Onus

My family and I watched both the Ring (the American adaption ) and the Ring 0 (Japanese) last night. We meant to watch the original in Japanese, and then the American adaption, but we ended up throwing on the Japanese prequel by mistake, and just sort of decided to roll with it. They were both really good movies, although Ring 0 was more visually restrained in a way I think I preferred (and the male lead had superior hair.) I'm still interested in watching the original Ring, if only to see how it differs. 

I did something I had been planning for a long time - Namely, the beginning of the end of my tenure on Neocities. I've got the index page of my new host set up with a .org address, and will probably migrate all my files over the next couple of days. After that, all that should be left is pulling out of the webring I'm in, and walking away. 

As for why I would do this, the answer is a couple of things: I grew to dislike the community of Neocities, who seem to spend a lot of time on discord and seem to be weirdly focused on clout chasing, of all things. Why someone would ever think a personal website could win them any level of acclaim in 2025 is confusing, to say the least, and the expectation that I involve myself in modern social media...to escape modern social media is annoying. I really don't like discord.

After thinking further about it, I honestly decided I disliked all the social and sharing aspects of Neocities, too, from its like4like and follow2follow culture, its microblogging twitter-clone thingy (which was such a source of grief for the admin he had to hard limit the number of posts you could makes there per-day), and the latest updates page. My website is mostly for me, so having to worry about what my "followers" would think if I did something goofy with it - like push a partly written article or do a live tweak of something small, like a gradient color  was not helping me enjoy my site. 

It's also run by exactly one guy, and while Kyle Drake genuinely doesn't seem to be a bad dude, there is no guarantee, so far as I know as to what might happen if something goes wrong on his end - a financial crises, a personal issue, something, that might lead him to consider decommissioning the site. It just being him can also make moderation a tad capricious, though I confess that's something I've heard more through others than by personal experience.

The final reason is probably the simplest of all: I just kind of wanted something more. At first, I was planning to go full steam ahead into shoving my shitty website into a  no-kidding VPS, but after a long time of thinking about it, opted for regular, next-order webhosting instead. No weird subculture to navigate, better analytics, and more independence, if only by virtue of being a very small fish in a much larger pond. I may put in an RSS feed or something, but so far as increasing my sites "viability" or "popularity" or what have you, I have no interest at all. 

Neocites was good to me for a long time, and I'm not exactly moving with any grand hurry. If you ever want to see what its like to have your very own website, it's a great place to give it a shot, especially with its free hosting plan. 

A lot of people also recommend  Nekoweb, which I haven't tried but is supposed to be very similar. Teacake and leopard are supposed to be very beginner-friendly as well. 

Thinking of website stuff, I actually have a few more sketches, as well as some writing I need to upload when I get the chance.