cieth.org

Cieth.org was registered with namecheap in May 2014, and was online within a day, as of 19th May 2014. This was because I jumped the gun somewhat - I made the layout prior to purchasing the domain, so that I wouldn't end up with yet another temporary "coming soon" splash page. Cieth is not the first fandom domain I have owned, but I have no intention of letting this one go; I really do like the name!

Cieth.org is named after the Cie'th of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries of the Final Fantasy franchise – which is to say, Final Fantasy XIII, Type-0, and XV (regardless of Square's distancing of the latter, it's still heavily rooted in those same ideas. Can't fool me). These are the stakes: in XIII, the protagonists are branded as l'Cie early in the story, and should they complete their focus, they will turn to crystal. Should they fail, they will turn into Cie'th, shambling, lifeless monsters doomed for eternity until they finally petrify. It's at this petrifaction that Cie'th remember their unfulfilled focus and call out to others to complete it. Essentially, Cie'th are the universe's variant of the undead (which is a delightful thing to name a domain after, no? This wasn't the last time, either. All my current domains have some death theme naming going on. Rems you don't even like zombies). I briefly considered l'Cie as a domain name, but cieth flows better when you take out the apostrophe.

I've always found the concept of Cie'th fascinating, ever since my first playthrough of XIII, and how Final Fantasy treats its mythos and death has always been an interest – crystallisation, pyreflies, the lifestream… if it wasn't cieth, it would be something similar.

The domain is known as The Fate Defier Organization for becoming a Cie'th is the fate that the XIII party are seeking to avoid (and as such is indirectly named after Defiers of Fate), even though they have no desire to fulfil their focus any longer. They choose their own destinies; they live to make the impossible possible, and that is their focus. Say what you will about XIII, but it always be my favourite numbered entry.

You might notice that a lot of sites collected here are actually on the domain Farron.net, which I purchased two years after cieth when I bought a new hosting package. I had planned for that to be temporary ownership... but honestly I was just lying to myself and really, I'm happy with both. If the subject matter relates to the Farron sisters in some way (and a lot of my current sites do, since there's an overabundance of XIII here!), they'll probably be at farron.net.

One day I'll complete my list of endless projects for cieth. It is not this day.

This is the fourth version of cieth, which features Caius, Lightning, Noel, Serah and Yeul from Final Fantasy XIII-2. Technically XIII-2 has featured before, but none of the characters did, and this is one of my favourite promotional images for XIII-2, so, why not? Again, nothing extravagent was done coding wise for this layout, as I delberately built it from the previous one as I liked the colour scheme. Sometimes you gotta stick with what works. Fonts are Abel, Berkshire Swash and LeviBrush.

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