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Kinda - Blog Posts
"I don't accually have any eyes, what your seeing is the holes in my face"
HELLO??!! WWHAT
For context he was talking about Bdub's eyes blinking
Not sure what vod/stream this is from, i just found the clip from YouTube and wanted to share https://youtu.be/f7ZJsjwk5NE?si=R52Pmw8tCnjLRu78
I hate Uranus!!! (I say while hiding my like 530 some images of him) Hes so smug I’m going to cry
Song lyrics from “I Earn My Life” by lemon demon ‼️☝️ like all the other lyrics fit him so well it’s not even funny
random doodle of me and my friends roblox avatars >w<.. @thefatherofsorrow <3
I shy away from kindness like a stray dog. I need it, I want it, please give it to me, I can be so good- my hackles aren't raised for you, I promise I don't mean to bite, I promise I can be good, see my tail wagging for you? But now you've come too close, and I want you here, but my legs pull me away from the hurt so I promise I'll try again tomorrow. Will you be there too?
The First To Sing and The First to Turn Grey
____________________________
Trolls Au
____________________________
Trolls - Trolls World Tour
____________________________
Troll Names/Color Coded
Pop - Pink
Funk - Green
Rock - Red
Classical - Green
Country - Orange
Techno - Light Blue
(I hate the color limit)
____________________________
Does Pop have any regret?
The Betrayal.
The Broken Promise.
The Heartbreak.
The Misery.
The Anger.
The Sadness.
The Shock.
The Disbelief.
The Resentment.
The Bitterness.
The Fear.
___________________________________
Woah, oh-oh
Woah, oh-oh
Woah, oh-oh
Woah
I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals
I'm breaking in, shaping up
Then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse
Woah
I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Woah-oh, woah
I'm radioactive, radioactive
Woah-oh, woah
I'm radioactive, radioactive
I raise my flags, dye my clothes
It's a revolution, I suppose
We're painted red to fit right in
Woah
I'm breaking in, shaping up
Then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse
Woah
I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Woah-oh, woah
I'm radioactive, radioactive
Woah-oh, woah
I'm radioactive, radioactive
All systems go, the sun hasn't died
Deep in my bones, straight from inside
I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Woah-oh, woah
I'm radioactive, radioactive
Woah-oh, woah
I'm radioactive, radioactive
Radioactive - Imagine Dragons
___________________________________
COMING SOON
Will make a AO3 fic of this
This takes place between Trolls - Trolls World Tour
Some of them might be Ooc
when the art blocks
Danny Phantom Head Canon - Dani’s Shadow
A ghost’s trauma tends to stick around in one form or another, and reminders are never pleasant.
TL;DR:
Regardless of her physical appearance, current health, and stability, Dani/Ellie’s shadow always appears to be slightly dripping or melting, and more so in ghost form. It’s not overly obvious in human form, and people who notice tend to dismiss it as a trick of the eye.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ellie can’t escape her shadow. It catches the corner of her eye when she’s least expecting it, and her smile wavers. The dripping edges, that half melted arm… Dani looks away. She was never meant to survive.
Danny asks if she’s alright when she doesn’t respond as he’s telling her about his latest scuffle with Skulker, and Dani pastes on a grin, laughing and giving some inane excuse. Of course she’s alright. She’s fine, just fine.
Danielle Dani Ellie it’s Ellie, she’s her own person isn’t she? cracks a joke about the sequel being better than the original, and she’s more than just a failed copy, right? She doesn’t even have her own name.
Danny smiles and laughs, but if his eyes are concerned as he meets hers, carefully avoiding looking at her shadow, neither of them says anything.
He’s just a kid, he doesn’t know how to handle any of this, let alone raise the clone/cousin/sister/daughter he never asked for, and she won’t make him.
She leaves again, and she enjoys traveling, really, she does, but… does she really want to do it alone?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ellie eventually gains confidence in herself, both as her own person, and as Danny’s clone. Just like any kid taking after their parent, sharing his DNA doesn’t change the fact that she’s still her own unique person.
Eventually even the clone jokes are less of a nervous traumatic response and more because she finds them genuinely funny. (Her sense of humor and coping mechanisms definitely take after Danny. Death jokes anyone?)
