Background

Workflow

I am not a very disciplined developer. Everything I learned about web development occurred through trial-and-error at the age of 12, raw-dogging the code and my brain along the way. My initial intention in making websites was not to learn, but rather to create something cool at my own situational convenience. I am still like this - I do not use static site generators, WYSIWYG editors, or any other tools to assist with web development beyond writing each line of code that appears on the webpage.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's start from the beginning.

In initializing a website project, I consider its:

Once I've come up with a concept and rattled these deliberations around in my head, I begin to come up with a design. Sometimes my design plans are skeletons or selectively temporary for me to change certain elements later, when I actively see the design on my screen. Other times my plans are more specific and rigid, so I don't get lost in the sauce of decision paralysis. Either way, design plans may live in my head or be sketched out, the latter of which I prefer, since I'm more decisive when I can see it. Well - I'm more decisive when I can make and see it, but that comes next.

When I draw out a design, I'll sketch it on anything - a notebook, my tablet, or a piece of cardboard (I have done this before). This particularly goes for larger projects, wherein I can also connect the interactions between pages. I often forgo sketching it if I'm eager enough for a quick turnaround, or if the skeleton is clear enough in my head that I'm happy to make other decisions along the way.

It's important to me that my designs are: simple, intuitively navigable, reflect an aspect of myself or the content that I find relevant to indicate on the webpage, and have a unique or fun element that may make it memorable. I'm especially drawn to colors and elemental organization, as well as incorporating functionality into aesthetic appeal.

Some things I keep in mind are:

In the coding and design process, I work on my projects in Visual Studio Code, with XAMPP as my localhost stack for PHP purposes, and initially test through Firefox and Chrome. I create and edit in raw HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript, though I'll often reference past projects or specific sources of inspiration as coding references. I start with all the base HTML to put the content on the page first, before customizing with CSS and JavaScript, and then dividing into PHP includes when I feel that any fixed code is completed enough. I code modularly and sometimes leave comments in my code, though I've always been a "figure it out" kind of guy, even to myself, so this isn't particularly consistent.

Writing CSS is the most fun part for me, so for less text-heavy pages, I spend a lot more time deliberating and perfecting a design until it's precise to my satisfaction. I'm a pendant when it comes to writing in general - word choice, phrasing, and the anatomy of sentences and paragraphs - but I save that for the end, because I'm even more of a perfectionist in copyediting. Either way, though I generally do HTML first and CSS second, I change my mind frequently while writing both, so more often than not it turns into a dual process.

It's difficult for me to work on a site without refreshing the page each time I change or add something, no matter how small, just to make sure it looks nice. With everything that I like about making websites, I usually forget things when I start making any project, or get more inspired ideas as I work. I test relative links and user interactions as well when coding and testing locally, and again when the site is online. Often while troubleshooting I get better or newer ideas, so it's not unusual for me to make significant changes at further points in development.

For text-heavy projects, when I'm satisfied with the bulk of the code, design, and web-ready implementation, I start copyediting, rewriting, and rewording rigorously. I continue to do this after a site is live; I frequently have my phone or computer speak out loud longer blocks of text so I can hear how they sound. (I never do this with my fiction writing.) I also write alt text in this stage, if I remember to.

When I feel that a site is ready to go live, or if I've made all the changes that I want to make in the sitting, I commit the project or changes to GitHub via GitHub Desktop, and pull through GitVersion control in cPanel. Some projects or pages do not use Git due to how its umbrella domain is set up; aroceu.com and kingdra.net in particular house multiple Git projects, so root projects don't use Git. In this case, I upload files with FTP via Forklift. I try not to make more tiny changes after this, as using XAMPP has reduced that bad habit of mine. But no promises.

Once a project is online, I do endless troubleshooting. I love visiting my own websites, being selectively critical of myself, and, as time passes, evolving my perspective to tweak, change, and add things. Much like fashion, I believe that a website's development is never over, and I like discovering ways I can improve, expand, or make more of them. So eventually, my workflow stays in this troubleshooting stasis period forever. Or starts all over again.

Design Philosophies

I'm one of the types who thinks webdesign as art, even if my style leans more minimalist than not. But creativity isn't just about minimizing or maximizing - it's about being authentic, in all the ways it means to be oneself. I lean minimalist, because it feels like me. But beneath it all I'm not that simple, just like my websites.

