sol. arriving. on the scene!

[solbeth]

hi everyone, i'm sol
i'm 22 years old and use any pronouns.

my journey with webdev is quite new, but i am very motivated and fully focused on working on my personal website. i plan to use it as a blog and storage for everything i create and hold dear. i enjoy the amount of customisation the old web is associated with and i am tired of the confining character limits of social media. i long for the sincerity and deliberateness of the old forum days, which i did somehow manage to experience as a child.

i am a bit of an introverted and skittish person, but i am always happy to make new friends and talk about anything! i really want to put myself out there more.

just to give a quick rundown of my interests besides webmastery:

• i love drawing! especially digitally. ive been dabbling in the pixel aesthetic recently as well.
• i play video games! roguelites, metroidvanias and open world exploration games seem to be my favourite, but i appreciate anything artsy or narrative driven too. ma favourite games of all time are the 'binding of isaac', 'darkest dungeon', 'disco elysium' and 'the beginners guide'.
• i write poems! they are like an extension of my human experience, emotions given form.
• i like to learn! and by that i mean both typical school note-taking style knowledge acquisition and listening to people talk about their interests! i am particularly interested in biology and medieval times!

for clarity's sake:
i may have trouble communicating properly online as i am autistic and english is not my first language. if any of my sentences do not make sense or if i am coming off as rude, please let me know right away! i am always happy to clarify what i meant.

anyway! i really hope to connect with people here
thank you for having me.

[villain]

hello sol! welcome! i hope you have fun making your personal site. i also love darkest dungeon - the flagellant is my favourite class!

[Rosaria Delacroix]

Welcome aboard, Sol! It's always super fun for me to see people that I recognize from the status.cafe stream hanging out here- and your website designs are really cool! I love the cherry red and teal- it's a very cute colour combination, and your art's lovely. I love the tiny yapping kitten stamp you have on your about page's scrolling marquee! Very impressed that you've done up the coding for your websites on your own- I mostly just poke around at templates the community generously provides, but your site really does cohere nicely.

I hope that you enjoy your time on the forum- I also get annoyed with the character limits on mainstream social media, as a notorious rambler and babbler: and something about the longwinded nature to forums and deeply customized experience of making a personal website as a sort of living document tailored just-to-you has been super appealing for me in this webdev space. I keep wanting to call it webweaving, but that's a different thing entirely in contemporary poetry scenes, haha.

Do you have any particular poets whose work you follow? The fun thing about Neocities is seeing all of the personal shrines people make- and your post reminded me I should pop up something about my favourite poets to go with my favourite musical artist I've already jotted down onto my site, so thank you for that!

[KiwiMeowo]

Hello and welcome Sol :3

I just looked at your website, I really like how it looks. I love the color scheme and the overall style!

I also have a blog in my site, I enjoy how I can talk about things I like/curious about freely, posting in social media feels a bit restricting. So I hope you will enjoy this experience as well!

[solbeth]

hello sol! welcome! i hope you have fun making your personal site. i also love darkest dungeon - the flagellant is my favourite class!

hi hi, thank you for having me! i am having a great time so far. the flagellant is so fun to play, my personal favourite is the leper!

Welcome aboard, Sol! It's always super fun for me to see people that I recognize from the status.cafe stream hanging out here- and your website designs are really cool! I love the cherry red and teal- it's a very cute colour combination, and your art's lovely. I love the tiny yapping kitten stamp you have on your about page's scrolling marquee! Very impressed that you've done up the coding for your websites on your own- I mostly just poke around at templates the community generously provides, but your site really does cohere nicely.

oh right, that's true, i've seen you on status.cafe too! fancy meeting you here, haha. i am really glad you like the color scheme i went for, teal is such a comforting color to me. also, css grid system made building websites very easy for me. i did use a template for my 'about me', but i modified it heavily (still with credit of course!) and added javascript to fit to my needs. i do not think there is any shame in using templates at all, modifying them did help me realise that i'd rather start from scratch instead though.

