New Look, Same Old Blog!

New look, same old blog!

welcome to a wholly improved skysometric.co! after years of dreams, sketches, redesigns, code, and slamming my head against the wall, i've finally fulfilled my dream of having a blog that matches my design language. i'm so excited to put it to good use as the front page for my creativity and journaling 💖

the blog's still based on tumblr, using a new custom theme. in truth, it's just a heavy edit of the default theme... and quite a mess of one, at that! but hey, it looks and works great, and isn't that all that counts in the end?

(speaking of which, are you reading this on the tumblr app? come check out the new site!)

About the redesign

on the left menu are links to my main sites, and core tumblr links like the askbox and archive. there's also a theme toggle for light and dark mode – i'm especially proud of how the dark theme turned out! the light theme needs a little work, but i think it's a good start to improve on in the future. oh and btw, these animations for the menus opening and closing? they're pure css, even on mobile~

the right menu has featured tags to browse stuff i've made and written, as well as a search box for anything not featured. tags are a core part of the updated site, serving as collections of art and writing – so they have extra prominence both in the menu and at the bottom of each post. all my most important tags have icons that are loaded dynamically based on their name! and any tags that don't have an icon use the default hashtag. i'm really proud of all the design work that went into it, and i'll show off the icons on their own pretty soon ✨

posts themselves can be blue, purple, or pink, matching my main color palette. the color is based on the post id! so each post's color is always the same, whether you're viewing it on the front page, tag pages, or the post itself.

Design history

this updated blog has been four years in the making, surviving both my name change and multiple iterations of my design language – yet somehow, it still looks just like my years old sketches. i'm impressed at how much i was able to rework and carry forward with me, especially with how many of these ideas felt like dead ends at the time!

that early screenshot at the top is from waayyy back when i was considering moving away from tumblr. it was very tempting to self-host and "own my data" as they say... but i would miss out on all the social features like reblogs. plus, on tumblr people can follow me and see all my posts in the app, as well as on my site – what's not to love? so even though the site's time may be past, i'm sticking with tumblr until they literally nuke it out of orbit~

Cleaning up, carrying forward

i've had this blog for nearly ten years now, and the way i've used it has changed tremendously over that time. what started as my first foray into social media turned into a space for sharing things i found that made me happy, sharing my philosophies and outlook on life, sharing my struggles through college and burnout, and now sharing my journey discovering my voice as a person and a creator. so now that i'm a new person with a new voice, i should probably clear out all those crusty old cobwebs and start fresh, right?

not a chance!

if anything, i went back and made sure my old posts look just as good as my new ones, cleaning up tags and backporting my new code to work with old tumblr post layouts. i want to carry my history forward with me! for all these years this blog has been my journal, and even though my journaling changed with time, that core purpose hasn't. honestly, after all the cleaning, i'm inspired to return to those old methods of journaling – share more of myself, share more of what makes me happy, be more free and open and wild ✨

(that said, some of those early posts were especially raw! those have been archived for now. maybe i'll remake the sentiment behind them someday...)

My promise to myself

in the wake of college i realized i was posting less here on the blog; this redesign was an attempt to give it more importance, so that i would use it more. but what i didn't realize was that i was posting less due to burnout... and i stalled out on the redesign, also due to burnout. a double whammy! so i used my blog less than ever, and it languished for years.

on top of that, giving my blog more importance made it more of a Serious Website™ in my head, a place where i had to put my best foot forward at all times. that made me want to post here even less, only when i finished some big or important project! but my blog was never intended for this – i've been posting random nonsense since the beginning.

so what started as a promise that i would use my blog more, became a promise that i would make my blog A Big Deal. and that's not healthy for me! so i stepped back and re-evaluated. first, i started consciously calling this place my journal, to make it a sketchy and rough place with intent. second, i ultimately decided to redesign it anyway, with a new promise: to make it somewhere i'm proud of posting more often, no matter what those posts look like.

and with that promise fulfilled, i'm ready to get back to journaling 💙

today i decided to start posting some of my favorite twitter threads from over the years on my blog, backdated to when i first posted them. why? because they should've been blog posts in the first place, full stop. time to fix that!

i'm tagging them all #backdated so you can view the collection at any time, but i'll update the front page with each new batch too. speaking of which, here's today's batch, loosely sorted by category:

Creative

The Missing Sketchbook, a piece of my childhood and drawing history that i thought i lost

Long Desk

spontaneous creation with toys

Gender

how my oc Rivers helped smash my own gender identity

a reflection on repression, from just days after i came out

Gaming

Mari0 10th Anniversary: how the game and its community changed my life

beating Twilight Princess for the first time and putting it in the broader context of the Zelda series evolution

Even though this level was made for first-time players, I still found room to pack in some speedrun flair with a few well-timed jumps and stomps. Try to beat my time!

Garden Grove | 091-H9Y-1PG

Here's my take on a first level, a "1-1". Aimed at beginners who haven't played Mario before, like your nephew or mom. Tried to make it easy without being boring, which was a challenge to balance!

new stream archive, in which we defend the honor of team scissors! …hey don't pit us against both teams at once that's not fair!!!

made some cute emotes of Rivers! (wow i still haven't properly introduced her here yet...)

these are live both on Ice Cap Zone (discord server) and my Twitch channel. i don't have a lot of emote slots on Twitch yet so most of these will be added over time, but they'll always be freely available through FFZ if you have that!

...and by the way, i'm back to streaming on Twitch again! i don't have a regular schedule still, but i plan to stream at least once or twice a month in between work. follow me to get notified when i go live~

honestly i think my goal as a trans christian is to be so visibly trans christian that i make heads roll. i want a certain class of people to be confused and unsettled by my mere existence.

i want to wear a cross necklace and a trans pin when my hrt has just started to kick in – and have somebody tell me that i'm misappropriating the cross that Jesus died for my sins on.

i want to openly talk theology using my masculine-sounding voice coming from my feminine-presenting appearance – while somebody in the room wonders whose agenda i'm really supporting.

i want to be invited to church by a member who is so well-loved that they're socially obligated to treat me well by proxy – except for the pastor, who isn't afraid to stare me down the whole sermon.

but i don't just want to make people mad. and i know i cannot change everyone's hearts alone.

all i want to do is change the conversation.

because right now, the conversation is that it is not POSSIBLE to be a trans christian. after all, none of them have seen it for themselves.

but i'm both. and i'm right here.

so i want to be LOUD. i want my existence to be KNOWN.

i want to FORCE people to realize that it is possible to be trans AND christian.

whether or not they Agree with my existence, they cannot argue Against my existence.

it's going to make some people Mad and Afraid. those people were never going to listen anyway.

it's going to make others Confused and Shocked. those are the lives that i want to touch.

because even if they never agree with me... they'll remember me.

one day the good christian kid they raised might come out of the closet... and that parent might remember me, and it'll be that much easier to accept.

or at least, it'll be that much easier to give up and go "FINE, I CAN'T STOP THIS, DO WHATEVER YOU WANT, JUST KEEP IT AWAY FROM ME."

i am far from the first trans christian, but i exist in a time when we are still not truly welcome.

more importantly, i am far from the last trans christian – and i want to make it easier for those who will come after me.

so i will Exist Loudly as a trans christian, and through that i will shake the very foundation of hatred that tells me i should not exist.