I like looking at random websites and Neocities makes doing that easy with their ability to sort by “Random” on the browse page. Seeing what people make is very fun to me. I don’t care if it’s “bad” or gross or incomprehensible, or if the person has no experience with HTML. I’d like to showcase just a few websites I’ve come across during my searches for what’s out there. For the fun of it, I've put each website into a category.

https://f369bdfadc37d5aadc4079189db0cd2d.neocities.org/
Category: Creepy

First impression: Weird image. Are the URL and text on the site code? Looks like so. I decided to translate some of the text.

The first line on the landing page is hexadecimal.
69 74 20 77 69 6c 6c 20 72 75 6e 20 74 6f 20 67 65 74 20 79 6f 75 translates to “it will run to get you”.

I couldn’t figure out what the lines like “Hes hoou canak bod ad? ick palck! tot.” or “qoo! sqa!” meant. I assume it’s letters jumbled throughout a sentence or some kind of cipher.

I did, however, recognize one of the last lines to be Base64. When decoded, it says “hidden forgotten”.

Some of the text on the website are links. “qoo! sqa!” links to the Neocities homepage. “tals” links to a custom not found page. The word “found” on this page links to w3schools.

What does it mean? Probably nothing. It’s likely just someone messing around while learning HTML.

I’m unsure of the image’s origins, but it was used as a thumbnail for this YouTube video uploaded in 2011. It’s of two people playing Ju-On: The Grudge for the Nintendo Wii. Not surprising. Moving on.

https://freemoolah.neocities.org/
Category: Educational Humor

This site has facts about cats. I never knew some of these facts, like how there are “vampire kitties” and that they’re opposed to “lasana [sic]”. It’s important to learn something new every day, so this is a good website. The words “Website for cats + Gabi and Orin.” scroll across the page. I would have to assume Gabi and Orin are the names of our webmasters here.

It’s a nice website, but I’m still waiting for them to post the results of the Cat Olympics...

https://sporkmagic.neocities.org/
Category: Personal

It’s not the prettiest, but I like it. It “gets the job done”, as they say. My favorite part is the map with pins showing all the times the owner has had his heart broken.

He links to a couple cool websites, one of which also being a favorite of mine: Cameron’s World, an art piece by Cameron Askin. Sporkmagic has a very apparent love for music as well. I mean, he's got a last.fm account; that's pretty much as much of a music lover as you can get. And damn, that's a lot of scrobbles! I appreciate his page on Radiohead very much.

Sporkmagic has a “funky duck” page. The music is incredible. Truly life-changing. Mr. Sporkmagic, I used to know a girl you would’ve liked – but she broke my heart, too.

https://deepfartcontest.neocities.org/
Category: Art

What the fuck is this? Like, seriously, what the fuck is this? It’s a cool layout but what the fuck is this? “Deep Fart Contest”? I don’t think I will. It mentions acceptable submissions being drawings, paintings, sculpted busts, and abstract art. But like, what is it?

I love the animations across the website and the disgusting imagery. The photo accompanying the “Watch” blurb on the homepage is particularly revolting. It makes my skin crawl. Note that despite the name, there are no buttholes on the page. The photograph of a puckered mouth sure is reminiscent of it, though...

It mentions certain dates, but it doesn’t mention year. I can’t view any of the submissions as the pages don’t load properly. To see whether this was already over, I decided to see if they had their Neocities profile open. They do, and it looks like this:

So this “contest” was 2 years ago by now. I couldn’t find anything about it. They have the Neocities supporter badge. Is this the creator(s)’s main site? I am left utterly confused by this.

https://corru.observer/
Category: Game

I found this completely by chance. It’s insanely impressive. As for what it is? It’s a super stylish visual novel. Open it and try it for just a few minutes and see what you think. It’s bizarre. I especially enjoy the point-and-click aspect and the barcode motif. The UI is just as stylish as the rest of the game. The jargon used really caught my interest. I was very proud of myself for immediately guessing I was traversing a memory while doing the segment where you walk around a street as Akizetesche.

