...and thanks for all the fish!
Short history of the page
The page started out with a fairly generic look that is documented in this post. That post also contained an honest analysis of what worked and didnāt work for me in that first draft. I liked the Tokyo Night styling but found that it clashed with the fish tank themes and hated the font. I struggled a lot with the page not being Neocities enough, because I loved other peoples creative retro stuff with GIFs and tiled backgrounds everywhere and really nice pink/peach themes. I failed to provide examples back then, but I was talking about sites from the ārecommendedā page, like PetraPixel, Lazer-Bunny, Sakura Dreams or doqmeat.
I also started to realize that I donāt really have any use for pages other than the blog. But my instinct at the time was to try and push the styIing more into a generic Neocities aesthetic and go harder on the fish. Both aspects I found theoretically fun and wanted to explore, but my concluding sentences were prescient.
The deeper I dive into Neocities, the more I see other, more sober designs and other blog-first pages without shrines. [ā¦] Last week, I changed the colors into what I find a more Neocities-aligned Hanami-colored and pixel-fonted version. It might just be a different kind of generic, but I am more at ease with it.