ICIRR.US: DOCUMENTATION

Last Updated: 3 March 2026

This is a manual on how and why I built Masterball. It is very long, with a lot of lists and subsections, and is mostly for me to verbalize my thoughts and reflections while making this website.

This page is not required for the Trick House.

Table of Contents

Introduction

I made this website in February of 2017, but I only started writing documentation for it in late November/early December 2024. I consider this documentation to be mostly accurate due to my trust in my memory, but, as memories work, some pieces of the earlier process I recall only vaguely, if at all. Additionally, my understanding of code, design, and web development has evolved over time, and continues to do so even today. My websites are a product of being self-taught, with minimal tutorial usage because I'm impatient. I started web designing like playing a video game without reading the instructions first, just like when I was a kid playing Pokémon for the first time.

The first website I owned dedicated to Pokémon was a fanlisting for Poké Balls, adopted from Georgie in 2011. My interest in maintaining fanlistings fell through; still, I liked the idea of owning a Pokémon-related website. Back then, all the independent Pokémon sites I'd been exposed to so far were web shrines for specific species or characters or ships—of which I have many, and no interest to talk about at length in an autobiographical or analytical way—or fanlistings which required maintaining member information regularly. So while the thought of making similar Pokémon-themed websites occurred to me repeatedly, it wasn't very appealing.

My favorite thing about making websites is the design component. I love writing and storytelling and analyzing, but they feel like different tasks when aesthetic design is factored in as well. Design and customization are purely indulgent for me; the work I put into writing and making content for a website is oftentimes an excuse for me to show off my website's design. The problem, however, was that despite my personal affinity for customization, I need content—an idea—to build the design around. Just a Pokémon site wasn't enough; after my exposure and experience with a handful of them, I knew I needed a more focused approach. Since I wasn't into other people's ideas for once, it quickly became evident to me that I needed something new, original. Something that was just my own.

In January of 2017, I reflected on this dilemma. What do I love about Pokémon? How can I create a personal and indulgent website about the franchise I've loved the longest, in a way that feels accurate to my relationship with it? And then it was so obvious: my teams in all of the games I'd played. I really only ever play a Pokémon game once, because I get so attached to the little bytes and pixels in my game data that I don't have the heart to reset and wipe my old team away. (Except for that one time where I had a bootleg copy of Emerald that couldn't save, so I played it for long stretches of time.) I love Pokémon because I love my Pokémon.

And so that's what this site is: an archive of my love for Pokémon, whether it's my parties from any of the games, species, plushies, gimmicks, regions, or anything else. I have a lot of love in my heart, and this website is dedicated to the part of my heart that belongs to Pokémon. I've admittedly moved all of my mainline teams to the most recent storage systems (currently Pokémon Home) so I can reset games now while my old Pokémon remain accessible to me. But I still only ever play the games once.

Background

I'll be honest and say that making this website didn't come from a healthy period of my life. I had dropped out of college for the first time, returned home from a year of traveling, and in January of 2017, lived with my mom, with whom I had a rough relationship at the time. I had few obligations and a lot of mental health issues, and so, as you do, I turned to my favorite creative hobbies for escape.

Once the idea of creating a personal archive for my Pokémon—and eventually, my overall relationship with the franchise—crystallized in my head, I began working on it immediately and obsessively. My initial idea had the Trainer page as the landing page and the whole site, so I worked on it first. The process quickly turned menial, but this was one of the rare instances where I didn't care how grueling the entire process was because I was looking forward to the end result so much. At that time, my party archive wasn't just the spotlight of this site; it was the site. So fueled by escapism, creativity, and sheer stubbornness, I designed and archived all my teams for their respective games, from Ruby to Moon, in one sitting.

It wasn't until I was writing my Trainer bio and recalling how kids at my after-school care used to call me "Pokeémon Master" when the idea for the website's name popped into my head. Not only was it a title I held, but the few times I had gotten my hands on a Pokémon cheat, the first cheat I'd turn on was an infinite supply of Master Balls. I love catching Pokémon and organizing them and calling them my own. The Master Ball is representative of why I love Pokémon, and it connects with all those times my classmates called me "Pokémon Master" when I was nine. It was perfect.

This site was originally arranged to have only Trainer and Gym accessed from the front page, on the band of the index Master Ball. After deciding on Masterball being the name of the site, I made the splash page after Trainer, and saved Gym for last. Though navigationally a lot has changed, design-wise I haven't done that much to these pages since then. The only major differences are that Trainer now has a separate About page (along with subpages), and that the Pokémon link in the Gym used to go to my Pokémon Go log. I also got into shiny hunting while making this site, so after making the Miscellaneous page (which was always going to exist) and Favorites (which occurred to me while making the Miscellaneous page, because Yellow is my favorite PokéSpe character but I wanted a page featuring my favorite game NPC too), I made the Shiny page shortly thereafter.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to take a minimalist approach to this website. I've always been inclined to minimalism, both visually and from a creative standpoint; though I can appreciate maximalism and elaboration, my instincts favor negative space a lot more. Plus, the minimalist nature forces focus on the content, the Pokémon-centrism of everything. Or at least the Trainer section. But that's why this entire website exists in the first place.