To my surprise, there’s quite a bit of fanart for the game, a fan-made wiki, and its own TVTropes page. Is this more popular than I assumed? It’s very cool.

https://heytojiko.neocities.org/
Category: Art

Oh wow. I never thought I would find this. I am almost certain I have seen this site before. If I am not mistaken, this is by an artist who used to be called "Casinos" (or "CCCasinos"?) or some variation of that. They go by the handle "nicooo" now. I wonder if they remember this site. Their style is very nice. I can see its influenced by the works of Osamu Tezuka.

I poked around a few pages before returning to the main page. Scrolling down, I saw the words "been here before? Click Here". Having been here before, I clicked and was brought to a page with different links detailing information about the site, characters, while also providing a link to a gallery. I decided to read about the site.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I've seen artists - especially niche character artists who make "adoptables" - give away or sell their lore-heavy characters. I read a little bit of the story, but honestly...it doesn't really grab me at all... There's something to be said about one of the tulpa characters telling Tojiko "you are not the same man who gave us life". Life imitates art, eh?

https://lordvantshotel.neocities.org/
Category: Creepy

I like the design. None of the links work, save for a Twitter page with 0 followers and the check-in page. Lots of references to Shaye Saint John. Unfortunately I am not familiar with the character...person?...so I can’t say much about it. I would’ve liked to have left a comment, but the guests section was a non-functioning link, too.

On the check-in page, there’s more links to other pages. Nearly all of them point to a non-existent “shayesaintjohn.net”, so they don’t work. I dig the site’s graphics and layout. It’s a shame it’s not functional.

https://futureson.neocities.org/
Category: Humor

True.

https://wolfhorrors.neocities.org/
Category: Art

This is the homepage of a person who likes to draw furries. The art style is nice, it’s not something I see everyday from the average furry. The small eyes make it look more mature.

Unfortunately, the gallery section of his site links to OneDrive folders that don’t work anymore. One link is to deviantART, but it says the account is deactivated. He does link his Twitter on his about page though, where I could peruse through his collection of art. It’s nice, but I don’t really have much to say about it besides that. Functionally it is scarely better than a carrd. While a blog is linked, it was last updated in August 2023, only having 3 posts.

I guess that’s the problem with a lot of these websites. They’re full of dead links or they’re designed in an inconvenient way. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone link to a file-hosting service to showcase their art. Stuff like OneDrive and Google Drive aren’t meant for hosting galleries and I promise that it shows, even when their links aren't broken. Twitter is okay for a gallery if the user doesn’t post or reply to people with a bunch of memes all the time. I much prefer someone hand-code a gallery section, but that takes time and effort to figure out. I went through many iterations of my own gallery section until I settled on what I have now, so I get it.

The site I've saved for last, though, is different.

https://iwillbewaitingforyou.neocities.org/
Category: Creepy

This was one of the more complete ones I’ve visited. It appears to be someone’s diary mourning a past love. My first thought was that this is a work of fiction, but I couldn’t help thinking of all the times where someone was acting like a psychopath online and it turned out to be legitimate. That Amazon reviewer saying how well the knives or axes they bought worked for killing, or the YouTuber who flipped a coin to decide whether they would only kill themself or their co-workers too.

"i will love you
for always
and forever
from now until the death of tthe sun
you are my one and my only"

That last bit links to a page titled “pleaselookforme”. It details how badly the author longs for whoever they’re speaking to.

"i'm not so good with computers
but i know that you'll find me regardless
i will be waiting for you
and i know that you'll reach out and take my hand when our time comes"

It sounds deeply sad and delusional. There’s a few links on this page. For once, they’re not all broken and dead. “are you sad?” links to iwillbewaitingforyou’s Gaia Online account. It turns out the image of a sad girl in a wheelchair isn’t entirely random; it’s their avatar on the game.

"those who conceal their sins do not prosper
but those who confess and renounce them find mercy

september 23 2025

i will wait for you on the beach of destiny and we will
walk hand in hand into the waves of fate
i was born for you"

For curiousity's sake, I searched up their Gaia username. I found this forum thread where they responded to the question "What does success mean to you?"

