on bisexuality page. Updated the projects page. Added the Transmasculine Ring. Removed guestbook for now as it was having issues.

Wrote a new blog post, Monthly Log October 2023. Added the Xenics of the Net webring.

I recently applied to be an early adopter for a new web host called Marigold Town, where the premise is that each website is a part of an overarching town and will have its own "storefront" on the homepage of that town. The website itself can be pretty much anything within this theme, and you're encouraged to get creative with it. You can read more about it on the website if you'd like.

As many others did, I immediately thought of an art gallery. Apparently there are a handful of us doing that already, so I adjusted my idea to be an art studio as well in the end. The Art Hive Studio is a space for supporting artists, both through providing resources on a variety of topics (learning art, pricing and taking commissions, etc.) and through "exhibitions" featuring various artists, which will take place every two months. The submission period for the first one will actually open on October 1st of 2023, and will last for the first 10 days of the month!

One neat feature I've come up with for the "exhibitions" is actually storing each "exhibit" in an array, and then using the shuffle function in PHP to randomize the order of that array. This means if there are a lot of artists featured, there won't be any issues with artists further down the list not getting seen. Or at least, that's the idea.

Another feature is that when the submission period is open, the text displayed on the submission page will change automatically to display the instructions for submitting art, and it will change automatically again when the submission period is done. There won't be any issues with me forgetting to update the page!

Anyways, I just wanted to share that here in case anyone was interested, because I'm pretty proud of how it's set up so far. I'd also love to hear ideas on resources I should add (it's a pretty small list right now), and if you have ideas for other ways the site can support artists besides exhibitions and resources, I'd love to hear that too! My contact information is listed on the Art Hive site's contact page.

Last year, I started my first ever office job.

Three months later, I quit.

There were a lot of different reasons for this, ranging from workplace toxicity to unexplained chronic fatigue where I would regularly go home and go to sleep on Friday evening only to wake up on Sunday morning (my fatigue issues were not caused by this workplace, but they were certainly exacerbated by it). I hoped that I'd be able to leave, go back to searching for another job, and move on with my life relatively unaffected.

I was wrong.

Since this experience, I've been dealing with what is most likely autistic burnout. While autistic burnout isn't a term often used by professionals, it has been getting more attention in recent years as a real and unique phenomenon. Research on it has shown it differs from both depression and the burnout experienced by neurotypicals. It may also be referred to as autistic regression, because research usually defines it as chronic exhaustion, losing skills, and reduced tolerance for stimuli.

For me, it seems to present itself as social withdrawal (I'm an extrovert and clingy as hell, so this is probably the most notable sign for me), increased susceptibility to sensory overload, more difficulty dealing with my ADHD symptoms (which is especially upsetting because I had just gotten prescribed the first medication for ADHD that actually worked for me a few months before this all happened), irritability, more memory issues, and more issues with taking care of myself. The more I try to force myself to be like how I was before, the worse it gets.

Throughout this all, I keep thinking: "It feels like this was easier when I was a child."[^1]

I got diagnosed with autism when I was a toddler. The neurologist told my parents that I definitely had it, but that I'd likely "grow out of it" as I got older. One of my earliest memories is going to speech therapy because I struggled with pronunciation due to autism, and I still struggle with some sounds, like the "sk" sound at the end of words like "ask" or the rolled "r" in my second language, French.

I don't know why my brain decided one of my special interests would be learning languages when I've already had issues learning my native one, actually.

I also struggled, and still do, with auditory processing, to the point that my parents took me for a hearing test as a toddler because they thought I was deaf. My hearing is perfectly fine, but sometimes my brain's ability to translate what it's hearing just turns off and everything starts sounding like incomprehensible gibberish.

Even with these factors, it did seem that as I grew up my autistic traits became less and less of an issue for me. Things like my social skills and my ability to cope with change definitely improved, and I began thinking of my autism as largely a non-issue: something that explained why I couldn't be in loud spaces without shutting down or why I sometimes failed to get jokes, but something that didn't affect my life too much overall.

Then I became an adult, and everything went wrong.

When I was a child, my auditory processing issues had almost no impact on my day-to-day life. As an adult, they're the reason I can't work at grocery stores and similar places, because the noisiness of the store makes them kick into overdrive. If I'm expected to make phone calls, even a quiet conversation in the room I'm in taking place at the same time renders me unable to hear the other person.

Social skills, it turns out, are also much more of an issue now. I have no idea how to make friends, and when I do have a job, I have no idea how to fit in with my coworkers. I don't really mask or even know how to either, so most people who meet me will instantly see me as odd and awkward and often be put off by it. Meanwhile, my sensory issues affect everything from the jobs I can do to the places I can live (apartments are so noisy and it does not matter if it's nighttime).