It took me a while to find my personal aesthetic, through all my internet names, domains, and sites. In the past I've enjoyed trying a bunch of things to see what I like best; these days I still like looking for excuses to try those other variations of myself, different styles and voices, just like I do with writing. It's always been about being true to who I am, at the end of the day. I don't find myself unique because of how I compare to other people; I find myself unique because I know myself best.

Growing up on the internet and learning from others made me feel for a while like I had to fit some specific category as preceded by older, more experienced webmasters. But I don't, and neither does my visual style, or simply what I like. More than anything, what I prefer and how I design are about finding out what feels like me, which is something only I can understand.

That's the fun part.

I spent years getting excited to change my designs all the time, but now I'm more interested in seeing how long my designs can last. Now, I think I'm a more relaxed, confident version of myself. And I guess I'm less impulsive and think ahead a lot more. Such is growing up, I suppose. That doesn't mean I don't design as much, though. Instead, I try to come up with more projects with long-lasting designs, especially ones that speak to my original core instincts.

I get overwhelmed easily, hence my more minimal preferences. My webdesign technique benefits from this, because after those beginning years trying to scale up my web and graphic design, I realized how much more I prefer the web portion, and how much less I look forward to making graphics. My favorite thing about designing is organizing for my logistical-favored brain; I prefer creating formulas, figuring out patterns, and constructing the bigger picture of the melody, less so the structure of the notes. But I like trying everything anyway and stretching my artistic muscles. I like the surface of the ocean, but I like exploring its depths, too. Metaphorically speaking.

I make each design choice intentionally; I'm sure everyone does. I don't like making so many decisions though, and despite the weight I give my intentions, they're not all the same - sometimes I make a choice if I like it "enough." Part of why I always visit my sites is because I want to see how everything looks together, to make sure I like the cohesion of the design and content. I don't always know if I like something right away, or if there's another idea waiting to come to me in the future. But I'm indecisive. And picky.

I think my whole self is a combination of all those choices, ones I've made in the past and ones I add and update. I like finding excuses to change; similarly, all my webpages abide by the idea of being a living page, equally fueled by my inconsistent curiosity. The one constant in it all is me - so I always prioritize being true to myself in the moment, whatever moment that may be.

Colors

The color I use most overwhelmingly on my websites is blue, more often than not a medium slightly under-saturated seafoam blue. This is my favorite color, the one I'll always choose first in a lineup of anything.

But my preference in colors hasn't been this decisive and simple. In fact, it's been as long and difficult for me to figure out what colors I like in design as it's been to figure out what my favorite color is in general. I don't just want to like the look of my favorite color - I want to be comfortable with it, for the color to feel like me.

I'm not very good at knowing what I'm feeling most of the time, though. So I've thought about colors a lot.

Pink/red

The first time I remember being capable of conscious thought, my favorite colors were, in order, pink, red, and purple. Hot pink was my first favorite color though, but not necessarily for its femininity. My mom's favorite color has always been red, and at that age (five), I wanted to attribute myself to a similar color, but different. So: pink. I thought it cuter than red, anyway.

Pink was my first favorite color, but as I grew older I didn't feel as inclined to its more feminine connotations, and that mattered to me. To my relief, when I started middle school, my best friend was almost aggressively possessive over the color pink, so I took ample opportunities to lean into my more gender-nonconforming nature throughout the duration of our friendship. I still liked the color pink a lot, though, and as it happens with my ethnicity, I tend to be surrounded by a lot of reds, and people encouraging me to opt for rich warm colors, especially since bold shades look good against my deep winter features. My prom dress was bright pink, and the first time I tried to make a professional website for myself, my main color was red.

I wouldn't say I'm necessarily in touch with my emotions, but I've always been interested in investigating them, reacting before stopping to wonder why I react in a certain way. I'm not meek - I've been told more than once that despite my own personal affinity for water, I come off more inclined to fire or air. I'm sensitive for sure, and I know I have a lot of heart. I've never liked pink any less than I did at the age of five, thinking it my favorite. My existence can't escape from the burning red of it all in more ways than I can state here. And so a bright reddish-pink - my favorite shade of pink - was the main accent color on my index page for nine years straight, until I changed it in January 2024.