If this were anyone else, I wouldn't be taking the usage of the word "walk" at the end so literally. You'll see why I have the feeling it is literal.

Going back to the “pleaselookforme” page, the word “laugh” goes to a page with a bunch of memes. Did the author and their love laugh at these images together? They're very similar to stuff people tend to send each other on Discord.

The poem on the right directs to a page titled “diary”. From this, we can read that the author is wheelchair-bound. They mention eating bamboo salt. A quick Google search shows it’s occasionally used as medicine, especially in Korean culture. I couldn’t find a good source for this information, however. From the way they talk about it, they're eating this salt to gain the ability to walk again.

The author talks a lot about how their love smoked. Fitting that when you click, smoke rises from your cursor.

"and we don't have to live for very long
there's just a little bit more than two years left until we drift away
and then we'll have eternity
and eternity minus five hours and fifty two minutes
is still eternity"

I can only assume from all this that the author – or main character, if it’s fictional - plans to kill themself by September 23, 2025. My initial assumption was that this lover broke up with them, but after reading more, I am not so sure. There's an implication they killed themself already. I'll just spoil it for you now: this is an ARG. It's tagged as such on the site's profile.

There’s still more to find on this diary page. The lines of red text each link to further diary entries. They’re...odd, though, because while I feel they’re written by the main character, they seem to be written from the perspective of their obsession. I’d give a run-down of it all, but honestly, you should just read it all yourself. It is far from poorly written. It's deranged.

While it calls itself an ARG, I am not sure what the "game" aspect is. The site profile comments are open but those don't appear to be for anything but the creator's personal comments and updates. Perhaps you're meant to interact with the "Reika Ruysch" account. I've never used Gaia Online before, though, so I have no idea how it works.

By far, this was the most interesting of the sites I visited. No dead links, no errors, no 404 not founds; just a piece of art in the form of a website. My only gripe is the pages aren't very responsive and don't always look right at certain resolutions. I wonder what will happen come September 23, 2025...

Even if a lot of the websites were in pieces, or confusing, or had practically no content, I enjoyed looking through all of them anyway. The ability to sort by random allows people to find online spaces that truly would be hidden and forgotten otherwise. Who knows what any of these people are doing right now, at this moment. Maybe they've forgotten about these sites. The first one I listed hasn't been updated in 3 years. iwillbewaitingforyou was updated just two months ago.

If you have a website that's unfinished or you want to make a site but haven't yet, please, make it! You never know who will find it and feel the need to tell others about it. Everything you do isn't inherently just lost to the void. I love finding these places tucked into the far corners of the internet. Not all websites are created equal, but that's the fun of it. Perhaps next time we can explore more websites together. Ciao~

I’m an artist, but I’ve never been good at it. This isn’t me being hard on myself – I just didn’t have the inclination or discipline from a young age that some others might possess. Some may call this inclination “talent”. While I was excellent in academics, it was the arts I cared about. It could very well be because it’s the one thing I actually had to try at. Save for math, which did require some effort, but not nearly as much as the arts. Nothing compared to it, not even technical drawing.

This could all be explained with the fact the things I described – math, technical drawing, academics as a whole – are “objective”, they can be acutely measured, as there is little matter of taste in them. There is no anxiety or uncertainty to be had. That is, unless you’re just bad at those things. But even in the badness there is certainty, as your badness is measurable, and there are concrete reasons for its existence. With art, there is significant anxiety, because while objectivity can be applied to it, it can be ultimately thrown out the window.

Now, one may be tempted to throw a wrench in my beliefs with “well, there are art classes and art schools…” which is true, but I would argue that these aren’t objective either, for the same reason that art in of itself is not objective. I think in specific of the YouTube user LavenderTowne who attended art school. I implore you to look her up. I do not personally find her art to be very good. Subjective, isn’t it? A school, somewhere in Canada, looked at her art and found it to be acceptable for a degree. Keep in mind I have nothing against this person; her greatest crime is that her art is not to my taste, which is fine. However, it’s difficult not to point out her portfolio is reminiscent of what you would find on a young teen’s Tumblr blog in the 2010s.

