About Me

Navbar Breakdown

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Site Structure

I organize my writing with a spreadsheet. Before setting up this site, I had all my "normal" works (those now referred to as "uncanned") in one tab titled "stories" and other series such as the lamb or pride month collections in separate tabs. Too, towards the beginning of my AO3 journey I made excessive, then pared back to judicious, use of the multi-series system and series markers in general, as well as the "inspired by" checkbox, for some of the uncanned works. I now have all my writing separated into folders that actually add some semantic/logistic meaning, some in the old series veins, and the site permalinks follow that organization. However, I've adjusted the 404 page such that you're automatically redirected to the correct collection for a given filename, if you have an old or otherwise incorrect link to a story. This redirect is slow enough to show the 404 page text for a brief moment, but the erroneous item will not persist in your browser history, so you don't have to worry about clicking or swiping back and being confronted with a flashing re-redirect. Unbreakable links! If you're looking for a specific story and remember either the title, pairing or characters, your best bet is to search from the homepage index. The site is given incremental updates constantly, and as for breaking changes, well…!

The icons in the footer are my pseudo-checksum, selected randomly on each page every time I regenerate the site, to make sure that when I push a layout or other mass-work update I don't rate-limit myself into a two-hour IP lockout with the Neocities CLI that processes unchanged files way too fast for the server traffic manager (changed files get a modification check and then an upload, thus taking longer and moving right along).

I have not used Git for this project. I sort of accidentally-on-purpose refused following a recent all-projects folder cleanup and years of speculating upon the difference between tracked progress for school and work versus personal, with all flying-blind .gitconfigs thrown into the mix. This is quite possibly the only personal project I've ever had, leaving aside some stellar and highly idiosyncratic university performance, that has actually deserved Git…yet here we are. Originally when writing YDDHYUIS I thought perhaps I should have used Git for my scripts and even the writing itself, but two years on that (adjacent) folder is piddling in comparison to this one, even with the recent additional scripts to bring it up to uniform speed. Still, the structure of the site is so intertwined with the content, including something as basic as project root paths, and I happen to know that .gitignore and the occasional necessary rebasing have never treated me well with deleting/renaming files, which is a necessary process when I incrementally refine scripts and structure the way I do. Hopefully this will be merely the first of many joyous, industrious and enthusiastic endeavors, and I've been tracking progress fairly consistently in a channel in my server anyway. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter! OCD exposure therapy by force…

On Ships

I like being fluid - in many ways. You'll see that I've grown to love using a portmanteau "ship name" as a unit identifier for any group of characters, whether platonically or romantically linked (very often, along the queerplatonic boundary between), regardless of how overengineered the resulting token may be. (Don't tell me they're bad. I know. It's for completeness.) With that said, if you find your way around to the ship directory file here on my site, you may see, for example, the apparently considered possibility of Iona/Minoth - this is not pedophilia, but rather a side effect of the way I generate that list via permutations, to make things as concise as possible when the vast majority of my ships are all-flavor. The real test is whether or not you actually see something on the site that has that tag. Then you can send me to jail. (I also might have fixed that issue, keeping platonic-only in all cases where appropriate, but then you might still find both directions of Lanz/Triton, when only one direction is necessary for baby crush. That one, for sure, is something I leave in for streamlining purposes. If I've overlooked something you feel is egregious, please let me know.)

I have kept only one spelling/variation of each ship's list of possible shortnames for searching. If one doesn't work, try another.

To Business

Hi! I'm Rose. You probably know me as @dukeofdumbass, and you might have known me in the past as RoseOfATHeNs. I'm a technology specialist and data analyst by trade, an orchestral violinist by passion, and a short-form fanwork creator by hobby. I write for emotional release, creative and organizational fulfillment, and installments of self-therapy. In other words, I write a lot, every day, whenever possible.