This website allowed me to bring another webdesign idea to life: having multiple webpages with different color themes, collated together like a rainbow. I initially had this idea in 2012 and tried it out for my personal site, but I quickly became unhappy and felt more like I was splitting myself apart rather than showing different sides of myself like a prism. With the Trainer pages, however, this idea is baked into the section's conceit: each game page innately has different colors to reflect its respective game, but they follow similar formatting so they're easy to comprehend. They're accurate to the games, but also reflect different parts of me, different periods of my life when I played each game. It's full circle, and much like the name of this site, it was perfect.

However, I certainly will be the first one to tell you that I'm not perfect. Though my intentionally minimalist approach reduced the number of decisions I had to make, my webdesign autodidactism began to show gaping holes in my approach to development and my overall coding ability. I didn't use root variables to translate skins with all the Trainer pages, I struggled for hours with the Bag Javascript, and for the initial pop-up bio on my Trainer page, I didn't know that I was using depreciated code until I asked about it on StackExchange years later. I've always had passion, but passion doesn't replace best practices. Because I hadn't formally learned anything technical about coding development at that point, I knew there was a whole ocean of contextual knowledge I was missing out on.

I returned to college in the fall of 2017. I had majored in Creative Writing before I dropped out the first time, but now I'd declared myself a Computer Science major. I had deliberated between Creative Writing and Computer Science for two years while I was in high school, since they're so drastically different and determined which colleges I would apply to. I suppose I didn't think that I would end up trying out both.

I didn't learn more about web development just by majoring in CS. But in my own time, I did, even if just a little bit. In the academic environment (and with ADHD medication) I learned to think about code algorithmically, strategically, modularly. I learned better the components of making things interact and operate and display from a coding angle. I learned the whys behind the best practices, not just the whats and hows. I dropped out of college again 2.5 years later because of my mental health and covid, but even though I didn't write any programs beyond my college assignments, I understood coding and development, as a whole, with a lot more coherence and confidence than I had before.

This is mostly to say that there are significant early portions of this website that I made before thinking technically, while more recent updates fall in line with having practicality, functionality, and structure in mind. Websites had always been about the front-end experience to me; I used to think, who cares what it looks like from the back-end? But the truth is that I care, especially as this is an ongoing project, so I need a comprehensible system for any and all future updates without much hassle.

Since the initial launch of this site and prior to November 2024, the only updates I had made were adding pages for new games I played, and removing placeholders for plans I had no interest in following through. But in September 2024, I got the webdesign itch bad, like I was 15 again and addicted to making several HTML/CSS layouts every day. I worked on my other web projects, and, in lieu of that, I touched up some things on Masterball that I thought I could do better. I decided to hunt for more affiliates to keep my button wall up-to-date, reaching out to webmasters after clicking around, and ended up getting an email from Butterfree that changed everything.

Well—not everything. But she did encourage me to think more about navigational accessibility, and if I was honest with myself, I kind of wanted to change the architecture of this site, anyway. It was made while I was a Creative Writing dropout, but several years later I was someone who'd studied Computer Science for three years and had a steady job. Now, I have more knowledge in code, design, and overall development reasoning. Despite how daunting it seemed, I was also excited in thinking about how to make this site more navigable while retaining my stylistic touch and unique ambitions. Plus, I had been meaning to make this site mobile responsive for years. All of this combined was the perfect excuse for a major sitewide overhaul.

The timeline of the background ends here because I don't anticipate needing to make another massive structural change in the future, particularly since the late 2024 update is meant to support future additions beyond just the Trainer game page updates. But who knows, really? I'm not concerned; this site started as a result of my deteriorating mental health, and has evolved into a personal project that I'm eager to continue as I traverse the inevitability of time. I'm much more confident in who I am and what I want, and one thing I'll always want is to change, to improve, even if it's in ways that only matter to me. Though this website is nominally centered around my love for Pokémon, it's also centered around my life.

Pokémon is the franchise I've loved the longest with a consistent intensity more than anything else, even if I've written more fanfiction for other media or put more hours into other video games. But nothing can replace the first time I watched the Pokémon anime in that kindergarten classroom and became hooked. Pokémon has had its hold over me since 1998, and even as the years pass, I know that I'll always return for more. In the same way, this website will continue to evolve as long as I love Pokémon—so, for as long as I'm around, and then some.

Site Purpose

The following four ideologies exemplify the purpose of Masterball, or icirr.us:

