MoxieCat's BlogZone

Site Update + New Project!

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:30:35 +0000

Hey there! It's been a while!!

I hope you're doing well. It's hard to believe it's been 6 months already, isn't it?

It's been a weird 6 months for me, admittedly. Depression and ADHD are kicking my ass, and my personal life's been a little wonky. On the plus side, I've been hard at work on Velvet's Plushogram DX (apparently this is the first time I've mentioned it on this blog), which is, as of writing this, the largest project I've ever worked on!

By my estimates, I only have a hundred or so hours of work left... which is a little overwhelming!! But it's manageable, and hopefully I'll have a more exciting update soon.

Speaking of updates:

Site Update

If you're reading this on moxiecat.dev, or receiving it through an RSS feed, I have bad news! It won't be there for long!

Between the domain costs, repping my home country, and my general vibe these days, I've elected to switch the main domain to moxiecat.ca. It's the exact same site, just a different name!

It might break a few things, unfortunately, but the moxiecat.dev domain will remain active until October 2026. If you've got my button on your own website, you have plenty of time to update it (or don't, I'm not your mom).

If you wanna keep getting the occasional update from this blog, make sure to grab the new RSS link!

Stoat Update

I also made a zine recently! (still not 100% on if "zine" is the right word - feel free to correct me in the comments)

Last November, I had a dream that I was a stoat. It was pretty mundane, a little funny, and weirdly impactful. Like... "I have a second fursona now" impactful.

I've been looking for any excuse to finally give zine-making a try, and this seemed like the perfect topic to cover for my first go.

If you wanna read I Dreamt That I Was a Stoat One Night, you can either download them direct from my website, or grab it through itch.io.

(Toss me a couple bucks for shipping, and I'll even mail you a physical copy!)

That's all for now.

Thank you for reading this far! I really appreciate your company, and it was nice seeing you again.

Stay safe out there!

Moximoji 2.0

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 14:00:32 +0000

So I revamped the Moximoji almost immediately.

In yesterday's post, they were implemented almost entirely through CSS. But by doing that, they don't show up in an RSS reader!

(And like... that's half the point of this blog!)

Now they're just plain images. Hopefully, these should work better!

I've also given them cute little buttons in SQirrL:

It's pretty fun building weird stuff like this from scratch! It feels a lot more "old web" than Neocities and the like.

The next post should be a bit less devlog-y. There's some fun stuff I wanna share!

Moximoji (Moxie Emojis)!

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 00:11:37 +0000

In an effort to make Posting here more fun, I spent a little time putting together some custom smileys/emotes/whatever you kids call them these days.

Introducing:

The Moximoji!

I drew a handful of 32x32 pictures of my face, to spice things up around here. (and then I re-rendered them at 64x64, 'cause it didn't look right )

Eventually I'd like to implement them into my post composer, too - right now I'm just copy-pasting the raw HTML.

Oh, speaking of post composers...!

Sorry if your RSS feed got a little funky the other day. I've been playing with an in-browser interface for my blog, but apparently however I built it caused a blank post to appear until I finished writing it.

I think I'll just be sticking to SQirrL for now... it's a little quirky and inefficient, but there's something novel about writing in your hand-built blog using a completely seperate hand-buitl tool.

(Also maybe I can find a way to send SQL commands directly from Godot...?)

Stay tuned for more quirky and inefficient posting!

The Vibe, Lately

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 19:35:13 +0000

Hey there, folks! It's been a while, hasn't it?

It's been a really weird year since Cohost went down. I hate to attach so much importance to a single website and a single point in time, but it really was an important part of my community, and it's been difficult picking the pieces back up afterwards.

(And to be honest, my tendency to self-isolate in stressful situations hasn't helped much, considering the state of Things.)

But you can't accomplish anything by doing nothing. I'm just gonna have to keep pushing at the edges of my comfort zone until I get where I wanna be!

On that note, one of my ex-chosties Mike wrote a blog post about some event called "Blaugust." (love me a good pun)

From what I gather, it's a yearly event where folks try to write a blog post every day for the month of August. Kinda like NaNoWriMo, but bloggier.

I can't promise I'll have a new post every day, but I'm still gonna use it as an excuse to post here a bunch more. If there's one thing Battle of the Bits has taught me, it's that it's easier to do creative stuff when you make a little game of it!

That's all for now, but you'll be hearing from me again soon!

Backend Update (Oops)

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 23:46:52 +0000

Hey, folks!

If you've been poking around my site in the last 15 minutes or so, you might've noticed a couple blog posts coming and going. That's because I've just been working on a new post editor for my site!

(The Godot program was cool, but it'll be a lot easier to post if I can just write something directly from my website)

Unfortunately, while testing things out, I accidentally overwrote the blog post about Dreamshine...

If I can get it back up, I will, but for now any actual evidence of it existing will have to wait for the devlog later this month.

Thanks for bearing with me, here. Hope to post again soon!

State of the Moxie - 2024-11

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 12:40:15 +0000

Hi again! Sorry for the wait between posts!

