about the site

i originally made my neocities account to create a little site just to archive my reading habits: notes, quotes, screenshots, livetweet threads... that whole mess.

i threw together the most basic, minimalist layout possible because i hadn't touched coding in literal years and couldn't even remember what a div was supposed to do. like, i was so rusty i just grabbed a free template and called it a day. no shame.

after spending hours figuring out how neocities even works and managing to make a solid 3 pages, i just left it there and moved on. back then it was called "nana journal" and i completely forgot it existed because i stopped reading to hyperfixate on other stuff. classic me.

now pokémon is literally my entire personality, so i figured, why not repurpose that old reading site and turn it into a shrine for my new obsession? but this time? i did not come to play.

that's how hitokage was born. most of the site's pages came after that. i started joining webrings, made some buttons for others to use, and like... the site is actually real now. not just living rent-free in my brain.

tbh, my goal with this site is to make it a digital dump folder for everything hobby-related while also finding cool ppl who like the same weird stuff i do.

i coded the whole thing myself using vs code and eleventy, so pls don't just ctrl c + ctrl v my stuff (not that you'd want to, it's kinda messy and i'm not exactly proud of that). but if you do have questions, feel free to email me! i love pretending to be helpful 😁

just a heads up: i'm an adult making content for other adults. you won't find anything too explicit without a warning first, but still, i wouldn't recommend this place for minors or people who don't know how to act on the internet.

i'm working on making the site fully accessible for anyone with any disability. still fixing the code bit by bit, but if you have feedback, i'm all ears, just shoot me an email!

and finally, if there's something on this site you don't like simply because it's not your taste... be a decent human being and just close the tab. no need for drama.

button options

use whatever button fits your vibe or your site the best to share the link. i don't mind hotlinking, but it'd be cooler if you saved the image and hosted it yourself (ᵔ⩊ᵔ)

use either the gif version or the static one, whichever you prefer!

how i ended up here

i remember going online for the first time actually knowing what i was doing when i was like 9. that's when i made my twitter account and a blog. because of that, i started looking up tutorials on other blogs and ended up learning a bunch of stuff about coding — mainly html and css. i used to practice coding on my blog, but then i made a tumblr too. never built a whole theme from scratch, but i'd tweak stuff here and there on free ones.

around 13 or 14 i deleted the blog and stopped using tumblr altogether. so yeah... no more coding practice for a long time. like, embarrassingly long.

fast forward 10 years and i made another blog, except i remembered literally none of the coding. and the worst part? all those tutorial blogs i used to rely on? Gone. Dead. Extinct. but, plot twist: while looking for new tutorials and lurking around, i ended up discovering neocities 🎉

my eyes lit up at the whole indie web thing. the idea of having a personal website again?? peak. i started checking out different sites and i was obsessed with how creative everyone was with layouts and content. like, the possibilities were endless. i obviously had to get in on it. only issue: what the hell was i gonna use my site for?

then i saw some people using neocities as manga journals, writing small summaries and thoughts about the chapters they read. and that reminded me of this chaotic livetweet thread i made once, so i figured... yeah, i could totally do that too.

manifesto, but make it short

i made this site to: have something that's mine, practice coding, practice my creativity, interact with cool people, talk about the stuff i love, and express myself without worrying about judgment.

i missed having a space on the internet that was my space, not just another profile in a social network fueled by algorithms.

i don't really feel like "i miss the old web" because i was super young, caught the tail end of that era, and honestly don't even remember what the internet was like back then. but one thing i do miss is the sheer amount of blogs that existed back then.

my site isn't about being anti-social media , but it's a way of trying to be something more than that. a reminder that it's still possible to find some peace in the middle of all this clout-chasing.

it annoys me how social media turned into a place to make money instead of a place to express yourself freely. content isn't organic or spontaneous anymore. i can't stand seeing a post and wondering if the person posted it just to get likes, gain visibility, grab attention, or be sponsored by brands... you know when a tweet starts doing numbers and then the replies are just filled with promo for some product? that shit really gets to me.

fuck engagement metrics and algorithm 🗣️ fuck the culture that forces the monetization of hobbies 🗣️ fuck consumerism 🗣️

to-do list

group all my picrews, tier lists and quiz results into separate pages for each one;
make a pinterest-inspired page to display some images i like;
make a spirited away shrine;
make a charmander shrine page;
write an article to share my opinion on the ending of banana fish;
rank the one direction albums;
take pics of my pokémon stuff and add them to the pokémon shrine;
~~make an atom/rss feed;~~
upload the pics i took to a photobook page;
make a separate page just for music and keep the media one for books + media log;
add a "characters i remind my friends of" section to the about page;
make a page inspired by this one ;

credits

the current design was inspired by hellomei (with permission from mei herself);
i got the fonts from dafont ;
some of the pokémon images and info came from bulbapedia ;
the decorative visuals are from pixel-soup ;
and the cursor i'm using is from cursors-4u .