It feels like I got thrown into the deep end without the ability to swim, even without tacking autistic burnout on top of that. I try to be capable of all the same things a neurotypical is capable of, but it just worsens the exhaustion.

One of the recovery tips for autistic burnout is simply to remove obligations. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do that in a capitalist society, especially when I also have internalized shame around my ADHD and feel lazy when I don't fill every waking hour with productive activities (and even then, I still feel lazy). Another one is to stop or limit masking. I guess I'm already doing great there.

Admittedly, other tips like stimming and engaging in special interests do seem more helpful, even for people like me. I still feel resentful that the major thing contributing to my burnout seems to simply be the demands of adulthood. How am I supposed to deal with that?

Why is it - for me at least - that being an autistic child felt easier, in many ways, than being an autistic adult?

[^1]: This is merely my personal experience, and likely an oversimplification, at that. If I got into all the nuances of how autistic experiences differ throughout life, this post would be super long. In reality, both probably have upsides and downsides, even for me, and there were negative parts of my experience as an autistic child that I no longer have to deal with as an autistic adult. This post is more to express frustrations and share my personal experience for others who may relate, and not to be taken as meaning autistic adults always have it harder.

I tend to be the sort of person who loses track of my goals pretty quickly (hello, ADHD and DID!), so I thought it would be neat to make a sort of blog post outlining goals I want to start working towards by the end of 2023. Not necessarily accomplishing them all, but making some progress at least.

Here they are below!

• Making more code templates for both Neocities/other indie web hosts and for Toyhouse profiles.
• Finishing up the grimoire page on my website, or at least having it presentable enough to share.
• Finishing up the first episode of my interactive fiction novel, so that I actually can have a demo available on Itch.io.
• Doing art more regularly.
• Getting back into Twitch streaming! I miss this a lot, actually.
• Beginning to offer coding commissions on Toyhouse and Neocities (I legitimately have no idea how to price these, otherwise I would have made these available by now).
• Making some YouTube videos and tutorials on coding itself (I'd like to make a series on Neocities/similar web hosts and the web revival movement in general).
• This one's a long shot, but getting a job I actually like and that doesn't give me burnout.
• Also a long shot, but being able to finally go visit my partner of over three years in person would be nice too. Sadly I have to be a responsible adult and save up for things like paying off my debt and getting my wisdom teeth removed first. I hate being responsible.
• Working on my language learning goals in general! Currently I'm decent in French, okay-ish in Brazilian Portuguese, and working on learning the very basics of Russian, so I want to make sure I'm keeping up with that.
• Finishing the website template I've been working on for my partner because I want her to join Neocities so bad.

We'll see if I end up removing some of these later. I have a tendency to set way too many goals for myself initially, then get surprised when I either burn myself out or fail to achieve any of them. Planning is not my strong suit.

I am hoping, though, that sharing these publicly both gives me feedback on how attainable they actually are and gives me more motivation to actually achieve the ones that are attainable.

This is a rewrite of a post I originally uploaded on Medium, about half a year after I first started identifying as asexual.

Content warning: this post will discuss internalized acephobia, trauma, and sexual harassment/abuse. Be warned.

Feelings are complicated. Being asexual makes them more complicated.

Asexuality is defined as a lack of sexual attraction, which is frustratingly vague for the average person to understand and also impossible to prove — because you can never prove a negative. That's not to say people identifying as asexual are wrong, but to explain why it's so hard for us to realize we're asexual and come to terms with it. If I don't know what sexual attraction feels like, how can I say for sure that I don't experience it?

I've identified as asexual since around the middle of March 2020. At the time of writing this, it's been around three and a half years since then, but I do still find myself regularly having doubts. Every once in a while I try to convince myself that the safety and comfort I feel around my also asexual girlfriend whenever the topic of sex comes up is me having sexual attraction to her, but luckily my logical brain kicks in after a few minutes and says, "No, you just like not feeling pressured to ever pretend to want sex, you like feeling able to express that if you did ever do it, it'd probably just be for the intimacy, and you'd rather have cuddles anyway and fall asleep on her shoulder, and she likes that, and you feel understood for possibly the first time in your life."

What even is sexual attraction, though? For the longest time, I thought it just meant having fantasies about certain people. I thought the anxiety that came along with these fantasies meant I must just be really into them. When I had intrusive thoughts about people who had sexually abused or harassed me, I assumed this was what sexual attraction felt like for me: a gnawing feeling of shame and dread and fear swirling around in the pit of my stomach.

It took me years to figure out this was a symptom of trauma, and not genuine attraction. It took me years to stop trying to force myself into relationships and situations I didn't want.

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network defines asexuality as not experiencing an intrinsic desire to have sexual relationships. On some level, I know that most of the population finds sex incredibly important. On another level, I'm always shocked that it's important to the extent that it would be defined as an intrinsic desire (this is not to imply that this is somehow bad, I mean simply that I do not and will not ever understand this experience because I do not experience it).

