Checkpoint 5: Priorities

[nepenthee]

Happy new year, everyone!

As you can guess, things have been quiet around here as December was a busy month. I hope you’ve had a good holiday season, and can start fresh in the new year.

We have one more month until the challenge deadline. How are your shrines coming along? Do you have a preferred order of tackling things, and how do you set priorities in light of the deadline? What are your thoughts on uploading a shrine in unfinished state?

I hope we’ll pull through together and can kick off 2026 with some new shrines! :D

Feel free to use this post to chat about other challenge- and site-related things.

Comments

[evenstar]

My shrine is...at an utter standstill right now, to my shame. I blame the holiday season, which was emotionally akin to being put through a meat-grinder while fully conscious, never mind physically torturous, but that's a reason, not really a decent excuse.

I desperately want to get it 'done' to a functional point, with all my heart. I can't tolerate the idea of another "maybe one day" sitting on my webspace, which is what a lot of my fanlistings were/still are. I've had enough of one days and I want nows; so I'm going to put my shoulder to the wheel. It might be slightly unpolished by the time January ends, but I want to see that as a possibility to keep it growing beyond the initial things I've planned for it -- a living shrine, not a dead fanlisting. I feel like I've wasted SO much time on fanlisting maybes over the years in a desperate need to be seen and to make other people happy, and all it brought was absolute misery...I want that curse broken for good this year, if nothing else. ♥

In light of a deadline for fanlistings, it was usually layout first, then 30 seconds of backend (because what else is there to do?). My priorities differ for a shrine: words, layout, then extras (gallery, so on). The words are the heart of a shrine, for me personally (though this doesn't mean that I think that ALL shrines should be wordy! That's just what I like best ♥), and once I've got them, time to make a pretty layout to house them in. 'Omake' stuff like a gallery (fairly sure my shrine will have a decently-sized one) could require a little more fiddling with PHP, folders and subfolders, and who knows what else, so that's always the thing that comes last. Hopefully I can distract the visitors with things to read while I get the eyecandy online! 😂

[nepenthee]

Rin, this is such an uplifting and rallying resolution to read in the new year (and first thing in the morning here), thank you for your voice so full of determination and hope!

I deeply relate to your "I've had enough of maybes and one days", and have been feeling that for the past year, hence also this event, and it's been growing stronger and stronger. I have so many heartfelt projects in the works from the past 5–8 years, and I'm sick and tired of feeding on my big dreams for them only to be oh so disillusioned as time passes, I grow older, life changes shape and the dreams are still unrealized, turning from hope to chains. (And yes, they are all projects my current self still feels strongly about.) I want to finally break free, to make my visions reality so that I may live with the real things, however imperfect, rather than the ghosts of what could be, and share the things I love with others, and make room for new dreams.

I am highly looking forward to your shrine (not just because it's Subaru, but because it's you), and your writing will absolutely be central and precious and not just a prelude to the extras!! (Excited for the gallery too, the present-day web needs more themed CLAMP galleries. But as you say, that can come later.)

Let 2026 be the year where we manage to shake off our curses!

[larissa]

I'm right there with you that the words have to come first, because otherwise I've no idea how I'm going to structure the site. (Sometimes I write sitemaps and then discard half of them while writing because it turns out they don't fit my subject matter.)

Also, big mood on the "one days;" I would love to make my all-time dream shrine this year but I still don't know if I'll be able to do it. I have like three or four shrine subjects that have been waiting in the wings a long time, I need to finally get them out into the world...! (If only so many of my chosen subjects didn't involve replaying a 40-60 hour JRPG.)

[larissa]

I've been making good progress! I started off the year by finishing the main section of the site, and now I've just got relationship pages left. Hoping to get some work on them in the coming week; weekends tend to be too busy but I should have plenty of opportunity before a slew of appointments chip away at my time in the week after.

I'm finding that a lot of this site is retelling the story, which is perhaps not the most exciting for visitors who already know it. However, my chosen subject is a character who features about 150-200 hours deep into a video game, so like, I can't expect all visitors to know the story. Frankly, a lot of the reason I'm making the site is just to appreciate a good narrative, so perhaps it all evens out in the end.

Regarding uploading unfinished shrines: yes, please, more of this. Having a framework to start from is so much easier to come back to later — and it's often very helpful to get encouragement at such a stage of the journey. (The only problem is when it takes you a decade to come back and finish the site... no I don't have experience in this or anything........)

