You can call me April
He/they + any gendered words ('hey girl' is chill but not 'who is she')
Currently enmeshed in Griddlehark brain rot / Goes FERAL for small birds /
Transgender grad student / Blog mostly SFW / Icon is the Sangled Picrew /
[Icon image ID: pale person with buzz cut and glasses, wearing a dark mask. Background is the nonbinary pride flag]
[Cover photo image ID: photo of some hyacinths in almost trans pride colors - white and pink with some blue rocks]
Okay, so i have an ADHD hack, and usually these don’t work for me, but this one did.
So, i saw this on TikTok. If you have multiple chores, and don’t know where to start, just write them all down, and then number them.
Then roll a dice, and whatever chore that number is, do it. (And if you don’t have a dice, there are thousands of apps for that.)
It makes the chores approachable.
You don’t see the mountain of all chores anymore, it’s just one thing. Also you don’t have to think about the next thing, because you don’t know what it is.
And then it’s done, and you can move to the next thing the dice tells you
I just did this to clean up my room.
I put bed, couch, nightstand, desk, chair, floor etc. And hell it worked. My room is actually clean now…
Like, try this, i swear, this is amazing!
another dice related adhd hack: i take a d20 and if i need to do something i don’t want to, i’ll be like “whatever i roll, that’s how many minutes i’ll do this chore.”
I also use dice sometimes when the decision paralysis hits (and I remember to use them…). Depending on ehat I’m trying to decide it might be odds=yes, evens no, or like option 1, option 2, option 3….
Did I daydream this, or was there a website for writers with like. A ridiculous quantity of descriptive aid. Like I remember clicking on “ inside a cinema ” or something like that. Then, BAM. Here’s a list of smell and sounds. I can’t remember it for the life of me, but if someone else can, help a bitch out <3
people want doing the right thing to be like pulling the correct lever at the correct time but actually usually doing the right thing is more like holding a moderate weight at arm’s length continuously for seventeen years
Tabletop RPG about a band of epic heroes with full sentences for names on a quest to murder God and shatter His throne, as one does, except the epic heroes in question are a mob of foot-tall gremlinny critters who are not 100% sure what “God” actually is, and they’re not about to let that stop them. The game features an elaborately statted-out bestiary of “divine beasts” to fight which the human reader will recognise as things that are neither divine nor beasts; the climactic battle of the example scenario involves the player characters going Shadow of the Colossus on what is clearly a windmill.
ALT
What if I just…
(This really wants to be an eighteen-entry table, but twelve should be more than sufficient for a first draft. Also, no bonus points for spotting exactly what each Art’s writeup is a reference to, because the overarching theme is – I hope! – extremely obvious.)
I think that’s kind of become my brand at this point.
(Also, my current working draft of this dumb thing was bashed together from bits and pieces of like five other game ideas I’d previously scribbled down some ideas for, so it’s not like I started from scratch. This is why writers should always keep a notebook!)
Now I just have to convince my much-less-weird-than-me friends to play
I mean, the game literally doesn’t exist yet – I’ve only been working on it for like a day, and the excerpts posted above represent the only portion of it that exists as anything other than a bullet-pointed outline – so you’ve got time to bring them around.
It just occurred to me that getting a hat steamed up for you is something a lot of people have never seen or done. Speaking of which, i kind of miss my hat now…
I want a hat now.
Nice to see a skilled professional at work.
And to think this version of the traditional cowboy hat was all because some random man (Mr. Stetson) survived tuberculosis.
in the words of the great Elizabethan wordsmith William Shakespeare, in Hamlet Act IV Scene V, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” or, in the words of the great Twitter wordsmith @Horse_ebooks,
i spent $32 on this fucking bowl at the moma and at first i felt bad buying it bc it was so expensive but ive had a terrible day today and every time i look at my lil bowl im like :o) you know what. i can get through anything with this bowl by my side
i literally get what marie kondo was talking about now
bc everyone keeps requesting to see it filled :)
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Time seems to pass differently. But the place is cozy and private so I have no complaints. And whenever I’m hungry, I go outside with my bowl and walk down the hill to the shore. Sometimes the lake is made of soup. Sometimes it’s huge pasta noodles the size of barges. Sometimes it’s breakfast cereal. Sometimes it’s dumplings the size of great whales. I dip my little bowl and take a portion and carry it back up to the house.