  1. This is a website that only I can make. Every element is directly tied to my life, experiences, and decisions: in games, teams, webdesign, and presentation. The unique thing about this website is not found in the Pokémon or website aspects, but in that everything is intrinsically tied to me. This website is a reflection of me much like my other personal websites; this one in particular is through the lens of the Pokémon franchise.
  2. This website is an experience. My favorite websites—and, in a larger scope, something I just enjoy conceptually—are ones that feel like scavenger hunts, where visitors have to explore through links, open a bunch of doors out of sheer curiosity, and maybe get rewarded for it. Though a lot about websites and website-making have caught my interest since I was 11, as the years passed, I noticed how much more I enjoy websites that aren't just words, but a navigational experience. Even from its humble beginnings, Masterball is my attempt to emulate that type of website, one that doesn't just require you to read, but also to explore. And maybe you'll get rewarded for it, too.
  3. This is an ongoing experiment. I love trying new things, especially in webdesign, but a problem I tend to run into with my artistic approach to web development is that there needs to be a purpose for everything, information to display or communicate in order for the design to need to exist in the first place. Masterball allows me to stretch my aesthetic muscles driven by my own vision and the things I like, rather than hanging the weight of expectation over my head. I don't want to feel limited in content, design, or structure. This website is whatever I want it to be, as long as it feels true to my desires.
  4. ...but it is a Pokémon website at the end of the day, and built to reflect that on every page and in every way. From the names of each section, to what goes where, to the graphics and use of in-game text, and to the nods to specific gimmicks in certain games—particularly the ones that I have a special fondness for—this website is ultimately about Pokémon. And it won't let you forget that.

Name

This website was always named Masterball, even before it had its own domain name. I purchased icirr.us in 2018, a year or so after I had first put this site online.

Why Masterball? When coming up with a name for this site, I knew I wanted something obvious enough to be tied to Pokémon, but not too specific or broad. Something meaningful to me, but with a distinct taste even in the keystrokes of others. At first, the working title was "Trainer," but I didn't like how generic and impersonal it felt. When I made the connection between my childhood nickname of "Pokémon Master" with my Master Ball cheating tendencies, I knew it was perfect. It is also, in a way, related to my very first Pokémon website, that Poké Balls fanlisting I adopted years ago. Though Master Balls aren't even my favorite ball aesthetically—that'll be the Moon Ball—as a site name, it's everything I want it to be.

Why icirr.us? This site was initially hosted on an old domain under the pkmn subdomain, because I like the idea of having subdomains. But even when I started this project, I knew that it would have its own domain eventually.

After uploading to the subdomain, I idly pondered over domain ideas for about a year. I was already fond of Icirrus City from Pokémon Black because of the town music's gimmick of becoming more percussive when you stand close to the ring of dancers. And yeah, that alone makes Icirrus City my favorite city of all time—I'm already very musically inclined, and gimmicky music is one of my favorite parts of Pokémon. The city name is also nice and inherently appealing to me, because C is my favorite letter, R is up there for me, and, elementally, I really like ice and clouds.

So when I realized that icirr.us could work perfectly as a .us domain, the idea lived in my head for months before I purchased it. I gave myself time to consider since it felt like a big permanent choice, but after I retired the domain this project was initially a subproject on, I bought icirr.us to move it to a home proper. If I didn't like it in a year, I thought, I could always change it. But here we are now, still in Icirrus City years later.

Why two names?

While I was pondering over domain ideas, I already knew that I didn't want a domain like masterball.com, or .org, or .info. I didn't want masterball to be in the URL—it felt too much of a commitment, even if this site has still been named Masterball ever since. When it comes to creative reflections of my identity, I like to make choices that feel just right for me, even if they seem senseless to others. I don't like conforming to expectations; I like being able to do whatever I want.

So Masterball being in the URL was never really a serious point of consideration, though I entertained the thought once or twice. Now, years later, I like the idea that my website has two names—who says that it should only have one? I use them both pretty interchangeably, though I suppose I'd say its preferred name is Masterball and icirr.us is on the birth certificate. But this is neither deliberate nor accidental, just a result of some decisions I made because they felt right to me in the moment, and continue to make me happy now. I have two names myself, anyway.

Construction

Design

My initial approach to the design of this site was rooted in my capabilities as a visual artist, which focuses on minimalism and making use of negative space. I want the site to look good, but I don't want to depend on graphics for aesthetics. In minimalism, graphics are for function and substance rather than for decorative emphasis: that's how I like to design. The only graphics I use are obviously Pokémon-related in some way, in the sense that the Pokémon-centrism of this site is evident with a mere glance, even if it's written on the tin. My penchant for minimalism makes these graphics stand out, and therefore the intention behind each graphic as well.

But I'm not limited here: this was just my initial approach so I had somewhere to start. As this site has grown I've experimented with different styles here and there, all the while maintaining the philosophy of being Pokémon-inspired—particularly from my experiences—in some way. I like being inspired by others and creating transformatively, but largely because I like to draw out my favorite elements, personal feelings, and interpretations in order to make something new and derivative, uniquely by me. This website is a love letter, a time capsule, an archive, and I want everything about it to reflect that.

While I have a strong preference for simplicity, I'm mostly here to follow my creative whims, wherever they take me and whenever they happen. The flexibility to design based on what the pages require rather than what I've already done makes this website an exciting mishmash of all the different types of design that I like, even if it lacks cohesion. But this site's cohesion isn't about its appearance, but about me: it's a home to different parts of me as a webdesigner, as well as the whole me that shamelessly loves Pokémon. I created this website because I thought it'd be cool, and I continue to work on it because I think it is cool. There's no final version in my head and I don't aim for a routine; I improve when inspired or necessary, but I have no desire for perfection or unchangeability at any point. I work on Masterball in the same way I work on my other websites and myself: continuously, and with love, grace, and authenticity.