[nepenthee]

I have no intention to get back into FFXIV and have forgotten everything from my first month(s) by now, so yes I will appreciate your retelling!

Also, returning to an unfinished site after a decade because you still want to finish it is better than never!! It's the shrine equivalent of a sequel or off-hiatus announcement!!! (I think I'll try to finish my Gwendolyn shrine next time I replay Odin Sphere lol. "Now or never" is a strong driving force when a video game shrine has been sitting around long enough and you finally get around to the replay...)

[lexicalcrow]

Well, I've finally got a layout and design I'm happy with, and an introduction page drafted, so. Things are progressing! I've also simplified my sitemap a lot so it's not a whole bunch of nested pages or something rip. But at least now I have enough on my plate that I can fill in the rest of the pages and hopefully get this thing finished. :D

For me, the design was really important to get right, so the vibes of the site matched what I was aiming to get across. It was a struggle to balance 'shadow god vibes' with still making it feel Taskmaster-coded, but I think I've done the best I can on that front.

Having a sitemap is also really important for me, so I know what content I need to come up with and create, and now that I have that sorted, things should progress a lot faster.

I'm actually really excited to get it done though. My first neocities site was going to originally be an old-school style Taskmaster fansite, but it never really got off the ground. So I'm excited to get a proper Taskmaster site up even if it's more specific than just an old fansite kind of vibe. This has been a really nice challenge for me, and I've enjoyed it, despite the struggles. :D

[larissa]

Man, I know what you mean about needing a sitemap. Any time I try to make a site without one, I end up spinning my wheels and not knowing where to go next.

And I'm glad you have a layout together! Truly that's one of the most difficult part of making a shrine; it can be hard to figure out how exactly you want to display your subject.

Wishing you luck with your site!

[nepenthee]

Happy to hear you've had a good time so far! And yay for the layout!! Nailing down the visuals is such a motivation boost. Smooth sailing now, full speed ahead.

[blaubeermars]

Hi guys,
my shrine is making sliiiightly progress, but I’m still not satisfied with the layout. I’m having a hard time putting the gallery together in a way that feels right, and I’m also struggling to find the right words to properly describe the relationships. Sadly, I can’t really do any fancy shrine stuff right now... mostly because I don’t have the time, and let’s be real, I’m not skilled enough either, haha. It’s a bit frustrating, but for the moment it’s okay, and I’ll keep working on it. I also missed the last checkpoints because the Christmas season was rough :_:

[nepenthee]

Hi Christina! I was wondering where you'd gone. I hope you've been able to recover a bit from the rough season. If you feel like it, feel free to share your thoughts in the previous checkpoint posts; they're as much staggered discussion topics as they are invitations to periodical progress reports after all. :D

I spied a Frieren figure in a relative's new figure collection over the holidays, and they told me some about the animation, which made me bring up your plans for the shrine hehe. You'll get there, and you'll keep learning and improving!! Which part of the gallery are you struggling with?

[blaubeermars]

Ah, I don’t really don't know. For example, I’m looking for images from the anime—official art without any text but I'm stuck somehow. And something I always find really tedious is making thumbnails. Does anyone have an idea of how to do that quickly? I think it’s the repetitive process of creating these graphics that makes it so exhausting for me, I’m not sure.

[nepenthee]

My go-to places for official anime and manga images are Minitokyo and Zerochan, unless you can somehow get your hands on a full batch of artbook scans. I also stumbled upon Danbooru last year while looking for specific images for a gallery I worked on; as in Zerochan's case, make sure to add the "official" tag to your search (see my example links) or you'll get a lot of fanart and, in this case, many gross views as well. If you're unsure whether an image is really official art, double check with SauceNAO or a similar site. Does that help any? (If anyone knows of more recent dedicated galleries, I would love to know! I miss dedicated artbook galleries run by individuals dearly.)

For mass-making thumbnails of images that are all about the same size (e.g. anime screencaps), I use Easy Thumbnails. I haven't used it yet for images of different sizes, so you'd have to try. If I make thumbnails manually, I use Photoshop actions to speed up the compressing/saving/closing process.

By the way, if it's of any help to you at a different stage, I have listed the tools I use to create galleries (from thumbnail-making to mass-renaming to generating the code) on my repository under "gallery creation".

