About This Site
Welcome to Fabled.day! Here, you can follow my return to web development and coding as a hobby. I’ll also be sharing some ancient tales and legends from the web of yesteryear. Fabled is a brand new site, opened on April 13th, 2024; nothing (and I mean nothing) except this page works yet…
Lots of sites on neocities focus on coding tutorials, graphics resources, and the like. This site, while having a similar purview, will be tailored towards those wanting to create larger (in terms of number of pages and files, not megabytes), text-based websites. I’ll, in fact, be prioritizing keeping my sites small in terms of disk space, and hopefully can gather tips about that, as well.
For the Expression
I want to learn to better express myself online in this unique environment, and maybe I can help others, too. I think that too many people ignore the potential neocities (and similar places) have for that kind of sharing. Larger sites, showcasing everything from stories to research, should definitely should be more encouraged.
You do not see this often enough on the “small” static web, nor the web at large, which is dominated by videos and images. I think it can be agreed that large posts don’t work well on most social media platforms, which tend to either have a “microblogging” or “tweet-like” format.
For the Aesthetics
Social media is, also, we’ll agree, dull for many of us who grew up on the colorful web of yesteryear. Really now, all those white backgrounds drenched in wasted potential bore even the most devout cybernaut.
Aesthetics, then, also play a role here - my goal is not just to explain and explore methods for creating and maintaining larger sites, but also to share how this might be done in a beautiful, accessible, and elegant fashion true to the creative roots of the internet.
Fabled is not a site that features graphics or templates, but rather, simple code snippets, tips, and tutorials, as well as small articles about relevant topics. Expect a section for links to sites with useful templates and graphics, though.
Tales of the Before Times
Lots of cool and interesting things happened back in the early years of the internet. I want a place to talk about that, too! This site will contain, ultimately, some tales of life growing up back then - online. I’ll share these memories of sites (long since vanished) and dear communities of the early years, things like that, but also funny stories about how I learned to use America Online and Yahooligans at school. I’m not quite sure what extent this section will have, nor exactly what it will include, but have plans for several little articles so far.
Why FABLED?
So, why is this site called Fabled, in case you’re curious? The word, after all, shares much in common with terms like legendary and renowned, of deep historical significance, too. It also, though, carries the connotation of mythological or even fictitious. And why Fabled.day, of all possible TLDs? It certainly doesn’t have much to do with the content of the site, and was chosen for aesthetics, yet…
The phrase sounds nigh apocalyptic, doesn’t it? Meaningful on many levels if one thinks within the mindset of a millennial. Much of our lives has been fabled in one way or another, and often in many different ways at once. Draw your own conclusions, and maybe choose what it means to you, personally, if anything at all.
About Me
I'm, quite unfortunately, an elder millennial, experiencing the usual backaches and disillusionment with the American dream, the seeds of which were planted at a young age.
Somewhere between the Y2K apocalyptic panic and 9/11, I gave into existential dread as a default. This isn’t uncommon - you know that; you, if you’re around that age, likely had a similar experience. Maybe your benchmarks were different, but a lot of us just gave in.
Anyways, I ended up running away when I was about eleven. Where did I run away to? America Online, of course.
Teenaged Runaway
My daring escape into the internet started with America Online's WYSIWYG website builder in '97. This was a way of making your own site on America Online, of course. In case you never saw that, it was quite a fun experience for an eleven-year-old. It had the ability to add pictures (however small) of dachshunds.
They also made us make geography-themed webpages for a class project in sixth grade, using some kind of WYSIWYG editor known as Claris Home Page. We weren’t allowed to add dachshunds to those.
I started exploring actual coding in ‘99, with a couple silly fansites for my favorite characters from age-inappropriate television shows, of course. I launched a small, goofy blog a couple years later, at age fifteen. This was, ironically, hosted on Geocities, but using Blogger, back when that was actually possible and the former existed.
On my sixteenth birthday, I received a precious gift: my very first domain name and some hosting space for a year. With sudden access to things like PHP in a stable environment, I shifted to using content management systems. These included Greymatter, MovableType, and eventually WordPress over the next few years, gradually growing apart from the code itself in favor of apps like those.
Pulled Back In?
University (I majored in partying) and the rise of social media pulled me away from web development. I didn’t really keep up coding as a hobby. I ended up with an online experience mostly consisting of things like Facebook and YouTube, and watched valiant flame wars burn from afar on Twitter, before it began to reek of Musk.
A lot of the stuff on those sites lately seems to inhibit social interaction and connection rather than foster it, though. I saw more arguments than genuine exchanges, and more falling-outs than friendships. Online communities I’d joined for niche hobbies would regularly explode in discourse on various sites, often spilling offline and affecting people’s lives. It didn’t happen to me, but watching it was grim and tiresome after a while.
Growing increasingly disenchanted with social media and the state of the modern internet, I’m drawn to neocities and its culture. The community has been welcoming so far, despite my struggle to trust new spaces online.
I’m open to talking to new people about CSS, HTML, and Javascript, though, especially those who might know more than me. You can contact me on Discord under the name ClarityAnne, or, of course, using the contact form to the left. My email is available upon request via said form.
Ex-Cult Lady?
Am I that eerie sapphic ex-cult lady on neocities? Sort of! I do have a website that covers some really (and rightfully) controversial, cult-like groups. That was, in fact, originally why I came to neocities - I wanted to document those groups and their effects on people like me. I picked up coding originally for much different reasons, but still.
I’m the person behind the Aristasian Reminiscence Project. I’m not part of Aristasia or that group/movement/cult/whatever these days (it no longer exists, too), and haven’t been for over a decade. The site itself is about the movement, not for the movement; hence the term “reminiscence” in the title. Please also note that while this site is safe for work, the Aristasian Reminiscence Project isn’t; it’s too bizarre!