the wizard's lair

the wizard, Mordecai

games	minecraft, vintage story, sims 3, rimworld, project zomboid, cultist simulator
books	ender's shadow (novel), shadow of the hegemon (novel), the goblin emperor (novel), oofuri/big windup (manga), honey lemon soda (manga)
people	natori (musician), terry pratchett (writer), struthless (youtuber), bazazilio (youtuber), hades (historical character), loki (historical character), baldr (historical character)
languages	french (reading, not speaking), some japanese
other hobbies	fashion, coding (duh), knitting, origami, ttrpgs (mostly D&D), history & culture studies
currently researching	writing techniques (carrier bag theory), jkr's literary sins (essay coming... eventually)

Hail and well met. I am the wizard; you may call me Mordecai. You may have met my counterpart the bard, who goes by Mortaki. I make the magic, and she weaves it into stories for others. Though it may appear otherwise at times, we are the same person.

This section of the site is essentially the inside of my brain made HTML. It is the place I put any ideas (experiments), prompts, inspiration, and anything else that catches my attention. It is probably stuffed full with things that are only barely related, but that's how my brain works.

100 Webmaster Questions

1. Please introduce yourself.: If you somehow missed it, I go by both Mortaki and Mordecai online. Most call me Mortaki though.
2. How long have you been making websites?: A year and a half, I think? I started in August 2024.
3. And what got you into the hobby?: Youtube video. I couldn't tell you who made it or even what made me click on it. I just saw it on my reccommended and when the idea was presented to me, I was immediately sold.
4. What kind of website are you most interested in?: Fun ones? Silly ones? Ones with writing and poetry? I couldn't possibly tell you what any particular site has that draws me to them. I visit my neighbors most often (as in people I've chatted with) and other sites I visit only occasionally. Sometimes I'm obsessed with a site for a few weeks and then don't visit for months.
5. What's your workflow? Do you plan your websites out thoroughly or do you come up with the design as you go along?: Hmmm. I suppose you could say there's very little planning involved? Any individual idea I come up with is usually thought out to a decent degree, but I don't really plan for my site overall. That's why most of my pages are unique. I think of them as their own thing in a network of things.
6. Please link to your biggest inspirations.: Funnily enough, you can find those in the sidebar, if you mean site-wise. Otherwise, you can probably find my biggest inspirations in the library or the spellbook. That's where I link to all the miscellaneous things that rattle around my head and spawn new ideas.
7. What's your favourite part about making websites?: That's a hard question. I'm torn between community and freedom. There's a lot of cool people making sites and one of my favorite things is to talk to them. But also I love that I can just... do anything with my site and no one can tell me otherwise. Both great features of the indie web.
8. And the thing you struggle with the most?: Layouts maybe? Or javascript? I don't have a lot of vision, so while I can make my own layouts, I find it very difficult. Typically, I just heavily modify a layout or other bit of code I found elsewhere. And then javascript is kind of the bane of my very being. I can parse it when I see it just fine, but learning it on my own has been a slow and torturous slog.
9. Do you keep the same layout on all of your pages? Or do you use different ones?: HA! Yeah, I rarely use the same layout twice. I'm all about setting the mood for my pages and there's just too many cool things you can do to use just one.
10. How confident are you with CSS?: Fairly confident. Like I mentioned, I lack the vision to do much with a blank slate, but I do know how to use everything I've encountered so far. The more complicated stuff is beyond me, but I can usually make it do what I want.
11. Do you know how to correctly use <dl>?: Uh. No? Ironically, I'm using it for these questions, but I had never seen it before now. I looked it up, of course, and I... kind of get it? Wouldn't say I really know what I'm doing though.
12. What is your favourite HTML element?: The p tag maybe? I'm a writer. There's something very eloquent, to me, about a paragraph lol.
13. If you're making a new web page from scratch, what is the first thing you do?: Look for a layout or centerpiece. Usually, I'm thinking about how I want to organize the content or the mood I want for the page, so I prioritize those things. A layout is self-explanatory, but what I mean by centerpiece is usually a code snippet that I then design the rest of the page around. That's what I did for my index page.
