Beyond the Sky
So tell me... how was it, being alive?
Beyond the Sky: yarning about video games and media since 2023
welcome to my site! ostensibly about video games; in actuality a virtual playground for me to explore and express myself. some of the content you'll find on this here site of mine includes (but is not limited to):
...plus anything else that catches my interest!
update frequency varies wildly. i am a hardcore hyperfixation girlie, and i do not control the speed at which i hyperfixate. site updates may be major or minor; every day for a week, or once a month! nobody knows -- not even me :')
i am a self-taught coder! everything you see on this site is the result of countless hours of online tutorials and reverse-engineering shit i thought looked cool. as a result, Beyond the Sky is currently not accessible, though it is a goal i am working towards! my primary focus rn is ensuring site-wide mobile responsiveness.
this site was coded in CodePen on Firefox, using a Macbook Air laptop.
there are no specific content warnings for Beyond the Sky. however, it is created by an adult with an adult audience in mind, and the language used and media discussed or recommended will reflect that. browse at your discretion.
where possible, Beyond the Sky aims to be spoiler-free. minor spoilers are tagged; pages with untagged / major spoilers are clearly indicated as such.
a loose, running list of things i want to make for or add to this site!
as a kid in the early/mid-2000s, i spent a lot of time browsing Pokémon fansites -- often via the cramped screen and shaky internet connectivity of my Nintendo DSi. i would spend whole afternoons following affiliate links, exploring every corner this passionate niche of the internet had to offer. back then, the internet felt like a magical place of creativity and self-expression; a space to indulge, free of judgement, in one's interests.
despite this, i never quite got the idea in my head that i could make a website of my own -- at least, not one that looked and functioned like an Actual Honest-to-God Website. while i had a Piczo website, that involved far less coding and far more drag-and-dropping as many glitter graphics as i could physically fit on a page. i was also young enough as to only have a single digit in my age, so what little 'content' existed on my Piczo site consisted mainly of terrible video game reviews, a barely-started Pokémon Mystery Dungeon walkthrough, and a detailed guide on how to 'zombiefy' your younger sister's Barbies.
that Piczo site has since been lost to time, but the yearning remains -- for an interconnected, user-created space for self-expression. i am far from the only person, especially on the indie web, to have grown tired of an internet consisting only of the same four social media sites where connecting with others is secondary to Algorithms trying to Sell You Stuff -- so when i happened upon Neocities by pure chance, i saw it as an invitation to return to the web i remember from my youth and signed up without so much as a second thought.
i created Beyond the Sky on a whim with the blind enthusiasm of somebody who has absolutely 0 experience in whatever it is they're about to do. prior to building this site, the most coding i had ever done in my whole entire life was when i had to use RStudio to make some graphs for a Microbiology paper in uni -- and i didn't understand a single damn thing that whole semester (i somehow passed that class, but only by the skin of my teeth)!
the bones of Beyond the Sky were constructed over the course of a weekend, which was spent feverishly alternating between Neocities and W3Schools; by the time Monday rolled around, i had something that functioned vaguely like a website and wasn't a complete assault on the eyes. since then, the site has grown and been revised as my coding skills have developd.
Beyond the Sky is a hobby and a passion project. i don't know what i'm doing; i'm having fun learning! and while i haven't moved away from social media entirely (much as i loathe to admit it, certain platforms do serve an albeit limited place in my life), i've been relishing the return to an anonymous, creative, and user-created internet. i can be whoever i want to be; i can express myself without the pressure or fear of my online persona being (easily) linked to my irl identity.* expending the effort to seek out new sites and discover new content myself -- instead of having it handed to me on a silver platter by an Algorithm -- is not only rewarding, i can literally feel my brain rewiring itself. it's wild, it's freeing, it feels like a small act of resistance.
i'm glad to be here. i invite you to come along for the ride xx
*this said with the understanding that nothing is ever TRULY anonymous on the internet, and instead as an acknowledgement that online anonymity is now an exception as opposed to the established norm it used to be. i have like a thousand more thoughts on this. if i ever write them up someday, i'll link them here :3
want to start your own indie website? wondering why the indie web is so vital? start here!