Obviously, I am not a part of any art school, nor am I a person that should be considered to have any credibility. This is where the uncertainty sets in. Am I wrong in finding this lacking? People with far more experience than me say it’s fine. So is my art fine? Is what I make worse than what this YouTuber makes?

It gets muddled further when you think of an artist I do like: deviantART user sharkplane77. The user draws, among other things, living airplanes (think of Planes, the spin-off of Pixar’s Cars), usually on paper and made with colored pencils to an obvious degree. Despite its unprofessional nature, I absolutely adore it. I genuinely think of this person as one of my favorite artists ever.

It’s hard to deny that sharkplane77 and LavenderTowne have more in common with each other than both of them do with what we’d consider a professional artist. Both have rudimentary art featuring a basic understanding of perspective and composition (just like me). Both are beloved by others as well. Sharkplane77 was surprised to learn they had gained a small cult following online. In the comments of a post they made acknowledging the newfound recognition, they replied to another user, in part:

“thats just my opinion though, but obviously the less technically skilled an artist is, the more likely they'll be made fun of no matter what it is they draw...while god-tier artists can draw cringy cookie-cutter junk and get great popularity just cuz it happens to look good >.<” (source)

Ignoring the accurate sentiment for another time, it appears sharkplane77 has ideas about the truths of “good” and “bad” art as well. Something can “look good” but be “junk”. Beauty isn’t everything in art, so even a good-looking piece of art can be bad. Art can look bad but be good. Art and the quality of it is, ultimately, about taste. The art of Pablo Picasso is both taught about in schools and written off as no better than a child’s chicken scratch. The rules can help you as a foundation for a piece, yet your willingness for the total disregard of them can be what makes or breaks your work.

I want to be good at art. I always have. But how can I ever tell when I am good? It’s immeasurable. I’ve had people mock it, I’ve had people admire it. So how? How can I possibly know? I’m an anxious person and I like certainty and nothing about this is certain. Sometimes I think I am good and I look back months later and think I am god awful. Sometimes I think I am god awful and look back months later and think I am good. It’s madness. Technical rules can’t be your Bible, as going against the doctrine can be the right thing to do at times. It can be paralyzing. In fact, it was; I didn’t draw for a few years in my pre-teens and teens. The paralysis was cured by its catalyst: the anxiety of, and the desire to be, good.

Nowadays, I think I’m alright at art, probably. I don’t have any numbers to prove it or any list of criteria to use when measuring, which is annoying, but it’s how I feel. I suppose that’s all art is, anyways. Even what counts as art can be contentious. Anti-art, a real thing that exists, is often described as artwork.

So, maybe I’ll never be good at art. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Recently, I made a character design of a knight. It was my first real, true attempt at not only drawing armor but designing original armor. As to why I did both at once...well, I am a masochist, after all.

Thankfully, it is easier now than ever to find resources for all sorts of artistic endeavors. Going through tutorials and using photographs as references, I designed this fair lady:

The poor girl has no name yet. I drew her based on an idea I had of a beast girl who wishes to be a kind, noble knight - however, due to her nature, she is plagued by fantasies of violence and assault. As to not frighten people, she takes the form of a human woman.

Since she rejects her nature, I did not use pointed ridges for her armor like the ridges on her body. The way a character dresses can say a lot about them, so I was mindful while designing this aspect.

At her core, she is brutal, so I gave her a weapon to signify that part of her. It's a silver spiked club; sort of like a morningstar, but without the ball. The inspiration came from this picture:

I thought what if the weapon was just the handle part? and went from there. Sometimes inspiration is what you personally see in something, and not the actual intended vision. As Maung Thuta said: "A statue doesn't have to be inspired by a statue." (source)

Overall, my biggest mistake with the design is that I did not consider what her real form would look like while making it...

Nonetheless, I gave it my best shot. I gave her true form a lot of pointed ridges, black horns, and very small wings. She's supposed to be a wyrm. In her world, wyrms are seen as the less graceful, less respected version of dragon.

