Checkpoint 2: Ambitions and challenges

[nepenthee]

The challenge has garnered a good amount of webmasters, from familiar to new faces, yay! To anyone reading this while still debating whether to sign up: Do consider joining us even if you might not finish your shrine by the deadline. You are invited to make use of this space if it motivates you and drives the completion of your shrine along!

My questions this week: Do you have any specific plans for your shrine aside from the challenge theme, e.g. is there anything specific you want to achieve, something new you want to try out, a skill you want to pick up? Where do you foresee your biggest challenges?

Again, feel free to chat about anything, no need to answer any of these questions. Also note that any previous checkpoint posts will stay open and you are more than welcome to reply and continue conversations there!

Comments

[nepenthee]

I have three equally important goals for my shrine:

1. I want to make sense of my feelings on the subject and to lay those feelings to rest by finding the precise words to conserve them.

2. I want to establish some links: between the subject and the two poems I associate with it, or at least the particular kind of pain they evoke (unsurprisingly, this is also to sort out these poems emotionally for myself), between the two poems themselves, and between the lyrical interpretation of the subject and the site's design.

3. I want to create a shrine whose substance is not made up solely or predominantly of textual content (in the sense of personal writing) so as to explore and demonstrate what kind of shapes a shrine may assume. (If people continue to think that making a shrine requires being able to write long texts and to analyze things verbally, especially now that other venues are available for strictly factual information, they will continue to think of themselves as unqualified – even if they carry love, have something to express, would like to make websites, can code, enjoy making graphics and/or like to collect information or images! – and then, idk, continue to hang out exclusively on social media or make sites that do not even attempt to communicate any of that personal love.)
   
   To that end, I want to employ other elements that I am fond of in fan spheres and would love to see more of in shrine context, in this case the aforementioned poetry (in lieu of, say, song lyrics that used to be featured on shrines and layouts more frequently, in various forms, from headers to title tags, headings and music subpages) and also graphic edits. (One of the things I love the most about Tumblr are gorgeous graphic sets with a quote or some verses in the captions, at times from the work itself, at times from a different work or medium altogether, thereby establishing a link between the two. As a set, these works of art – fanwork! – may constitute analysis and interpretation of the subject by themselves, without need for writing.)

I was able to figure out the poetry part last month when it comes to how I want to integrate it structurally and contentually, and am looking forward to playing around with typography once it's time to design the site (as much as I dread the font questing). My biggest challenge will no doubt be the graphic edits, as I don't enjoy making graphics and the kind of style I envision isn't, well, something I've made much myself (texture-heavy, decorative, perhaps focus on colours/shapes), and the outcome will heavily depend on how much time I have to hunt down resources and experiment with them… As much as I dread it, I think it'll be an interesting exercise to make graphics that are neither just more-or-less uniform insert images (as on my other shrines, and typical of shrines in general) nor a layout header that has some design interdependencies/functions to consider.

I'm trying to get all the writing done by mid-December at the latest (ideally by the end of November!) so that I'll have sufficient time to play around with all the graphics I'm dreading… As intimidating as my ambitions are to myself, I'm glad for the challenge deadline and the reasons they give me to speed up the writing part and just get it done!!!