HELLO, FUCKERRRSSSSSS!

THAT'S RIGHT, BABY! WE'RE BACK IN TOWN WITH A FRESH COAT OF PAINT! READY TO START TROUBLE WHILE WE RUMBLE AT THE...

.... Scrumbleeeeeeeeeeeeeee???

Anyways --

If you're a fan of my work, you probably know the ol' neocities page I made. I've been maintaining it for about 2 years in a irregular fashion. And since I don't see myself abandoning this "website project" any time soon, I thought that making it an "official" venture with its own domain and an updated design was necessary going forward.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love neocities and I love my silly little webpage. It was a simple yet good enough way for me to make simple blogs, show my portfolio and have a personalized page for my own game (Tales From The Other Side). BUUUUUT, idk, as time went on, I felt like it wasn't good enough for what I was aiming for.

But Levc, why do you need a website? Why did you make it, especially because websites are fucking dead thanks to social media?

Well, I guess this blog presents a good chance to talk about why I made the website in the first place. So, why not? Let me ramble about why twitter sucks for a minute.

LET ME TELL YOU A STORY... That is divided into acts, like a play, or a webcomic, or an absurdist indie game.

ACT 1: TWITTER IS DYING

It all started as a response to twitter (or "X the everything, but it's still just twitter and not much else, app") being kind of SHIT.

Elon bought it, and it has been getting worse and worse over time. To the point that around the end of 2022 it got SO BAD, everyone got into panic mode because of the possibility of twitter dying for good, and sought new social media spaces to migrate in case it shut down. Now, it has been over like 3 years since, and we can say it didn't "die" perse. But most people, or at least a TON of people, for the first time ever felt the actual dread of a social media site dying for good.

Influencers, like youtubers, have been asked questions in the vane of "what would you do if youtube was gone tomorrow?" all the time. But even then, I think all of us live today assuming these big social media spaces will be here our whole lives, despite similar giants that were thought to be invincible dying in the past.

We have people making their whole careers based around these websites. Even when the website itself doesn't generate money for the users, it's the means by which people like me find jobs and can make a living. So, even if nobody will die from a lack of social media in their lives, any platform going down today would be the end of many people's income... that, and it would get boring to eat without a cool youtube video to watch.

Now, twitter is not like youtube or twitch. You don't really make any money from posting content (or at least, at the time, you didn't make money from posting... who am I kidding, I doubt anyone's making a living out of it today).

Twitter is what I'd like to call an actual "social media" platform. A place where you react and interact with other users in a more direct way, rather than making content that others interact with in a passive way. As a "Microblogging" service, it became the best way for celebrities and influencers to interact with their fans, and brands to advertise and promote themselves to the masses (both things that in hindsight were a bad idea in the first place).

But it is thanks to twitter, that I get to make money from my music. People that find my youtube or soundloud could find me on twitter, dm me, and pay for an original song to their liking. To this day, this is how I make most of my money from my art (I don't live from it, but it helps a ton). IN FACT, I make youtube videos and post on twitter with the explicit goal of having the right people find me.

Without twitter, this wouldn't be possible. Most people don't like sending e-mails, and youtube doesn't have a way for users to message other users. Without twitter, I wouldn't have a music career. Like, I got to join many creative projects BECAUSE I found them on twitter and sent them a message asking them to join! The OSTs I made for like 2 or 3 games? I got to do that BECAUSE I found a tweet asking for a composer!

SO, imagine the face I made the moment that "twitter will die" posts went viral.

This is a moment in internet history I don't think I'll be able to forget, mostly because before the BIG "oh fuck" moment, every so often "twitter is dying" was trending. Elon musk was legally obliged to buy the damn website in 2022, and ever since it has gotten worse and worse. The sentiment of "twitter will die" was palpable, even if most people didn't really believe in it.

Every once in a while, a new "twitter will die tonight" post went viral. Everybody made posts sharing the places they could be found in case twitter died for good, shared "twitter alternatives" like mastodoon or hive, and then went on with their lives the next morning. It was a real cycle that kept repeating over and over, until one day, EVERYTHING changed.

On november 17th 2022, shit hit the fan.

(Image Source)

Elon Musk, as an ultimatum, sends an e-mail that asks his employees to "sign up for long hours at high intensity by Thursday, or leave". The response? Hundreds quit right then and there. And with that, the twitter offices temporarily close.