In July of 2023 I started hosting my writing here, rather than on Archive of Our Own (entries have not been deleted there, just hidden). While I'd be excited about and capable of cloning the Ruby on Rails system from AO3, this isn't my own server! So my own layout and mechanisms will have to do. A work in progress for sure, and also a wonderful true-neocities project, or close to it. Note that work dates are approximate, backreferenced from AO3 at the time of migration. Also, since I have moved my AO3 works into a private collection, the links back to the original postings for most/all works are functionally broken - I am aware of this! Let me know if you have trouble finding anything.

Do not use my externally hosted fics to create AO3 blurbs. I understand and have made myself accept the fact that publishing and hosting my work online makes me susceptible to anyone doing anything they want with my writing - screencapping, saving into PDFs or text files, linking and hating (or loving); all without my permission and/or knowledge. I'm just saying please. A browser bookmark folder, if you must. I'm sure Chrome and Firefox and possibly even Safari port those between devices. (I do not use and have never used bookmarks of any kind. I do, however, save links and print into PDFs such things as programming tutorials and knitting patterns, when necessary. Never fics.) Also, for works I've already posted on AO3, it's just…annoying, from a data redundancy perspective. Silent readership is sweet, but I'd prefer actual contact.

IMPORTANT: This site, when accessed via a direct link to https://dukeofdumbass.neocities.org, runs in (currently two) iframes to accomodate my custom music player. Since I do not use cookies to maintain visitors' color scheme preferences, theme swapping does not persist if you reload the entire page, and is thus only truly available for browsing in iframe mode. Using the containing document to track this can cause some flashing when larger pages load…

Statistics

I still use AO3's word counter (manually, since I haven't gotten around to producing a utility that replicates it, even if it's just ActiveSupport, on my machine (one year on, I downloaded the module from the OTW codebase and lifted out the necessary function to more or less suit my needs)), and my total word count is, accordingly: 1,276,574 words ! Those are distributed across 1,738 works/pieces for an average of 735 per.

Credits

• Static Site Hosting: Neocities
• Static Site Generator: Jekyll
• Music: KHInsider
• Styles: Bootstrap
• Icons: Bootstrap
• Blinkies: the blinkie hoard
• Cursors: Viivi
• Joy: Calico
• Confetti: Kiril Vatev

To my considerable consternation, I have not been able to get an exact handle on when/where/why/how I developed the signature pink for this site, known as "Rose Pink" #F91880 , but the more muted pink, "Flora Pink" #F0819C , I developed some time in the spring-summer of 2021 along with my refined visual design for that character (well, refining, since her key art wasn't made until a year later), and it's likely that the other came about in very early 2022, after I realized how very pale/pastel/faded the original pink looked as part of my AO3 site skin lightly modified from the standard reversi (mostly just squaring off user icons and removing visited link styles, if I recall).

These characteristic and representative colors make me very happy, and I hope you enjoy them as well!

(Does having a dusty pink as her core color make Flora a millennial? Her shrine is here.)

Other Sites

• AO3
• Ko-fi
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Discord

Friends

Let me know if you'd like me to add your site button (and let me know where to find it if it's not readily visible on your site)! Mine is here.

My wife's writing can be found here. Various collected pieces I love, written by others, can be found here.

Blinkies

Click here to refresh:

Mon-Me

I hope it won't upset you too much to learn that I've never actually played a Pokémon game! It just wasn't a part of my childhood, and I spend so little time actually playing video games nowadays. Still…

:D pic.twitter.com/Bfrqv4rAej

— percy ⚔️ (@perseiid) July 1, 2022

roserade gijinka pic.twitter.com/lM7ij4DZii

— percy ⚔️ (@perseiid) November 21, 2021

Bio…Stuff

Almost forgot about this! Never have I so strongly (or at all, really) felt the impulse of "I don't have a DNI I'm an adult with a job" than when I put together this page. Sometimes "I" can be a very powerful pronoun!