As an example, in high school, when I was having lunch with a girl I was dating at the time, one of her friends came up and decided to give us some relationship advice. One of those pieces of advice was to have sex at least once a week. We were fifteen at the time.

Looking back on it now, I realize that many fifteen-year-olds are not virgins (and her comment probably would've made more sense to someone who was not asexual), but at the time, I thought this was absolutely bizarre. I could not fathom why sex would be important enough in a relationship, even once you were no longer a virgin, to warrant a minimum number of times you must engage in it weekly for your relationship to be healthy.

Quick side note: when I mentioned this to other allosexual people I knew, they laughed and said it should be more than once a week, confusing me further.

Later on in high school, I remember my best friend at the time offhandedly making a joke that the bus that morning had smelled like sex. I looked at him, confused, and he said, "Dude, I'm not a virgin."

Suddenly it felt like an elephant had sat on my chest.

Around that time, friends of mine started talking about sex almost incessantly - while I was trying to eat, while I was trying to do my schoolwork, while I was trying to do anything but talk about sex - and I started to feel like I was a child overhearing conversations I shouldn't have been overhearing. I started feeling angry and betrayed, too, like I was being left out of something I desperately wanted to be part of.

I tried to fit in. I made jokes about sex. I forced myself into situations I didn't really want to be in. The elephant sitting on my chest grew and grew, until I was having panic attacks and breakdowns and desperate to finally figure out what was wrong with me and why I couldn't just be normal. I told myself that no one would want me if I couldn't be normal.

This certainly wasn't helped by people treating my "innocence" around the topic of sex as a challenge. One former friend thought it was funny to ask me to look at his tablet screen, knowing I'd expect to see a funny picture or something and look over almost immediately, only to be greeted with graphic pornography. He treated my clear discomfort as hilarious, and even when it got to the point that my other friends had to cover my eyes before I could look (I'm autistic too, which definitely played a role in this - I tended to be very trusting at the time), this seemed to egg him on more.

On one occasion, he came up to me from behind, grabbed me, and bent me down over a desk in front of all our friends before I managed to squirm away; on another, he dragged me onto his lap at lunch, and when I pointed out to him that his knee was in an awkward position between my thighs, he laughed and began bouncing it up and down directly into that area before I successfully wriggled out of his grasp.

He wasn't the only person who treated me in this way, and when I met my current partner I had almost grown to expect this sort of behaviour. I guess that's what societal expectations around sexuality can do. When someone deviates from the heteronormative idea of what orientation should look like, no matter in what way, they're made to feel like an outlier. Asexuals are estimated to make up around 1% of the total population, a percentage similar to redheads (1-2% of the total population). It's likely you know at least one asexual person, if not more.

And yet many of us don't ever figure out we are asexual, sometimes even when we know of asexuality. I knew asexuality was a thing as early as twelve years old, and had multiple asexual friends who I noticed I shared a lot of experiences with. It still took me until I was nineteen to finally accept that I myself was asexual. This feeling that I was abnormal led me to believe that I was simply overreacting to the sexual assaults and harassment I'd undergone, that they were annoying for sure but that I needed to calm down and get over it.

I'm glad to be able to say that I'm doing much better these days. Surrounding myself with people who know what asexuality is has helped immensely, and it's given me a much better idea of what someone respecting my asexuality actually looks like.

One of my most noticeable experiences of this is the time I was in a car with someone I had just met from university recently, going to hang out with two other acquaintances at the mall. A song came on the car radio, and she immediately fast-forwarded past it. I lightheartedly asked her if she disliked the song, and she explained that it had been a song mentioning sex and she didn't want to make me uncomfortable in case I was sex-repulsed, so she erred on the side of caution. We only ever hung out a few times, but I still remember her fondly.

I do think, though, that this feeling of loneliness related to orientation needs to be talked about more. I don't want to live in a society where sex or lack of it is assumed to mean something about our character at all, whether it's demonizing people who have more sex than what is considered socially acceptable, or people who have less sex than what is considered "normal," or people who have sexual attraction to multiple genders, or people who have sexual attraction to the "wrong" gender in society's eyes.

Instead, I want to live in a society where we acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of ways to feel sexual attraction, including not feeling it at all.

Hopefully, we'll soon live in a world where this is a reality.

If you're curious about asexuality, or you're asexual yourself and want to find more stories of people with similar experiences, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network has resources and information, plus forums for asexual people as well.

Content warning: discussion of pet death

I recently decided I'm going to start making little monthly log posts, just as a way to sort of share what's been going on with me, so here's the first one.

