about the webmaster

The basics

name: noah
age: ???
pronouns: any, preference to they/them
home: orion
config 1: mixed 🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🇩🇪
config 2: cap sun / aries moon / sag rising

the favorites

colors: pastel green, peach orange
flowers: sunflowers, daisies
animals: deer, crows, capybaras
drinks: chamomile and earl grey (tea), iced caramel latte (coffee), sea salt jasmine green tea (boba), mtn dew baja blast (soda), white russian, mojito (alcoholic)
manga / anime: 目隠しの国 (Land of the Blindfolded), Hana-Kimi, Natsume Yuujinchou, Moribito, Mushishi, Frieren at the Funeral, Skip and Loafer, Dungeon Meshi, Strobe Edge, Wotakoi, ARIA, Card Captor Sakura, D.Gray-Man, Mob Psycho 100, Carole & Tuesday, Oofuri (おおきく振りかぶって), March Comes In Like A Lion

a letter from the heart

a small wish

Be kind to yourself.

A

s I get older, the onslaught of crippling questions that constantly feel like an interview for a job I didn't even know I was applying for feel relentless, unending. I find them unbearable and stifling, and I've compartmentalized myself in a rehearsed elevator pitch like a light switch in a room that people won't even look into, wasting energy. 180 characters or less. I've been mulling over how I would describe myself if I wasn't being assessed or scrutinized by people who would never get to know me. How I would explain who I am and where I've come from to someone who really cared. I'd like to think that if you're reading this, you might be that kind of someone.

I'm a mosaic of everyone I've ever loved

even for a heartbeat.

Every time I make indomie with a fried egg, I think of the late nights staying up with Hana during a con. I got serious about sewing because my HomeEc teacher in middle school said my stitching looked like a surgeon's sutures (my mom taught me those stitches). The soup an ex-boyfriend's mom made me when I was sick is still one of the best soups I've ever tasted. A girl named April told me that when it was sunny, it meant your loved ones were smiling and hugging you through the sunbeams. And whenever you cried on a rainy day, they were crying with you from the clouds. I think about that every time I cry when it rains. I still can't listen to "ME ME SHE." I have to skip it every time, even after all these years. My favorite alcoholic drink was a recommendation by a friend in a bar we'd both never been to before. I name all my silly characters Lil' Jimmy because of some streamers I don't watch anymore. Habits and catchphrases I picked up from people I've met along the way, even in passing.

The truth is I love being around people, I love to make new friends, but sometimes social situations give me anxiety and I start crying even if I'm having fun. Sometimes I cry all the time. I feel deeply about everything and anything, a lot of the times too deeply. I don't like leaving other people out or making others feel bad, but sometimes I can hold a grudge over the most insignificant things. I have a lot going on in my brain, so I enjoy trying out many different hobbies. I daydream a lot, and it's very rare that I ever get bored. I'll try anything twice, maybe even three times. I find that it's easier to appreciate things when I hear about it from others, so I love listening and reading about the things other people like. One time a friend asked me what I'd do if I lost the use of my dominant hand, and I told him I'd learn with my other hand. What if I lost both? I'd learn with my feet. If I lost those too I'd learn to draw with a pencil in my mouth. It is not a question of ifs or how, I just simply will, always and with anything.

internet roadmap

Late 90s to early 2000s

The Home Computer

M

ost of my early childhood was spent renting single bedrooms out of stranger's houses with my mom. It wasn't until my uncle and older cousin moved in with us to help take care of my grandma that I got to experience a computer and a house of our own. It was our family computer, tucked away at an oddly-placed built-in desk between our pantry and the kitchen. The typical ivory monstrosity of a PC, with a matching monitor. The only ones who used the family computer was my grandma and I, and I'd get kicked off by her so she could play solitaire pretty often.

Still, I had many unsupervised hours exploring every corner of the internet that I could figure out. My mom and uncle happily helped me make accounts, and I never really took that privilege for granted or abused that trust. I was a pretty straight-laced kid (except I thought it was normal to lie about your age, since my mom and uncle did it for me lol!!!). I remember joining all the major TV channel websites like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and playing a ton of flash games. I also joined a million pet/avatar sites, and I wish I could find the name of some of the ones I can vividly remember. A lot of these memories were so formative to me as a kid that they're far more memorable than anything I did at school.

The Digital World

My biggest influence on how I browsed the internet was definitely Digimon. I was a really skeptical and pessimistic kid, but I had a best friend who genuinely believed that Digimon were real and that the Digital World was real, and that the internet was just like in the anime. I didn't believe in imaginary friends or that there was a Digimon out there for me that I couldn't see, but it didn't hurt going along with it. We would make digieggs in MSPaint, and every time we came over to each other's house we'd show how the eggs were beginning to hatch, and even digivolve. We'd painstakingly draw the transformations in MSPaint and change our desktop wallpaper to this. Even though it was obvious that we were painting these changes, there was magic in the moments we showed each other our desktop digimon.