14. Do you know JavaScript?: Haaaaa.... A little. Not enough to do anything useful or fancy. The very, very basics.
15. How about PHP?: LMAO NO. And I truly have no desire to learn.
16. Does your website have a theme that you stick to?: Is whimsy a theme? Generally speaking, no. I rarely consider what other parts of my site look like when making new pages unless it's for technical reasons.
17. Are you more focused on content or design?: Oh, content, definitely. While I would love to put more original thought in my layouts, my brain is simply too fast-paced to dedicate the time to fiddle with them. I want things that are cool and interesting and worth sharing on my site. Often, the aesthetics can be somewhat of a hurdle in pursuit of that.
18. Do you own a domain name? If not, would you ever want to?: I literally just got one! Like today! I've wanted one for a while and even had it picked out almost a year ago.
19. What do you think of nostalgia-focused or "retro" websites?: They're fine. I'm indifferent unless the design is hostile or the content is boring (or simply not there).
20. Is your HTML valid? Do you even check?: Probably not. I still use center tags so... No, I do not check. I do try not to use depreceated html, but sometimes I just gotta brute force it lol.
21. What are your opinion on buttons and banners?: They're cool! I find them, frankly, a little inconvenient. Both mine and others. But they're a nice touch of joy and expression so I could never be mad about them. I have a section of my site specifically for sites without buttons though.
22. What do you think of button walls in particular?: They're fine. I'm less likely to click on any button in a button wall. I personally prefer a cold hard text link with a description, but they're always fun to see. I make a point to visit at least a few from sites that I frequent a lot.
23. If you started over again, would you make something similar or completely different?: Oh, I love my site. It took some time to get it how I wanted it, but I would hardly do more than tweak it now.
24. Are you envious of other people's websites?: Not really? Anything they can do, I can do too. If I have enough grit and patience lol.
25. What text editor do you use?: As in for my code? I use VSCodium. I used to use Notepad++, but VSC is more convenient and allows me to do git stuff. I still use it for testing and dissecting webpages from other people though.
26. Why do you use that one?: Oh. Well, like I said, for git mostly. I also like the little quality of life features like automatically closing tags and previewing colors. I use VSCodium over VSCode because I try to avoid corporate stuff when I can.
27. Do you host your image files on your web server, or on another host?: I host all my images myself. I feel like hosting them elsewhere is just inconvenient and risky. Like why?
28. This might not be relevant to you, but what's your opinion on the Neocities vs. Nekoweb debate?: Both are good. Both have their pros and cons. I've only used Neocities (for the git lol) but there were several features of Nekoweb that tempted me to switch. It wasn't until I realized you needed to be a premium member for git that I decided not to.
29. How much server space would you estimate your main website takes up?: Uh, according to neocities, 112 MB. I don't know if that's a lot lol.
30. Do you keep local backups of your files?: Absolutely. I'm paranoid. I have backups for my backups.
31. Do you prefer simple or highly visual websites?: I don't have a preference, I don't think. I usually keep mine fairly simple, but I love seeing some wild vibes.
32. Do you stick to certain colours? Do you do that on purpose, or is it your subconscious?: Haha, no. I mean, you could say I have a penchant for browns and greens, but generally speaking, my color palettes are wildly varied. I don't do it on purpose necessarily, but I'm always aware of it despite that.
33. Have you ever thought about quitting? Why?: HELL NO. Love my site. Love coding. Love writing. Pry it from my stiff corpse, if you fucking dare.
34. Do you have many webmaster friends, or is it a solitary hobby?: I have webmaster friends! :D I started off on my own, but made a conscious effort to get to know my fellows.
35. Do people in your real life know about your website?: They do, but they don't care to visit it lol.
36. Do you update your website very often? How often is "very often"?: I think so? Usually, I update it several times a month. Sometimes the updates are very minor, but they can be huge as well.
37. And the overall design, do you change that much? Why or why not?: Yes and no. The designs for my main pages (my index and the wizard page) have changed drastically and multiple times. But I've actually kept the two-sided persona thing almost since the beginning. My work pages also rarely change, whereas my library is currently under renovation lol.