Today I found a new bowl! In its center is a little hill with a little house. I will carry it down to the shore and fill it up, and whomever lives in that little house can have a tiny portion of my meal. I hope they have a nice bowl to put it in..
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Climb aboard, then!” But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown. “Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“I can’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s my nature.”
___
…But no sooner than they were halfway across the river, the frog felt a subtle motion on its back, and in a panic dived deep beneath the rushing waters, leaving the scorpion to drown.
“It was going to sting me anyway,” muttered the frog, emerging on the other side of the river. “It was inevitable. You all knew it. Everyone knows what those scorpions are like. It was self-defense.”
___
…But no sooner had they cast off from the bank, the frog felt
the tip of a stinger pressed lightly against the back of its neck. “What do you think you’re doing?” said the frog.
“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair, isn’t it?”
They swam in silence to the other end of the river, where the scorpion climbed off, leaving the frog fuming.
“After the kindness I showed you!” said the frog. “And you threatened to kill me in return?”
“Kindness?” said the scorpion. “To only invite me on your back after you knew I was defenseless, unable to use my tail without killing myself? My dear frog, I only treated you as I was treated. Your kindness was as poisoned as a scorpion’s sting.”
___
…“Just a precaution,” said the scorpion. “I cannot sting you without
drowning. And now, you cannot drown me without being stung. Fair’s fair,
isn’t it?”
“You have a point,” the frog acknowledged.
“But once we get to dry land, couldn’t you sting me then without
repercussion?”
“All I want is to cross the river safely,” said the scorpion. “Once I’m on the other side I would gladly let you be.”
“But I would have to trust you on that,” said the frog. “While you’re pressing a stinger to my neck. By ferrying you to land I’d be be giving up the one deterrent I hold over you.”
“But by the same logic, I can’t possibly withdraw my stinger while we’re still over water,” the scorpion protested.
The frog paused in the middle of the river, treading water. “So, I suppose we’re at an impasse.”
The river rushed around them. The scorpion’s stinger twitched against the frog’s unbroken skin. “I suppose so,” the scorpion said.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the
river. “Absolutely not!” said the frog, and dived beneath the waters, and so none of them learned anything.
___
A scorpion, being unable to swim, asked a turtle (as in the original Persian version of the fable) to carry it across the river. The turtle readily agreed, and allowed the scorpion aboard its shell. Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung, but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell. The turtle, swimming placidly, failed to notice.
They reached the other side of the river, and parted ways as friends.
___
…Halfway across, the scorpion gave in to its nature and stung,
but failed to penetrate the turtle’s thick shell.
The turtle, hearing the tap of the scorpion’s sting, was offended at the scorpion’s ungratefulness. Thankfully, having been granted the powers to both defend itself and to punish evil, the turtle sank beneath the waters and drowned the scorpion out of principle.
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it
across the river. “Do I look like a fool?” sneered the frog. “You’d
sting me if I let you on my back.”
The scorpion pleaded
earnestly. “Do you think so little of me? Please, I must cross the
river. What would I gain from stinging you? I would only end up drowning
myself!”
“That’s true,” the frog acknowledged. “Even a
scorpion knows to look out for its own skin. Climb aboard, then!”
But as
they forged through the rushing waters, the scorpion grew worried. This frog thinks me a ruthless killer, it thought. Would it not be justified in throwing me off now and ridding the world of me? Why else would it agree to this?
Every jostle made the scorpion more and more anxious, until the frog surged forward with a particularly large splash, and in panic the
scorpion lashed out with its stinger.
“I knew it,” snarled the frog, as they both thrashed and drowned. “A scorpion cannot change its nature.”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across the river.
The frog agreed, but no sooner than they were halfway across the scorpion stung the frog, and they both began to thrash and drown.
“I’ve only myself to blame,” sighed the frog, as they both sank beneath the
waters. “You, you’re a scorpion, I couldn’t have expected anything better. But I knew better, and yet I went against my judgement! And now I’ve doomed us both!”
“You couldn’t help it,” said the scorpion mildly. “It’s your nature.”
___
…“Why on earth did you do that?” the frog said morosely. “Now we’re both going to die.”