Neopets

My next biggest influence was Neopets. There, I learned about roleplaying, HTML, guilds, and Choose Your Own Adventure games. In 2003, Neopets introduced this new feature called Neopian Adventure Generator, where users could create their own "adventures" for other users to enjoy. I remember pouring my heart and soul into mine, starring my own neopets and exploring the different personalities and backstories that I gave them. I was also the leader of an InuYasha RP guild, and I made a ton of friends and memories there. I even set up a guildbank on an alternate account and everything. We made comics of each other in our RP and one of us even made sprites of everyone. It was my first fandom community, and I learned even more about the internet (like how to torrent InuYasha lol). Unfortunately, since I was only a kid at the time, I had no idea what guild banks were even for, and I went inactive for a few years. When I came back, everyone was super mad at me and had left (I'm still so sorry!!). Sadly, my accounts were lost in the great purge of 2012, but my time on Neopets was one of my most creative.

My Personal Computer

At some point, my mom and uncle bought me a rather inexpensive PC of my own so that I could play my own computer games. My uncle knew how much I loved video games and playing online, and he bought things for me and my cousin equally. I own most of my consoles and video games because of him. It eased off a lot of pressure from my mom, who worked long hours just to make ends meet. My uncle was a kind person who brought me along everywhere, from card shops to game stores.

Final Fantasy XI

It was this time when Final Fantasy XI came out, and my uncle got the game for my cousin and I. Just like before, he set up my account and everything. I didn't even know the game was subscription-based, because my uncle took care of everything. He was just that kind of person. Much like Neopets, this became my whole world. If you're not familiar with this game, you absolutely needed other players. Servers were small, and if you were a jerk you would be held accountable - aka other players would kick you from the party and tell their friends. If you weren't a white mage (WHM) or were at the mercy of a WHM offering teleport services, you would have to run everywhere until you were lvl 20 to make the dangerous trek to Jeuno for a chocobo license. It was like a rite of passage, and everyone would try to help you get to the city safely. In the world of Vana'diel, I learned so much about people, relationships, and the importance of being kind and helpful. The friends I made here are forever imprinted on my heart, and I still think about them often. Roogen, Pippy, and Shippon to name a few. Sometimes I would fall asleep at the computer and my friends would make sure my character was safe when I woke back up (this still happens often, I'm so sorry lol). I drew comics, I made OCs, I gave people twice my age marital advice (that one tiktok hit too hard). It was my perfect escape, especially when my uncle suddenly passed away from cancer. I think if there was one community I could pick that shaped me to who I am now, it would be FFXI.

Mid 2000s

DeviantArt

I'm not exactly sure when I started my DeviantArt account, but it was around this time. I remember spending my time on here daily, uploading lots of work throughout the years and making friends. I learned SO much from the online tutorials, and the artists and tutorials I admired and learned from are probably the most memorable for me out of everything. There was a special community here in the corner I quietly occupied. Not to say I wasn't exposed to some extremely uncomfortable material and learned a lot of things I probably shouldn't have at my age, but that's kind of how the early internet was in a nutshell. There wasn't filtering back then, and things were just. mixed in. unfortunately.

Blogging sites

When I hit middle school, I was introduced to more than just video game communities. I learned about blogging, and at the time the place to blog was Xanga. Here I spilled all my poetry and middle schooler thoughs, unfiltered. My username was something about soybeans, and I would read all my friends' blogs. This carried over to MySpace, where I used my Neopets coding skills and photoshop elements knowledge to customize my page. It was at this point that I struggled the most with people IRL, and found myself the odd one out too many times to count. Still, I posted my pictures, my songs, my thread surveys that everyone else was doing. I read my friends' blogs, too. I stopped blogging on MySpace when I read one of their entries - one that was about me. In it she wrote a huge wall of text in alternating rainbow colors about how she hated me. I was devastated, and I cried a lot. I still used MySpace, but I slowly shifted away from blogging where everyone could see, especially that group of friends. My mom quit her full-time job because I was so depressed from being bullied in general, which was a saving grace for both of us. My middle school years were miserable, but I had my mom and the internet full of strangers who cared.

GaiaOnline

GaiaOnline was another big community for me, mostly on the art side. By now there wasn't much of a distinction between online and IRL friends, so I had a bunch of my classmates as my friends, as well as friends I made through the community. I was frustrated by the gendered clothing, so I made two accounts to express myself in different ways however I liked (hello tiny GNC me). I used to make art freebie threads all the time, as well as have my own art shops or joint art shops with friends I made online. Here I was free as could be, and enjoyed my time to the fullest. The economy has always been terrible, and that goes for art prices as well. I had an art mentor who I looked up to and thought the world of, and my creativity and self-expression really flourished through this community. Sadly, I also learned about the weight of commissions and monetary transactions, and even though it was for in-game currency, even though it was in trade limbo, the guilt of leaving a commissioner empty-handed affected me for many years. I stopped playing Gaia out of that guilt.