Went to the dentist for a consultation and my first dental cleaning in nearly a decade (money issues). I was super worried about my teeth as they're very crooked/crowded, I have some jaw issues too, and one was actually loose and had been for about two years at this point (I was doing everything in my power to keep it in place until I could get to a dentist), but it turns out because my teeth are crooked, the adult teeth that would normally push out my baby teeth came out at odd angles and left the baby teeth alone. My loose tooth was one of those baby teeth, and I still have the other one too. I've literally had those two baby teeth for over a decade. It's not as rare to keep baby teeth as an adult, but what is rare is having the adult teeth that were meant to replace them at the same time. Anyways, I yanked the loose tooth out a couple weeks later, now I don't have to worry about that.

Really, the only problem with my teeth being so crooked besides that is that two of them are pretty much behind other teeth, which makes them hard to clean. But apparently I can just... get them pulled if I'd like, and not bother with too much orthodontic treatment. Though orthodontic treatment and jaw surgery are still recommended. My dentist told me I can look into getting my insurance to cover it since it's more a health issue for me, but if they don't make an exception for that I'm not sure how I'd afford it.

Honestly I'm relieved though, because the only orthodontist I went to as a 14-year-old took one look inside my mouth, went "Holy crap," and then I became so insecure about my teeth because he didn't explain any of what was actually wrong. I was sitting here for almost ten years thinking my teeth were horribly messed up, but they're not anywhere near as bad as I thought they were.

I need wisdom teeth removed too, but I think that's pretty normal.

Onto sadder stuff: my stick insect Otto passed away yesterday. It seems to have been old age, since he would've been an adult when my brother got him, and then my brother had him for a little bit before giving him to me, and I've had him since around June I believe. They only live for around a year, give or take. I still didn't expect it, though - in my mind, I thought he was younger, especially since he's much smaller than my brother's stick insect who is definitely older and still kicking. I cried like a baby most of yesterday and the night before (when I initially found him in the dying process).

Stick insects are parthenogenic (most species are, at least), meaning they reproduce asexually and produce female clones of themselves this way (Otto was female - I just got into the habit of using he/him pronouns for him). So I have about 7 little nymphs of him in the enclosure right now, some of which are getting quite big. There are still some eggs in there too, and my brother has some more of Otto's eggs, so I find a little comfort in knowing that his descendants will live on (and produce more near clones of him). My partner jokingly called them the Ottolettes, which I think fits them well.

Otto was quite nervous and shy at first, and clumsy as well. He eventually worked up the courage to let me handle him, and even tried to nibble me a few times. I have videos and photos of him that will go on the page for my stick insects when I make it. He also had nymphs frequently take rides on his back or legs, although I also watched him step on a nymph once (said nymph is fine and still alive) because he was too dumb to realize that his child was not a convenient foothold.

Rest in peace, Otto.

In happier news, I've started making F2U codes on Toyhouse, and I've also started making Neocities templates here (there's only one at the moment, but I do hope to add more).

I also plan to work a lot more on my interactive fiction novel this month. I've got a bit of an outline planned out for it, though outlining interactive fiction is quite hard.

I'm also planning a YouTube video on the indie web revival movement, so if anyone has any ideas for stuff I should mention in that, please let me know! Ideally, it will be encouraging those who are disillusioned with social media to make their own websites, and explain some of the process and good things to know.

I'm also coding a Neocities website for my partner to use, which is pretty fun so far and is giving me opportunities to fiddle around with stuff that I've wanted to try out but didn't necessarily want to put on my own site.

It's still hard to shake the feeling that I'm not doing enough, especially since I'm taking a break from university and trying to find a suitable job is difficult, but I'm trying to remind myself that I am learning stuff and I'm doing my best.

Put my links to other cool websites into a PHP array and shuffled them, so each time you visit the cool websites page, they display in a different order. Also used this to put a random link to one of these websites on the homepage, plus added a new poll there as well. Also finally published my grimoire page, though it's still a work in progress.

A new project I've been working on, the Art Hive Studio, is now live! It's meant to provide resources for artists and will also be featuring artists and their work in "exhibitions" which take place every two months, the first submission period for that starts on October 1st. Also made a blog post about it.

Updated my goals page to reflect further progress and to update the ways to support me! Also added some new webgarden pots, added new quiz results to my about page, added directory buttons to the homepage, and added the bucket webring.

Realized my commission page linked to the wrong Google form, sorry about that, it should be fixed now! Also added some new site buttons and added a music page.

Updated my commission page, firstly to add Toyhouse HTML customs, and secondly to make my Terms of Service easier to get through and fix some issues with them (I originally borrowed someone else's template for their TOS that they shared online, and honestly while it is very comprehensive it was a pain to find and fix stuff that didn't apply to me and probably a pain to read too). Also updated my goals page to reflect the Nerdy Neko's kind donation to my Ko-fi! Added some new site buttons as well. Also added a link to my thoughts page.

Wrote two new blog posts: Autistic Adulthood, and Goals For the End of 2023!