I've always liked pink, but it never really felt like me. Like my taste for a lot of things these days, I evaluate how much I like something based on how all the pieces work together as well as element by element. I prefer pink as my Splatoon color because it looks better against my splatsona's chosen skin tone, as opposed to the bright sky blue in the game. And it's definitely still one of my favorites, which is why all the sections of my websites here that highlight an interactive relationship of mine in some way (gifts, library favorites, favorite ships) are all themed pink, in this sea of blue.

Black & White

When I started webdesigning, it didn't take me long to realize that, at minimum, making websites wasn't about choosing one color. It was about choosing two.

I like color combinations as much as I like individual colors, so for some time during my indecision I figured that I didn't like any singular color, only if colors looked good together. Despite my early designs, this mindset helped my approach when I was coming up with palettes for my beginner layouts, thinking in terms of main color and accent, with necessary greyscale for readability. But it was easier when that accent was the greyscale, and before I'd even learned how to code, I was already obsessed with yin-yang symbolism. Soon enough, everything I touched became black and white.

I like duality; unrelatedly, I'm a Gemini. I like understanding the complexities of human nature, our capacities for good and evil, science and faith, right and wrong, life and death. I like philosophical balance. I like my own, too, though red and blue isn't as easy on the eyes as black and white is. Black and white is as common to pair as it is to find, especially for my preference for black as a main color with white accents. For a while as a teenager I even regarded black as my favorite color because it was so dominant in my wardrobe, it looked good with everything, and though I dye my hair a lot, I never dyed it entirely - it was still always black. Well, until 2016 when I dyed it in full for the first time. It was red.

My problem, though, was that it's not exactly an original color combination. It's the most common one, in fact, whether it's white and black or black and white. For good reason, because opposites attract and all. But later in my teen years I began to feel unoriginal, and the overabundance of black in my wardrobe became a problem, because it was repetitive, and because my friends eventually told me that so much black made me look depressed. In all fairness, I was - but I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be so commonplace or morose, and I didn't feel so dual or colorless.

I started integrating more colors in my wardrobe, and for my first self-purchased domain I intentionally divided up different sections of my website based on the colors of the rainbow. But the black-and-white combination will always be in my web designs because it's so reliable, and I have fun figuring out ways to make it look a little bit different each time, even if the colors are the same. Black was never going to be an accent because I liked it as the main color so much more, and I do prefer blacks to whites, so a lot of times I used warm accents - reds, pinks, even oranges at times - since they pop against black better. Despite my personal affinity for black, in design it was never about the singular color, but about the way the colors work together.

And it would be fine if I was okay with identifying with colors that way. But I'm not.

So for years, much like every quiz on Quizilla opened up with, I kept wondering to myself: If I really, really had to pick, what's my favorite singular color?

Light Blue

Talking about colors comes first in my design philosophy because it's the most visual consistency across my websites, and so it is most concisely, initially, impressionistically me. Though many of my pages and sections differ in nature, whether it's in structure, font, vibe, accessibility, or whatever else, the most common characteristic between all these different pages is the use of this color blue.

Though I like the idea of a rainbow of separate designs (now fulfilled by my Pokémon site), I didn't like it for that first (self-purchased) domain because there was no uniformity, and felt more like I was splitting myself apart. I wanted my website to be a reflection of me - but then, with so many different aesthetic characteristics, I didn't have a full grasp of who I was.

It's funny, because I've actually always known how much I like light blue. I'd always choose water, cool colors, ice, black, the night, winter. Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls was the first fictional character I imprinted on; I like Rosalina's design better than Princess Peach's (who I've still I always liked); and light blue gemstones are a lot prettier to me than pink ones. When I was five, almost six, a classmate next to me outside of the girls' bathroom said that her favorite color was sky blue. I hadn't realized yet girls could like the color blue - I hadn't even intellectualized that lighter blues like that existed. Once she said that, I remember thinking, Wait, I like sky blue so much more than pink, and saying, "Actually yeah, me too." The moment was so significant that I still remember it to this day.

Sky blue isn't my favorite color, though it's on the spectrum of my favorite shade, because I feel more connected to the ocean than the wind. Light blue is still distinct, but comforting; it's easy on the eyes. Though I like pink, it's the color I use when I want to stand out, be more impressionable, complement a lot of elements of my existence. But I don't want to stand out all the time and I like having a default aesthetic, a vibe that's still characteristically me, no matter what version of me you get.