38. Is your website more you-focused, hobby-focused, or outside world-focused?: A split between me and my hobbies, I guess. I have things for the outside world planned, but I also have a lot of hobby stuff planned too.
39. Do you do web design professionally?: Ha. No.
40. If not, would you like to? And if you're comfortable answering, what do you do for work?: No. I like it as a hobby. And nothing currently. I'm prepping to go to university.
41. Do you communicate with people by email very much?: Not really. Mostly just professionals (lawyers & teachers & the government lol) and people applying for my webring.
42. Some people reject social media and use websites as a replacement. Do you keep social media outside of your website?: I would say I reject social media, but I wouldn't say my website is a replacement. I never used social media much to begin with. I have a rarely used tumblr and like youtube and dicord. Otherwise, I stick to forums.
43. How about instant messengers? Do you use a mainstream one like Discord or Telegram? Or something like Matrix? Do you avoid them?: I don't mind instant messengers. I do use discord. I'm not really fond of them right now, but struggling to find a suitable alternative or suite of alternatives so.
44. Do you listen to music while you work on websites? If so, what kinds of artists?: Ha, not really. I'm a freak that works in complete silence most of the time. For my writing as well.
45. Do you keep everything you make on one website, or do you have more than one?: I think I'd like to keep the one site honestly. I'm not so anal as to need to divide up my projects like that unless very necessary.
46. On a similar note, do you keep to one topic on your site, or many?: Me? One topic? Might as well ask me to stop breathing. All the things are on my site with more coming.
47. Do you present your real self, or at least try? Or do you construct a persona on purpose?: Hm. Both? Both Mortaki and Mordecai are characters, but when I'm talking like this I'm talking as myself, not either of them. I feel it's very obvious when I'm in character and when I'm not.
48. Have you ever made a good friend thanks to your website?: Yes! I consider both kepler and sattler good friends from the neocities club discord. I think shrimp will be a good friend too.
49. Are you happy with the way HTML and CSS currently work?: Yes? What an odd question. They make a lot of intuitive sense to me. There's not much, if anything, I would change about them.
50. What are practices that you think people should avoid?: Uhhhh? Hotlinking? I guess? I don't really care what other people do lol.
51. What about under-utilised practices, or things you think people should do more?: Link backs maybe? I don't necessarily think there's a lack of that, but it's one of the more frustrating things I run into sometimes. I want to know where something came from. I'm guilty of this sometimes, but often because I'm still thinking on how to work it into my site.
52. Do you use a lot of semantic HTML? Or are you guilty of generic structure?: I don't even know the difference. I name all my classes what they are? I prefer making a class over inline style properties?
53. Do you consider different browsers?: Eh. Kind of. If I know how to accomodate, I will. But otherwise, I don't think about it often. My site isn't exactly the hardest thing to run on any browser.
54. Speaking of, what's your preferred browser? Convince your readers why they should use it.: Librewolf. Which is a more privacy-focused, open source version of Firefox. If you already use Firefox, it's easy to switch. I just prefer it over Chrome and Chromium browsers (sorry Vivaldi) because Chrome makes me feel icky. Firefox was lowkey heading that way too, which is why I switched to Librewolf.
55. And what OS are you on?: Windows. I know. Booooooooo.
56. Do you have a strong opinion on that, or do you just happen to use it?: Surprisingly, I do have a strong opinion on it. I was the one booing lol. I'm not super fond of Windows because I'm not super fond of Microsoft and it's honestly not great even on its own merits. I'd like to switch to Linux, but many of the programs I use don't run on it.
57. Are your websites mobile-friendly?: For the most part. I don't check as often as I should, but it's actually one of my main concerns. I try to make sure that at least my index and my work pages are mobile-friendly since my main motivation is that I want people to be able to read my stories on their phones.
58. What are your thoughts on autoplay?: It's fine if the music isn't obnoxious.
59. What are your thoughts on webrings? Are you in any?: I like them. I'm in quite a few. My preference is other forms of link communities, but webrings can be charming.