Added a goals page for my current fundraising goal which also lists ways to support me. Added alt-text to all the stamps on the graphics page and added two new ones, including a ferret one made by me. It's wonky, but I'm proud of it still! Fixed up the guestbook a bit so JavaScript widgets display properly, or at least they should. Last but not least, made some minor layout improvements to the main pages and added a new logo for the site.

Wrote a new blog post! Trying out posting the blog stuff on bearblog instead of directly onto this website. Also added a new template! Also added new stamps.

Added new guestbook and a bookmarks page using code from Owl's Roost. Moved all resource links except my own over to the bookmarks page. Added light/dark mode based on browser preferences. Removed GoatCounter analytics, as I've decided I want to avoid the social media trap of getting too focused on my site views. Added a poetry page. Added some new site buttons. Added dropdowns for sections with lots of links. Edited headings so they hopefully don't look too weird on zoom. Edited manifesto a bit.

Added new poll. Started using PHP includes for some of the stuff I'd previously been using Eleventy to do. Overhauled theme. Changed some JavaScript functions to PHP functions. Added links to Spacehey account.

Added quiz results to about page. Added stick insects page (still a work in progress). Added memes to partner page. Added back graphics page.

Added pages on bisexuality and pansexuality (if you have ideas for things I should add to those pages, please let me know). Added new webgarden pots. Added new website buttons. Added Discord widget. Removed pagedoll and music box, as it felt a little cluttered.

New blog post. Edited site layout. Added accessibility page. Added new website links/buttons.

Edited site layout and new template, should hopefully work better on mobile now. Added new custom scrollbars. Resized pagedoll.

Added new resources, including a new section for LGBTQ+ resources. Added my first template, which is based on the current code this site uses. Added art page and art gallery, which currently contains some of my art from 2022-2023. Updated some colors in CSS to have better contrast. Added footer. Added Eleventy and Leprd.space to credits page. Added OpenDyslexic and Atkinson Hyperlegible to font selector. Added counter to partner page showing how long (approximately) we've been together, might be making calculations a little weirdly right now so I'll have to go edit that later. Added videos page (can't remember when I actually did this but I forgot to put it in an update apparently). I think that should be it for today?

Recently I've been looking for ways to reuse snippets of code on other pages without going insane trying to copy and paste them individually to each page or increasing my site's loading time with JavaScript (which I would prefer to use as little as possible). Iframes seemed neat for a bit, but ultimately not really what I was looking for.

The solution I ended up finding is a static site generator called Eleventy. Static site generators essentially are a tool you use to automate the creation of a static website (so the stuff you'll put on Neocities or wherever you're hosting your website is still the same, it's just the process of creating it that changes) from templates and raw data. Eleventy in particular seems to be fairly new, or at least I couldn't find much on it that was actually both beginner friendly and not out of date. Since I spent all of yesterday setting my site up to work with this generator, I figured I'd post a walkthrough of my process. Fair warning: I am a self-taught programmer and not by any means an expert, so there may be errors in this or better ways of doing it. If you know your way around Eleventy better than me, feel free to leave a comment in my guestbook correcting any errors you spot and I will edit this post!

By the way, if you find this useful, please consider tipping me on my Ko-Fi page!

Before starting this tutorial, you should probably be comfortable with using a terminal window (Command Prompt is what it's called in Windows usually in my experience). We'll be installing Eleventy and doing a lot of our work through there!

You'll need to make sure you have Node.js version 14 or higher. You can check this by running the following command in a terminal window:

node --version

If the command is not found or it returns a number lower than 14, go install Node.js!

If you had to install Node.js just now, I recommend closing the terminal window you had open and reopening it after Node.js is installed. I found that when I didn't, some commands weren't recognized right away.

Next, make a directory for your new project! You can do this by running this command in the terminal window (and feel free to replace eleventy-project with whatever you'd like to name it, just make sure you remember to use the name you chose for it instead of eleventy-project later on in this tutorial):

mkdir eleventy-project

Once that's done, move into that directory by running this in the terminal:

cd eleventy-project

"cd" means change directory, and "mkdir" means make directory.

Now you'll install Eleventy into this project directory! You can install Eleventy globally, but I think it makes more sense to install it for each project individually and that is what is recommended by the documentation, so we'll do things that way. In the terminal window, run this command:

npm init -y

This command is provided by Node.js and creates a package.json file for you, which is required to install Eleventy. The "-y" at the end tells it to use default values and skips the questionnaire it would otherwise give you before creating this file. Finally, to actually install Eleventy itself, run this command in the terminal window:

npm install @11ty/eleventy --save-dev

Then run this command to check that the installation worked:

npx @11ty/eleventy

Your terminal window may show a message like this after you run the above command:

[11ty] Wrote 0 files in 0.03 seconds (v2.0.1)

The reason it didn't process any files - "wrote 0 files" - is because the directory is still empty, so there's nothing to process yet. This will change as we add files to the directory.