One day, the dripping, melting form of her shadow will no longer haunt her, but for now… she’s taking it one day at a time.
This looks amazing not only the art but the story too
TOTK AU: Shards of the Kingdom (contd.)
Our protagonist! In this picture the armor is a mix between her clothes in the beginning of the game and the hylian armor set. I want her to have an emphasis on ranged attacks, so I gave her parts of the armor to reflect that better (wrist guard on left hand to protect arm from bowstring, funky archery glove on the right).
The boyfriend in need of saving! I've been thinking for a while that a prosthetic made by the zonai would be cool, so I'm exploiting that in this AU. I wasn't sure whether or not to still have him in the spot as the sage of time, but A) one incarnation of him was the hero of time so and B)he did get to the past based on some level of time magic. I'm all ears if there's a better idea.
*since some elements of the au will reflect totk spoilers, posts that include references to major in game events will be marked just in case! If I miss anything that should be marked as spoilery sorry!
DPxDC Dead Tired Coffeeshop Accident
For one reason or another, Danny is now living in Gotham and working in a coffeeshop. For one reason or another, Tim frequents the same coffeeshop.
Now, both of them are honest to god messes who treat sleep like a grave enemy. Meaning they both survive on coffee, spite, energy drinks, and their respective hyperfocuses.
They don't even talk, really, they just see each other from time to time: Tim knows the barista who looks like he's been dead for weeks is named Danny, and Danny knows how to make Tim's Death Wish with his eyes closed, but other than that, they are just strangers who largely don't care about each other.
That is, until one time after his patrol, Tim comes to the said coffeeshop in his Red Robin gear. He doesn't even think about it, he simply needs coffee. He comes to the counter. He orders. His voice is tired and emotionless. He just wants his coffee and maybe stare at a wall for a few hours until his brain reboots. Danny takes his order without even looking at him. He has been sitting and staring at a wall for a few hours, night shifts are literally killing him.
They are both so done.
Red Robin waits for his coffee. Danny makes it almost automatically, his mind elsewhere. The coffeeshop is empty, save for them two. It's four in the morning. Nothing feels real.
Danny sets the cup on the counter.
"One Death Wish for Tim," he says out of a habit, not fully registering they are alone, and he doesn't need to do that.
Tim takes the coffee without thinking, nods a silent 'thank you'. Brings the cup up to his mouth-
And notices a glove on his own hand.
He is in Red Robin get up.
He freezes and looks at the barista, who is cleaning the coffeemachine. Danny, noticing him looking, also looks back at him. Did he make the wrong order? He knows Tim's soul, he's seen it a lot, he couldn't have mistaken him for anyone else, but maybe he forgot to add syrup?..
There's a domino mask on Tim's face. A vigilante domino mask.
They stare at each other. No one moves. No one blinks. The sun is rising somewhere over the city.
Tim takes a sip of his coffee. Danny goes back to cleaning the coffeemachine.
They never speak of this again, but Tim becomes a regular here in both of his personas.
[To whoever sent the ask saying, "I love you and your brothers," I'm sorry I have accidentally managed to delete the ask after answering it, so here is what I had intended to respond with:]
"Um, thank you?"
Bite had had weirder and much more unpleasant things said to him before by Coruscanti citizens, but few of them left his feeling as confused and wrong footed as this. He could only pray to Mand'alors long past that this wasn't one of those clone groupies his brothers had told him about.
whatever, go, my scarab
finally i finished a design (a small redesign even) for my skystar fankid aka Aurora
plus some old emotion sketches that i never posted here oops
"Is it hard to express emotions with that mask? Doesn't it bother you?"
Soo this is a drawing I made for an ask blog where I have the role of Brainstorm >:) I liked how it turned out so here you are, translated it for you!!
(the letters on the second picture are for laughter, I was too lazy to redraw them sorryyy)
uh oh uh oh looks like we have our selves a puppy boy!!! it's a pubby booy and his kitty frieeend!! uhh oh oh nooo!! someone sound the puppy alarm!!!!
WDYM KNIVES DIED IN THE END OF TRIGUN MAXIMUM, MY DUMB ASS THOUGHT HE JUST TOOK OFF HIS CLOTHES AND LEFT
Drew my Invader zim OC Alora trying to kill my bf's oc Porter instead of sleeping, so eyah, enjoy bedtime art
im gonna go die now, gn ppl
*bwahhh i finally made a uty-sona design im happy with….
