Checkpoint 3: Offer & receive

[nepenthee]

Hello! How is the challenge going for you?

We have had some more sign-ups in the last while, and it’s nice to see that the event being well underway isn’t deterring people from joining. :> The event playlist is also coming along; if you happen to listen to something fitting while working on your site, do consider sharing with us!

This checkpoint’s theme is as follows: Post a WIP of your challenge shrine and ask something you’d like hear about from your fellow webmasters, web-related or not. This can be as specific or abstract as you’d like (e.g. a paragraph, a crop of the layout header, a colour scheme; coding input, style concerns, writing advice, tools etc.).

You are welcome to use this post to chat about anything related to the challenge even if you do not take part in the checkpoint theme.

Comments

[nepenthee]

omg yes Larissa and I briefly talked about this question shortly after the challenge started, and I do in fact find myself thinking intensely of some other shrine projects these weeks.

I realize you're asking a rhetorical question, but it makes me think of a conversation I had with my mentor years ago. I tend to hold myself back when it comes to pursuing passions that require deep immersion over a prolonged and undefined period of commitment (e.g. shrining), for fear that my very limited energy will otherwise not last for the important long-term RL/work tasks that need doing, and other precious things (such as relationships) that need tending – conserving my resources out of a sense of obligation, basically, also towards my own wish not to drop or lose anything that I'm juggling.

My mentor back then said that rather than preserving myself and thus repressing my desires along with the creative drive, I must absolutely pursue those desires; the flow that comes from that would inevitably influence all the other things in my life, and give me the energy needed to keep everything important in flow; and my life would arrange itself around it, and in turn reveal what's important (in any specific phase and in general).

Others may keep themselves from creative pursuits for similar reasons, or because they're too occupied with daily tasks, routines, distractions and struggles to carve out time for creativity. What happens when we give ourselves to the craft, however, must be the same, hence all that inspiration and that pulling from all sides! (It also makes me think of what I'd once read about our ideas hitting us when we're in the shower... the effect of idle time and the flow of water.)

Anyway, although all the inspiration and musings regarding other projects that are now rattling in my head at times feel like an unwelcome distraction, they also fill me with hope... and I can't wait to finish my event shrine so I can tend to all my other thoughts soon!!

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I LOVE YOUR PARAGRAPH SO MUCH!! Hokuto mention included, because some things in TB can only be fully examined in triangle constellation. CLAMP SHRINES TB SHRINES YES.

Also, can I bring up how much I love that you signed up and told me this is about Subaru from TB specifically, not X, as if that were somehow odd... (I get where you're coming from.) TB and X are such distinct works, and X is clearly not about Subaru, so what we see X' Subaru from a very specific angle, one that serves X' themes; in any case, as you write, TB's Subaru is gone (in many ways). Now, in a time where stories are told and retold in endless multi-season series, remakes/reboots, spin-offs, franchises, crossovers etc. (ugh), I think it's more important than ever to look at characters not only (as is most frequently the case) as a single continuity, but within the context of the original work with its very own style and message. (And even to critically examine the different characterizations rather than just lick it all up as "truth", canon or not.)

I am very much looking to seeing your Tokyo Babylon domains populated after all this time!!