Song Cradle — Of all my sites, this is the one returning visitors most frequently report to binge-read or reread. I entered it (and thus the central update log) for the Our Kingdoms Eternal Site Marathon to figure out how to make it responsive — with success, as I can proudly report! While at it, I recoded much of the site to improve semantics, added minor styling elements, slightly edited the texts, stuck a poem in there and updated the Magic Kit. Most of all, I finished oubliette.nu’s revamp documentation, which turned out about as long as the main site itself.

oubliette.nu — Fixed yet another mistake with font configuration some months ago. :| Fonts should load as quickly as they can now.

Having (hopefully) figured out fonts for good, I went through all of my sites and switched to self-hosted Google fonts or Bunny Fonts.

Now I shall poke about and see if I can get another project finished before the marathon deadline.

Vanishing Moon — Hi, I wrote about 6k words for a thing I don’t care much about, totally normal shrining behaviour: Here’s a personal guide to Fate, Fate/Zero specifically. I uploaded this a full month ago and had hoped to announce it along with other finishing touches to the shrine; alas, that will have to wait.

I also added two illustrations (Machi Asobi vol. 9). Images from the spin-offs Fate/Zero Cafe and Capsule Servant may be added in the future if I feel like it, but for now, I’m done.

Lastly, mobile view has been adjusted; though not optimized, the site should be viewable and readable now.

oubliette.nu — Added some text cliques. Also added a link button, which I received from Mina! ❤ People in this sphere are so incredibly sweet!

joined fanlistings — Removed a bunch of subjects I no longer feel strongly about. Might do some more pruning when I feel like sending out more mails.

Emotion — Added a bunch of link buttons donated by Christina! ❤ I’m really glad for these. =x

It looks like my site activity streak has reached its end for the time being, as I will be occupied in the next while. I’m glad for these seven months, which have shown me that it is still possible (or possible again) to devote so much of my time and attention to site-crafting next to a full life.

Happy new year! Mine is off to a great start:

Network — I am mighty pleased to say that the guestbook and contact page (now with a form!) have been, as dubiousdisc put it, mermaidified! As you can see, the pages build on the repository’s design; you may have spotted the header image teased in one of the buttons from the last update.

I spent way too much time on this (four whole days?) considering that these are periphery pages, but the unstoppable force of my love for these manga panels demanded that I make something worthy of them. >:( (Incidentally, this is the third instance of site productivity triggered by mermaids within the last years. Also, after over a decade of despairing over header image transitions, I have discovered… Photoshop’s own wet media brushes. wtf.) I’m SO happy about how it turned out, because I vividly remember looking at the guestbook script’s template in 2016 and pretty much throwing in the towel right away. Good thing there are many other brilliant people in this sphere who have crafted absolutely gorgeous guestbooks, which demonstrate that this degree of customization is indeed feasible. I managed to make it responsive too.

Many thanks to Larissa for sharing the code for individual site links with me, troubleshooting and listening to all the raging.

The network got a new error page as well. From now on, you will run into the same daydreaming lady if you follow a broken link, which I hope won’t happen too often. x)

Song Cradle — Updated Magic Kit with new and replaced tools. Optimized minor things (line-height, self-hosted fonts).

oubliette.nu — Added two link buttons, which are kind gifts from Christina! ^-^

I love how many new and familiar names have been popping up lately in my guestbook, mailbox and beyond, and I’m excited about every single declaration to continue or take up site-crafting again. Here’s hoping that 2025 will be a good year for all of us, and that we may create all the beautiful things we want to create. I can’t wait to see it all! ❤

A bunch of minor updates:

• Cut content that has been moved to Song Cradle from oubliette.nu. Removed the projects page as the bulletin board now serves that purpose.
• Nuked Enthusiast and made a new layout for my Joined Fanlistings page so that I could go on a joining spree. My cute Takeru!!
• Cleaned up some minor things in the guestbook. Yikes there were quite a few outdated and unsightly elements in there…
• Added a link to Song Cradle to each shrine.
• Added a link to Refugium’s link list after poking a Tumblr user about it. x) The purchase note has also been moved to the index.
• Fixed the text selection colours for Waterbound and Setting Sun because they were unreadable and made my eyes bleed.

That’s it for now. I expect things around the network to be quiet in the coming months, if not for the rest of 2022, as I will be occupied. I’ll be writing on sites in the background though.

OKAY SO. I ought to be focusing on finishing some major sites so I can move on, or think about how to revamp the domain, BUT I COULDN’T STAND GOING ANOTHER DAY looking at my update log with its makeshift layout that sucked in terms of visual guidance.

I’ve had this manga panel for a while, unsure which of several projects to use it for, and with zero layout inspiration. After that silly splash page last week, I rode on the mermaid wave and, lo and behold, was proven once again that when it comes to graphics, it’s often best to open Photoshop and see what happens, rather than give it too much thought in advance and be deterred by the lack of concept. I certainly could never have imagined creating something like this! I reused a few assets that I had initially set aside for Refugium (and perhaps an Aquaria shrine in the far future)… It’s a set I’m so fond of, I could use it in three more layouts and would not tire of it.

Coding this layout was so much fun, it got out of hand very quickly. I LOVE MERMAIDS SO MUCH. I’m so enamoured with it, I debated using it for the domain instead, primarily out of fear that I would not be able to make something this pretty again, and also because it might be a while before I’ll have time again. In the end, I resolved to be brave and decided against it, as I already have images picked out for the main site and don’t want to compromise my vision. I also don’t just want to slap the layout over old content. Anyway:

Update Log — The log finally has a category page, and I’ve also added an overview of my current projects since I’m going to scrap that page on the main site. This leads to:

Song Cradle — This is a repository of supplementary material to the network, a project I’ve had in mind for a while. The site is an indirect effort towards revamping the domain, which I have been dragging out because I don’t yet have the space to think about what text to cut or how to archive it so it doesn’t clash with new content. The repository offers me a future space for any archiving needs, and slims down the hub content so that I’ll have fewer elements to design once I get to the revamp.

Essentially, I have moved all my post-mortems over… and was quite horrified at the amount of text previously tucked away on the main site. …Which didn’t stop me from adding Refugium’s documentation that is nearly a third of the actual shrine’s length. There’s also some other fun new content around, such as a timeline and an overview of tools I use to make sites.

I hope the new content is as fun to browse as it was to make it! If anything’s wonky, confusing or could be improved, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

These entries in the log are getting wordier, partly as a result of not plugging projects on any forums these days. Perhaps the weightier reason is that it has come to my notice that my sites are visited by many more people than I know of, and this is currently the only place for a bit of chatter on my part outside of largely static projects. In any case: Thank you for visiting, and for still visiting after so many years and after the long hiatus!