*xir a gardener in the wild east (｀▽´)
*bonus doodles: (potential uty spoilers??? idk)
*note: i hc starlo as pangender so yeah that’s how bea is a lesbian and dating a guy
im sure someone already made a post about it but i came across a ublock origin add-on that blacklists around 950 AI websites and disables AI overview ☝️ so u can be free from seeing AI in your search
“Because distillation removes protein if good manufacturing practices are followed, and because it is possible to verify the absence of protein or protein fragments in these products using scientifically valid analytical methods, TTB will permit “gluten-free” claims on distilled products from gluten-containing grains as long as good manufacturing practices are followed to prevent the introduction of any gluten-containing material into the final product,” according to the TTB.
Can you recommend me resources for racial literacy, please?
so this is a hard question to answer when I don't know where you're from or what your background is.
The first book you should be reading if you're USAmerican is
preferably the 10th edition.
here's some articles and resources that are free though.
This is a really good starting point if the above are too confusing though
let me know if you need more resources!!
mod ali
Wait, do people know about the Before I Play wiki?
I have used this for..... at this point easily over 6 years. It's a wiki where there will be low-spoiler/non-spoiler hints about just stuff you would want to know before playing a game.
It's always stuff like.... "Vitality in this game is useless, put your points in everything else first" or "Don't leave the second hub town until you buy X item, it'll become unobtainable."
Lemme pick an example almost everyone will know. From the Animal Crossing New Horizons page, the first tip is:
Nearly everything on the island is movable later, including all buildings and even cliffs and rivers. The main things that are fixed are the stuff on the border of the island (river mouths, beaches, rocks/peninsulae, the dock and the airport) and the resident services plaza, so picking your island layout should be based around that primarily.
That's stellar advice, tbh, given what you'll know about the game 30 hours in instead of 30 minutes.
Not every game is covered obviously and not every piece of advice is good, it's all subjective, BUT..... I look up almost every game I play for the first time, just to keep stuff in mind. The SMT4 page had top tier advice imo.
people NEED to stop gatekeeping making music like ohhhh i don’t have an instrument ohhhhh i don’t know music theory ohhhhh i’m not gonna pay for some program. SHUT UP. take my hand.
you need NONE of that shit!!!!! there’s a website called beepbox.co. literally all you have to do is press things until it sounds a modicum of nice. it’s easy it’s free and it works on anything which has a browser because it’s a website.
if even ONE person starts making music bc of this post it will be worth it.
making bad music is just as important and okay as it is to write badly or draw badly or sing badly. you AREN’T BEHOLDEN TO MAKE GOOD MUSIC. making music is not utilitarian HAVE FUN. HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!
Fuck It, Internet Guide
Hey there! As social media becomes more and more inhospitible for the local user, I wanted to post some useful/fun links to just about anything I can think of! Enjoy! Also, if you'd like an invite to the P!rated Games discord, lmk! ^_^
If you like what I do, consider tossing some money my way? I am so freaking poor, kthnx.
I AM CURRENTLY STILL UPDATING THIS POST AND I WILL REBLOG IT WHEN I ADD TO IT! Feel free to comment things I've missed, I'm sure there's way more than this came from!
EDIT 1: Here's the link to the google doc! Link it on your webrings and sites! Share on twitter! <3 be free my little links!
EDIT 2: Adding a readmore so this post isn't so long!
EDIT 3: Added more links ^^ please comment if there's cool stuff out there that I didn't link to! I want to collect as much reputable links as I can!
Links included are web centric (URL, generators, and archive collections), Knowledge Bases (like Libgen and The Eye, as well as open source projects from art museums), Art Tools (bootlegged SAI and different tools), Music Tools and Discovery (radio sites and music searches based on what you already like), and fun stuff (like Gifypet and Flashpoint!)
WEB CENTRIC
CURLIE: THE COLLECTOR OF URLs (Curlie strives to be the largest human-edited directory of the Web. You can save sites and create your own mini webring!)
Internet Archive (A collection of over 818 Billion websites, books, movies, music, and more. Hosts the Wayback Machine, which can be used to access a multitude of sites, given they were indexed in time.)