With Cohost gone and Elon Musk's Hellsite actively burning to the ground, I decided to join Bluesky - as a digital artist in the internet age, I think it's important to keep my eggs in several baskets.

Unfortunately, that means I've been using Social Media again, and uh... as someone with ADHD, it's really easy for me to fall back into the endless-scrolling dopamine loop.

So I'm back here again!

I don't have much to say about one particular topic, so here's a quick-fire round of a few thoughts and stuff:

Battle of the Bits

If you're not aware, BotB is a site for music jams - they host several one-hour competitions (or two-hour, or month-long, or whatever) to write music based on a given theme.

I'd heard of it before, but a few fellow musicians said it was a really nice community, so I decided to give it a try.

And it's really cool!! There's a lot of friendly people there, and it's fun to hear tons of music from independent artists.

My profile is here, if you want to check it out. At time of writing, there's a big event introducing a bunch of new formats, and I'd also recommend going through that to hear everyone's cool tunes.

Dreamshine Update

Progress on Dreamshine is slow, but good! I'll be starting a devlog here, so keep an eye out if you're interested.

Over the last month or so, I've started rebuilding it from scratch. I have a bad habit of making things more complicated than they have to be, and it was quickly getting hard to manage. Now, everything's either more modular, or handled by a plugin with a much nicer interface!

Furthermore, I've switched the game to full 2D, instead of having 3D environments. I still think the 2D-characters-in-3D-worlds thing is a more fun visual style, but the truth is I'm just not good at 3D modelling. Using 2D maps will help the game look better, and also be less frustrating to produce.

Speaking of 2D art, here's a crop of a character sheet I drew recently!

I'll be sharing the full piece with the first proper dev log. I'm hoping to share a new character with every entry - there's a lot of folks here on the Isle!

Site Updates

I'm thinking about updating the site a little. There's a few easter eggs I want to add, and maybe a proper gallery page for my art.

If there's anything you'd like to see, leave a comment below!

Personal Stuff

My partner just finished playing Moon RPG!

Now that I'm not worried about spoiling anything for them, I'd like to write a blog post about it specifically. It's easily my favourite game of all time, and I think Dreamshine is very good proof of its influence on me.

Also, I tried eyeliner recently and it turns out I'm super pretty. :3

Probably not super important to you, but it's nice to visibly present as more queer (that's why my hair's pink, after all), so I wanted to share that joy with you!

That's all for now!

I'm not expecting to write many posts like this. Unless I end up spending a long time away from the blog again, I'd like to stick to smaller, more-focused posts instead.

See you next time!

Music Monday - Adult Oriented Pop

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 11:04:53 +0000

Welcome to Music Monday!

This is a little series I tried to do on Cohost, highlighting new and/or interesting music. There's a lot out there in the indie scene, and most of it tends to fly under the radar. So I wanna spread the word!

I'm gonna try to make this a monthly thing, but you'll have to forgive me if I miss a day - life can be pretty hectic, especially when you need time to write music of your own.

A few months ago, Birch and I found The Yetee has a record store of sorts. There's "Yetee Records" for game soundtracks, of course, but they also run a storefront for Superjumbo Records in Illinois.

It's exactly the kind of record store that's missing from our local scene, with a really eclectic collection of stuff! New releases and old classics, popular artists and niche ones... pretty much whatever they can get their hands on.

We splurged a little, and ended up with some fun stuff like Plantasia and Court of the Crimson King.

Among them was an album titled 6:15 AM, by Adult Oriented Pop.

We came for the album art, and stayed for the jams:

With the grotesque doodle on the cover, I was prepared for something punk-ish. Instead, I found some of the smoothest psychedelic synth-pop I've ever heard.

AOP manages to get a lot of mileage out of some cheesy sounds. Distant Alarm in particular is my favourite track - it features an early synth flute that I associate with stuff like old Thomas episodes I watched as a kid, but then pairs it with a harsh saw and drawbar organ to deliver a powerful and melancholy hook.

The whole album kinda floats in this space between bittersweet resignation and dreamy, danceable grooves. It's a real treat to listen to when you want to chill out.

As a sidenote, it's crazy to me that AOP is as small as it is. Only a couple hundred views on each video, and just over 200 monthly listeners on Spotify. Maybe there's not a big synth-pop scene in Sweden?

If you like, you can buy 6:15 AM on Bandcamp - it's just over $7 CAD (or $5 USD), and considering how many times I've listened to it, it's easily worth twice as much.

Show these folks some love, if you can!

Goodnight, Cohost

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 10:22:47 +0000

Today is the last day before Cohost goes read-only mode.

It was a platform that meant a lot to me. I'm not sure what to say about it that hasn't already been said, especially by people who're better at writing than I am.

But I still gotta write, y'know?

On November 16th, 2022, I joined Cohost. I decided I'd finally had enough of Twitter (although it would be another 6 months before "the last straw" was actually the last straw), and though I can't remember where I first heard of this site, the Tumblr-esque post format and inline HTML/CSS drew me in almost immediately.

