Okay. First post on the new blog. How we feeling! I'm really fucking hungry as I type this. Probably going to get a beef dip with cheese after this. Mmm. Back on topic. My site's different! That's crazy! Let's talk about that.
So, the main reason I decided to change up everything is literally because I felt like I wasn't having enough fun with it. See like... part of my creativity kind of depends on copying others. Not in a malicious way, just in the way that I like to have an actual tangible thing to base a concept off of. You can see this in my stories, my OCs... the majority of my additions to MJIH are heavily based off of pre-existing technology and the real life story associated with them. It's not exactly copying, just transformative.. and maybe a lot more people do this than I realize. I mean, we write best from pre-existing experience, don't we? Hence the heavily based websites. They're only similar in presentation, I promise I spent an absurd amount of time coding them in my own sub-par optimization. I mean, the fact that these 2005 layouts are mobile friendly should be proof enough...
I also generally had a lot of fun researching these sites. Despite the fact that web.archive is perpetually shitting a brick, when it does work it's really, really fun to come up with some website I use regularly and see what it looked like before I even had my hands on the internet. Places like Radium Village and Lake Louise, and companies such as Rogers and Pepsi have a wildly different and frankly much more fun layout than they currently do. I checked out most of these with my brother, and we'd sit there and go WOAHHHH when the most creative website layout from 1998 popped up onscreen. Skip a couple years, that same layout is wildly different, a bit more polished, but still has all those fun, creative layouts and graphics. Hopefully in 2030 we shake this whole minimalist shit. I understand it's the easiest accessible layout, but we can still be accommodating and whimsical.
As to why it's Canadian themed... I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about my relation to Canada, and clear up some stuff. Because sometimes I feel like people see my surface level obsession on where I live, and assume I'm some sort of all-forgiving nationalist, when I'm not. My affinity with where I live naturally started with Newfoundland. Over on the rock, we're all very, very proud to be Newfie. This is probably partly because Newfoundland was practically its own nation for a long bit, and was one of the last provinces to properly join Canada. We're always putting Newfoundland over the whole, just because of how our province was brought up. Not to mention there are a lot of other provinces that tend to put us down, so we seek unity in each other.
My personal experience with this being in the very, very minor discrimination I've faced in Alberta. (It's not on the level of POC by any means, which is why I call it minor.) Just little things, like ohh why don't you speak like a normal person. I can't understand your accent even though you're only saying one word slightly out of the norm. Tree isn't a number. Yadda yadda. I think the reason a lot of Newfoundlanders tend to be very big on teasing humour is because it's our defence from being the laughing stock of the country. We talk funny, we're lazy, we do nothing of value... so right back at'cha.
For this reason, I actually hated Alberta for a long time, along with a bunch of other political reasons, cause. Who doesn't fucking despise Albertan Politics. Things got a lot worse around 2020. It did for everyone, I mean, we were all so steeped in politics at the time because what else was there to do? And then, for me, 2022 hit. I don't know what it was particularly. I couldn't exactly give a date. But sometime after a trip to Edmonton, it felt like something in my head just clicked. A four hour road trip over to capital city, and suddenly those canola golden fields were something more than passing blurs on dissociative car rides.
The domino started with West Edmonton Mall. I got really absorbed in the concept, mostly out of nostalgia for what the mall was like pre-pandemic, but everything followed. I was excited to go to Calgary, travelling inbetween towns was suddenly something exciting, then came the research, and the history, the archives, the events...
I also discovered objectum around this time. Maybe that helped? Reading from other's experience, I do also have to wonder if I clawed out of a years long dissociative episode. Who knows. I just started loving every second of being where I was.
And wow. Did that improve my life like.. tenfold. It's stereotypical go say "just think positively!!!" but sometimes to keep your sanity you need to get reeeeally annoying about loving everything. So, yeah. Canada means a lot to me, as a geographical position (hiking out in the rockies, the coves of Newfoundland, the flat nothing of the prairies,) and societal entity (the art, cities, locations,) but.. politically, no.
Politics is not my lane. But I keep myself educated, and I definitely don't agree with a lot of shit that goes on here, and I want that to be clear. We all need to fucking... treat each other, and the land we're all stuck on, a lot better than we currently do. We will never be without flaws, and god hope someday the people that can actually do something pick up the fucking slack.
This turned a lot less about the site and more about Canada. But, arguably the site is heavily connected to Canada, by proxy of me being connected to Canada, so.. topic.. somewhat salvaged? Whatever. My original goal of filling space has definitely succeeded. Thanks for reading, if you did!