Wiby (Human submission search engine for older webrings, as well as a how-to guide on how to develop your own search engine)
Unicode Text Converter (Easy way to make your text illegible to Google but be warned, it will make screen readers malfuction)
Embed Responsively (Easily convert links and embeds to work responsively within your site - perfect for neocities!)
Generator Land (Generate a list or prompt for just about anything!)
GifCities (Part of the Internet Archive, a special project done as part of the 20th anniversary in an effort to save data from GeoCities. Find a gif for just about anything!)
Animated Images (Another gif repository, though this one is easier to search and includes small animations.)
Gifs-Paradise (Another gif repository. I swear I collect these. Searchable and categorized.)
ASCII Art Archive (Database of ASCII Art, also known as text art)
Christopher Johnson's ASCII Art Collection (Another, arguably larger, ASCII Art database)
MelonLand (A web project and online arts community that celebrates homepages, virtual worlds, the world-wide-web and the digital lives that all netizins share, here at the dawn of the digital age. See their thoughts and the WEB REVIVAL they're starting.)
Sadgrl Webrings (Webrings brought to us by Sadgrl.Online - 60+ different ones to be exact) and Sadgrl Links (70+ links just like the ones in this post)
Districts at Neocities (Remember neighborhoods on Geocities? Imagine that but for Neocities!)
Neocities Banners (Banners from all across neocities. Blinkies, banners and more leading all over the web. Mostly 88x31, though there are bigger ones too. Technically counts as a webring.)
Blinkies.cafe (Site for blinkies where you can even make your own! I get most of my blinkies here and off DeviantArt.)
88x31 Collection (Possibly the largest collection I've seen for 88x31 buttons)
90's Cursor Effects (Want a funky cursor for your blog or website? Wanna be able to realtime preview what cursors would look like? Come get some code!)
The Malware Museum (Interact with malware and viruses from the 80s and 90s through emulation! No nasty virus interactions needed :D )
KNOWLEDGE BASES
Library Genesis - LIBGEN (Scientific journals - dedicated to archiving every science journal and their articles in existence.)
Information Mesh (A web platform celebrating the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web that explores social, technical, cultural and legal facts throughout different interactive timelines.)
Refseek (THE Academic Search Engine. To make academic information easily accessible to everyone. "RefSeek searches more than five billion documents, including web pages, books, encyclopedias, journals, and newspapers.")
Springer (Another large collection of archived research papers, books, and more.)
WorldCat (Great resource for locating and reading unique and rare books, perfect for library resources.)
OceanOfBooks (Another collection of books - notably there are LGBT+ sections in the "listopia" page.)
Web Design Museum (Over 2,000 sorted websites showing web design trends from '96 to '06.)
The History of the Web (A twice monthly newsletter about web history, and the incredible people that built it. Goes from 1989 to present.)
Field Guide to Web Accessibility (Principles and applications to every day web scenarios in order to make the web a more friendly place!)
CARI - Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute (an online community and collective association of researchers and designers dedicated to carrying on the important work of categorizing "consumer aesthetics" from the late midcentury, when work on the subject somewhat trailed off, through today.)
The Eye (Archive consisting of 140TB of books, websites, games, software, or anything else you can really think of.)
The Uncensored Library (A project from Reporters without Borders, where they use a loophole using Minecraft to distribute information.)
National Gallery of Art Public Domain (The National Gallery of Art has an open access policy for images of works of art in their permanent collection which the Gallery believes to be in the public domain. Images of these works are available for download free of charge for any use, whether commercial or non-commercial.)
Library of Congress Public Domain (Features items from the Library's digital collections that are free to use and reuse. The Library believes that this content is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use.)
Public Domain Review (an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.)
New York Public Library Public Domain (Our digitized collections are available as machine-readable data: over one million records for you to search, crawl and compute.)
Official articles from NASA (PubSpace is NASA's designated public access repository. It is a collection of NASA-funded scholarly publications within the STI Repository, aiming to increase access to federally funded research in accordance with NASA Public Access Policy.)
Universal Hint System (Wanna get some vague help for an older video game without getting spoiled? Check out these awesome hints!)
Smithsonian Open Access (Download, share, and reuse millions of 2D and 3D digital items from their 21 museums, 9 research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.)