It seemed like a healthier place for creative folk, especially when you could literally format your posts however you wanted!

I wasn't prepared for how much healthier it was. Not just for sharing art online, but for the artists themselves, and for people in general.

The first thing I noticed was what the lack of visible metrics did for me.

On Twitter, when I posted something, I got maybe 3 likes and 1 share. Those are very small numbers, so I interpreted it as getting almost no traction.

On Cohost, when I posted something, kunekunehog liked it, and maybe shared it. applecinnabun would like it. bearofsquares and codarobo would like it.

The actual amount of interaction stayed small, but it was tangible. They were people, not numbers.

Over time, the amount of icons and usernames I recognized in my notifications grew. It was like a small family - distant "cousins" like Librarianon who, though I never spoke to, was still nice to see they were still around and doing well.

I learned that people liked me, and liked seeing what I had to say.

Cohost and its culture made me feel valuable.

The second thing that happened was I became happier!

Not just because I was part of a community, but because any interaction I had with someone on here was a real, human interaction.

People gave each other the benefit of the doubt, usually believing they acted in good faith.

People were weird, and shared their weirdness.

People were passionate, and shared their passions.

On any other platform, I'd be scared to say this, but the NSFW scene on Cohost did wonders for me - because of the filtering and content warning systems, people were able to more granularly decide where their boundaries were. Some folks I followed would share the occasional piece of porn. Some folks would share "weird" porn.

But they were open an unashamed of it, while never stepping over other peoples' boundaries.

It made me feel a lot more confident in my own weirdness, tame though it may be.

It made me feel like I didn't have to worry about saying or doing the exact right thing.

It made me feel like I could fuck up, learn from it, and do better in the future.

Cohost and its culture made me feel human.

This coincides with my own transition - I didn't even go by "Moxie" until I joined!

It was a one-two-punch of learning who I was inside, and learning who I could be outside.

Even with the future looking uncertain once more, and losing a platform I happily called home, I have grown so much on Cohost that it's impossible for me to look back and do anything but smile.

Cohost has had its problems, and I don't want to ignore them - there wasn't enough of an effort making minorities heard, the staff dragged their feet on a few bans, and some of us were pretty bad at taking criticism.

But maybe that just makes the next step better. We fucked up in some places, and now's our chance to learn from it, and do better in the future.

A better internet is possible, and I've seen it.

Thank you, all my new friends!

Thank you to everyone in the Anti-Software Software Club, for making something truly special!

Thank you, Cohost!

Buttons!!

Fri, 20 Sep 2024 14:00:39 +0000

With things winding down on Cohost, a lot of folks have been putting together 88x31 "buttons," like you used to see on old Web 1.0 pages.

It's been a lot of fun! It's cool to see so many people getting creative and trying to distill their essence into a single tiny gif.

Some people have really leaned into certain aesthetics, like Windows XP UI or late-2000's gradients - I'm not sure if it was intentional, but my sibling Bee's button reminds me of the kinds of gradients I saw in forum userbars back in middle school:

Others have just been doing whatever they want, as long as it fits in the 88x31 space. Here's a really smooth one from Creature0354!

So naturally, I made my own!

If you're interested in linking back to me, you can copy the HTML below to add my button to your own page.

I also made one that's twice as big, to make it easier to read (this is actually the version on my homepage:

Let me know if you end up using either of them!

Meet SQirrL

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 22:14:30 +0000

When I was in college, I took a web development course that taught us how to use PHP and SQL. I liked messing with them, but I just didn't see myself using them for my own projects.

8 years later, guess who ended up using both extensively??

My website is partially based on a couple of SQL tables, which hold all my projects and blog posts.

I really like it! It gives me a lot of control over how I present my content (not to mention I get to store all my stuff as pure HTML, so I can do fun stuff with it).

But it's also a bit of a pain to update, since there's no post editor or anything like that.

Enter: SQirrL!

I call it SQirrL because it's like SQL and also because squirrels are cute :3

This is a program I threw together in Godot. Basically, I write whatever I want to add to my tables, and it spits out an SQL command for it.

I'm even writing this post in it!

It's still something of a work in progress, though. I'd like to add a few more features, like buttons to format text or insert snippets of HTML. It also doesn't solve the fact that I have to input the commands myself, or that I have to upload any images manually.

Still, for something I made in an afternoon, I'm pretty proud of it!

I might make a repository for SQirrL so people can see how I put it together, but it's very specifically tied to how my website is set up, so it's not gonna be useful to anyone else on its own.

I'll keep this page updated with any news about it!

Update - 2024-10-01

Added a handful of buttons to automatically add HTML tags or apply formatting!

This should help make posting just a little bit easier.

Thanks for reading!

Hello, World!

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Hello there!

This is the first post on my blog. At least, I think so - I'm still getting it set up, so this is more of a test post than anything.

Who knows how well it'll work??

Let's find out!

Update 2025-01-10: It's been working for some time now, and I've added this line with my new post editor!