Database Animal

1 February 2026

I currently own 6tb of external hdd storage, which isn't a lot (for freaks like me) but any time I bring it up in standard company I get a huge reaction. "What could you need to have that much of?". Stuff, things. In my case it's primarily television shows, films, music, books, and youtube videos. A youtuber I like and had written about unlisted their videos; the ones I have links for I can still watch (and have downloaded in case they decide to delete them all together), but the one that was recommended to me, the one that introduced me to their channel, is gone. Until I can find a way to find it, if such a thing is possible. Hazel, another youtuber, unlisted or deleted a number of videos that she wasn't pleased with the quality of. They existed on Archive.org for a while, until she eventually reuploaded them on her second channel with the caveat that she no longer stood by the research / points in the videos (or perhaps just thought they weren't very good). I'm torn between understanding the impulse (my deviantart account from when I was 13 - 17 is still up, with photos of me in my first cosplay ever, and I've wished for a way to scrub that from the internet for years) and understanding the reuploaders.

In the opening of the Glass Beach song "coelacanth" off their second album plastic death an overheard monologue that fades out as the music rises talks about the Markiplier / Ethan Nestor collaboration channel Unus Annus, and how even as soon as the channel had started and stated its goal (to upload a video every day for a year and then, at the end of that year, delete the entire channel and all of the videos) others were ripping the videos for preservation. I was one such person, not reuploading them anywhere but saving them to my hard-drive for future re-watching.

When I was a child growing up with limited access to anime, the YTV evening broadcasts of Death Note and Bleach were precious to me. I would have one night where I could stay up just late enough to see a single episode of my favourite shows. Bleach was my absolute favourite, and I found a way to tide myself over in the time between each episode aired. Before Bleach came on I would make a rickety stack of books and balance my shitty point and shoot digital camera on my makeshift tripod. My memory card could hold about 30 minutes of footage. I would zoom in on the screen, line it up just-right, and press the record button just before the episode began. As I waited throughout the week I would rewatch the recording on the camera itself, never even plugging it into the computer (it was a shared family computer at that time but it was my camera, so I could keep it in my bedroom with me).

Often my stack of books would be in the way of the chair in front of the TV, to have the best view. Sometimes I would get called away for dinner during the episode. Often my first full unobstructed view of the episode of Bleach was watching on the 2" screen on the back of my digital point and shoot. The colours were washed out, the pixels huge, the rolling refresh of the tv visible on the camera footage. And when the next episode aired I'd delete the previous episode (I only had one memory card) to film the next one.

The fact that the act of recording the episode to view it back later meant my actual viewing experience was worse isn't lost on me. There's a metaphor in there, well-worn by music fans bemoaning the people who watch an entire concert through their cell phone. I barely pull my phone out at concerts. It's sort of gauche to me, to be honest, but I also feel that way about singing along with the band and clapping in time with the music so I might just have some real problems with live music.

Part of my tendency to want to hoard data is about my own memory. It's not great. I forget so much, all the time, about things I need to remember and even things I love. "I've forgotten more than you have ever known", etc etc. But I worry about it, and when things vanish, unavailable for me to use their existence to prompt my own faulty memory, I feel a huge sense of loss. It's an oversized emotion for the things that can cause it; an internet personality I loved decided to retreat from the public eye. A trailer I saw in front of a shitty movie isn't findable with eager googling. A show I loved is only available in a pricey DVD boxset. I've seen the internet personality, and the trailer, and the show, and if I had a complete record of all of these things, would it make a difference? In my 6tb of shows and films and youtube videos how much can I say I've seen? In all the books that line my shelves how many can I saw I've read, how many records have I actually played? Am I holding onto things because I love them, or because I'm afraid of them slipping away?

This sort of toxic nostalgia, this fear of abandonment by inanimate objects, by pieces of art, isn't healthy, but I think it's common and maybe even natural. In a sea of information it feels more easy than ever before to get lost and drown. Who wouldn't want to hold onto a life raft, to remind themselves of things that are important? The more I use the things I own the more I enjoy them, which feels obvious, but the games I play and the movies I watch hold more sway over me than the ones that simply sit on the shelf or in the drive gathering dust. New years resolution; settle a bit more. Appreciate what you have, now. A youtuber you love could delete their channel and take all their videos with them. Your house could burn down and take all your books with it. Would you have rather read them?