Instructables (Wanna know how to make just about anything? Check here!)
QZAP Zine Archive (Archive of LGBT+ Zines, began in 2003 with zines dating back all the way to the 1970s. NSFW AT TIMES, BROWSE AT YOUR OWN RISK.)
P!racy Masterpost (Tumblr-based masterpost of game piracy, last updated 2021. A bit old but some of the stuff there is still good. If this link breaks, please contact me.)
P!rated Games Megathread (masterpost created by r/P!ratedGames includes required components as well as anything else you need. NOTE: PLEASE HAVE SOME SORT OF PROTECTION WHEN NAVIGATING THIS SITE)
Geocities Gallery (A website hosting a working archive for many abandoned Geocities Sites.)
Snipplr (Code Snippet repository. Great for coding issues.)
GeoCities (Archived) (Great for searching ancient webrings for gifs and website ideas. Not so great for downloads.)
Freeware Guide (Archived) (The Freeware-Guide died sometime in 2021 [we think March] but it's still full of VERY valuable information. Links are broken pretty much all the way through, but the names of software as well as what they do can be useful in finding them elsewhere thru some google searching)
Peelopaalu (Where I got a good handful of these links - AND THERE'S MORE!!!)
The Simple Site (More links to so much more cool stuff!)
Hathitrust (Like Internet Archive but focused on books/written word, a much larger pool of written works across history.)
ART TOOLS
Untitled - Paint (An in-browser version of classic Microsoft Paint!)
KidPix (In-browser version of classic KidPix for the public domain!)
Pixel Logic - A Guide to Pixel Art (Comprehensive guide to making cool art for $10 USD, updated semi-frequently and you get all new versions for free)
SAI - Bootlegged (A version of SAI with a multitude of brushes and textures pre-installed. Quite literally the only thing I use to draw aside from Clip Studio Paint.)
Stripe Generator (Need some easy stripes for an art piece? Can't be bothered to try and space stripes evenly? This is for you!)
Photopea (Free online photo editor supporting files for Adobe Photoshop, XCF, Sketch App, Adobe XD, and CorelDRAW, as well as many more!)
blender (A FOREVER free and Open Source software for 3D Modeling, full of tutorials and assets. I feel like most people don't know it's completely free to play with)
Vertex Meadow (A web-browser tool that renders 2D images as explorable 3D terrain. With it you can create detailed and unusual 3D environments to explore using a 2D paint-program-like interface.)
OpenGameArt (Need art for your game but you're not an artist? Consider checking here first [or just hire a real artist looking for work on here!])
Art Book PDFs (14GB of pure scanned pdfs of a lot of different art books. Need some inspo? Some teaching? Check in here for sure.)
MUSIC TOOLS AND DISCOVERY
BandLab (Social music platform that enables creators to make music and share their creative process with musicians and fans. Completely free with an option to set up stripe where you get 100% OF PROFITS. Available for apple/android/desktop)
JummBox (Free online beat-maker with a very simple interface that runs on your browser)
Mydora (Mydora is a continuous streaming player that gives you a deep dive into the lost archives of Myspace Music, based on some recovered data called the Dragon Hoard, with some additional metadata (most notably the locations and genres) from a different scan of Myspace conducted back in 2009. Contains 490,000+ songs, only a fraction of what was wiped out.)
Radiooooo (A place where people are able to play hit songs from the decade of their choosing from whatever country they wish.)
WFMU (Independent freeform radio broadcasting. Currently ongoing.)
Gnoosic (A sort-of music search engine that finds you songs/bands based off of your music taste.)
Khinsider (3.1 TB worth of video game soundtracks)
Radio.garden (Listen to thousands of radio stations all around the world.)
FUN STUFF
FrogLand (The purpose of Frogland is to show that the Internet can indeed provide a wealth of useful information and still be fun. Mainly, this site is dedicated to the many teachers out there who are finding new uses for the Internet as a tool for educating youngsters. Hopefully, it will inspire some young minds to find new interest in herpetology, biology, and environmental issues...not to mention providing some inspiration for young future computer "wizzes"! No longer active but still useful.)
Windows 98 icon Viewer (Want clear jpgs of all the Windows 98 symbols and icons? They're all here!)