There are a couple different paths you may want to take here, depending on if you're starting from scratch or using an existing site with Eleventy. I'll list out your options for the next step below.

• Take your existing site's index.html file and copy it over to your directory for your Eleventy project
• Use the text editor of your choice to create a file and save it to your directory for your Eleventy project as index.html
• Or use the following command in the terminal window to create a new index.html file:

echo '<!doctype html><title>Page title</title><p>Hi</p>' > index.html

Once you've got a basic index.html file set up, run this command again:

npx @11ty/eleventy

Your output will probably look like this:

[11ty] Writing _site/index.html from ./index.html (liquid)
[11ty] Wrote 1 files in 0.04 seconds (v2.0.1)

What Eleventy has done here is used your HTML file as a template and compiled it into an output folder (which is named _site by default, you can change this, but we'll get into that later). You can check that folder to see the generated HTML file! Right now it's not all that impressive because it's kind of just... the same HTML file we gave it to start with, but that's going to change in a moment.

If you'd like to see a live preview of the site Eleventy generates for you, use this command to set up a hot-reloading local web server:

npx @11ty/eleventy --serve

It will show the same output we got when we generated the site just a second ago, but with this at the end:

[11ty] Watching…
[11ty] Server at http://localhost:8080/

You can now open up your web browser and go to http://localhost:8080/ to see a live preview of the site! When you save your template files, it will refresh the browser to show your new changes automatically. If you'd like to stop this local web server, just hit Ctrl + C in the terminal window to cancel the process (this is generally how you terminate or kill a process that's currently running in your terminal window, at least on Windows and Linux - do not use it thinking it will let you copy text! It may work in certain terminal programs that account for this common misunderstanding, but if you have a process currently running, there's a good chance it will kill or terminate that process).

This isn't strictly necessary, but highly recommended, as working with a GitHub repository enables you to keep track of changes between versions and even revert to an older version of your project if you accidentally mess something up and can't figure out how to fix it. Plus, if you accidentally delete a snippet of code you later decide you want to put back in your project, you can just go grab it from that version of your project repository on GitHub. This walkthrough of creating a GitHub repository for an Eleventy site will help you set that up.

Okay, cool, we know how to use Eleventy, but we don't have it actually doing any of the useful stuff for us yet, like say, adding the same header and footer across every page without having to update them on each page individually. That's where layout files come in. You can also reuse snippets of code using partials, but we'll get to that after this!

A cool thing about Eleventy is that you don't actually have to write your input in HTML. In fact, you could have made your index.html file in Markdown instead and it would have worked the same. Eleventy knows how to process that file and turn it into an HTML file without you actually writing it in HTML.

For the sake of this tutorial, though, we're not going to be writing our templates in Markdown. Instead, we're going to use something called Nunjucks. Nunjucks is a templating language powered by JavaScript, and it feels similar to HTML but allows you to add code that's more like what you'd see in JavaScript, while still generating a static site at the end. I actually first heard of it in this tutorial on Toyhouse, where the author was encouraging others to use it for their code templates. I honestly don't know how you make it work with Toyhouse, but if you enjoy playing around with code there as well, that could be something to consider!

A Nunjucks file has the file extension .njk, so if we used that, Eleventy would automatically use Nunjucks to process it. However, we don't actually have to do that. We can write our templates in HTML files and have Eleventy process them using Nunjucks (enabling us to use Nunjucks in these HTML files) by updating our Eleventy config file.

Go into your Eleventy project directory and create a file named .eleventy.js right there, in the root of the directory. Then open it with whatever text editor you prefer to use and add the following code:

module.exports = function(eleventyConfig) => {
    return {
        markdownTemplateEngine: 'njk',
        dataTemplateEngine: 'njk',
        htmlTemplateEngine: 'njk',
        dir: {
            input: 'src',
            output: '_site'
        }
    };
};

This tells Eleventy to process Markdown, data, and HTML files using Nunjucks, so we can have the benefits of Nunjucks without having to remember to write all our files in it.

Now, go to your Eleventy project folder, and make a folder called src. This is where we'll put our input files now, so move the HTML file you created earlier in here (don't move the other files in here though). Then, in the new src folder, make a folder called _includes, and then inside THAT folder, make a folder called layouts.

Lots of folders.

Inside the layouts folder, make a file called base.html and paste in the following code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
        <title>{{ title }}</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        {{ content | safe }}
    </body>
</html>

Here, putting {{ content }} tells Nunjucks that if another file uses this as a layout, their content should go in between the body tags. Adding the safe filter means it doesn't get double escaped - I'll admit I'm not fully sure what that means but I imagine your code would probably display weird if you didn't add it (EDIT: it would display as plain HTML code if you didn't have this added).