Winter Storm, Warm Home

26 January 2026

I just got back to my apartment after three-ish days being away petsitting for a coworker, which was lovely in plenty of ways. Her house is huge, her cat and dog are darling, and it is warm there. Which has been a real factor these last few days as it's been hovering around -25 to -30 (celsius), before windchill.

And now I'm home, in my apartment that is mostly cool to cold and damp and where the pipes froze around -16, so when I knew I was going away I left the tap in the bathroom running. Coming home my apartment smelled weird from a pot on the stove I forgot to wash before going away, and it was a mess (as it often is) and there's nearly no food in the fridge and my recycling is overflowing... but I am so happy to be back.

I spent a treacherous hour biking to buy an external harddrive to set up a Jellyfin media server and as soon as I was home I was so glad. It's warm enough and when the radiators don't kick on I have a space heater, and there's no in-building laundry but I did laundry at my coworker's place so I'm set for a bit. My point is that even though I'm not living like she is I'm so happy to have my own place. And also that winter is really cold this year.

Now I'm settling in for a quiet night, I'm soaking my dishes in the sink and lighting candles and watering my plants. I'm getting recycling ready to go out (though I may not be able to put it all out tonight). I'm transferring data to my new hdd. I'm listening to good music and wearing clean warm clothing and just feeling very very content in that way you really on can when terrible weather outside is giving you good contrast.

I love my weird little apartment. I love living alone. And I get to keep doing it!

So, I've Been Playing Bloodborne

15 September 2025

My history with video games generally goes back decently far (the older I get the more this will be the case), but not as far as most people my age / generation. My dad was a youthful hippie type who didn't want me to watch TV at all (not sure if he wanted this to be a lifelong thing for me or was just waiting until a certain age), a plan that lasted until I went off to daycare and was promptly plopped in front of some Disney movie (probably Cinderella, I have a handful of memories of that). We didn't have a video game system in the household for a number of years after that, though.

I acquired a Nintendo 64 around age 10/11, which I was allowed to play until my dad realised the only games I had were 'too violent' - the solution wasn't tracking down any of the myriad less violent games for the N64, it was to get rid of the system. I had a friend who was willing to house it for me until I came of age, whatever age that was. I think he eventually just gave the system away, no memory of where my N64 actually ended up. Anyways, this friend (Chase) had an N64 of his own. His family did not share my dad's attitude to TV.

For the years between 10 - 15 (roughly) if I wanted to play a video game, it would be at a friend's house. Smash and Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64, Kingdom Hearts and Re:Chain of Memories once Chase's family got a PS2, Lollipop Chainsaw and Batman: Arkham Asylum and Fallout: New Vegas at our rich(er) friend Avery's house. All of the time I spent with a controller in my hand was on someone else's couch, passing it off in between deaths, or breaks for soda, or conversation.

And then, me and my brother found a Gamecube at a yard sale. It was our money, my dad couldn't really object. So the Gamecube came home with us. Once it was in the house my dad found that there was actually a social aspect to be had with video games. We played Zelda games together, mostly Wind Waker, but Four Swords and a bit of Twilight Princess (my favourite, even now).

Part of me feels a bit of it was sexism - he was calmer about video games and Star Wars and the Simpsons and plenty of things with my younger brother, but on the other hand, he was also calmer about a lot of things, so it's entirely possible it's just the difference of having a first child versus having a second child.

It took me a long time to get comfortable with video games, with a controller in my hands. It wasn't until I was in my late-teens that I felt able to move and look (using both joysticks) at the same time with any amount of control. First person shooters were a write-off from the get-go. My brother, raised with games both on the console and later, on the computer, grew up in CSGO lobbies and Minecraft servers, particular hives of scum and villainy I've never stepped foot in (mostly joking).

I started playing Bloodborne because all the cool girls I followed online on tumblr liked it. That's it, the whole reason. And I had mostly assumed that I would try it, dip a toe in, and go "yep, not for me. Too hard." From Soft games have their reputation for a reason, and while I didn't begrudge them that, I figured that Bloodborne would bounce me off it. And it did! I played for maybe an hour, got my ass soundly kicked, and put it down. I want to play a game that's fun, I'd think, and go back to a visual novel or a JRPG.

It's not that I'm totally skill-less, but I feel like I know my limits. And I assumed that Bloodborne was beyond them. It wouldn't be possible, and worse, it wouldn't be fun. So I dropped it. And then Elden Ring came out, so I bought that, and tried it, and bounced right off again. Too hard, not fun, same loop.