GifyPet (Create your own embeded pet that people can play with and feed when they visit your page! See my version HERE [only works on desktop tho])
Ultimate Mushroom (Like the idea of picking mushrooms in your area but no idea what to look for? Check out this info hub!)
Gif Gallery (Another gif repositiory, only sorted by being numbered 1-100,000. Fun and silly, not so much useful unless you're looking for random gifs. Part of the MelonLand Webring)
Interesting DOS Programs (A host of DOS programming, guides and links.)
Internet Archive: MS-DOS Games (8,000 games right in your web browser! Your browser can play DOOM!)
Tiled Backgrounds (Need some small jpegs for easy website bg tiling? Browse this collection sorted by color.)
cOOl & EMO tEXt cOnVERTer xXX (Flashing warning. Wanna type like you're in the 2000s? Need a funny Green Day lyric as a caption? This is probably the best place for you.)
0x40 (Flashing Warning. Anime images synced with music. Fun for parties, lol)
WebGL Fluid Simulation (In browser fluid simulator, great for art backgrounds and desktop wallpapers.)
Flashpoint (The biggest collection of preserved Flash Games and Animations)
NCase (Free games and open source projects from Nicky [THESE ARE REALLY COOL AND FUN, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND])
Your World of Text (A huge interactive text doc that anyone can add to anonymously.)
Text To Speech (TTS in more than 30 languages and over 180 voices.)
ASCII Art Generator (Make ASCII Art from any image.)
Petit Tube (Random Youtube videos with less than 10 views)
Noclip Website (Noclip around various video game maps in your browser!)
Monster Mash (Create and animate some monsters in browser! You can also download their files.)
Soul Void: Redux (Free browser/GBA game where you help lost souls in the void :] )
Vimm's Lair (Emulators, games, and more - always scan your downloads!)
Sometimes I’m looking for something online - often “how to” articles - and I want to filter for - like - a website that was clearly built in 2010 at the latest, which may or may not have been updated since then, but contains a vast wealth of information on one topic, painstakingly organized by an unknown legend in the field with decades’ worth of experience. I don’t want a listicle with a nice stolen picture in a slideshow format written by a content aggregator that God forgot. I want hand-drawn diagrams by some genius professor who doesn’t understand SEO at all, but understands making stir-fries or raising stick insects better than anyone else on this earth. I don’t know what search settings to put into Google to get this.
Treat anything on Discord as media that will be lost
Do not use Discord to host your files. Do not rely on Discord to preserve your text. DO NOT RELY ON DISCORD FOR ANY KIND OF PRESERVATION OR HOSTING!!
It CAN be lost, it WILL be lost! You must consider Discord as a part of the Core Internet, controlled by one company that hosts the servers.
I thought it was impressive at first that it replaced IRC, but now I am horrified. If the company behind Discord went under today, how many friends would you lose?
How many relationships? How much writing?
You may think this won't happen, but I remember when AIM went down and along with it, entire novels worth of interaction with my oldest friend.
IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. NO COMPANY IS INFALLIBLE.
Back up your files! Download anything you've saved to Discord NOW, before the API changes go into effect! And DO NOT RELY ON THEM FOR HOLDING IMPORTANT FILES!
beginner’s guide to the indie web
“i miss the old internet” “we’ll never have websites like the ones from the 90s and early 2000s ever again” “i’m tired of social media but there’s nowhere to go”
HOLD ON!
personal websites and indie web development still very much exist! it may be out of the way to access and may not be the default internet experience anymore, but if you want to look and read through someone’s personally crafted site, or even make your own, you can still do it! here’s how:
use NEOCITIES! neocities has a built in search and browse tools to let you discover websites, and most importantly, lets you build your own website from scratch for free! (there are other ways to host websites for free, but neocities is a really good hub for beginners!)
need help getting started with coding your website? sadgrl online has a section on her website dedicated to providing resources for newbie webmasters!