Facebook

I wasn't allowed to tell my friends' parents that we all had Facebooks, so it was a relatively tight-lipped secret among our group. My mom didn't care, obviously, but it was an interesting observation in how other parents supervised internet usage and what they considered dangerous. Well, they were on to something. I still used MySpace primarily, but there was a definite, gradual and seemingly-natural transition to Facebook. I also hung out a lot on the Cosplay.com forums - this was my main social network in high school tbh.

2010s

Tumblr

Once my friends and I graduated high school, we all decided to join tumblr to keep in touch and make weekly vlogs about our time in college. It was a really sweet idea, honestly. Naturally, I tried to seek out an online community to join and fell into one I stayed with til the bitter "end" (aka the p*rn ban mass exodus). Tumblr has an incredibly special place in my heart. Since I joined it during college, I explored so much that was new to me. I really dived into fashion, photography, poetry, writing, movies... you name it. I learned about self-love, loving others better, challenging and differing viewpoints, and harsh realities. I fell in love with strangers and cared deeply about them, our souls laid bare, and many of them are still friends with me now. It was a place where I made some lifelong connections, and I really grew as a person. I think I had a really lucky experience that I largely escaped much of any discourse that the site is now known for. Witch hunting was unfortunately ramping up during these times, though, and I became increasingly conscious of my actions and words. I stopped using my tumblr when I wrote something very personal and it was shared with family members without my permission. It was used against me. I even had friends from church on my tumblr, and no one had ever crossed that line and wronged me so cruelly. It was my first real breach of trust in my otherwise virtual hideaway from my day to day demons. I couldn't bring myself to delete my blog, and I come back to it every now and then, but it's hard to be so open after what happened.

Twitter

To be continued...

Present

To be continued...

about this domain

17 Dec 2010

I distract myself with the faded silhouettes

and exhaled breath

Lightless eyes filling up with

constellations in the sky

.

Scarecrow trees growing under my feet

I lost that flush of sentimentalism

and I think I lost my heart, too

I'm just walking in the dark.

.

We've come a long way, haven't we? My neocities may have been created in 2023, but my first domain, scarecrowkid.com, has existed since Nov 20, 2013.

For the longest time, every new site, every existence, meant a new name. I shed my usernames like old skin, frequently and freely. I spent a significant time picking each one, but I had no qualms letting go of them as I traveled through the internet. I don't know why, but I resisted and struggled with being known by anything concrete. It wasn't until I started school that I felt compelled, maybe even pressured, to adhere to one identity or name.

I wrote the above poem on my walk home from school, exhausted by my classes, the commute, and taking in the night air and the moon above me. I had a habit of typing up poems on my phone during my commute, and this one became one of my favorites. I ended up using scarecrowtrees as a username, which eventually morphed into scarecrowkid. To me, scarecrowtrees is more of a place, or a state of being. That time in my life where that poem was typed up with cold fingers on a winter night.

I purchased my first and, for 10 years, only domain because of school. I was taking a web design class and had to make a portfolio website with a domain. It wasn't hard to decide at this point, having settled into scarecrowkid for a good 2 years now. I initially wanted a .net or .co extension, but marketability was drilled into me so thoroughly that I reluctantly opted for the simple, SEO-friendly .com.

Fast forward to Apr 29, 2023, the creation of this personal website. After so many years being stripped of any sense of creativity or personality, my existence becoming "content" to market and capitalize on, I thought to myself. Why not get that .net extension like I always wanted? So I did. And I've never felt more at home. It's funny how such simple actions can make such an impact.

connect

socials

⇢ neocities profile
⇢ twitter
⇢ bluesky

in-game

⇢ Final Fantasy XIV: Noah'ni Rakka • Hyperion Server (Primal)
⇢ VRChat: scarecrows_
⇢ Livly Island:

friends

Veera and I met back in 2019 when we had a PF group advertising plein air draw parties in FFXIV. Since then they've become one of my best, most irreplacable friends. When words fail me, as they often do, Veera always knows just how to describe what I'm feeling and helps me process our day to day happenings with such poetic, funny prose. We started our personal websites together, and it's been an amazing journey looking back.


Shirley and I have been friends since around 2012-2013 — we met when we were both cosplaying Tsuritama at an event! Her kindness and outlook on life has always inspired me to be the best version of myself, and despite all of our moves and changes in life she has always kept in touch. We have a lot of similar interests (we met because of them!) and it's always such a joy talking about them and discovering games or media together.

legacy