Aside from this documentation, I don't use a lot of words to talk about myself here. I like to keep things brief, which complements my minimalistic affinities. My feelings are ever-changing, and while this site basically has my history with Pokémon on display, I don't intend for it to read like an encyclopedia, blog, or informative website. Instead, this site is more like a museum gallery: the exhibits speak for themselves, and I hope that visitors take something away from them. Even if that visitor is just me.

Fonts

I don't complicate it with the font choices here: Century Gothic was my favorite font when I was younger, but I have a Mac with Futura, which looks similar, and I like its aesthetic display a little more. The main font is Century Gothic on PC, though. Both fonts appear minimalistic yet have a unique look, as I hope this website also does.

The Home uses the same fonts and is styled similarly to Trainer because for all intents and purposes, my Trainer archive is the main showcase of this site. Other sections use fonts that better fit the content, and more often than not are monospace, primarily to emulate the video game feel. Inconsolata (the Gym and Fight font) is the font I've used the most on my other websites; chronologically, however, I believe it started here. It's more of my love-for-websites font, which fits with it being used for the site metadata.

The sans-serif body font used here is the Google Font Lato.

Sectional Notes

I know most websites have one template or layout for every page, but that has never appealed to me, and this site especially rebels against this convention. My other websites do as well, but Masterball is the site where I've made this truly evident on each page. On my other websites, I use some shade of ocean blue to visually unify them, but this website intentionally has none of that. The most unifying thing between all the pages on this site are me and Pokémon. Everything else can start from scratch.

Well—to a point, of course. Despite not being accessibly cohesive, each section is still designed with intent per its content. When making a section, I keep in mind what it's called, what is displayed, and what I want the user's experience to be. For example, the PokéGo page looks very similar to the actual game, while the TCGP page emulates a real life binder of Pokémon cards. Both of these designs illustrate my relationship with each game, even if they are both mobile apps and look very different.

It's really to say that I like being creative within boundaries. Give me a limit of plausibility, and see what I can do inside of it. That's where my imagination really shines, I think, and both Pokémon and this website are set up in a way to continuously foster that. Sometimes a design will be universally reminiscent, while other times it'll mean something to just me, or I think it's good enough because I don't feel like thinking of ways to make it better, or I accidentally end up with something I really like. The experimental nature of this site allows me the freedom to do whatever I want, but its core concept gives me a clear focus every time I want to do something new. It's my ideal way of being creative, particularly in website format.

February 2017: Process & Launch

In earlier versions of this documentation, I had incorrectly recalled the sequence of constructional events for this website. It wasn't until some time later when I retraced my steps, and remembered that the origins of this site were rooted solely in being a mainline game archive. (I also checked the created dates of my files and assets.) The entire Trainer section was first—I made the splash page shortly afterward.

I had drawn the wireframes in a notebook that is probably still with my mom. It wasn't hard, since I knew that I wanted every game page to look somewhat similar in organization, and that their colors would make them stand out from each other. I didn't get every idea at first, though; each page started off looking quite similar, but I quickly realized that that didn't accurately reflect my experiences with some games.

Platinum was particularly unique in that I only used one unevolved Pokémon, and I wanted to draw attention to the uniqueness of this run. Then, when I was making the Omega Ruby page, I didn't want it to look like the original Ruby page so I added a 3D effect with text- and box-shadows to reference it being a 3DS game, even though I had rarely used this CSS rule before. I liked it so much that I went back and edited my X page to incorporate the same motif, and continued it with the other 3DS games. This eventually resulted in the side border designs for Let's Go Pikachu and other Switch games, to reference the appearance of the Switch. My love for Omega Ruby also led me to make a small page for my progress in the game, particularly increasing my Trainer Card ranking with the Battle Maison and Secret Base flags, which I was obsessed with at the time. Making a game-specific subpage later prompted me to make my collection of shinies during my addiction to raid den exploits in Shield.

Despite the chore of getting the game-accurate sprites, balls, ribbons, and moves, it was worth going through all of my lovingly crafted boxes of old parties in Pokémon Black and transferring them permanently here. Since I didn't play all the games necessarily in order, I decided to list the games in the order I played them, to emphasize my personal experiences. This was also a factor in selecting the trainer sprites for each page, though I suppose I don't really play with much variability there. On the Trainer page, though, I had assigned myself as an Ace Trainer for the first several years of this site, with a light teal to complement the Ace Trainer's design in Omega Ruby. My party has also changed a few times, though Kingdra and Sceptile have always been there.

It was shortly after the Trainer section was done—particularly my mini-bio—when I worked on the splash page, as I had now settled on naming the project Masterball. Though I don't consider myself much of a graphic designer, I liked the vectors I made for the splash page so much that I instantly made linkback buttons out of them once I was done, which now meant that I also needed a section to distribute them. And so then came the idea of having a Gym for my site metadata—linkback buttons, exit links, and... whatever else.