I was never going to make all of my webpages red or pink. This shade of blue, on the other hand? Well, that's a different story.

Even though I like investigating myself, I can be pretty slow when it comes to recognizing my pattern of preferences, since my journey with my favorite colors mirrors the use of colors on my websites, from the bright, flashy pink to my softer, comfortable blue. From Bisharp to Kingdra, femininity to soft androgyny. It feels like who I am because I want to be, not who I'm expected to be - my choice of my inner world, rather than the impressions of others. I've been told all my life I'm sensitive and emotional, but truthfully I'm hyper-analytical of my feelings and operate as a dysregulated human being. I like pinks and reds a lot, but not so much for them to define me.

I like monochromes and colors; I like rainbows and the simplicity of two colors together. But more than anything I like water - I like the ocean, and the endless depths it holds, just like me. I like exploring and the unknown, the mystery and chaos beneath something that appears so calming and accessible on the surface. I'm easily impressionable; I like lighter blues. And when I'm on the internet, which is just as expansive and diverse as I am, I don't feel like my aesthetic identity has to make me stand out, like pink does in my eyes. It just has to feel like me.

And so here we are with my sites on aroceu.com and kingdra.net being predominantly seafoam (lighter) blue, with white and light yellow accents because of my complementary preference (and nature), because this feels like my true aesthetic. I still like pinks and the idea of being more colorful and experimental, but this shade of light blue is my aesthetic comfort zone, and therefore me. I'm not particular about the exact hex color though.

And, well...

I do use a lot of red on three-apples.org for reasons related to the domain and beyond. But like I said before, warm colors are how I deliberately stand out - I'm usually putting on more of a performance IRL than I am online, in accordance with the more conventional structure of the domain. It's all on purpose, really. And I spend a lot of time thinking about these things.

Anyway, here's a TL;DR on my feelings about colors:

Fonts

The fonts I use on web projects are dependent on the textual vibe of the webpage, depiction of the content, and if I've used the font before. Most of the time I use sans-serifs and monospace fonts because they're designed for screens, while serif fonts are more reserved for the bookish part of my brain, if at least in intention.

The main fonts used on most of my personal web projects are my favorites of each font type. I think they look good together because as a combination, they represent me. These fonts are:

* = Technically Century Gothic, but Macs don't have it installed. Poppins is a close Google Font replica.

Broadly speaking, my favorite font styles are handwriting/cursive, because I'm a writer at heart and I wrote longhand before I started pressing keyboard buttons. For webdesign, I favor sans-serif and monospace fonts; they're more casual and designed for screens and I'm an informal and practical-minded person. As a writer, I favor default fonts for my word processor or serif fonts (Cambria) for print, but webdesign is more about screen presentation and display, so I tend to use serifs more sparingly for websites, though not as a hard rule. The way I feel about fonts replicates how I want to be perceived, both as a writer and in general, with a deliberate uniqueness while being simplistically accessible. I don't need the appearance to stand out that much. That's what the actual content of my writing is for.

I think of fonts for design much like colors in a selective strategy of combination. I like only using one font of each font style for a project, but I don't necessarily need all types, just a main body font (usually sans-serif or monospace) and a flavor/accent font (usually serif, cursive, or handwriting). My standards are less restrictive when it comes to using fonts in graphics, but this is part of why I don't like making graphics, because I'd rather confine myself to rules based on what I find artistically necessary. For web content, I prefer using Google Fonts over more custom fonts because with something as necessary as textual communication, I'd rather there be some sort of reader standardization instead of inflicting random fonts onto random viewers. This is just the way I think, though.

In more recent years, my favorability towards monospace - Inconsolata, specifically - has increased. The letters in monospace fonts are all the same width, so they're the easiest to read, and are reminiscent of both writing (typewriter) and computers (code), two core aspects of my identity. Much like colors, I like having a font/font style I can default to without needing to think too hard or make a decision, and over the years, Inconsolata has incidentally filled that role. Plus, it's not very big, and neither is my handwriting.

