The Final Hours of VDU February 24, 2020

NuVDU is complete. I’m tired of looking at it. It’s basically all I’ve done for the past 48 hours and I have a headache.

Since I knew this was gonna be the last time I ever touched it, I decided to spring for all the fixings. Proper table of contents on every page. Related guides on every page (painstakingly implemented by hand). Redirects so the old links still work, embeds and all. Crushed PNGs for the quickest possible loading (taking a good six hours and leaving me fried >_>). Manually checking 70-80 pages by hand, even with AutoSite helping me keep things as consistent as possible.

Diminishing returns–but worth it. Everyone, including Jax, is very happy with the site and basically agrees this is what VDU should’ve been in the first place.

NuVDU coincided with a large dip in my mood this month. Such a strange juxtaposition, being down because Caby was down and then looking back at all these old logs of Jax and I fighting, me and VDU people fighting, thinking of how it bled into the Quake scene and Neocities and all that. I got to thinking of what caused me to be that aggressive in the first place. And answer? I wanted to not feel useless, really.

VDU’s demise coincided with me deciding web design was really all I had left to be interested in and immersing myself in Neocities. Through that, I realized my priorities. VDU, Tesserae, my impatient prowling of every last Discord server–it all comes from this weird desire to help people who I probably shouldn’t help. Brianna, prengle, randos online, no one I should’ve been devoting that much time to, yet I was because I really wanted to help someone, anyone, I guess. And when none of it ever worked, I got angry.

So aside from focusing on making stuff and not ranting at people to make stuff, having Caby, having a better Somnol, having people to genuinely help, care for, be hype with, all that–everything’s just worth my time more now. And now that people around me have actually been on the up with my help, I just feel more fulfilled. I don’t have to argue with Jax about tab sizes because I have people I just plain work better with now. I don’t have to feel helpless and manipulated by Brianna because the girl I’m with now genuinely needs me, genuinely perks up when I’m there chatting with her, and because we’re working towards something tangible we can absolutely accomplish–a future together.

I’m not saying I’ve Ludovicoed myself and am totally incapable of that aggression nowadays, I’m just saying I see less point in it. My takeaway from all this is that mellowing out has been nice. I didn’t know what worked for me then. I got a lot done in spite of myself and and blew out within four or five months. Some days, I was writing three tool pages and a guide a day. Pair that with an overly active Discord and a team passing the buck for being “bad writers”, and yeah, I broke down quick. It wasn’t meant to last.

VDU was a good idea in a time where I got in over my head. I’d never want to go back to it, but it’s safe with me now. Everything I wrote all those Summer afternoons and late evenings, it’s back online. It’s another part of my history that can rest easy. Nowadays, it’s all for fun.

And if someone gets a good WAD editor out of the deal again, that’s a bonus.

Tags: Natural One, Valve Developer Union, Web Design,