60. Do you have any web shrines? What do you like to see in that sort of page?: Not yet. I have some planned though. Honestly? My favortie webshrines are the lunatics that just have a crap ton of photos of the same thing in different forms. I recently saw someone make a dr. pepper shrine and it was just bottles of dr. pepper and dr. pepper flavored things and these characters named mr. and mrs. pepper. I just love unhinged stuff like that.
61. Are your websites "cliche", in your opinion?: Uh? Maybe in some ways? I've heard a cliche defined as anything you've seen before and certainly you've probably seen newspaper themed sites and wizard themed sites. The question is have you seen them done the way I've done it?
62. What is your ideal website? Are you striving for that, or for something else?: A maze with treasure around every corner. Yes, I am striving for that. When I say maze, I don't necessarily mean confusing or getting lost. I mean that every time you return you find something new.
63. Are you an artist? Do you draw or design your own assets?: Ha. No. Either I find free to use things and credit them or I use things in the public domain. Very rarely I will do some pixel art for a few bits.
64. What are your favourite resource sites?: Hillhouse, I suppose. I have a lot bookmarked, but that's the one I always return to. It's linked in the sidebar.
65. Is there a habit you just can't get away from no matter how hard you try?: With coding? Not really. Using the center tag, maybe, but I usually only do that when I'm already stuck. I wouldn't call it a habit.
66. What's your biggest advice for a new webmaster?: Make friends. Bookmark everything.
67. Do you keep all your styling in CSS? Or do you hard-code some?: I hard code some, but rarely actually. Most of the inline styling you see on my site is from other people whose layouts I've modified.
68. What do you think of frameset layouts?: Not sure what that is.
69. How about table-based layouts?: Ew. That sounds like a nightmare and I've never even seen one.
70. Do you subscribe to the ideas of "one-column", "two-column" and "three-column" layouts? Do you use any of these?: I mean, yes? They exist, don't they? I suppose I do use them, but I don't really think of them that way. I organize information in the way I think makes the most sense. Columns or lack thereof have nothing to do with it.
71. Do you spend longer on the HTML or the CSS?: Html, easily. I usually set up my css for ease and speed.
72. Have you ever made a page with no CSS? It's useful for your thoughts.: Hm. Yes? I've never really thought about it tbh. My story ideas used to have no css, but that's mostly because I think in prose. I already think of and plan my site without much thought to the css, so I can't imagine it being much simpler than it is.
73. Do you ever find yourself making layouts with nothing to put on them? Or do you only make layouts when the need arises?: The latter. Making layouts that fit all the content I want to put in them is a struggle.
74. Would you consider yourself a beginner? Or advanced? Somewhere in the middle?: Intermediate. And I'd like to stay there as well. Struggling to get the machine to do what I want is part of the fun of coding for me.
75. Do you have a habit of looking at the source code of websites you visit?: Yes. Basically all the time.
76. How did YOU learn how to make websites?: Looking at the source code for sites lol. And dissecting templates. And looking up elements I don't recognize.
77. Do you ever force elements to do things they're not supposed to?: Probably. I'm not so worried about what a thing is supposed to do as opposed to what I can make it do. I've never really paid attention.
78. Thoughts on floating elements?: Chef's kiss. Make me very happy.
79. When you're sizing stuff, what do you use first? Do you use px, em, %, or something else?: px. It's rare that I use something else besides maybe percentage.
80. Do you have a favourite font?: Courier New.
81. Would you run a website with another person? How would that work?: Hmmm. Yes. I'm not sure how it would work. Depends on the content and purpose of the site, I supoose.
82. Do you surf the Web to find new personal websites very often?: Eh. Not very often. It kind of just happens occasionally without me actually setting out to do it.
83. Do you bookmark other people's websites? How would you feel knowing someone else bookmarked yours?: Yes. I'd be happy people thought my site worth remembering.
84. What do you want people to be most impressed with when they see your website?: My creativity, I guess. The breadth and depth of my site.
85. Are you interested in technology outside of websites? Do you collect?: Do video games count? I have a lot of those. And I have a fascination with word processors. I have like... five that I use regularly.
