Daily Archive for March 26th, 2008

More site talk, plus fandom spooge

I gave up distortedsociety.org and guild-slayer.net. The former domain had expired about a month ago when I was too broke to renew. I was having trouble with HostRocket about add-on domains anyway, and the DS project itself never really took off like how Yukino and I had hoped it would.

The latter domain closed because, similar to DS, the project itself collapsed in on itself; Slayer disbanded and most of its former members are now inactive. The forum itself was hardly used anyway… only Aiko and I ever really posted stuff, which hardly anyone else checked. And so when it got hit hard by spambots, it was easier to just delete the whole thing than to try and clean it up.

I’m in the mood to create content but I don’t know what. I have a whole list of website ideas that I’ve been hanging on to for, like, eight freaking years now (no exaggeration), but I just don’t know if I have the talent needed to create anything.

For example, I’ve wanted to reopen my Vincent Valentine site for years now, but I don’t have the technical prowess to update its code to conform to the standards set by modern browsers. I’ve uploaded it here so you can see that it’s in desperate need of repairs. Plus the layout itself was never, IMHO, all that great. It’s really hard to read the text, for one thing, and the layout is ridiculously cramped for anyone running a resolution higher than 800×600 (read: everyone). But this would mean either giving the layout a complete overhaul, or creating an entirely new layout. I don’t know if I can do either anymore.

And then there’s the fact that the FF7 universe has expanded to include a lot more than just the PSX game. I don’t really want to play Dirge of Cerberus just to find out Vincent’s backstory. I don’t have a PSP, nor am I going to buy one, just so I can play the new Crisis Core. And I’ll be damned if I watch that awful Advent Children again just to pick out from among all the fanservice the few shining places where Vincent’s character is actually fleshed out.

And actually, that’s the thing. Vincent Valentine has become nothing more than sexy eyecandy for loser fangirls to masturbate over. I’ll admit that back then (and even now) I thought he was the best-looking guy from the FF7 cast and that’s initially what made me unlock him in the first place (after Yuffie, I didn’t want any more asshole “optional” characters), but what really drew me in was his background story. I don’t like the way people usually portray as a tragic , emo anti-hero. I like that he endured incredible pain and hardship, yet through it all he remained faithful and devoted to a woman who abandoned and betrayed him. I like his strong sense of morality. I like the way he is intrigued by Cloud and his party, not annoyed at the thought of accompanying them.

And dammit, I like his limit breaks. They were freaking sweet. It was ridiculous how easily I could clear the Battle Arena with his Chaos.

I’d have to rewrite a lot of stuff, not to mention actually create a lot of sections that I never got around to making back when I was working on this site. Probably rename it too, since “An Angel’s Fear” never matched Vincent and is pretty fucking tacky. And then there’s the fact that absolutely NOBODY is going to want to visit, since who on earth visits character fan pages these days anyway? Everyone uses Wikis. And as shallow and superficial as this sounds, what would motivate me to put in a lot of time, energy, and obsession to make a site that nobody else will ever look at?

Oh man. There’s also this. Look at that freaking resolution. It looks like it was made for a 640×480 audience. It probably was. Gah. Well, I guess maybe now people could look at it on their iPhones. :P

You know, I take back what I said. I kind of want to work on this crap now, and put in all that time, energy, and obsession to make stuff that nobody else in the world would care about. Heehee.

Some people go out and save the world. I stay at home and cobble together outdated HTML and badly Photoshopped images in homage to fictional characters from ancient video games.

Anyone out there a dream interpreter?

Care to take a crack at what any of this means?

I dreamed that I was playing goalie for a really terrible soccer team. I didn’t know any of my teammates and so I felt a little awkward ordering them around, especially since it’s not like I’m super awesome at soccer either. The other team wasn’t that great but because our team was just THAT BAD they kept stomping us. And I was blamed for our pathetic score because, as goalie, I let in all those goals.

In my dream, there was this odd rule about extra points. Just like in American football, if you scored a goal then you had the chance to score an extra point by kicking it in with just the goalie to guard… which is kind of a weird rule for soccer, but whatever. So not only was it tough because I had idiot teammates who wouldn’t help me at all, I also had to deal with this extra point crap.

Every time the ball came at me, I always JUST missed it. My fingertips would BARELY touch the ball, or the ball would skim milimeters above my head, or I would be just one step away from lunging for it. Stuff like that. Whenever I punted the ball away (which was very rare since I hardly ever touched the ball) it would go almost straight up in the air and come down, like, four feet in front of me. I was pathetic, and I remember getting mad that I wasn’t doing better.

I don’t remember what the score was (if we were even keeping score) but basically the other team was stomping us flat. Most of them were my old soccer buddies from intermediate school days. I didn’t recognize anyone from my team; they all had blonde ponytails, and they were all taller and more athletic-looking than me… which I guess was part of the joke since they were so terrible.

Finally, with like twenty seconds on the clock, the other team scored again. They set up for the extra kick, and I was standing there, nervous as hell. I remember worrying that I was going to be sick. The ball flew through the air and smashed me right in the gut, and I crumpled over and puked.

That’s when I woke up. Thank God I didn’t ACTUALLY throw up.