I suppose I sound flippant here, but mostly because I liked the idea of making the Gym a battle menu for website information, but my vision for it wasn't as fully realized as the Trainer section. The Gym would have to have four relevant sections, and each section had be somewhat intuitive with its respective menu link. I knew I wanted Fight to be the metadata section since it's the most interactable option, and Run was always going to be for exit links. I decided to make Pokémon link to my PokéGo archive because it was still 2016 in my mind, and have the Bag link to a site map that appeared and operated similarly to the battle menu. It was pretty impractical, but I didn't have any better ideas. All things considered, I was pretty happy with the navigation effects, at least. I chose to add the sprite of the gym guide from Emerald as well, to complement the section and to reference my extensive familiarity with the Hoenn games.

My design for the Fight section has been the same since its inception, though I did declare myself an ice-type gym leader at first. I switched to steel-types sometime in 2019, as a result of my Shield raid den hyperfixation, during which I made a bunch of new friends and discussed forming some sort of battle ladder as if we were gym leaders, though that never happened. But while we were discussing it, I realized how many more steel-types I like and how I feel that it suits me better, as both a type and as a gym leader. My shiny Gigantamax Corviknight also made a difference in those feelings, I'm sure. I was incredibly pleased with this realization as it significantly broadened my party options; steel is a stronger typing than ice, anyway.

My one and only design idea for the Exits page was to be based on a Love Ball, though at first it was temporary in case I came up with something better. But I didn't; in fact, when I was done, I liked design so much that I seriously considered making other random pages for the sole purpose of displaying different ball designs in a similar fashion. Before this site was responsive, I had a note for mobile users indicating this site's initial lack of responsiveness, and I had fun designing it like a premier ball. Honestly, I never really knew how much I cared about the ball designs. I really do love balls.

I always knew I was going to make the Pokémon Go page look like the mobile app. Funnily enough, it's the very first webpage I ever employed a gradient background on, though I've known how to do it for ages. But much like the 3DS games' box- and text-shadows, I didn't have a reason to use these CSS rules until now. The PokéGo page originally had all the sprites of the Pokémon I had seen/caught, but as more 'mon got added, I realized it was way too laggy and changed this nine years later, in February 2026.

I saved and tested all the webpages locally as HTML and CSS files, then converted them to PHP and uploaded the entire project via FTP at the end. However, as of October 2024, I test in XAMPP and upload via Github Desktop, so now I can skip a few steps.

November 2024: The Responsive Update

I'd known how to write responsive code before I even started this website. But—and this isn't the first time I'm complaining about it—I don't like making my designs responsive, even though I absolutely understand the necessity. Responsive designs are about adjusting for a preset boundary while keeping familiarity with the desktop design—in my opinion, anyway—and therefore is webdesign but without the fun part, for me.

When I launched the site, I knew I'd want to make it responsive. Eventually. But I really didn't want to do the work, especially as doing that meant not just making one style responsive, but several, with some page-specific quirks. So I put it off for a long time. For over seven years, at that.

It was shortly before American Thanksgiving in 2024—and after I'd moved this entire site to a Github repository, so I could update it locally—when I got the aforementioned email from Butterfree about taking navigation accessibility into more consideration. It spurred me not only to reorganize, but also to sit down and make this site responsive like I meant it to be for ages, despite my gripes with the process. But I thought of it as a fun and practical makeover, especially since I knew I could do better, and how, and why, so I might as well.

I edited, changed, and added a lot of the stuff under Scrapped Plans during this update, including:

Though I was initially motivated by the necessity of accessibility, this update soon turned into thinking of ways that I could develop this website even more. After being online for so many years with so few updates, I knew it was starting to feel too stale for my liking. Now that I was reorganizing everything, I could imagine not only how I could make it better, but also more interesting—more fun, more creative, more me. The creation of the home page especially helped, no longer limited to the binary of "Trainer" and "Gym." And, well, I guess the ball button, which was initially to refresh the page rather than take you anywhere.

It helped that I'd gotten really into PokéRogue some months previous and wanted to find a way to work my runs onto this website. I was starting to get into TCG Pocket too, and I liked the idea of translating my collection of rare pulls into a webpage, even though I don't care for the real life cards. I didn't actually add these subpages yet, but making this site more navigable gave me new ideas that I could do if I wanted to, and add them to the home navigation if I ever did. I was happy with this update, but more than that, I had set up ways to expand this site even further in the future.

I worked on this all through my Thanksgiving holiday in 2024, while my mom was visiting me. This isn't important, but that memory will forever be tied to this development stage now.

February 2025: The Wild Area & Secret Base Update

I told myself that TCGP and PokéRogue were the subprojects I would work on next. But as I have a lot less to show with PokéRogue, and a lot more with TCGP due to my luck with pulls, I decided to work on the TCGP page first. I ran into some creative difficulties during the process since I barely had an idea of how I wanted it to look, just that it should be as true and necessary as any other section. I settled on the motif of a binder of cards but displayed as a vertical scrolling webpage to emulate the mobile app, with a large empty section to showcase the cover. The background was an annoying point of indecision that I put off until the end. Eventually I realized that a wood pattern would make the page look like a binder on a desk and enhance the vibe even more.