Fonts represent my relationship with text, both as a writer and a reader, in that I want to be readable, memorable, and unique. Though my main projects employ a lot of similar font decisions, others may differ in terms of intention and presentation of the project, and therefore the impression I want to leave. I like bookmarking fonts that are vastly different from the ones I favor, using projects as an excuse to apply them and work out of my font comfort zone. I like to try everything at least once instead of putting restrictions on my creativity. I apply this thinking to my font usage, too.

I've been thinking about fonts since I was 10, even though it was only from a writer perspective back then. I think fonts help create a visual sound for one's written voice, my own being casual, minimalistic, and with a unique range of tones. My approach to writing and webdesigning has always been quite similar in being an outlet for my desire to be heard in some way, and what font my words are read in is as intentional as how I write. Once I have the style of my writing determined - or in the case of webdesign, the appearance and tone - I can focus a lot more on the substance, the content.

Graphics

Under construction.

Organization

Under construction.

Origins & History

You can view a visual timeline of my internet history here.

My first real website was on Geocities when I was 11-years old, shortly after my new best friend had convinced me to secretly make an email, against my mother's will. My friend had a Yahoo account, so I had one too. As soon as she discovered Geocities was a thing, she told me immediately. We ventured into making websites together.

Of course, since it was Geocities and I was 11, I had a drag-and-drop what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor, and no aesthetic sense at all. I liked things more than looks at the time, and I was obsessed with cheese. So I made my first website sort of look like cheese with yellow text, and a black background because I kept reading in the dark. And I wanted to be edgy.

My first website was a silly newsletter that my best friend helped me write. We made a paper zine version of it as well. My friend was the one who scoured the internet more than me at the time, constantly telling me to make an account on each new site she discovered. She got me into IMVU, which also had a drag-and-drop website editor, so I was happily fixated with it for much longer. She moved onto GaiaOnline and other websites, venturing into code as I spent most of my time looking for new graphics to add to my IMVU profile page.

When we moved to MySpace, I discovered that it was just as customizable, but only with code, not with a drag-and-drop editor anymore. I didn't even know what HTML did, despite that I added hundreds of copy-and-paste codes for icons on my IMVU page. My friend taught me enough so that I could make my profile look the way I wanted it to - black and white with a ton of icons again - while she went with more deliberately pieced aesthetics, like pinks and browns, pinks and greys, pinks and whites, and pinks and greens.

I technically discovered Quizilla on my own - and from there, fanfiction - but really dove into it when another friend randomly sent me a chain letter reposted to the site. It didn't take me long to discover that Quizilla profiles had a personal webpage element to them too. Not only that, but these Photoshop-, HTML-, and CSS-based webpages looked completely different from any other personal profile I had seen before. I was curious, enamored, and started learning by doing.

Well, by changing people's code to my own tastes. I wasn't interested in learning how to write code, I just wanted an end result that looked like it was completely my own. But I didn't read up on any tutorials because I didn't have the attention span, so with my limited knowledge, I barely knew what I was doing. In January 2008, I stumbled through the dark for that first persistent but experimental month. By February, I had modified enough code that I was comfortable making my first website with it.

And so came my first site, created on Freewebs, which was a free subdomain host that popped up in a lot of Quizilla layout credits. My first website title had my IRL name in it, and its first main graphic was frankensteined in MSPaint. There's a 100% chance that the first code I used was stolen. But it was mine. What it looked like and what I put on it was entirely my decision, and that part was immediately thrilling.

Since the first types of personal websites I had encountered created and shared layouts for others, that was what my first website became. I made layouts frequently, still through this method of not-exactly-writing-my-own-code. I made these layouts a bit too frequently, actually; but as I did, my understanding of HTML and CSS began to more fluently develop. Though I often felt insecure about my graphic design ability, my confidence in understanding code grew. And it helped that I was so addicted: I enjoyed webdesigning so much that I kept wanting to do it. It felt impossible for me to stop.

And I've always been a bit brazen on the internet. Once I noticed other people's Freewebs sites had affiliates, which sometimes just meant you asked to affiliate in their chatbox, I thought to myself, well, I could do that too. So I did: I asked to affiliate with sites I liked, and that eventually turned into an excuse for me to browse personal websites. Sometimes my applications to affiliate got rejected, but I wasn't really bothered, because I just wanted to find more websites to visit.