Everybody went "Oh shit oh fuck what is going on?" that day. Many made jokes about it, others were indifferent or got mad at people for believing twitter would die for real this time, and many, like me, actually worried about the future. A moment of clarity, where many people realized how much they depended on something like twitter existing.

Even Toby Fox reacted by creating the now beloved "UNDERTALE/DELTARUNE newsletter", that's how bad it got!

It was here that I got invested in the idea of moving away from twitter as the only place to build an audience. The platform had no future I wanted to be part of. Things only seemed to get worse as it became a tool for misinformation from the right, getting attention only seems to get harder and harder, and Elon is a loser that only wants to make everyone as miserable as him. Simply put, twitter wasn't the place I loved anymore.

But now I am confronted with an interesting challenge: where exactly should I go from here?

I'm not a big personality. At the time I had around 600 subs on youtube and around 400 followers on twitter, and even now I have only 1.5K on youtube, and 950 on twitter. I'm almost getting to the status where people can make fun of me, but I'm nowhere near being "famous". Moving away from twitter is factually like starting over. It's not an easy action to take, but I started looking for alternatives, making profiles EVERYWHERE.

In the end, I stuck with bluesky. I got in when you could only be invited with a code on july 2023, one year before it evolved into a viable social media site. With this, I hope it is clear that I wasn't playing around, I was hoping to find something to make my home.

But my story with bluesky is complicated and constantly evolving, from shilling the website in 2024 as it was getting more and more users (after another Elon fuckup), to being more critical of it in late 2025 with its questionable decisions. It is GOOD, better than twitter, but it's not perfect. Especially at the time, when being invited only meant not having enough followers to justify investing time in it.

So, that same year, I decided to do something drastic. To make something that, in my eyes, could last forever.

I decided to build a website.

ACT 2: NEOCITIES, THE FUTURE IN THE PAST

On june 2023 I announced, with little fanfare, my own original neocities website! All build in a few days with the help of a template. I found out about neocities (a modern take on the concept of geocities) thanks to Chart (the Toby Fox's japanese articles translations guy). After finding his webpage to be simple yet efficient, I decided I wanted something like that for myself.

So I went ahead and learned about html and css, the basics, and build this beauty of a website!

At the time, I thought I had done my best with it!

An index with the latest youtube videos I made, an about page with all my socials, the portfolio (which at the time was on wix but later was moved to the site), a space for my blogs on random topics, and a place where people could learn about my future projects. It was perfect!

It was essentially what I had in mind from the start. There's little of my work I don't feel like doesn't "fit my vision", mostly because I tend to shoot for things I'm capable of with my current skills, or with a month or two of learning. Even my game's demo launched as I wanted it to be from the start, with later changes being more of a response to feedback or new ideas on the table. So, I was proud of it.

BUT AS TIME WENT ON, I got tired of looking at it.

I don't think it's ugly or something...

BUT when it reminds you of the fucking meatly's site, and it looks LAMER? That's when you HAVE to do something.

And besides, even if I didn't get tired of it, the "social media" aspect to neocities wasn't the best. I didn't use it, and it only functioned as a way to spoil people of my secrets and updates to the website. What's the point in hiding secrets if the tool that brings more people to your site just spoils the fun bits?!

No matter how I looked at it, whether it was my own flawed design decisions, or the act of making website building work as a social media platform by the hosts, it just felt like it wasn't a "real website". And the idea of hosting a page where people could learn about my own creative projects wasn't working, when people probably expect something like a formal .com or .net domain, OR THE PAGE JUST LOOKS KIND OF UGLY!

SO that's the challenge. Take the core concept of the neocities page and update it. But there's one problem... I have no idea how to.

First things first, I went ahead and bought a domain.

There's no better way to force you to do ANYTHING, than making pressure by investing in something that requires justifying said investment. So I had to validate the choice of paying for the "domain of my dreams" with a website that deserved such luxury.

But here's the thing, how do you make said website???

Tools to make websites without coding exist, some even come free if you buy a domain (wordpress is the one everyone knows). But the problem with these services is that they aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall work with rigid templates, or somewhat flexible pre-made widgets. And you can make websites that look good, but the problem is that a lot of these templates are templates for a reason.

They're generic, the things EVERYONE uses for their websites. There's nothing unique or interesting to look at, a true continuation of the homogenization of the internet. EVEN when you're not on a social media site where every profile looks the same, every option gives the same templates and structures.

(Shoutouts to shadok, the cool creator of LOVEWEB, who for some reason follows me on bluesky.)

There's a reason I chose neocities, it brings back the spirit of every website being its own thing, unique to every person.