When I linked it from the home page like I'd planned, it felt wrong. For one, it was the only one-page subproject linked to from the home navigation, while Pokémon Go was in the Gym and everything else was in Trainer. For another... as much as I dreaded admitting it, it would actually be better suited in a section with Pokémon Go, and the Pokémon link in the Gym should link to something else. I was annoyed when I realized this, though, because that meant I had to think of something to replace it. If ideas don't magically manifest in my head when I need them, I can get really impatient.

Still, I knew what felt right. So despite my lack of ideas, I made the index menu of the combined Go and TCGP section, in what's now known as the Wild Area. But it was Pokémon in the Gym first, which was also how I came up with the idea of making it look like the starter selection screen in Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. Soon after deciding on the starter selection screen as this new page's motif, I remembered that I'd been wanting to employ the logic of radio buttons as in-page navigation for an eventual project, and this design was perfect for it. Once I made it work, I liked it a lot, but I knew it didn't quite fit in the Gym section. I knew I was going to move it. I just needed to think of something to replace it first.

I asked a friend if she wanted to help me brainstorm page ideas, and she suggested having a little pet feeder adoptable; I expanded that idea into even more digital collectibles and cliques. And then as I was hunting for Pokémon sprites and PNGs to adopt, I came across newlambda's Pokémon shrine and it gave me the aesthetic inspiration I needed for this page, particularly having a game overworld image as the background. So I chose Route 104 from the original Hoenn games, because it's both nostalgic for me as an area to encounter new Pokémon, and extremely visually distinct. Since I'm not the type to regularly collect digital adoptables, the Pokémon section is more for posterity than anything else. But I'll admit that I love having just one page on this otherwise pretty minimalistic website that looks so maximized.

From there, I had a new page for the Pokémon option in the battle navigation menu, and a brand new section with a new subpage of its own: the Wild Area for mobile games. Because being in the real world is like wandering into tall grass, I guess.

While I had been wracking my brain for page ideas to replace the Pokémon section, I got other not-as-relevant but nevertheless enticing ideas along the way. I decided that PokéRogue could be in a future section dedicated to fangames, so I could put it off for a while. But the big idea I got in the meantime was the Secret Base: a section for my Pokémon merch, which came as a result of another (unfinished) project to display my collections and possessions on my personal site. But I have a lot of Pokémon merch, too, certainly enough to have its own section here, and I've always loved the Secret Base gimmick. My only excuse to procrastinate was that, ideally, I wanted a customized Secret Base as navigation but couldn't make it that easily on my computer yet... and then I found Pamtre-Berry's Secret Base maker which had somehow escaped my notice before that very moment. So I no longer had that excuse.

Over Super Bowl weekend in 2025, I sat down and made it. I didn't have a concrete idea for how I wanted it to look or function design-wise yet, but I knew that my online-made secret base would at least inspire it, if not be a part of it. I started with making something that I liked in the Secret Base maker and trusted that the rest of my ideas would follow.

And wouldn't you know? It worked. From making the base online I implemented the idea of my merch being in two separate "rooms," distinct by intuitive association. I created the entire look of the secret base first, then separated certain items as navigational buttons so I knew what to use and where they would go. I had jotted down beforehand how my IRL merch would be categorized, so I knew how many navigational items I needed to download and edit to operate as image links. Each item originally had two different images for border hovers, though I changed this to use drop shadow CSS a year later, in February of 2026.

After that, I settled on the base tree background being the page background, with the content initialized as a brown square before slowly and surely, the more it looked like a corkboard, the happier I became with it. I found and took pictures of all of my Pokémon things and turned them into PNGs and dithered them, which was a task in and of itself, and implemented iframes since I think they're kinder for each page load. I really don't like designing with the colors green or brown, but the breadth and uniqueness of this section's design makes me feel especially proud now that it's done.

The Secret Base was a day-long project; I passed out early on Sunday morning. I woke up several hours later suddenly with an idea of how to make the guestbook—which, for a short period of time, was designed like the Pokétch—look cuter in a way that I liked. So I worked on it immediately, after being asleep barely 10 minutes prior, now looking up PNGs of Gabby and Ty from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and creating a design I liked a lot more. I updated the Documentation—this page—too, in the next couple of days, doubling its original word count. Making such a significant update was quite fitting then as it was also near the eighth anniversary of this website.

February 2026: The Trick House & Ball Guy Update

And funnily enough, my favorite update yet was about a year later, shortly after Masterball's ninth anniversary.

As these things go, the idea of the Trick House occurred to me while I was making the Secret Base, since both are gen III gimmicks and a major influence for why I don't think any Pokémon game will compare to the experiences I had with them. But while the Secret Base is about ownership and showing off, the Trick House is more of an optional incremental puzzle. I love puzzles, riddles, and side quests, rewarding curiosity while requiring cleverness. Around that time was when I learned how to add the Konami code to webpages, and suddenly the idea of the Trick House was clear in my mind.

I worked on it right away, on February 19, 2025. It was a brand new type of creative project for me, especially since I'm not a game developer, or that much of a gamer in general. I have excruciatingly average hand-eye coordination and very little patience. One time I was tasked to come up with a simple original game idea, and I struggled, because the possibilities felt too big and my mind felt too small. The reason I like playing certain games is because something about them appeals to me significantly enough for me to trudge through all the parts I don't like. But I don't think like a gamer, and even less so a game developer.