Still, one rejection was memorable: I was told that my prolificness was admirable, but my graphic quality was lacking. And it was true - I was still using Paint. I wished I had Photoshop like all the cool kids, but I was young and traditionally didn't ask my parents to buy me software. So instead, I searched the internet for similar freeware, and found PhotoPlus, the imitation program I liked the most.

It wasn't PhotoShop, but it wasn't Paint. There was certainly more I could do, though. My initial attempts were rough, but as I tried and errored, I eventually got better. To the point of effectiveness, at least, because there are graphic designers I will always admire. But with PhotoPlus now in my life, after changing my website layout monthly four months in a row, on the fifth I created my favorite at the time - a three column top navigation iframe layout, launched right as the summer was ending and I was about to start my first day of high school.

This layout lasted a whopping three months before I changed it again, this time to a temporary Christmas theme (launched in October) as I worked on an official sixth version. However, due to emotional circumstances that had everything to do with aforementioned middle school best friend who got me online, my interest waned for several weeks before I turned to the internet as a crutch, now socially lost.

Still, I understood more now and felt in need of a rebrand, particularly because I wanted to do something fun with my next website name. I knew I was better, too, both as a graphic designer and a coder. And at the time there was a hierarchy of website sophistication in my head: from Quizilla, to Freewebs, to a subdomain, and then a domain. I knew I would want a domain eventually, but I was happy to take my time to invest and improve even further, especially as a distraction.

My second website and first subdomain was acquired in February 2009, and the layout I made for it was the first code I had written entirely from scratch. I was more confident than ever now in understanding what code meant, not just what it did. I even started to delve into PHP, though I was still too scared to touch JavaScript.

The more I explored in the personal web outside of Freewebs, the more I discovered outside of sozai/layout sites. I quickly found bloggers, fascinated at the concept of people writing extensively about their lives, something which, understandably at the time, felt too personal and tumultuous for me. But I also love thinking and spinning narratives out of everything, so I entertained it for a bit, trying to find my voice and what I wanted to talk about, instead of my latently developing personality disorders.

Despite this, I continued on with my layout-making hyperfixation, so passionately that five months later, I asked my mom for a domain for my birthday. It was only $12/year - I didn't realize domains were that cheap - so she agreed, and I got it. The domain was on a whim and wasn't something I felt personally connected to, and with my mom knowing it I now felt monitored in this hobby and on my blog. But it was fulfilling nonetheless, and motivated me to keep at it, to learn, and to be more confident, for me.

My growing attempts to improve came to an abrupt halt when a k-pop hyperfixation took over my life at the end of 2009.

I then wrote over half a million words annually for the next two years, but don't worry about that. When my domain expired in July 2010, I decided to let it go because the k-pop brainworms were too strong, and the last layout for the site - the second overall - was dedicated to my ex, after we had given up on our relationship in January of that year. I created a small home for the things I had been sharing since my first site in the meantime, on a new Freewebs subdomain.

As my hyperfixations rotated several times and waned, I treaded back to the hobby in bursts, a year or so older and with a new pair of eyes. That foray into k-pop was a much needed break; as I made new layouts for my own amusement, it didn't take long for me to notice how much my aesthetic sense had improved. But despite those short bursts of layout-making addiction, fanfiction-writing still had a much stronger grip on me. Regardless, realizing I had gotten better simply over time had me thinking that I could probably be skilled at this too, like I wanted to be with writing.

This is the primary reason for my initial deliberation between Computer Science and Creative Writing, when it came to what I would eventually major in college. As an adult some decades later, though, I'll tell you now that I majored in both and don't have a degree in either.

But with this on my mind, in my sophomore year I opted to make a website for an English high school project, instead of something related to writing. The website was not very good - and, weirdly, was the first time I tried using both WordPress and XAMPP. Afterward I realized how little I cared, though, and how much more I wanted to polish my fiction-writing skills from a peer-reviewed perspective. I only felt interested in making websites for myself, so I easily decided to major in Creative Writing by junior year, before even applying for colleges.

At the end of 2011, in an attempt to help wane my writing addiction (which was getting a little out of hand), I rekindled my interest in making websites and improving through the process. I returned to the subdomain world with my first (real) attempt at a WordPress theme, a three-column top navigation site. But this time I wasn't interested in making layouts for other people. Well, that wasn't my intention, anyway. I wanted to get into blogging, because I knew at this point that I couldn't commit to making layouts and content if I wasn't hyperfixated.