[blaubeermars]

Oh wow, haha , WHAT? I just checked your site (the credits page) and you literally have EVERYTHING I need. I feel so dumb for never looking there before 😅 I even found a blogging script, which is perfect because I really can’t stand WordPress (sorry!). Thank you so much!!! this makes everything so much easier!
BTW I've been thinking about how I could incorporate the animated Zoltraak idea, and now I'm wondering if I could find a script where a white beam follows the cursor? That would be similar, and I think it would be kind of cool.

I do know Minitokyo (and honestly I think it’s better than Zerochan, since there’s also a ton of artwork in between), but sometimes the site is just inaccessible for me.

[nepenthee]

Haha I'm glad it's helpful! Just ask anytime you wonder whether there's a better way of doing things.

I haven't customized cursors in forever, so I can't help there. I'm fairly certain I've seen cursors with a trail of sparkles on some websites.

[nepenthee]

I procrastinated through nearly all of my off-time in late December because I was so exhausted from work and socializing in the last months of the year, holidays included. The biggest thing I did for a while was restart the layout's header (first and last draft from 2021), which fills me with hope. For better or for worse, the new draft looks very different from what I had always envisioned for the rest of the site, particularly the graphic edits I want to make... so at this point I'm not sure yet which direction the layout will go.

Last weekend, I finally duked it out with the summaries and translations, finishing 2.5 pages. That leaves only about a page of personal commentary to write (excited!). Will have to think about whether or not to make drastic cuts to the rest of the text if I have enough time during the event, because I don't want the text to be the primary or sole focus this time. Once that's out of the way, I hope there's enough time left to take care of the visuals. If not... I may have to cobble something basic together and do a visual revamp after the deadline.

On uploading shrines unfinished: I've participated in challenges before where I knew towards the end that I wouldn't be able to fully finish the shrine in time. I'd prioritize the pages crucial to my vision for the shrine, and to my interpretation of the subject; visitors should be able to grasp my angle and narrative and infer where the rest of the shrine will go. That means postponing not only sections such as the media gallery, but also, depending on the subject, part of the relationship section (not all relationships are equally important), select analysis pages such as symbolism, later parts of summaries/descriptive pages (the visitor doesn't need the whole story to see the themes of the story and my personal vision), and so on.

While I prefer to upload shrines fully finished in terms of content because I conceive their components as a unit, I have learned from said previous events that defining the essentials – by which I mean your own non-negotiables – that need to be done by a deadline works wonders to actually get shrines finished. The ideal in your head will always outdo what you are capable of making, but only what you have crafted can be shared as your own accomplishment (your own MIRACLE); finishing a project requires and means finding out what's feasible by actually turning it around in your hands, not in your head, and then coming to terms with it. And if I've done my best during the event period, either the momentum will carry me towards my own personal finishing line shortly afterwards (and shortly may mean some more months), or, if I'm exhausted, I will take a break and resume work soon because it's all still strongly present on my mind and I don't want to lose it by dallying.

Also, something I wish I'd factor in more often as encouragement not to get everything perfect in the first version: Getting to revamp my own shrine later on has consistently been SO MUCH FUN. The bulk of the work is done, I don't have to wear myself out by stretching myself in all directions, I've spent enough time with the thing that I know what bothers me about it, and am distant enough to pick it apart. I can fully commit myself to messing around with the layout to achieve my true vision, polishing the content to my heart's content, and following up on little details I've always wanted to pursue further.

[blaubeermars]

Dear Lethe, that sounds very relatable, honestly. After such an exhausting period, barely having any free time and then slowly easing back into things makes a lot of sense. The fact that you still worked on the header shows that the project still matters to you, even if everything feels a bit messy right now.

Your approach to unfinished shrines sounds really reasonable. Focusing on the parts that are essential to your view of the theme instead of trying to do everything at once is probably much healthier. In the end, people don’t need every single detail to understand what you’re trying to say.

And, to be fair, I think I’ve personally never uploaded a fully finished shrine (oh my god lol), so the idea of submitting something that’s “good enough” and then continuing to work on it later is actually pretty comforting. It honestly makes me feel calmer, because I tend to work on personal projects for a hundred years (O_o). It’s clear you’ve learned what works for you from past events, and the fact that you enjoy revisiting and refining things afterward fits that mindset really well.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you find a good balance between what you’d ideally like to do and what’s realistic right now.