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) are the core of what all websites are built on. many websites also use JS (JavaScript) to add interactive elements to their pages. w3schools is a useful directory of quick reference for pretty much every HTML/CSS/JS topic you can think of.
there is also this well written and lengthy guide on dragonfly cave that will put you step by step through the basics of HTML/CSS (what webpages are made from), if that’s your sort of thing!
stack overflow is every programmer’s hub for asking questions and getting help, so if you’re struggling with getting something to look how you want or can’t fix a bug, you may be able to get your answer here! you can even ask if no one’s asked the same question before.
websites like codepen and jsfiddle let you test HTML/CSS/JS in your browser as you tinker with small edits and bugfixing.
want to find indie websites outside the scope of neocities? use the search engine marginalia to find results you actually want that google won’t show you!
you can also use directory sites like yesterweb’s link section to find websites in all sorts of places.
if you are going to browse the indie web or make your own website, i also have some more personal tips as a webmaster myself (i am not an expert and i am just a small hobbyist, so take me with a grain of salt!)
if you are making your own site:
get expressive! truly make whatever you want! customize your corner of the internet to your heart’s content! you have left the constrains of social media where every page looks the same. you have no character limit, image limit, or design limit. want to make an entire page or even a whole website dedicated to your one niche interest that no one seems to be into but you? go for it! want to keep a public journal where you can express your thoughts without worry? do it! want to keep an art gallery that looks exactly how you want? heck yeah! you are free now! you will enjoy the indie web so much more if you actually use it for the things you can’t do on websites like twitter, instead of just using it as a carrd bio alternative or a place to dump nostalgic geocities gifs.
don’t overwhelm yourself! if you’ve never worked with HTML/CSS or JS before, it may look really intimidating. start slow, use some guides, and don’t bite off more than you can chew. even if your site doesn’t look how you want quite yet, be proud of your work! you’re learning a skill that most people don’t have or care to have, and that’s pretty cool.
keep a personal copy of your website downloaded to your computer and don’t just edit it on neocities (or your host of choice) and call it a day. if for some reason your host were to ever go down, you would lose all your hard work! and besides, by editing locally and offline, you can use editors like vscode (very robust) or notepad++ (on the simpler side), which have more features and is more intuitive than editing a site in-browser.
you can use ctrl+shift+i on most browsers to inspect the HTML/CSS and other components of the website you’re currently viewing. it’ll even notify you of errors! this is useful for bugfixing your own site if you have a problem, as well as looking at the code of sites you like and learning from it. don’t use this to steal other people’s code! it would be like art theft to just copy/paste an entire website layout. learn, don’t steal.
don’t hotlink images from other sites, unless the resource you’re taking from says it’s okay! it’s common courtesy to download images and host them on your own site instead of linking to someone else’s site to display them. by hotlinking, every time someone views your site, you’re taking up someone else’s bandwidth.
if you want to make your website easily editable in the future (or even for it to have multiple themes), you will find it useful to not use inline CSS (putting CSS in your HTML document, which holds your website’s content) and instead put it in a separate CSS file. this way, you can also use the same theme for multiple pages on your site by simply linking the CSS file to it. if this sounds overwhelming or foreign to you, don’t sweat it, but if you are interested in the difference between inline CSS and using separate stylesheets, w3schools has a useful, quick guide on the subject.
visit other people’s sites sometimes! you may gain new ideas or find links to more cool websites or resources just by browsing.
if you are browsing sites:
if the page you’re viewing has a guestbook or cbox and you enjoyed looking at the site, leave a comment! there is nothing better as a webmaster than for someone to take the time to even just say “love your site” in their guestbook.
that being said, if there’s something on a website you don’t like, simply move on to something else and don’t leave hate comments. this should be self explanatory, but it is really not the norm to start discourse in indie web spaces, and you will likely not even be responded to. it’s not worth it when you could be spending your time on stuff you love somewhere else.
take your time! indie web doesn’t prioritize fast content consumption the way social media does. you’ll get a lot more out of indie websites if you really read what’s in front of you, or take a little while to notice the details in someone’s art gallery instead of just moving on to the next thing. the person who put labor into presenting this information to you would also love to know that someone is truly looking and listening.
explore! by clicking links on a website, it’s easy to go down rabbitholes of more and more websites that you can get lost in for hours.
seeking out fansites or pages for the stuff you love is great and fulfilling, but reading someone’s site about a topic you’ve never even heard of before can be fun, too. i encourage you to branch out and really look for all the indie web has to offer.
i hope this post helps you get started with using and browsing the indie web! feel free to shoot me an ask if you have any questions or want any advice. <3