೯ 𖥻 welcome to JOHG .

i grew up in the somewhat early web of the 2000s, and i got to experience some really cool sites that i miss dearly (like this forum dedicated to W.I.T.C.H., one of my favorite places from 10-12 years old... good times). from there i moved to tumblr.com, where i first ran a beatles blog and later on a multifandom blog where i started making moodboards and edits for just about anything that interested me at the time, from game of thrones, to the books i'd read because they were Hot on tumblr, to biblical mythology.

tumblr offered a vast galore of themes and customization options that scratched the itch of tailoring everything to my very-aetshetically-demanding teenage self (i notoriously went through more laptops than i should've as a preteen because i would recklessly download anything that provided a sliver of extra customization for my run-down windows 7 acer computer), and i started trying my hand into html and css (not knowing what those terms even meant) by editing premade themes that insanely talented and generous users shared with the rest of us, free of charge. spending hours and hours picking the right colour palette and playing around with the code was one of my favourite things to do, aside hunching in front of my screen squinting at a photoshop document. but and i found myself stranded from what had been my safe place as a queer teenager with an ungodly love for photoshop (uni also played a role here), i was more and more disenamoured with the web as it was. social media offered so little customization i was just not drawn to it at all.

cue neocities! i ran into the indie web because of a video by lrnjulie and was amazed to learn the web i had loved as a kid was still there, waiting to be rediscovered. i first decided to create this site on january 19, 2025, but life was hectic and for a while i made do with a premade template i tweaked a tiny bit and used as a placeholder.

this went on for some months as i finished my master's degree and moved in with my wonderful girlfriend (both big life changes that left no room for experimenting with neocities), but in august 2025, after regaining my childlike wonder because i finally could have holidays after almost two years of nonstop working and studying, i decided to get into coding again. so here it is! my little corner of the world wide web.

this is my first-ever website, so please be patient and excuse any wonkiness and spaghetti coding :) i'm learning, slow and steady!