To be frank, I am still not very great at drawing dragons or dragon-like creatures. All the detail makes me go a little crazy. I think my prior practice helped a lot here. I could still do a lot better, but that will come with time.

I don't plan to have this woman as my main character. Actually...I have not even thought of the main character yet (ーー;) But I'll think of something! I think it is important to have likeable/interesting characters, even if they're just side characters. Something I love about 【Dark Souls】 is how there are so many eccentric, interesting characters, and you can really become fixated on any of them. I hope to bring out that kind of fascination in people with my own creations.

Until next time! ★

I've designed a leucrocotta (also known by nigh endless variations of the words "crocotta" and "leucrocotta") as a part of my medieval-based world. I picked this as it came up during a conversation I had with David, where - among other creatures - the leucrocotta was mentioned.

For the appearance, I was inspired by a few things, one of which was this photograph I saw on Pinterest.

(source)

It's of an okapi, which have particularly long, black tongues. I ended up basing the leucrocotta's appearance pretty heavily on an okapi. Unlike an okapi, however, the leucrocotta does not feature stripes, large ears, or very thin legs.

For the sclera, I chose red as it is very striking. It is also reminiscent of one my favorite animals, the bearded vulture. Evolution-wise, they supposedly have these as a threat display. For my leucrocotta design, they just have them because I thought it looked cool.

source: Michel Gunther

I also chose to use red on the chest as it is supposed to resemble how male geladas flaunt the red flesh on their chests to attract a mate. I already used this idea for the ghouls in Angelmorningstar, so I dialed it back a little and just had the red be a splotch of color on the chest area. Perhaps female leucrocotta don't possess this marking...

I considered making the ass blue, but I wanted to avoid too much color and distraction within the design. No blue ass for you, leuleu.

As for the traits of the leucrocotta, I based it on actual descriptions of the beast, especially Pliny's from 【Natural History】:

"When crossed with this race of animals the Ethiopian lioness gives birth to the corocotta, that mimics the voices of men and cattle in a similar way. It has an unbroken ridge of bone in each jaw, forming a continuous tooth without any gum."

and

"In Ethiopia there is an animal called crocottas, vulgarly kynolykos [dog-wolf], of amazing strength. It is said to imitate the human voice, to call men by name at night, and to devour those who approach it."

This, to me, is absolutely fucking terrifying. And because I'm just like this, I decided to crank it up even further: my leucrocotta is a creature which preys on the heroic and empathetic of this world. The people who wish to save & help others are the ones who fall victim to it.

You may notice that in both written descriptions and visual representations of the leucrocotta, it is most popularly represented to be canine-like in some way, possibly because the creature these people were describing was what we now call a hyena. However, I think visually and conceptually this depiction is incredibly boring, nevermind how accurate it is. Ultimately, the biggest source of inspiration for my design was from the amazing person behind 【A Book of Creatures】.

(source)

I am obsessed, OBSESSED with creatures that resemble peaceful herbivores and should otherwise be peaceful herbivores, but are actually violent and cruel. Bonus points if the creature is also a carnivore. You can see this within the design of the unicorns in Angelmorningstar, which feature lion-esque front legs.

I am not sure I will ever get tired of this concept. I think my initial fascination of it came from the classic possessed horse scene with Farnese in chapter 124 of 【Berserk】 where the trusty steed of Farnese suddenly becomes possessed and attempts to rape her.

For today, that's all I have. Currently I am working on an illustration featuring the leucrocotta and Cateline, our noble knight. I hope to see you next time! ★

I know I tend to switch between sporadically updating my site, with updates being actual months apart, to updating it almost daily. As I said in part of my QnA, this is because I am very fickle – though this appears to be a trait I share with other Neocities users, as some make an entirely new layout from scratch every 3 months.

My layout, however, has only entirely changed once or twice. The earliest snapshot on the Wayback Machine shows that on February 4th, 2021, a little over a month after its conception, my website looked like this:

(source)

Basic. Embarrassingly basic, even. Worse than a Carrd, even. ○|￣|_

But this was the equivalent of dipping my toes into the waters of HTML & CSS. Many people new to Neocities (the hosting service I use) start themselves off with a template they found online. I did not, and I can’t recall if that was because I didn’t know there were templates or if I was too stubborn to have the layout of my website be something someone else made.