I continued to struggle finding my voice in blogging, but as usual, I got the webdesign itch after that first WordPress theme. I made a second version a month later, then a third a month after that, and then I was staring at my text editor and thinking, What if I made a series of WordPress themes based on the colors of the rainbow? It was just to make different types of WordPress themes with different aesthetic identities - I didn't expect anyone to actually use them. But it would be fun. And I would get even more familiar with WordPress in the meantime.

So I did, and developed a new theme for my own site monthly for the rest of the year as well, as I graduated high school and started my first year of college. I soon got a job at the library and with my own money, I finally bought Photoshop, after four years of pining for it. My mental health took a nosedive the following year, but I wanted a domain again. I had one in mind this time, one that felt personal and me, and had a sparkly fun .nu TLD. Since I had my own money now, I bought it for myself.

Unfortunately, the combination of my poor mental health and my internal need to maintain my blog soon made my website an uncomfortable mental health diary. I had split the project apart into several different sections with no consistent identity, which made my internal fragmentation even worse. Despite this, somehow, I started and finished another series of WordPress themes, this time based on the months of the year. I'm still proud of the themes I made during this difficult period of my life; designing them really helped me figure out what aesthetics I felt drawn to.

As the memories and association with my old blog (and username) soured over a short yet too long year, I ditched it eighteen months later and created a new username in December of 2014: aroceu. I bought aroceu.com almost immediately after establishing it, on my half birthday of a new decade, eager to not wallow in my self-hatred anymore. However, for a long time I had always thought of .nu domains as the peak of sophistication when it comes to TLDs, so I bought another one, which was not named "aroceu" because it would've sounded bad with the TLD. I tried blogging again but didn't really get into it, and dabbled in fanlistings a few times before I quickly realized how tedious they were for me to maintain.

I desperately wanted to channel my interest in making websites into something, though. My mental health fluctuated and I dropped out of college. I wrote more fanfiction, and got really obsessed with a movie about the making of an ontologically evil social media site. I traveled for six months. I went to therapy. I was asked, "Do you think you might have ADHD?" for the first time, at the age of 22.

After a long dry and depressive spell, my brain started whirring with ideas again. A simple text-based list didn't accurately depict how widespread and categorical my fannish interests are. When I absently thought, well, I could make a website that does, I had no reason not to and I had all the time in the world. So I did, getting my fingers into JavaScript for the first time.

Then I remembered how years ago, in 2010, I'd found a pairing and prompt generator for my first and forever k-pop boy group, Super Junior. I thought, I could make something similar for my current hyperfixation because it had an even bigger cast of guys, Haikyuu. So I made a Haikyuu prompt generator.

Then I made generic ones as an alternative option for only prompts; one for my ontologically questionable movie obsession; and a few more as suggestions from friends, happy to channel my love for this hobby into projects which could be used by others in a fannish way. I was only interested in making generators for fandoms I was in or specifically as suggested by a friend, so I was curious about what fandoms I'd get into in the future, what friends I'd make, and what prompt generators might result.

I tried getting into fanlistings (and, for a moment, shrines) again, but what I was having the most fun with, like usual, was constructing the site. I didn't really care to get my fanlistings approved, nor, still, did I have any interest in maintaining them. Despite this, my love for Pokémon constantly weighed on my mind during my venture back in, because I wanted to make a site inspired by my love for Pokémon, but not something that felt impersonal or meant for others. I wanted to make a Pokémon design and website that was really only meant to be for me, but not a fanlisting.

So Masterball was born, named just so and as pkmn under my .nu domain at the time. Suddenly this felt like a bigger project, because I always played new Pokémon games, and I've loved Pokémon longer than writing or the internet. There was a very slim chance Pokémon - or this site - would ever become irrelevant to me. And even if it did, its main purpose was to be an archive - a catalogue of my history with the franchise, so the emotional attachment to my Pokémon didn't feel trapped in bytes and memories in my game cartridges.

Masterball made me realize that I didn't have to make websites like everyone else. I could make whatever websites I wanted, so as long as I felt passionate about their existence. Even starting a project that would never come into fruition was more valuable than not doing so at all. This occurred a couple of times, one of which made me realize the organization of WordPress as a content management system would make it quite useful for me to archive my writing.