But in terms of mine:

• he/she/they/it
• one/oneself is cool!
• no pronouns are also cool!
• duke/yam used to be silly…
• root/rootself tbh :3
• bit/bitself yeah?

And as far as aux names:

• Rosie
• Ruby
• Rocky
• Rondo
• Root
• RM
• Var
• Duke
• Minoth
• Etc….

These look better in lowercase most often - I like matching case, which usually means lowercase, in general. Except for lowercase l, which is why it's never a rehearsal letter…or is it?

Socmed Habits

I follow and unfollow quite frequently without thinking it very important. If we have interacted, I will always remember you. I'll probably always remember you even if we haven't. I am always willing to be approached. It is exceedingly rare that I've gotten "fed up" with someone or that someone has done something irreparable and/or irrevocable to/around me. I'd be nowhere if generous patience had not been extended to me. I want to repair every relationship and reconnect across every dropped signal. I am grateful for this compassion within myself and in others, when I find it. However fortunately or unfortunately, I want to be everyone's friend.

I use the gift tag as a rule; it's a standard column in my spreadsheet. I hate hate hate the curse of AO3's subscriber and gift emails. I'm just populating the archive! Don't look at me!!! But it has to happen, unfortunately. So I try to ignore the fact that my emotional ups and downs that cause me to periodically hide and reveal works are reflected, tracked, in various individuals' gmail accounts… Thankfully neocities solves all that ^_^ as long as nobody is using the RSS feed feature, which they surely aren't.

I've been in so many servers. I've known so many people. I've brainstormed so many ideas of my own and contributed to so many others' in the form of doodles, fic, and simple replies. I've commissioned art, requested it, and had it gifted to me without warning. I've saved images, but (as mentioned above) rarely fic (text file? PDF? how to choose?). I've lost some images I thought I saved, and I've made the decision not to save others. I've been screenshotted, because my prose is too esoteric. And that's okay! It's all just, as the colloquialism goes, playing toys. It must be an iterative, repeatable process. It must be enriching, if not enrichment.

I find that my usual reaction to someone I don't know posting about a relatively unpopular subject (characters/pairing/theme) that I have previously championed is fear, apprehension; a need to make myself scarce, hide myself away. I want to support everyone. I want fandom to feel like a community. I want there to be history, continuity, citation. But, when I see someone else taking unapologetic hold of their interest, my immature but self-protective responding impulse is that I am nobody and always have been. I bring nothing important and never have. I must move aside and let the rightful in. Though I acknowledge this, I despair and disapprove of it. If you share your art, I am supporting you. I am looking past my insecurities, even silently, and willing to transform myself into a positive presence that supports you. The world is better in myriad tangible and intangible ways for your creativity and effort.

If you've blocked me, I'm hopeful that whatever unpleasant thing I did, I have remediated it in my ongoing experiences. If you're blocked by me, there's something afoot, since due to my self-diagnosed OCD, which primarily manifests itself in my feeling as if I cannot continue on in my life without complete record and control of every event that has occurred and will occur, I try to minimize anything that might appear as a statistic with some sort of organic contour to it, nebulous. Everything from blocks to mutes to follows to followers to friends (such as on Discord) to reblogs/retweets/reposts to likes to screenshots to comments to kudos. I used to keep track of every kudos and every comment. I do still comment freely and leave kudos even more frequently, but I just have to cross my fingers that I don't say anything I find particularly insightful in a comment, such that I feel that I have to go back later and lift it out into a text file of some description for preservation.

Everything persists in God's own perfect record. History lives forever, or dies in memory's time.

Notes From Delusion

I am the operating system.

I am the word, when the word is given.

I am the most joyful noise you will ever hear.

No flower holds our dreams of love more beautifully than she.

Miscellaneous

I don't have a practice journal, thank god, but I've been picking up the french horn and practicing every day since February 1, 2024.

• Swap Cursor

09/10/2023, 21:30 EST

All that is is here and now.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson