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mari . she/they . 29 . italy

hi! i’m mari, and i made this website to branch out from digital art, which is that one thing i have been doing for the majority of my adult life. i currently work with my 2d art through freelancing by coloring comics for another italian artist, occasional commissions, and whatever else i find. you can read more about me and about this website in the sections below!


things i do & love

my hobbies include drawing, web design, game design + making assets for said games, making the occasional 3d model. in theory i also like the concept of writing, but i rarely have stories worth telling.

i also enjoy playing videogames, reading a shitton of fanfiction (of canon characters, i don't read x reader fics) and the occasional real book, browsing tags of my favorite blorbos, watching snippets of the same 5 movies until i’ve basically rewatched the entirety of them, and trying out new food whenever i have the chance.

i went to a catholic school primarily staffed by nuns for 12 years. they had this policy that if you were late for mass (which was every morning before class), you had to give 1€ to the head nun (already an insane concept). everything was put in a jar to allegedly pay for school expenses. during one of the last years i attended, someone climbed over the rose garden and stole the jar, which i'm assuming contained thousands of euros by then. i have a lot of interesting stories from that time, including the time another nun sprayed a student with a garden hose, and the same nun slapped another student during the carnival party, because they were dressed as madonna (the singer), because that also is the name we use for the virgin mary here.

i haven't been able to drink anything that isn't completely free of any texture change ever since i was little. besides my presence being a nightmare for any bartenders, my non-alcoholic options are limited to water, soda and energy drinks. problem is: i'm also extremely sensitive to caffeine and it stays in my system for 24+ hours, and it ruins my sleep. to this day, i've yet to find someone with the same issue with drinks that i have: there's always that one guy who is like 'oh yeah, i have that too' and then they chug a smoothie like it's nothing.

i was not bestowed with the gift of synthesis, and i am an overexplainer. but i just can’t help it! it’s important to me that the point gets across in the exact way that i experience it.

i'm often moved by love + honesty + passion for a subject when it shines through writing, and whenever i have the excuse, i try letting the creators know through email how much their art, story, or craft impacted me. it's definitely a very good habit of mine, and i've also made friends through this in the past.

i am queer!

❤ tv

❤ games

❤ other

the devil wears prada, mean girls (2004), high school musical 2, severance (2022). more in general i love chick flicks.

portal 1 + 2, road 96, the sims 2, crypt of the necrodancer, greedfall, raft, age of mythology, class of 09, among us (unironically).

jalapeño stuffed olives, documentaries about some species of animals, tumblr-born phenomena such as the concept of 'sexymen', liefmotifs, musicals.

FAVORITE CHARACTERS


how it started

my web design knowledge had always been basically non-existent prior to neocities. i had a rough idea of how html worked as far as a text editor would teach: i knew how to insert images, links and colored text through html, but i had never touched a div in my whole life. and had NEVER messed with css (nor i knew how it related to html) aside from tiny edits to tumblr themes made by other people.

it was daunting! i didn’t really think i had the skills to do it. everyone on the subreddit kept saying learning html/css was pretty easy, but i didn’t even know where to start! i was lost on the technical aspect, not to mention that i've always struggled to identify what aesthetics, themes or styles speak to me, so i was also lost on the designing aspect of it. but i've always thrived at my lowest, and i had been there for months. so i got to work: i watched a couple of youtube tutorials and read through some other resources. i couldn’t even understand half of what i was putting in, mostly using premade bits from w3schools.

these below were my first attempts. first is three days in, second is one week in:

it took me an entire month to make something that i could use.

i still don't have a very specific vision for it, but we all start somewhere, don't we? most importantly: when i started this site, it felt like i finally had a hobby that i didn’t have to be good at. i mean, i try my best, but i am not planning to monetize this skill (unlike art), so it’s fun to fuck up and learn how to fix your mistakes. after all, even if i'm not great at it, who is going to see this besides like, 5 people? i can deal with 5 people.

my experience with modern social media

finding a space to be 'cringe' in without subjecting myself to the pressure of thousands of eyes was definitely one of the reasons that pushed me to create this website. with the advent of modern social media and phone apps, the userbase of internet spaces massively increased, and with so many people connected at any given moment it became harder to ignore the loudest, angriest ones — and i believe it's because of sheer numbers, not people becoming evil, meaner or worse.

it's just way more likely that someone will leave twenty nasty comments across the 500+ videos they consume that day while doomscrolling, than it would have been back then in the comment section of something that they had chosen to click and watch in 2003. nowadays, there are a thousand replies to any given thread, all shouting the same things to people who will never listen. and sometimes i don’t know if i get angrier at bigots or at the people on my side, for being ragebaited like this and writing hundreds of comments trying to challenge the beliefs of someone with the username NoWokeZone69.

this constant negativity was making me miserable. i was already posting less and less on modern social media, only using it to doomscroll and send reels to my friends, and i began to wonder: why am i even on this platform at all, if not to share my work? is there value in scrolling, when it makes me feel like this?

i deleted social media apps several times through these past two years, but eventually always came back: i wanted to spend that time i was 'saving' on something more productive, but i had no hobbies that i enjoyed anymore. so it always felt like a cruel, pointless punishment to myself, because i wasn't replacing my time spent on those apps with anything that made me feel better.

making my site has started a chain reaction that also made me dip my toes into other creative hobbies that are equally new to me, and it feels like i actually have something to do with all this extra time. this has been the longest i have been without scrolling mindlessly, and i still haven't felt the urge to re-install those apps.

it can feel isolating at times: deleting apps and being clueless about ‘internet news’ (whether that’s memes, drama, or scandals) puts me in a position where i feel disconnected at times, not being able to get a reference that my friends make and so on. but ironically enough, i’ve felt like my friends like me better these last few months, and i can’t help but feel like it has to do with my improved attitude. i’ve been feeling more confident, with more things to say, and drastically less negative towards myself and especially other people. despite it all, maybe i am a cool dude, after all.

this is not a delete social media!!!! manifesto. being able to share my art and look at other people's fanarts was my escape back when i was still living with my family. i owe a lot to websites such as deviantart, tumblr, and facebook: allowing me to meet my friends, my partner, landing my current job through networking, and giving me purpose for a long time.

but i think it’s important to be in tune with how what you see on social media makes you feel, to consider how you spend your time and how intentional your scrolling is, and how you feel at the end of the activity. it can be hard to get out of a rut, especially when you are asked to break years of bad habits, but maybe defaulting to scrolling whenever you feel bored could be preventing you from starting on something else that could feel more fulfilling for you in the long run.

and it doesn’t have to be all or nothing! i still use tumblr multiple times a day, because my dashboard is in line with my interests (i choose who to follow and only see their posts, i can browse character tags and so on).

if you've found you relate to these feelings of mine, maybe this is your sign to reshape how you spend your free time!

the good thing is, sometimes things fall into place on their own quite randomly: a new hobby might find you when you weren’t looking, and it might change your outlook on life for long enough that you can take that opportunity to learn something new. and when it finds you, go for the throat!