Maybe I'm A Lion.
All my musings on the old web recently left me a little tempted to create a website of my own. But I just couldn't think of a good focus for one! How would I structure it; what would it be about?
It'd need to be something I'd loved for a long time and could talk about at length. Maybe something I'd, say, tagged over a hundred and sixty entries with on this blog.
lassarina left a comment on my recent old web entry to say, 'I keep meaning to do something with my Neocities account, and then I don't.' My response was:
I keep thinking 'I should get a Neocities account!' and then '...but what would I do with it?' A shrine to Squall Leonhart? I don't have much in the way of graphic design skills, and I rocket so quickly between fandoms that it's hard to pin down a good focus for a website; I'm more suited to... well, a blog, which is why I'm still here after all these years.
Maybe a site structured as 'you're exploring Balamb Garden and uncovering all my Final Fantasy VIII meta and fanfiction in the process' could be fun. (You could go to the library for the fanfiction! That would be cute.) It would be a big project, though; I'm not sure I'm capable!
And then I kept thinking about the Balamb Garden idea.
And kept thinking about it.
And, anyway, now I have a Final Fantasy VIII website.
The structure is magnificently incoherent, and I have been having a blast. Who needs sensible lists of webpages when you can force visitors to explore a fake school in order to uncover your thoughts on Squall and Seifer's relationship?
To be honest, the freedom is slightly dizzying. I can just decide what pages exist! If I'm feeling self-indulgent, I could just write an entire page of author's notes on each of my Final Fantasy VIII fics! Who's going to stop me?
(I have not yet done this, but it's a real risk.)
My design philosophy was basically 'create the website you would have loved as a thirteen-year-old'. To be honest, if I'd found this site while I was thirteen, I'm not sure I'd ever have left.
I'm still planning pages. I'd like to add the ballroom, with a page on Squall and Rinoa's relationship; I want to put some sort of Zell analysis in the cafeteria; I need to whip more of my many thoughts on Squall into semi-coherent shape for the dormitory. I need to host my fanfiction on the site, rather than just having AO3 links; maybe I'll even put up the terrible old Squall/Zell fic I took down out of embarrassment years ago. If I'm feeling really bold, I might scan and post the absolutely dire Final Fantasy VIII comic I attempted to draw as a teenager, despite having no drawing ability whatsoever.
For now, though, I think Balamb Garden is intact enough to share it here! Feel free to poke around. I had a lot of fun creating this, and I hope it can be fun to explore as well.
It'd need to be something I'd loved for a long time and could talk about at length. Maybe something I'd, say, tagged over a hundred and sixty entries with on this blog.
lassarina left a comment on my recent old web entry to say, 'I keep meaning to do something with my Neocities account, and then I don't.' My response was:
I keep thinking 'I should get a Neocities account!' and then '...but what would I do with it?' A shrine to Squall Leonhart? I don't have much in the way of graphic design skills, and I rocket so quickly between fandoms that it's hard to pin down a good focus for a website; I'm more suited to... well, a blog, which is why I'm still here after all these years.
Maybe a site structured as 'you're exploring Balamb Garden and uncovering all my Final Fantasy VIII meta and fanfiction in the process' could be fun. (You could go to the library for the fanfiction! That would be cute.) It would be a big project, though; I'm not sure I'm capable!
And then I kept thinking about the Balamb Garden idea.
And kept thinking about it.
And, anyway, now I have a Final Fantasy VIII website.
The structure is magnificently incoherent, and I have been having a blast. Who needs sensible lists of webpages when you can force visitors to explore a fake school in order to uncover your thoughts on Squall and Seifer's relationship?
To be honest, the freedom is slightly dizzying. I can just decide what pages exist! If I'm feeling self-indulgent, I could just write an entire page of author's notes on each of my Final Fantasy VIII fics! Who's going to stop me?
(I have not yet done this, but it's a real risk.)
My design philosophy was basically 'create the website you would have loved as a thirteen-year-old'. To be honest, if I'd found this site while I was thirteen, I'm not sure I'd ever have left.
I'm still planning pages. I'd like to add the ballroom, with a page on Squall and Rinoa's relationship; I want to put some sort of Zell analysis in the cafeteria; I need to whip more of my many thoughts on Squall into semi-coherent shape for the dormitory. I need to host my fanfiction on the site, rather than just having AO3 links; maybe I'll even put up the terrible old Squall/Zell fic I took down out of embarrassment years ago. If I'm feeling really bold, I might scan and post the absolutely dire Final Fantasy VIII comic I attempted to draw as a teenager, despite having no drawing ability whatsoever.
For now, though, I think Balamb Garden is intact enough to share it here! Feel free to poke around. I had a lot of fun creating this, and I hope it can be fun to explore as well.