But that's the thing, right? It can only be unique, if you make it yourself. So I had no choice. I had to take a month or two to learn web development.

ACT 3: A NEW HOME

Now, I didn't document the process of creating this new version, so I won't go in detail about every step taken. But I think it is evident, looking at both sites side by side, what I meant by "updating the site". It is an evolution of the core concept I made back in 2023.

Simple backgrounds, a simple interface, flat colors and the overall feeling of "this page was made by a real person".

The differences rely on tackling the weak points of the original design.

While I can't be sure of how many people actually read my blogs or visited the site, I'm pretty sure those who didn't stick around for long would cite any of the reasons listed above.

So I went ahead and did my best to make it right.

It is less simple, and more "minimalist" in its intent. There's nothing fancy, but it looks like I was having fun building it, or that I paid someone to make it.

And since I took the time to learn and make the website myself, it means I don't depend on anyone to update it with ease. I made it in such a way that it's not hard to make blogs or new sites if needed. IN FACT, I even made a cool template showing off every reusable element.

It's not like making more pages is a piece of cake or anything, but it helps to streamline the process. Speaking of streamlining...

All of this is possible in part thanks to tailwindcss, A "utility-first CSS framework". What does this mean? Well, basically, it lets you work on the CSS (the thing that stylizes webpages visually) directly on the HTML (the structure and content stored on the page file itself).

It was a PAIN to learn how to implement on my project (it involved learning what node.js even is). Even if I didn't have to learn a new coding language or anything, it still took a month to learn and understand how html and css work. But it's cool! It lets me build new web elements on the fly that are simple, clean and responsive.

For someone that just wanted to make good-looking static websites, this was the DREAM. And I have, yet again, to thank Chart. It's because of him that I learned what tailwindcss even is. I also have to thank my friend Luan Himmlisch (Master Pose), who took time from their day to explain how css and html work.

I also have to mention that, yes, the Tales From The Other Side webpage has been updated too. Ironically, this is the webpage that changed the least. Like I said, I don't do things without a strong vision. I knew what I wanted and so I did. Which is why, at first, I struggled to figure out what to do for it.

I did two things to gather ideas. First, was checking one of my main inspirations, the UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE websites. Both are exactly what I wanted, simple and to the point. And second, I just read what tailwindcss was capable of doing with ease.

With this, I made a better navigation bar, I did a simple screenshot gallery, added animations when you hover the mouse, and did things like that picture at the top with its corners "vanishing". Again, nothing crazy, but cool-looking enough for people to look at it and go "Oh damn, this gamedev is going serious! He even paid someone to make a professional-looking website. How fancy, how fancy!"

And that's really what this is all about, isn't it?

ACT 4: THE START OF SOMETHING REALLY EXCELLENT

In the end, this whole project was just me investing in myself. I didn't want to depend on social media to talk about whatever I had in mind, or share my work as a professional. I like to think that, even if I have a hard time doing so, I'm working to become a "good artist", one that is professional yet approachable.

This is the reason why I love social media, believe it or not. It is the THING that makes my career, even if small, possible. Without it, nobody would know about my music. Fewer people would've played my game. Most of my friends, ones I hold close to my heart, are online, including my best friend who lives in another country. Social media is a wonderful tool that has been used to bring amazing things to everyone.

And yet, social media is also the worst thing that could've happened to the world. It erased personal websites, it lets hate hurt, and misinfo spread like wildfire! Like 2 or 3 corporations have total control of our community spaces, and dictate what we can or can't do. All while being supported as long as it makes money.

Even if I like to believe that what we have today will let me make my dreams come true, the truth is that it's anything but guaranteed. There's nothing we can do to stop it, but we can at least invest in alternatives. Even if it's fun to bully users from whatever random twitter alternative comes to mind, I think there's value in trying your best to push whatever you think is the right thing. I'm not sure bluesky will kill twitter, but I'll support the best option, and that includes my own website.

Now, like I said. I don't think most people, even my fans, will care for this website. But I'm not doing it because I know people will 100% read everything I post here. I do it to express myself, to leave something that others can glance at and take something from it. And isn't that why art is made for?

Anyways, that's all I had to say. I have more plans for this place, but this is good enough for a blog celebrating the new website.

See ya! Thank you for reading, I hope this either motivates you to make a website (neocities is the best starting point) or to start using twitter less and less. I don't have it on my phone anymore, you can do that too. You don't even have to move to bluesky, just stop using twitter and do anything else.