I hope that you enjoy your time on the forum- I also get annoyed with the character limits on mainstream social media, as a notorious rambler and babbler: and something about the longwinded nature to forums and deeply customized experience of making a personal website as a sort of living document tailored just-to-you has been super appealing for me in this webdev space. I keep wanting to call it webweaving, but that's a different thing entirely in contemporary poetry scenes, haha.

i feel like social media did take away some of my rambling side, if i'm being honest. it's hard not to feel like i need to compound all of my thoughts into a catchy slogan, a meme or 300 characters maximum just to be heard. so i really do share your sentiment. also, could you tell me a bit more about webweaving? i don't believe i'm familiar with the concept!

Do you have any particular poets whose work you follow? The fun thing about Neocities is seeing all of the personal shrines people make- and your post reminded me I should pop up something about my favourite poets to go with my favourite musical artist I've already jotted down onto my site, so thank you for that!

i must admit, i am not a close follower of any specific poets, although i do take inspiration from classical polish works, as i feel closely connected to country i was born in and have been greatly influenced by it's folklore and culture. other than that, i absolutely adore mary oliver, she paints beautiful images in my head with her poems. you just gave me an idea for a page dedicated to translating and analysing polish poetry! now you tell me, who are your favourite poets and why?

Hello and welcome Sol :3

I just looked at your website, I really like how it looks. I love the color scheme and the overall style!

I also have a blog in my site, I enjoy how I can talk about things I like/curious about freely, posting in social media feels a bit restricting. So I hope you will enjoy this experience as well!

hello, and thank you for having me! i am really glad you like my page so far ^^
i absolutely adore the way your blog page is structured, oh my god! your archive is so organised, the tag system is really clever too. i really do have a lot to learn, haha.

[Rosaria Delacroix]

In that case, I hope that relaxing into the forums helps revive some of that more chatty side to you. Have you heard of the unseen voyeur?

It's a phenomena that comes up in writing circles- though particularly in journalling and diarist spaces. Some people make the hard distinction between journalling and diary keeping on the basis of the time commitment and content: some people use journalling infrequently, but as a chance to delve more deeply into guided questions, or deep plumbing into their own lives, and some people use diaries more so for a daily record of events to look back on, or to hand down to future people who might be curious- there are some really interesting preservation projects that look into the details of everyday life that history books may skim over: things like weather patterns and slang come to mind.

I don't really personally, as I use the terms interchangeably, but the unseen voyeur is most often encountered in diarist spaces. People can often struggle with the sensation of needing to account for an unseen audience: and fear not just having their private entries read, but also feel an obligation to make their mundane, everyday entries profound, to craft them into elegant, blisteringly brilliant stories, like the sort of diary excerpts we see snipped from famous poets and authors- the trick is, most of the really snazzy bits from their letters and diaries are from reams and reams of extracted works: so of course it feels elevated, and better-than.

I think that the feeling of curbing and curtailing your speech and thoughts has elements of both a structural issue, (with the hard word count limits on many sites), and more of a theoretical issue, with the spectre of the unseen voyeur, or some close approximation of that shade. In diarist circles: the only way out is through, and overtime, people who keep diaries often find that the voyeur recedes, the presence lightens: and they don't feel that need to perform or be switched on when they write: that an authenticity of thought, no matter how silly or ridiculous, but deeply genuine, tends to float up to the surface. It is an act that takes practice and repetition to really sink into comfortably, but it's often something that brings about a radical change for diary keepers. Hopefully your time in these webdev spaces will bring about a similar peace of mind, and ease into anchoring back into your thoughts, unrestrained.

Webweaving is a term I've mostly seen floating around Tumblr and related spaces- it's essentially quite akin to collaging. A creative will often pick a theme- perhaps poems about friendship, and hunt around the web to cobble together excerpts from poems, essays, social media posts, songs, and pictures, and arrange them into a nice little post for people to share. They can be useful to explore very niche works, but also serve as a stylistic view into the creator's tastes. I think the equivalent around here would be more similar to people's shrines that they build to their favourite phenomena.

That sounds really lovely. I know a game developer who is Polish and has some interest in translation and poetry himself, and if you do make that page, I'm sure he'd be very interested in keeping an eye on that space. Translation is an art unto itself, and the vast worlds of language it opens to the reader are so fascinating. Mary Oliver is also one of my favourite poets- she is a perfect entry point into poetry that I've used to share poetry with people who don't consider themselves a fan of it: often the issue is one of access, and anxiety around poetry being too dense, erudite, or abstract to dig into. The clean, tight prose she presents, with simple beauty drawn from everyday experiences and the natural world, make her poetry incredibly easy for non-poetry enthusiasts to understand and enjoy. When I think of her poetry, I think of light- how crisp, and clean, and illuminating it can be, falling through glass windows and alighting gently overtop everything within.