But I had a lot of fic. And as my life continued aimlessly, I had long become tired of myself. In fandom, on the internet, and as a writer. Not to mention my mental health was worsening again.

I moved out of my childhood home with the excuse of going back to college, seeking an environment where I didn't feel so constantly triggered that my relationship with the internet was suffering as well. I took a clean break from being so online in September 2017, and retired my .nu domain in 2018, since I no longer felt attached to it.

During my hiatus, I popped online a few times to make a prompt generator, add a couple of new Pokémon game pages, and move Masterball to its own domain. But I had realized how terminally online I had become, and my new roommates were in a similar boat, so this was a much-needed break. From the internet, and from who I used to be. Things that I was scared of, ashamed of, and didn't want to admit about myself. This worked wonders on my mental health, though I wasn't technically offline. (I read a lot of fanfiction and got really into Splatoon and Pokémon Shiny Den hunting through Discord.) But wanting to heal and being in a space where I could heal - well, I did heal.

I returned to fandom and writing fanfiction in July 2020, but this isn't about that. This also isn't about my moving and the resulting materially difficult 2021 I had (though I did make my iconic Sexy Times with Wangxian tag generator in the meantime). Nor is it about the social bullshit I endured during those two years, and the aftereffects in 2023, which would have broken me had I not taken that three-year long hiatus for clarity earlier.

Instead, this story starts again in 2024. I had made my hyper-ambitious fic site the previous May and was proud of it, but it was the only website I really worked on in 2023. Since I had made the dominant color on my fic site light blue, I felt that it was only fitting to change the accent color on my main site to light blue as well, from the bright pink it had been for the past nine years. I changed the color in January 2024, and expanded and reworked my main index page beyond being a more interesting Carrd. And for the first half of the year I dawdled around my site, adding small but less designed sections, adjusting things when brief inspiration struck.

In September I randomly decided to browse Clover's Neocities site. The benefit of having a fannish webdesign friend since 2012 is if I want inspiration that will most likely appeal to me, I can just visit their site. I'd heard of Neocities for years now but hadn't been interested in using it, since I long had my own domain, and just looked around for fun.

But when I visited, their library certainly was an inspiration. To say the least.

My list of fandoms had been retired for a few years now and I didn't really feel motivated to make another one, but this page changed my mind. A short few days later, I had made a fannish media library in the same way. Clover had also made their own version of a fic site after seeing mine, which I was thrilled by. Making my library got me thinking about personal sites again - especially considering the state of the corporate web in 2024 - so I wrote a manifesto, updated my existing websites, created a links section, gave kingdra.net its first design after nine years, and the rest is history.

Well, it's mostly to say that since then, I haven't really stopped, as of the time of writing this. With a deeper understanding and a lot more confidence, from my perspectives to how I present myself, I've been getting a constant stream of website ideas, whether as a personal archive, for others, as a testament to my younger self, or just straight up inspired by a page on someone else's hobbyist website. In October 2024, I transitioned to Git and improved my workflow to be far more efficient than before. In November I reworked and finally made Masterball responsive; in December I made my first webring; in February I established an 'about' section; in March I developed a web-interface game for Masterball (launched in 2026, exactly a year to the day after starting it), and in April 2025 I coded and developed the entirety of Berelyse, the first code I've ever fully written with the intention of being used by and to appeal to someone other than me. I desperately wanted to make a page about my dog that I could show people in real life, but I didn't want to link it to any of my internet pseudonyms. So in May 2025 I launched three-apples.org as another website project for my more offline self.

Ultimately, I like writing fiction because it's fun, I want to be good at it, and I like getting my writing peer-reviewed so I know I am. But I don't really care about being "good" when it comes to making websites - I just want to like the things I make, in the way I want to make them. I equally love seeing other people do the same, especially considering the state of our current internet landscape. This is why I made Magpies in July 2025.

But more importantly, it's to say that growth is neverending, and so is the evolution of me and my websites. Though my hyperfixations may fluctuate, my desire to find the fullest, truest version of myself will never cease. I think there's a reason I keep coming back to this hobby; these days I feel happier with my sites, the way I present myself, and, well, myself. My presence on the independent web has become a gallery of who I want to be, who I am, and I'm excited to discover what the future may hold.

And I hope you are too. Thanks for reading!

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