Now go back to your index.html file. At the top of the file, add the following code:

---
layout: layouts/base.html
title: Hello world
---

It doesn't actually matter what you put for the title, so feel free to change it. Remove any parts of index.html that are duplicated in the layout file, as otherwise you'll run into issues. If you don't already have the preview started up, start that now by running this command in your terminal window.

npx @11ty/eleventy --serve

You should be essentially seeing the contents of index.html wrapped in the contents of base.html. You can use this to create headers and footers that are reused across multiple webpages, without having to manually copy and paste code across twenty different HTML files or make the same edits in each HTML file individually.

One last thing before we move on: go find your package.json file in the root directory of your project and open it up. Find this line:

"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"

Replace it with:

"start": "npx eleventy --serve"

Then save the file. Now instead of writing out that long command above to start your live preview, you'll be able to simply enter this and accomplish the same thing:

npm start

Quick note: you can wrap layouts in other layouts. It's like Inception.

Another cool feature of Eleventy is being able to reuse snippets of code across different webpages. For example, I have a chatbox that I sometimes reuse on other pages besides the homepage. I can create a file called chatbox.html, put just the code for my chatbox in there, and then insert it into other pages by putting this wherever the code for the chatbox would normally appear:

{% include "chatbox.html" %}

Then to tweak the settings of the chatbox, I only need to edit chatbox.html, not all of the pages using the chatbox. Efficiency!

When Eleventy generates your site code (which will be in the _site folder by default, or whatever folder you've set as your output directory in .eleventy.js), pages other than index.html will automatically go into their own folders with the name of... index.html. The folder they go in gets called whatever their filename was. It's a little confusing at first and will affect the way you write filepaths or links to other pages on your site, which can now be referred to as "/folder/" (replace folder with the name of the folder holding the HTML file you want). Because they're all named as index.html, you don't actually have to specify anything besides the folder name as long as you remember to put the slashes.

Eleventy's documentation on permalinks has more information on this and how to override it if you'd prefer.

When you want to publish your site somewhere like Neocities, you simply take the contents of your output folder and upload that to your Neocities file directory.

That's going to be all for this post, I may make other posts on Eleventy in the future as I fiddle around with it more! Let me know if you have any questions (or corrections!). I referenced the following sources for this post and highly recommend that you check them out as well if interested in learning more about Eleventy:

• Learn Eleventy From Scratch
• Nunjucks API documentation
• Eleventy documentation
• 11ty.Recipes
• 11ty Rocks!

There's this strange trend on Neocities/in the indie web revival community/etc. that worries me a bit. It's probably obvious from the title of this post, but if you're new to Neocities/indie web spaces and haven't seen this sentiment yet, it's essentially a strange... resistance to making websites accessible or even responsive.

Important disclaimer before I continue: I am by no means saying that every hobbyist who is just doing this for fun needs to have a fully responsive and accessible website. My website wasn't really either when I started out, and I'm sure there's still room for improvement, which is okay with me. It's okay for implementing responsiveness and accessibility to be a journey, and it's okay for a hobbyist who is just doing this for fun to decide they're not going to go out of their way to make their website super accessible or responsive. That's fine.

What I'm talking about is the fact that in this community, having an accessible website seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

And that's... strange.

I'm not going to talk about the responsive design thing, though I will link you to a great blog post by Kalechips on responsive design. Their post inspired me to write this on the accessibility side of things.

Side note: I realized while writing this post that the template I use for my blog actually has some accessibility issues itself (going straight from an h1 element to an h4 element). That's ironic.

Without further ado, let's get into it.

I think most people don't really realize how frustrating it can be to run into an inaccessible website, let alone how it can be flat-out dangerous for those with certain disabilities. Take photosensitive seizures, for example. If you have no warning before flashing GIFs (blinkies, etc.) and no way to turn them off, your site could potentially induce a seizure for someone with photosensitive epilepsy. Even for someone like me who suffers from chronic migraines, it can be a painful experience to click onto a website with no warnings for flashing lights and suddenly have to go take painkillers and lie down in a dark room for the next hour.

This isn't the only way inaccessibility hurts those trying to use your website. Images that lack alt-text make a large part of your site inaccessible to screenreaders, ESPECIALLY if you're using images as links or buttons. If a person who can only use a keyboard to navigate your website can't tell what part of the website they're on, it's basically unusable for them.

This isn't something fixed by just straight-up saying, "If you have issues with flashing GIFs, leave this website" or anything of that variety either. That's essentially just telling disabled people they're not welcome on your website. A warning not to enter a specific page with flashing GIFs is better, but there are better ways to rectify these issues.

I don't want to make a post just ranting about inaccesibility and then not provide any solutions, so to the best of my ability, I will try to list the ones I know of.

