Site Info
Fine Print
This site is fully responsive and mobile-friendly, since I do most of my browsing on my phone. In fact, taking a stab at designing a neat responsive layout was one of the main motivations for creating it! Accessibility is a big priority for me, though it’s still a work in progress. If you encounter any accessibility barriers, please reach out; I’m always looking to improve.
My CSS Adventures
Like many others, my web design journey started on Tumblr, where I spent hours tweaking themes and experimenting with code. For a long time, the idea of creating a personal website felt intimidating. It seemed like too big of a leap, and I was always worried I wouldn’t be able to bring my vision to life. I even attempted a Neocities site before this one but gave up because I couldn’t translate the ideas in my head into the design. Being a perfectionist didn’t help either—I was frustrated that my layout didn’t look right across different screens, even though the site was mostly just for me.
When I started this project, I decided I wouldn’t quit this time. Instead, I embraced trial and error, letting myself experiment and have fun without the pressure of perfection. Since starting in April 2024, I’ve learned a lot about responsive design, CSS grids, and the importance of not getting hung up on the small stuff. I pulled it all together through a lot of Googling, trial and error, and way too much obsessing over tiny design details. It’s still a work in progress, but I'm proud of how far it's come!
I made this site because I needed a place to collect all my weird, scattered thoughts without the constant noise of social media. I love customizing things, having a space that's purely mine, and the idea of making something that lasts. Social media’s too fast, too overwhelming, and everything’s fleeting—here, I can arrange my brain the way I want, save it, and revisit it whenever I like.
On the Old and New Web
Of course, starting a Neocities site means you'll inevitably run into the "old web" and Web Revival movement. The whole Web Revival thing appeals to me because it’s trying to bring back the personal, creative side of the Internet, away from corporate control, ads, and constant debate, but I think people get a little carried away with the nostalgia. Web 1.0 was fun, but it’s gone for a reason. People miss it because it felt new and wild, but the idea that we can recreate that era is kind of naïve. What we can do is take the best parts of it—the creativity, the independence, the weirdness—and bring that into the present without pretending we can go back.
Another weird trend among those romanticizing the old web is the obsession with “don’t steal my code.” The best part of the early internet was how collaborative it was. People shared knowledge, helped each other, and didn’t treat HTML and CSS like intellectual property. If you’re going to be possessive over a style sheet, you’ve kind of missed the point of what made the old web so fun in the first place. So, if you want to take a look at my code or borrow a bit, go for it. I built this site from tutorials and code snippets I found scattered across the web, so it only feels fair to keep that cycle going. Use what you need; the internet’s a big learning ground.
Meow...?
This site's name is a mashup of "meow" and "molecules." I love cats and chemistry, so it felt right. I might consider changing it at some point, especially if I get a cool domain name (although marten.site is taken... u_u)
The mascot is my Brainstorm humanformer design. You might spot Perceptor here and there too, because I love seeing them in yuri together. Hehe. ^_^
Colophon
This website is is made by hand with Visual Studio Code and hosted on Neocities. It uses HTML, CSS, and JS.
Malihu's plugin is used to style my tooltips. The code for the image-based navigation menu was created Hill House. For my guestbook, I use HTML Comment Box. You can find the CodePen for the Periodic Table used in my shrines hub here. I also also use a few different libraries to improve the site's performance and look, like vanilla-lazyload and normalize.css.
Headings, buttons, and links are set in Victor Mono by Rune Bjørnerås while the body copy is set in Bitter by Sol Matas, both from Google Fonts.
Contact
If you have any questions or would like to chat some more, feel free to send me an email.