My website is a shifting house

Fan Fiction

Website as a flowing river

We humans always needed ressources to survive. Water being one of them, we tended to establish ourselves by the nearest source of it, whether it be a lake, a pond, the sea or the ocean. But most of us found comfort in the ever so flowing river, and so that's where we settled the most. The river brought us more than one ressource, as we could use it to for drinking, to feed ourselves and our herds, to water our fields and trees, or as a way to travel. And so the river started to become more and more attractive, and more and more people came to live by its side, so much so that soon its flow became too weak to sustain the city that had grown around it. We humans came to the conclusion that since we were too many to move away and establish ourselves further,  we needed a bigger river, a stronger flow, to get us more ressources.

We dug around the river bed, made it wider, deeper, and soon, the water came running through its new bed, granting us access to more and more water. From watering the fields, we started to use it to power paddle wheels, we got bigger boats to fish more and more, we installed leather tanning factories, and had to build bridges to make sure we could still cross it and communicate from each side of it. That didn't always work, but at least the option was there. But since we could do more, once again more people came to live in our city. And they came with hope, ideas, and projects, that all relied on the power of the river to exist. A book binding shop that produces it's own paper? Next to the river to access the water for the paper making and for cleaning the ink off of the typographic plates. A dog grooming business? Needs the water to wash the dogs. A sport's team establishing itself? Needs water to drink during training, and to shower afterwards.

Everything was buzzing with life, everything seemed fine, and everybody seemed happy with the ever growing of the river bed and the city around it.

But one day, something changed in the air. Something was off. In the middle of this beautiful sunny afternoon, a shift ocured, and the sky darkened. The atmosphere felt sticky, heavy, wrong. But that didn't stop the people from establishing their businesses by the riverside, to draw buckets from it, and to carry on with their day. A few humans tried to pull the alarm on the shift, but they were only a handful - nothing compared to the rest of the citizens. And it started raining. A light mist at first, nothing to worry about, certainly, nothing worrisom enough to paralyse the city. And the mist became a drizzle, and people were actually happy about it happening.

"It's been so hot these past few days, a little more water in the river is actually great news".

The drizzle became a proper rainfall.

"We've seen way worse, why should we stop our activities for rain?".

And from a normal rainfall, another shift happened. The sky, who'd been gray these past few weeks, turned so dark that it was almost black, so dark it was hard to see what was happening down the street and up the river stream, whose level was starting to reach a height no one had seen before.

"Certainly it won't last, we can live like that for a little time, that's not an issue"

But the dark sky and the heavy rain remained. It poured and ir poured, and it poured so much that the river started to overflow, and it overflowed so much that it started swallowing all buildings on the river side. Not all of them obviously. Some people who's been established here for a long time had taken onto them to reinforce their doors, windows, and foundations. Some other were desperately trying to make things work for their house; it was the only home they'd known for the last decade, their whole life was in this city, so having to move away was a decision they were having a hard time making. And the one who had tried to pull the alarms before were long gone by the time the river overflowed. They had packed, and found their way to smaller villages, near smaller rivers, hoping for their new place to never get as big as the one they had left before.

Website as a room - Webring as an apartment complex

This apartment complex is made of clear windows that let anyone see inside. As you navigate through this apartment complex, clicking from room to room, you can peek into your neighbors’ spaces.

Someone has written a manifesto, someone is collecting hyperlinks like Pokemons, and someone is writing reviews for the latest films they’ve watched.

Some doors are wide open, some are just slightly ajar that only gives you just a hint of what’s happening inside. You can leave a note, say hello, or just linger around at the doorstep.

Some rooms never change. Sometimes they empty out overnight, which make you wonder if they are packing up their stuffs and moving elsewhere or just tearing everything down to build something new.

There’s no landlord in this apartment complex, it’s a a loose collection of people who happen to reside here at the same time. The clicks between one room to its neighboring rooms are hallways made of shared curiousities, a mutual fascination and similar obsessions. It’s comforting to know that you’re not alone. You live here with them (at least for now).