I particularly enjoy the Confessional movement- poetry that speaks acutely to the intimate, the personal, the particular. In many ways, it reminds me of this space. The Confessionalist poet often writes what hurts: drawn unflinchingly from their own live, probing into intimate details that ache to read, spoken directly, in a language shaped wholly by their own life and eschewing universal symbols. Many of them maintained a sense of a larger narrative through their poems, connecting and referencing many works: building what seemed to be a window to peer through at their own life, that which is normally sequestered away deep in the dark to fester, or stripped clean of anything that might impinge upon a reader's sensibilities, made commercially bright and squeaky clean.

To that effect, some of my favourite poets are: Richard Siken, Mary Oliver, Ada Limón, Anne Carson, Anne Sexton, Wendy Cope, Ellen Bass, Warsan Shire, Louise Glück, Margaret Atwood, Roxane Gay and Andrea Gibson.

[solbeth]

I think that the feeling of curbing and curtailing your speech and thoughts has elements of both a structural issue, (with the hard word count limits on many sites), and more of a theoretical issue, with the spectre of the unseen voyeur, or some close approximation of that shade.

not gonna lie, you are presenting me with many terms i haven't heard before, but i'm really happy to learn what they are! i think i do struggle with the perceived presence of the unseen voyeur. while my language tends to get more flowery as i actually sit down to collect my thoughts (for example, i love comparisons and metaphors!), i think i would benefit from letting myself be more honest and relaxed every once in a while. nowadays a very popular form of the voyeur would be the potential follower, consumer. even while running away from the pressure of views and likes, i still unintentionally cater to the stereotype of a busy modern netizen with short attention span. it's probably a lack of faith - both in my presence being 'interesting enough' and the possible curiosity of other people. and although as technology progresses and our lives get busier i should be settling down into these doubts, i feel the pull to try and trust in myself and others once again.

when i think back to my old diaries, filled with exclamations and silly doodles, i wonder if that version of me was any more real than whatever i am sharing with the world right now.

Webweaving is a term I've mostly seen floating around Tumblr and related spaces- it's essentially quite akin to collaging. A creative will often pick a theme- perhaps poems about friendship, and hunt around the web to cobble together excerpts from poems, essays, social media posts, songs, and pictures, and arrange them into a nice little post for people to share. They can be useful to explore very niche works, but also serve as a stylistic view into the creator's tastes. I think the equivalent around here would be more similar to people's shrines that they build to their favourite phenomena.

oh, i think i've seen a few of these kind of posts floating around, even though i am not a frequent tumblr user. it's a really fascinating idea, probably a bit more familiar to me than the concept of webshrines (these are quite new to me and honestly, i wouldn't know where to start!). i enjoy categorising things, drawing parallels, spinning narratives and hunting for connections. it gives me some sense of comfort, like everything makes sense. though i don't think i would be every good at webweaving - my mind often looks like string-ridden case corkboard, table or a flowchart rather than an arrangement or a collage.

I particularly enjoy the Confessional movement- poetry that speaks acutely to the intimate, the personal, the particular.

it's interesting to see how different our approach towards poetry is. if i must confess, the intimate, raw honestly scares me beyond belief. poetry is a way for me to express myself freely and honestly, but under a veil of subtle deniability - i will let others know what i am feeling, but only if they are willing to dissect my words in good faith. it probably leads back to my lack of faith in myself and other people, oh well. another reason for it could be the fact that i tend to speak rather matter-of-factly in my daily life to ensure i will be understood. diverging from that in my writing lets me explore the way i frame things - and therefore, the way i am allowed to think of things.

thank you for sharing your favourite poets with me! i've been busy searching through some of their works and i must say, louise glück might become one of my new favourites as well. 'celestial music' grabbed my by the throat and still hasn't let go.

[SergioEduP]

Hello from a non-native english speaker to another! Welcome! I love the look of your website and can't wait to see more of your stuff up there, I will deffinetely add your link to my website once I get around to writting my next blog post