finding friends in smaller (web) spaces
long time no see! i feel sad to have been away from neocities this long... i got tired for a bit, but i'm okay now, or at least trying to ease back into things by updating myself on my friends' sites. i think i got caught up in trying to complete my animal crossing shrine pages asap that it started feeling a bit more like a chore.
another reason might be that i've been spending more time on some other lovely spaces that places like neocities have brought my attention to!!!
i forgot what site i found out about it on, but i've been using bear to host my blog (linked in the sidebar of my diary, but you can find it here too) and i really like it. it's a lot like smol.pub, which i discovered a bit after i got on bear, but maybe a bit bigger lol, and more overrun by uhhhhh tech people. (that part i don't super love.)
i've made a few friends on there after exchanging fanmail about each other's blogs, which is a really sweet, personal way to interact on the internet. there's no follow button to let them know i'm there reading their posts, and there's a version of a "like" function but it's anonymous, so if their post resonates with me, i have to tell them myself via email. i even figured out how to work an rss feed reader to better keep up with their blogs. (it's surprisingly not that hard.)
it's made me realize that i love reading blog posts, especially personal ones – they seem so intentional and thoughtful. i care less for blogs that are prescriptive or full of advice, although i also like this one. i just like the Peopleness of it all. i like reading meandering posts or ones with no clear answer to a question they're pondering... ones that are petty or full of angst or mundane as hell... oh the humanity!!!! it impresses me too, when they can word their thoughts so well. it also makes me want to write better – not for any creative projects necessarily, but just for me as a person.
aethy is another space i'm spending time on. it's a decidedly profic mastodon instance that i happened upon thanks to my friend cyrano, and the tiny community of people on there blows my mind. it's honestly so – inspiring? heartening? i don't know, to see so many people just being themselves and liking their niche strange horny iconoclastic obscure self-indulgent things. there are very few people who share the same exact brainworms, but as a result everyone is very supportive of each other's worms, and quite vocal about it too (lots of replies - people aren't too scared to talk to each other!).
i made an account with the expectation that i would delete it in a couple of days, but i posted something and near immediately got interaction from friendly people on the local timeline (which is, i found, a really nice thing!). the content warning feature is so useful, and i cannot stress enough how encouraging people are and how everyone knows how to curate their own experience/set their own boundaries without throwing a fit.
artwise, the culture is also very different from twitter – there's less reach but more quality interaction, and there's a lot of support for ocs and selfship, which is so new to me! i've been drawing my ocs more and more, heartened by how well people take to them.
on Big Social Media it's very easy to get caught up in the numbers in a horrible way. i've felt pressured to keep drawing fanart to stay relevant, and then later went the opposite way trying to rid myself of my desire to make work that people like. but i don't think that latter bit's possible as an artist. it's important to me that my work speaks to more than just me... so i think the next best thing is to find people who love the work that i make out of love. i'm happy to have found a place like that!
i didn't link aethy because it's 18+ with lots of taboo content (be warned), so you'll have to look up the site yourself if you're interested. i also almost didn't want to share the name of it at all for fear of people going on there to poison the well... but if there's anyone at all out there craving a community that welcomes weirdos who can separate fiction from reality, then it's a worthwhile share.
so yup!!! those are the two sites i've been lurking these days. my drawing kick is kind of dying down a little though, and i miss coding... i would really like to make some shrines for my OCs or other brainworms like ships and favorite media, but my brain gets frazzled trying to encapsulate them in a page / multiple pages. i've gotten too used to just yelling out every half-formed thought i have of them on twitter (and now aethy).
maybe that's the issue? that not every thought i have about my worms can be complete and that making a page for them will put me on a neverending quest to finish it. my god. i've got to make peace with having incomplete pages up... to have pages i'll continue to update forever and ever... say NO to optimizing your life!!! there's joy in seeing how things accumulate and grow!
but i'll still want to find a way to systematize it to be sure... after all, i'm the bitch who keeps saying it's annoying to update my sketchbook page LOL. we'll see!! i'll try to take it easy.
what else...? some life stuff... it was my birthday last sunday, and i had a wonderful dinner with my family! i wore a nice fluffy dress (i caved to the selkie craze) that i was honestly quite worried about wearing because there's So Much Boob, but i bought some clothing tape and felt more secure. i was also a little worried because it's so poofy that it draws so much attention, but what the hell. it was my birthday! when else is it time for attention!
i'm also in my hibernation era, so replies and things are a little slow... when will i grow into a person who doesn't need to retreat from society in order to stay afloat