Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2020-10-17 03:02 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2020-10-17 03:02 pm
It's A Big Anniversary And I'm Allowed To Be Sentimental.
Back in the year 2000, twelve-year-old Riona (or Mew, as she called herself at the time), bright-eyed and enthusiastic and fairly new to the Internet, created a genuinely terrible Pokémon website. Every page background was a mosaic of anime screenshots or tiny animated Pokémon GIFs, rendering any text completely illegible. My solution to this was to highlight all the text on the website in bright yellow. It was magnificently hideous.
I have seen my childhood website cited in multiple places as an example of bad website design.
People can be cruel, so you might think this negative attention would have led to flames, perhaps discouraging twelve-year-old Riona from having a visible presence on the Internet in the future. Fortunately, I misspelled my own e-mail address on every single page, so I never received any direct feedback on my website at all.
My terrible website lasted a lot longer than it had any right to, but eventually the hoster did take it down. I was too embarrassed to even glance at it for a long time, but earlier this year I dug into the Wayback Machine to salvage what I could find of it. I'm not the sort of historian who can just ignore the ugly aspects of my own history (although that may in part be because I'm not a historian at all).
Anyway! I didn't actually come here to drag my heartfelt childhood attempt at website creation; there's another reason I'm making this entry. Here's what I wrote on the website's update page in October of 2000 (although I was unhelpfully unspecific about the actual date; the entry is just dated 'still in October'):
Oh, and I've begun a fanfic called 'Rachel's Pokémon Journey'. My FIRST EVER Fanfic! 4 chapters are up already- go take a look!
It's now October of 2020, and that means I've been writing for twenty years! I've written over a million words of fiction in that time, and I've had a blast doing it.
What a great hobby. I don't know what I'd have done without it. I've found work that relies on skills I developed by writing fanfiction. I've made excellent friends through fandom (hi!). I've received so many lovely comments. I've improved my confidence. I've spent countless pleasant hours writing fun dialogue and/or psychologically devastating my favourite characters.
In good times, writing's fun. At times when I haven't been doing so well, it's helped me to keep my head up and keep going; my psychological wellbeing stands on a sea of broken fictional characters. Whatever my state of mind, it's always been a good way to spend my time.
I don't regret a moment I've spent writing, even if some of my early work is embarrassing to look back on now. If I hadn't written the Pokémon self-insert or the terrible Friends angst or the gratuitously dark Jak II fanfiction, I'd never have improved!
It's hard for me to express how glad I am that I picked up this habit twenty years ago. You may have had some questionable ideas about website design, twelve-year-old me, but I can't fault your decision to try out this fanfiction thing. (I'm also pleased with my younger self for being brave enough to start posting it online; I wouldn't have expected it of her!)
It seems appropriate to end this entry with the 'home' button I created for my childhood website. Please enjoy this genuine masterpiece of early-2000s graphic design by a twelve-year-old. I was very proud of this. (From the update page: 'I did a pretty big update to the Moving Pictures Section, and made a Home link button. See- there it is, down at the bottom! Isn't it CUTE?')
I have seen my childhood website cited in multiple places as an example of bad website design.
People can be cruel, so you might think this negative attention would have led to flames, perhaps discouraging twelve-year-old Riona from having a visible presence on the Internet in the future. Fortunately, I misspelled my own e-mail address on every single page, so I never received any direct feedback on my website at all.
My terrible website lasted a lot longer than it had any right to, but eventually the hoster did take it down. I was too embarrassed to even glance at it for a long time, but earlier this year I dug into the Wayback Machine to salvage what I could find of it. I'm not the sort of historian who can just ignore the ugly aspects of my own history (although that may in part be because I'm not a historian at all).
Anyway! I didn't actually come here to drag my heartfelt childhood attempt at website creation; there's another reason I'm making this entry. Here's what I wrote on the website's update page in October of 2000 (although I was unhelpfully unspecific about the actual date; the entry is just dated 'still in October'):
Oh, and I've begun a fanfic called 'Rachel's Pokémon Journey'. My FIRST EVER Fanfic! 4 chapters are up already- go take a look!
It's now October of 2020, and that means I've been writing for twenty years! I've written over a million words of fiction in that time, and I've had a blast doing it.
What a great hobby. I don't know what I'd have done without it. I've found work that relies on skills I developed by writing fanfiction. I've made excellent friends through fandom (hi!). I've received so many lovely comments. I've improved my confidence. I've spent countless pleasant hours writing fun dialogue and/or psychologically devastating my favourite characters.
In good times, writing's fun. At times when I haven't been doing so well, it's helped me to keep my head up and keep going; my psychological wellbeing stands on a sea of broken fictional characters. Whatever my state of mind, it's always been a good way to spend my time.
I don't regret a moment I've spent writing, even if some of my early work is embarrassing to look back on now. If I hadn't written the Pokémon self-insert or the terrible Friends angst or the gratuitously dark Jak II fanfiction, I'd never have improved!
It's hard for me to express how glad I am that I picked up this habit twenty years ago. You may have had some questionable ideas about website design, twelve-year-old me, but I can't fault your decision to try out this fanfiction thing. (I'm also pleased with my younger self for being brave enough to start posting it online; I wouldn't have expected it of her!)
It seems appropriate to end this entry with the 'home' button I created for my childhood website. Please enjoy this genuine masterpiece of early-2000s graphic design by a twelve-year-old. I was very proud of this. (From the update page: 'I did a pretty big update to the Moving Pictures Section, and made a Home link button. See- there it is, down at the bottom! Isn't it CUTE?')