Flashing GIFs are honestly the most simple issue to fix. Here is an informative tutorial on using JavaScript to implement a way to turn GIFs off and on. In case that doesn't work for whatever reason, I always have an article on how to turn off GIFs autoplaying in your browser linked at the top of any page that will have GIFs.

For everything else, I have links under the webmastery section on my resources page and I add more as I come across them.

Apologies for the short post, I haven't been able to concentrate enough lately to write anything very long. I still hope this is useful to someone out there.

Editing to add: thank you to Frills on Neocities for mentioning that links should have meaningful text! I'm definitely still learning about some aspects of web accessibility myself. Frills also has an accessibility masterpost that I would recommend checking out! In addition, pinkvampyr has made a blog post on accessibility as well, and is working on a project called the Accessible Net Directory that will be a directory for websites working to make the indie web more accessible, in addition to providing resources and information. I am super excited for this project and I recommend you go check out their site for any updates on that.

Moved website over to leprd.space and added redirects to Neocities pages. Moved webrings to sidebar. Added iMood. Updated webgarden pot and webgarden pots page.

Updated ACNH page, added site manifesto. Fixed mobile responsiveness (hopefully). Added music player.

Revamped site layout again because apparently adding so many tabs on the same page slowed it down a TON, and am now using the first layout for this site that I made entirely on my own (we're not counting the first one).

Fixed up some CSS, moved webrings to sidebar, edited sidebar, added fanlisting buttons, added some new site buttons.

Started using Eleventy (a static site generator) to edit site content and stitch things like sidebars, etc. together without needing to repeat the code over and over again in like 20 different files! In addition, this means my blog no longer needs to use (as much) JavaScript, and I've got a post up summarizing, to the best of my ability, how it works!

New site theme, and now I have an actual blog at last! My first post is a short one about web accessibility. Also, I've been adding a bunch of website buttons when I come across them, and I've added new pots to the webgarden. Let me know if you'd like to exchange buttons or webgarden pots! Also: removed the whole "this website is a WIP so if it looks unfinished that's why" bit from the homepage, I don't think it looks unfinished at this point! Cleaned up CSS code, added page regions to main page, added skip to main content link for screenreaders and mobile users (because otherwise this massive sidebar displays first and it's a bit long), added some missing alt text (will finish that up tomorrow), added form labels. Will add the page regions and skip to main content button on other pages tomorrow.

Haven't written out an update entry in a while but recently I've removed French translation of homepage (made code a little too messy, may add it back or add French pages at some point), added Mastodon feed, updated resources page, moved chatbox to its own page, added site navigation links to homepage so you no longer need the directory to get around, moved site buttons and buttons in general to their own pages, and added Tamanotchi to pets section.

Added buttons to stop and start GIFs to homepage. Added status.cafe feed reader. Added new site buttons.

Added new buttons, added "ads" for Neocities websites and other personal websites, added information on how to disable GIFs autoplaying in your browser at the top of the homepage. Added new site button. Added working French translation to the homepage.

Added blinkies and hexagon stamps to graphics page. Added disclaimer about the importance of crediting artists there, too. Removed status.cafe widget. Worked very hard on optimizing the site so it would load faster. Worked on page for my partner, now it not only holds her links but it's also got a little thing about how we met, a Spotify playlist I made for her, and its own colour theme and graphics (which can be clicked on to view their source)!

Revamped site theme based on a template from Eggramen (site is now mobile friendly, or at least, it should be, and contrast of text against the background should now meet WCAG AAA standards). Added directory and graphics pages. Made pride cursor bi pride-themed.

Added projects page. Added new stamps. Added guestbook.

I've been busy today! Added music playlist using links to YouTube videos with SCM Music Player. Added more resource links. Added viewcounter using GoatTracker. Added commissions page. Added page with my partner's social links. Added more digital pets.

Added link to my Neocities profile in the left sidebar so it's easier to follow me on there.

Added pride flags to about page, set up art page for July 2023, uploaded new art.

Added new resource links, updated Dragcave buttons. Added status embed.

Added a Twitch embed so you can watch my channel right from this website, on its own page titled "Stream".

Added buttons linking to my dragon eggs on Dragcave. Edited chatbox settings.

Added new blog post. Added more site buttons.

Added ACNH page, which is still very much bare-bones. Adjusted CSS. Added more cool site links. Updated site button.

Added buttons for some other cool websites! Starting work on implementing a nature theme.

Added fandoms page and resources page, added links to other pages as well but not the pages themselves (yet). Added alt text to every image on the website.

Added scrollbox for updates. Added button for people to link to this site if they'd like. Updated my image sources so I'm no longer hotlinking to other sites because I'm a noob and didn't know that was bad, sorry about that!

Implemented font selector. Removed marquee with stamps for accessibility purposes. Fiddled around with CSS.

Added Ko-Fi widget, finished adding all of my art from June 2023, created update section, adjusted chatbox size.