This version of my website, version 1.0, lasted until February 25th, 2022. Unfortunately, after this point it is difficult to get another accurate snapshot. They exist, but they look, uh…

(source)

I’m not sure why this is. I promise you I did not bork my website this hard. The thing you’re seeing so prominently is a custom navigation bar that stuck to the left side of the page. It is a little sad to me that version 2 of my website is essentially lost, even if it’s likely poorly designed.

Regardless, the next earliest snapshot that isn’t broken was taken on June 8th, 2023:

(source)

Version 3 isn’t too far off from what I have currently. One of the major philosophies behind the design for my website is that the art must be accessible without clicking anything. It isn’t hidden on a separate page, you don’t have to click an arrow to expand a little box, it is right there upon entering the home page.

There is one big problem I have with this version of my website and that is the category box. I tried several different ways to get it to look less unsightly, but it always took up so much space and I am not certain if anyone appreciated it. It made finding all of my art a chore consisting of multiple clicks which is even worse than what I was trying to avoid. I kept this little box for way, way too long.

The other problem is the segment for character information. Every page was either nonexistent or horribly incomplete. I am never going to finish ALL of those pages, so they have been removed in their entirety and will remain that way indefinitely.

And now, we can reach current time, with version 4.0 of my website. As of December 2nd, 2023, here is my website:

(source)

It is the cleanest, most readable, and least incomplete version of my website thus far. There are no dead links or links to horrifically incomplete pages. The most important information is at the top of the page, while things people likely care less about are at the bottom. There are probably ways I can make everything more accessible. For instance, I think I could do with some kind of image hover effect on the gallery to give more indication to the viewer that they are supposed to click the previews to view the full image.

I’d also like to find more music to add to the home page. I’ve added and removed several tracks by now, as I am picky with what plays. It must be gentle and non-offensive to the ears. This isn’t because I hate hard music; I actually prefer it over something like a piano track. I just inexplicably feel it’s the most appropriate. It could be that it’s not too distracting from the art being presented. It also won’t turn people away. As much as I love loud music, it can be jarring and annoying coming from a website, especially when there’s no audio controls. This is fine if your vibe or purpose is being jarring and annoying, but that’s not my goal with this website.

Actually, speaking of which, I don’t know what my goal with this website is. Maybe it’s to be more like the artists I enjoy. They tend to have their own websites, like Patricia Piccinini, or Daniel Drabek or Paul Komoda. Or maybe it’s to have a place besides vapid, hostile social media to contain my art. I have a tendency to forget to put content warnings on things, and it isn't because I think they're a sign of oversensitivity, but because I am not phased or offended by most things and I genuinely forget that other people are. I'm not very sure what will make people happy if good intentions aren't enough.

Of course, being mostly located on a personal website doesn't make it impossible for me or you to receive hate. People will go out of their way to make sure you know they don't like you. I will say this, however: putting hate on mine or anyone else's guestbook is not a good idea (｡･∀･)

Another problem I've run into is being put in situations where my art either A) isn't allowed to be posted in a certain place or B) can be posted, but must be categorized as pornography. I have nothing against pornography; I make erotica and porn myself. What irritates me, however, is having to treat my own piece as porn simply because there's a naked woman in it. Of all the things are sensitive about, artistic nudity is the one I understand the least... Is it artistic nudity when the subject is unattractive, and pornography when the subject is beautiful? Regardless, having my own website means I can put anything anywhere and there is practically no pressure to put labels on my hard work.

Perhaps, though, I made this website because I like things with an older aesthetic and I hate to see that style disappear. It's been compared to "old web" or "web 1.0", which wasn't an entirely conscious decision. I like old websites but didn't realize there were terms for that sort of thing.

Compared to others, my site is very primitive and simple. To me, it’s everything I need. I would like to continue expanding upon it until, at the bottom of my home page, the word “present” here is replaced with a number.