86. How often and for how long are you online?: Basically every day. Usually for several hours a day. This is almost always time spent on my computer though.
87. When it comes to your website, who is your target audience?: ...Do people think about that when making a personal website? I sure don't. If you see it and like it, then you are the target audience lol.
88. Have you ever been interested in XHTML?: I looked into it briefly. I can see how it'd be useful, but I wouldn't get into it until I found a specific purpose for it.
89. Do you program in general? Have you ever written a program for use with or on your website, not counting simple JavaScript?: Yeah, sort of. I was once on a small game dev team, so nothing for my site. I learned C# and a little C++. I haven't used them in years though.
90. Speaking of programs that help you make websites, what do you think of static site generators (SSGs)? Have you ever used one?: Ehhhh. I've tried some, but generally I don't like them. None of the layouts on my site are from a generator. It's hard to make them fit with my plans for a page, usually. And they can be very plain...
91. Do you keep a hitcounter? Why or why not?: Technically, yes. I have a button on my index page that keeps count of people visiting. I honestly didn't care about setting one up until I discovered that. I put it up there because I thought it was neat.
92. Do you frequent forums? Which ones?: Yes. Melonland and 32-bit Cafe. There's a few forums from my misspent youth as well, but I'm not telling because my middle school roleplays deserve to die a proper death.
93. Do you write your page content directly into the editor, or do you prepare it elsewhere, like a text document or a Word document?: Do people do that? Huh. Mostly, I write it directly into the editor. The only exception is my writing, which I write in ghostwriter, which then converts it into html.
94. Do you think you appear cool to others? A more accurate answer now: do other people ever say you're cool?: Maybe? I think I appear pretty enigmatic until you talk to me directly. Sometimes people say I'm cool, though I think they mean it more in the sense of having good vibes or being chill.
95. Are you embarrassed of your old work? Have you ever deleted everything out of shame?: On my site? Not really. In general, yes. Even if I remove something from public view though, I rarely delete it entirely. Old work is fuel to improve.
96. Would you close down your website if you couldn't update it, or would you leave an archive?: I'd leave an archive.
97. Do you reveal a lot about yourself on your website? Or are you more secretive?: I don't think I overtly reveal a lot about myself. This is the first "about me" type thing that I've really wanted to do. I'm cautious this way because I've had stalkers in the past. But also I tend to think that my writing reveals more than enough about me for people to understand my character.
98. Are you willing to reveal who your best online friend is, and/or if they have a website?: Uhhhhh. Basically all my friends are online. If they have a website, I've already linked to them lol.
99. And do you optimise the images on your website?: Ha. No. I probably should.
100. We're out of time! How do you feel after answering 100 questions? ....other than exhausted.: Decent, I guess. I broke it up into two sessions, so I'm not as tired as I thought I'd be. This was fun. I much prefer interview type stuff like this than generic about me's. Maybe I should do one for writers...

this month's updates |=| past update can be accessed through my changelog, which updates monthly

feb.2026

fixed the lair, which had not been retrieving its css properly
redid the red hander read in browser thing; it now matches the theme! more of those coming soon.
added zomboid.pro to other mages section
added Yolotli Moreno to the writer's webring

mar.2026

changed the lair layout AGAIN bc I didn't like the one I made anymore; say thanks to numbedpill for this new one
added button and shrimp to neighboring mages
added pepper to neighboring mages
added infini and nightcoreandcaffeine to the writer's ring
joined the seraph ring and fanlisting

apr.2026

got a domain; we're now hosted at www.mortaki.place
did the 100 webmaster questions thing
changed some chapter titles for red handed

planar portals

enter different worlds

[:::] Amarila & More the inner lore of red handed [|||] Shora's Secrets learn more about Shora's myths and monsters [===] witchcraft the science of magic [~~~] Experiments spells still being made, not yet ready for the bard

memberships

illustration of a big, broad, shiny sword with the words NO AI WEBRING around it in dark red. two arrows point left and right

// Vanilla Chai »

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guardian spirits

❧ Baldr is the patron of this site.