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.)