Interlude: let me say that one of my favourite games in my early twenties was Hotline Miami, a fact which shocked my at-the-time boyfriend (who I would later dump for similar moments to this) because he thought "I wasn't any good at hard video games". What I loved about Hotline Miami was its willingness to let you fail, and learn from those failures. Most Final Fantasy games may not be as moment-to-moment hard as something like Hotline Miami (in terms of like, aiming or reflexes), but they are a thousand times more punishing when you lose.

Hotline Miami, or Bloodborne, have a lot more in common with a rhythm game - the first time though you're probably going to miss a lot of things, and fail, and fail badly. But as you try again, again, again, you'll memorise the way the level (or chart) is constructed. Everything is always in the same place. No random encounters. You can play a game of Bloodborne as perfectly as you can play a song in osu!, or as badly. But it's the same chart every time.

As a dedicated rhythm game player, treating Bloodborne this way has unlocked something in my brain, and after many hours of trial and error, I'm finally getting good. While I'm sure that for any actually seasoned player watching me stumble my way through every encounter would be nail-pullingly annoying, I'm having so much fun. I want to keep playing, even when I'm losing and dying horribly.

There's been a lot of talk about game difficulty and accessibility, and while I can't speak to this from an accessibility point of view in terms of people with less / more limited dexterity or similar, as someone who is ablebodied but unpracticed, I've been enjoying the loop and skill-building that a game like Bloodborne provides. (My accessibility note: let me change the font sizes. I can't read any of this shit).

Since cracking the code on this I want to return to Elden Ring and try it again, with this mindset. Grinding not for levels, but for skills, techniques, practicing in the same way you do for a real-world sport. Getting used to how long certain animations take, memorising the chart, more or less. I also want to challenge myself to try other games I'd written off as not being for 'someone like me'. This last week or so of playing Bloodborne has made me feel like a kid, the controller just barely part of my body. It's been wonderful.

New Look, Same Great (?) Flavour

7 September 2025

I've been revamping my site again. I'm sort of always revamping, or rethinking. The homepage + blog were nice, and I was proud of what I was able to learn with them, but I wanted a site that felt slightly less "young".

There're a few reasons for this: reason one, I'm turning thirty this year, and while it does feel fundamentally extremely 13 Going on 30 (in that I feel much more like a preteen trapped in the body of a 30 year old than an actual real adult person tasked with things that matter), I wanted my site to feel more in line with the kind of fun slash playful slash adult energy I'm hoping to soon infuse into my real life wardrobe and possibly even decorating scheme.

The other reason is that I keep designing sites for characters and thinking 'damn, this looks great. pity it's just for this character and not for me though...'. Realising that I am in fact a character in my own life was very satisfying for me. So I've harvested some ideas from previous projects to pull this together. My code is always kitbashed together so we'll see if this causes any problems in the future.

Of the changes I've made, I'm very proud of this whole set-up.⁰²

Part of my main inspiration and desire to code is to see things represented physically and see if I can recreate them in css + html. I draw a lot of inspiration from physical design, print design (zines, magazines, newspapers, so-called 'coffee table books', and so on).

I like trying to represent and replicate the feeling of an extremely physical item such as a magazine online. There are some real drawbacks to a print-first design mentality, the easiest to spot being the layout. Unless you're rocking a vertical monitor (which I really do want, for discord and manga and whatever else), the layout styles are set-up different and I never want to make my adherence to trying to create something in another medium to lead to worse design.

I've always been of the 'good artists copy' mentality, in that I think you can learn a lot from trying to recreate something. I've spent a fair amount of time trying to recreate various magazines' layout design in the past (in Pages and Photoshop, mind you, as InDesign still scares me). Now that I know (enough) about coding, it makes sense that desire would transfer over here as well.

This might feel stupid, but part of what I love about the neocities side of the web is that it feels less 'cheap' than a lot of cookiecutter layout-based sites. Or if it feels cheap, it feels cheap in like, a DIY / zine / shot on video kind of way. So many sites today feel cheap in a 90s office building way. Cheap without any charm. And it's not that I want my website to look 'expensive', but I at the very least don't want to give off that cheapness that feels endemic to the listicleslop factories of the world. You know?

Anyways, all of this to say that I have been thoroughly enjoying revamping my site. I hope I'll write here more, or create more interesting pages. I want to use it more, and use social media less, as I can tell that one brings me joy and the other mostly just serves to stress me out. And if I'm not going to be touching grass any time soon, I may as well enjoy it. Right?