But the Trick House is a game. And I say all this because despite my past experiences and general lack of interest, all it took was a random video about Super Mario Odyssey for me to think differently, and to know exactly how I wanted to make the Trick House a proper game. The video in question was about how Mario games—Nintendo games as a whole—follow a three-step rule, similar to kishōtenketsu as four-part narrative structures. As described by maxonwriting:

The rule of three is the idea that you present something in a game, such as a mechanic or an enemy, in three escalating steps before going all in. These steps ensure that the audience—in this case, the player—is eased into thinking about how something works and how it can be used, which then encourages their mind to extrapolate further when presented with the mechanic in question later—be it a foe, item, magic, whatever.

So, if we were making a game, the three steps to the rule of three would be these:

  1. Introduce the thing as simply as possible.
  2. Do it again, but with a slight twist or a wrinkle.
  3. Again present the thing, but with a different (and ideally more complicated) execution.

Now, once you’ve done all three of these, you can continue to use this thing in new, creative ways, such as throwing large numbers of them at the player if they are an enemy with new twists, or giving them puzzles that will build on what was in those three steps.

As a fan of numbers, logic, organization, and storytelling, I realized how true this was, and it changed my view of game development completely. While I'm not great at platformers, a big reason I've always enjoyed Mario games is because they consistently employ this approach—no tutorial, just in-game learning. I'm more inclined to Nintendo games overall because I'm a kid at heart, but I think also because a lot of Nintendo games consistently adopt this philosophy. With this epiphany, I realized that creating an original webpage navigation-based game didn't have to be difficult at all. In fact, it could be incredibly easy.

But I won't provide spoilers here ;) I brainstormed all my ideas in voice memos over the next few weeks or so, hyperfocused on making the game. I came up with ideas by working backwards, and worked on each puzzle once I felt confident enough in its concept. From the beginning, I knew that a major part of the game would require exploring the frontend of this site, and I wanted to incorporate callbacks to the Trick House in the Hoenn games, particularly how the first four puzzles rely on the first four HMs you get in the game. Like other transformative things I create, I wanted my Trick House to be self-referential, in any and every way possible.

I also really liked the idea of writing as another persona through this game—as a more obnoxious, arrogant, Trick Master version of myself. This was one of my favorite parts of the writing process: adopting the Trick Master's voice and tweaking it to make it my own. But that part was easy; it took a lot more time for me to code and develop everything, learning what I had to learn, and adapting and adjusting along the way. I had so many ideas for different elements of this game that I made a Google Sheet with multiple tabs detailing the purpose, text content, problem, and solution of each room. I noted how certain puzzles connected, the URLs of each necessary page, lists of answers and passwords, and a personal checklist. I learned a lot with PHP, particularly how to make webpages accessible in certain ways and inaccessible in others, which is by far one of my favorite things about this game.

I worked on the Trick House for a solid month straight—and completed 90% of it—until I ran into a few roadblocks. My first was a room that I wanted to commission art for; my initial choice for the artist was unavailable, and I became too lazy to look around for anyone else. I never commissioned art for this page, but I did draw a placeholder that functions the way I always wanted it to and, I think, has some "bad art" charm, so I published my placeholder drawing for that particular room. (If you've finished the Trick House, you can probably guess which one I'm talking about.)

My second roadblock was one of the last puzzles, because I wanted it to be a confusing and annoying link maze that relied purely on luck and nothing else. I thought about how to do this in several different ways for a solid year, with this always being the idea, but I never got excited enough to make it. And I never did; while I was sick during the middle of February and finishing the Trick House, I decided on a whim to do a completely new idea. I like it a lot more, it was easier for me to make, it's a lot more fun than getting confused by clicking on links, it's difficult enough to be towards the end of the game, and it's referential to me in several different ways.

I made that page, and then... I was done. A month of working a year ago, two days of working 363 days later, and the Trick House was complete. All that was left to do was implement the way to get there and other little frontend tweaks, and then, on February 19, 2026, it was playable by the world. My initial idea was to have two close friends test it, but since they had become much busier now a year later, I threw it in a Discord server of new gamer friends in case any of them wanted to be my guinea pigs instead. A handful of them did, leading me to tweak a few more things and up the estimated completion time.

Despite being more sick than I had been in a long time while completing the Trick House, its launch lit a fire in me for this website once more, so much so that I actually made two more projects right afterward before writing this part of the documentation. The day after the Trick House was published, my ideas for a Ball Guy section drew nearer and nearer; I considered making a fanlisting for him, because I love that guy. But then I asked myself, how much would I care to install a fanlisting script and keep it updated? More than that, I had also seen how my mini-cliques have really taken off, so I decided I liked that idea more. I love the Ball Guy and, like the Trick Master, I think cosplaying as him is fun—and like I said before: man, I love balls. I really do. From that Poké Balls fanlisting I adopted in 2011 to my brand new mini clique for Poké Balls, my Pokémon website-making journey had once again come full circle.

