The Warrens Are Open!

It lives!!!

After a month of banging my head against VsCode and 11ty (the latter in particular was a pain to get working), The Warrens are now in a somewhat presentable state. They aren't perfect—I was too lazy to figure out how to arrange the category list over there on the side ¹ in alphabetical order, and unfortunately Sacchin on the left needs more time in the oven—but the general skeleton is done. Now, I basically have...a Wordpress site. Except it took a month to prepare, rather than an afternoon.

Yeah, admittedly I do feel a bit weird about ending up with such a vanilla-looking site, especially after snooping around other people's sites (and sometimes code) and seeing all sorts of wonderful shimmering digital creations. It feels almost like I'm not really participating in the spirit of this independent section of the net. Obviously it's not a competition, and insofar as sites are an expression of their creator's personality the Warrens do reflect my personality pretty well. But when I started making this site I had all sorts of ideas, and it's hard to escape the feeling that the sheer difficulty of realizing them² made me preemptively cut myself to size. The ideas are still there, though; and I hope I maintain enough motivation after this to continue working towards them.³

In any case, my aim in making this site was pretty much the same as everybody else's—to attempt to sever my ties with the eldritch machinations of social media. I have more thoughts on this, and I'll probably write a separate post on this subject⁴; which feels really good to be able to say/do, as opposed to having to write a twenty-post fragmentary thread whose contents will be mined to write someone's four-page paper on, like, Derrida.⁵ It's been really difficult recently to loosen up my writing—to write, not necessarily as though nobody were looking (which is probably impossible), but at least as though there isn't a neck and head draped over your shoulder at all times, checking your work, clicking its tongue, sneering at your word choices, asking if you've really done all the readings, and so on. My hope is that writing this blog will help me forget about this head's presence, if not make it disappear entirely. (What I would give for that to happen!)

Anyways, that's all I have to say for now. Hope to meet you back here soon!

^{1. (or, if you're reading this on mobile, below)↩}

^{2. (though I should note that the difficulty is mainly due to my own incompetence with code, rather than any difficulty inherent in the project as such)↩}

^{3. More specifically I had section on the navigation bar called "The Warrens," which would have led to a weird webcomic/hypertext thing featuring all my OCs. In fact this whole site was supposed to feature my OCs, but since I'm not an artist and want absolutely nothing to do with that whole AI business, Sacchin was forced to take their place for the time being. She's doing great, though. Everyone say: Thanks, Sacchin!!!↩}

^{4. That being said it's a bad bet to think that I'll follow through on anything I say I'm gonna complete, so take this with a grain of salt.↩}

^{5. For now, though, here's a great article by Kate Wagner over on The Baffler about the cannibalistic nature of the recent internet.↩}