How the year can fly when you're doing the same things as always! It is the 1st of January, which means new horizens! New days! Repeating the loop! But that isn't important to you or me, what IS important is that today marks the 1 year anniversary of the Stellarbat Arcade!

...Or, well, since i released the first VERSION of it. I've had my account since i was 15 because i had fallen victim to wanting to take up a creative challenge but lacked the real drive to learn everything on W3Schools (You don't have to do this! Just copy and paste relevant code snippets!). Up until 2024 i had it set to a black background with a construction sign and left it like that for a few years. The only real update that site ever got in the meantime was the image breaking because i hosted it on Discord.

Hey, i still have the image i used! Look! See?

Handpainted grunge ... the alignment of the stars on the face ... Hindsight is a strange phenomenon when it comes to artwork ... Ugh ...

I've a knack for old looking things. This isn't a secret. If you've seen my art you can see i've drawn inspiration from old 2000s stuff PLENTY of times. My art for Stellarbat is based on my own recounting of how that era looked. Bold, uneven lineart and bright colors but everything looking worn out like a faded sticker.

It's a good look, i think! There's a much wider lens for that era to be viewed under but everywhere i looked only honed in on the scene-core bit. That's good in it's own right, but i don't quite identify with it. When you see it everywhere it can be easy to think it comes across as insincere or performative - by no means a generalization of the crowd, there's definitely people who align with it who grew up in that timeframe. Quiz them on if they know bands like Metro Station, though.

That's all to say, this site is mainly an outlet for that. Rushed in some areas; i wanted to get it done for the new year back in 2024, and with my admittedly limited knowledge of HTML at the time i could only do so much ... A redux of the homepage is in the works at the minute! I'm currently battling the demons of getting an animation degree so i can't dedicate all the time i've got to pushing out updates -- not that it's a huge concern.

The site hasn't changed much in the past year. Mainly the introduction of the Song Of The (absurdly delayed) Week page and giving the gallery a dedicated menu (which wound up breaking despite working peachy-keen in pheonix, i have NO idea what happened there.)

A moment of silence for this... this layout... why did i do that... sweet heavens.

But hey, that's enough of the past. We've been there already. What do i want to do this year?

I've got friends, you see? I have friends, and buddies and chums, and i cherish them dearly. Friends who do creative work! Friends who do creative work in the video category!

Why do i say this? The state of things out on the face of the internet are BAAAD. I jumped ship from Youtube long ago for my own reasons but i've been vindicated by the state of things. Send lengthy nostalgia trips to me all you want (don't actually do that, i'm not interested at all) but no number of absurdly attached strangers will drag me back.

That being said, as much as i can suggest individual websites like this as an alternative, there's very little desire to actually commit to change. Who wants to move when html is just WAY too hard? Who cares if the 'Machine-That-Stabs-You-With-Knives-O-Matic' is stabbing you with knives? Everyone else is doing it! That's how it feels watching people stay on places like Youtube or Twitter.

All of that is to say, provided i can wrap my head around it first, i want to try and make things more accessable by making a template. Granted, i'd have to figure out how to organize putting videos up on a site without it heavily impacting the space it has long-term and make my own first before extending it to other people, but regardless of how long it takes, i'd like to help that become a more attainable goal.

Sgtcharlynne has a really good resource blog written on the matter, i'd definitely give it a look if you want to delve into the topic yourself.

Speaking of blogs! I'm in the midst of debating whether or not to redo or totally retire the whole blogging thing on this site. As much as i can write if given a good enough prompt to do so, sometimes i struggle for things to say, and i feel awkward about them sitting with zero updates for several months (or a year! that is WORSE!). They may disappear, they may be replaced, i have no idea just yet... But it will be decided sooner or later.

I am very pleased with how things have been going. It's a slow start, sure, but things can only get better, and they will! I hope that in 2026 i can hammer in some more progress with this site and it'll be even better than when it started.

That's all from me. Take care of yourselves, I'll see you next year!