As these things go, the more I add to this site, the more ideas I get for newer things to add. Though I've now launched my year-old favorite creative baby of all time, I am super excited for all the things I have in store for the future. I have my ten-year anniversary planned, which will arguably become the biggest update yet, as well as other project ideas past that. In 2026, I want to (finally) play Ultra Moon, Violet, and Legends ZA, particularly before gen 10 comes out, and get those game pages up. I usually do this; if there's a deadline I have no control over, I like making it a challenge for me to do everything I want to be done beforehand. I'm more driven than ever to not only expand this site, but to keep it up-to-date with both me and Pokémon at this current point in time.

All in all, I love what this site has become and I have a clear vision for where I want it to go. Even if things may change, I've reached a point in my life where all I need to keep going is to be excited for whatever might come next. And with this website, I definitely have that.

Site Walkthrough

Upon entering the site, you are presented with the image of a large Master Ball and instructions to open it—or click on an adjoining link—to begin the journey.

Doing so will lead you to the site navigation, or Home: a hub of all the main sections, along with a small description of each. Webrings, the Ball Guy clique, my GPX party, documentation, feed, splash page, and web portal are linked in the footer. A trans icon linking to Point of Pride is linked in the footer as well, to signal that this site is and will always be a safe space for trans people.

The sections on the Home navigation are:

  1. Trainer
  2. Gym
  3. Wild Area
  4. Secret Base
  5. Amie
  6. Map

There appear to be a set of directions at the bottom of the page.

1. Trainer, listed at the top, is the main showcase of the site. It is a mini-archive of my parties across all played games. Each page lists:

Clicking on "Trainer Battle" directs the visitor to a small autobiographical section about myself as a Pokémon fan, why I think I would be the respective NPC in the Pokémon world, a small blurb of why each of my favorite six Pokémon are my favorites, and additional fun facts about my relationship with the franchise.

At the bottom are links to dedicated pages that expand on a certain element of my personal relationship with Pokémon. Currently, they are:

Non-game pages listed in the trainer section are:

Visitors can leave the Trainer section by avoiding eye contact.

2. Gym is the second page listed in the Home navigation, and contains pages relevant to the site's identity.

Fight directs to the main site information page, which has an in-page menu of my gym team as clickable shiny Pokémon. Each selection expands into the following sections:

Bag toggles into an in-page subpage of the Gym as a menu of quick links around the site. This is to access other sections without needing to go back to the home menu, and fits with the idea of opening your bag if you need resources during a battle. More options unique to the bag will be added in the future.

The links are:

Pokémon directs to a page of digital adoptables in the form of images, as well as cliques, similarly themed widgets, and any other Pokémon graphics I collect. Pokémon fanlistings I've joined are here too.

Run directs to exit links out in the form of a button wall. Pokémon sites are selected to be shared here based on my interest in their content and design, especially if I've affiliated with them. Other links are independent Pokémon sites useful to fans, fanmade Pokémon-related projects, and archived links through the Wayback machine.

3. The Wild Area is a hub of my mobile game archives. Each Poké Ball serves as a navigation link, opening up an explanation for the archive it leads to. Currently, there are only two. The third Poké Ball appears to be empty.

The first ball leads to the Pokémon Go page, listing my public player information if you were to add me. My selected Go team is evident in design. Relevant game stats are on this page, as well as significant Pokémon. This page is a dead end and only navigates back out to the Wild Area.

The second ball leads to the Trading Card Game Pocket archive, listing my public player information if you were to add me. It contains the in-game graphic I selected as the cover of my main binder. Scrolling down will show you an archive of all my rare and full illustration cards, which can be hovered over to see at full opacity. This page is a dead end and only navigates back out to the Wild Area.

Visitors can leave the Wild Area by retreating from the tall grass.

4. The Secret Base is a display of my real life Pokémon merch. Each page can be navigated through the Secret Base in the top left via highlighted furniture items, or the text navigation below it. The landing page is reminiscent of a corkboard, with some guidance in navigation. All internal pages open in an iframe.

Each page contains PNGs of all respective items within the category, as well as a sentence or two describing the item and the context of my ownership. The About section (the PC in the Secret Base) details the presence of Pokémon merch in the context of my life.

Visitors can leave the Secret Base by clicking on "Exit" in the text navigation. There is no adjoining link through the Secret Base furniture, to prevent confusion.

5. Amie directs to the public guestbook. Closing the guestbook redirects to Home. The footer links to the sitemap and documentation.

6. The Site Map is a hierarchal list of all pages on this website. There is no further navigation here, as the map itself is navigation.

Scrapped Plans

This website has gone through a lot of changes, both big and small, despite how much has stayed the same. Here's a list of design and organizational choices in previous iterations of this project that are no longer present and not mentioned above:

End Credits

The Pokémon section has its own list of credits, as it is a page of things I've collected from other people's websites.

Disclaimers, Privacy, & Accessibility

Though I have done my best, some pages on this site do not have a fully accessible color contrast ratio but do not require the visitor to spend more than a minute or so of reading.

All pages are coded by me.

As a big believer in accessibility and privacy, I have done my best to make my websites as accessible and uninterested in visitor information as possible. This includes:

Additionally, this website:

This website was made for creative and entertainment purposes under the WTFPL license. I am not receiving anything monetarily through this website. No copyright infringement intended.