“Alas, I was of two natures,” said the scorpion. “One said to gratefully ride your back across the river, and the other said to sting you where you stood. And so both fought, and neither won.” It smiled wistfully. “Ah, it would be nice to be just one thing, wouldn’t it? Unadulterated in nature.
Without the capacity for conflict or regret.”
___
“By the way,” said the frog, as they swam, “I’ve been meaning to ask: What’s on the other side of the river?”
“It’s the journey,” said the scorpion. “Not the destination.”
___
…“What’s on the other side of anything?” said the scorpion. “A new beginning.”
___
…”Another scorpion to mate with,” said the scorpion. “And more prey to kill, and more living bodies to poison, and a forthcoming lineage of cruelties that you will be culpable in.”
___
…”Nothing we will live to see, I fear,” said the scorpion. “Already the currents are growing stronger, and the river seems like it shall swallow us both. We surge forward, and the shoreline recedes. But does that mean our striving was in vain?”
___
“I love you,” said the scorpion.
The frog glanced upward. “Do you?”
“Absolutely.
Can you imagine the fear of drowning? Of course not. You’re a frog. Might as well be scared of
breathing air.
And yet here I am, clinging to your back, as the waters rage around us. Isn’t that love? Isn’t that trust? Isn’t that necessity? I could not kill you without killing myself. Are we not inseparable in this?”
The frog swam on, the both of them silent.
___
“I’m so tired,” murmured the frog eventually. “How much further to the other side? I don’t know how long we’ve been swimming. I’ve been treading water. And it’s getting so very dark.”
“Shh,” the scorpion said. “Don’t be afraid.”
The frog’s legs kicked out weakly. “How long has it been? We’re lost. We’re lost! We’re doomed to be cast about the waters forever. There is no land. There’s nothing on the other side, don’t you see!”
“Shh, shh,” said the scorpion. “My venom is a hallucinogenic. Beneath its surface, the river is endlessly deep, its currents carrying many things.”
“You - You’ve killed us both,” said the frog, and began to laugh deliriously. “Is this - is this what it’s like to drown?”
“We’ve killed each other,” said the scorpion soothingly. “My venom in my glands now pulsing through your veins, the waters of your birthing pool suffusing my lungs. We are engulfing each other now, drowning in each other. I am breathless. Do you feel it? Do you feel my sting pierced through your heart?”
“What a foolish thing to do,” murmured the frog. “No logic. No logic to it at all.”
“We couldn’t help it,” whispered the scorpion. “It’s our natures. Why else does anything in the world happen? Because we were made for this from birth, darling, every moment inexplicable and inevitable. What a crazy thing it is to fall in love, and yet - It’s all our fault! We are both blameless. We’re together now, darling. It couldn’t have happened any other way.”
___
“It’s funny,” said the frog. “I can’t say that I trust you, really. Or that I even think very much of you and that nasty little stinger of yours to begin with. But I’m doing this for you regardless. It’s strange, isn’t it? It’s strange. Why would I do this? I want to help you, want to go out of my way to help you. I let you climb right onto my back! Now, whyever would I go and do a foolish thing like that?”
___
A scorpion, not knowing how to swim, asked a frog to carry it across
the river. “Do I look like a fool?” said the frog. “You’d sting me if I
let you on my back!”
“Be logical,” said the scorpion. “If I stung you I’d certainly drown myself.”
“That’s
true,” the frog acknowledged. “Come aboard, then!” But no sooner had
the scorpion mounted the frog’s back than it began to sting, repeatedly,
while still safely on the river’s bank.
The frog groaned, thrashing weakly as the venom coursed through its veins, beginning to liquefy its flesh. “Ah,” it muttered. “For some reason I never considered this possibility.”
“Because you were never scared of me,” the scorpion whispered in its ear. “You were never scared of dying. In a past life you wore a shell and sat in judgement. And then you were reborn: soft-skinned, swift, unburdened, as new and vulnerable as a child, moving anew through a world of children. How could anyone ever be cruel, you thought, seeing the precariousness of it all?” The scorpion bowed its head and drank. “How could anyone kill you without killing themselves?”
Already posted/talked about how excited I’ve been for the release of this newly-published book (Decolonizing “Prehistory”: Deep Time and Indigenous Knowledges in North America – 2021).
But here are a few other cool-looking newly-published books (with
publisher’s descriptions) from the same publisher, the University of
Arizona Press.
——-
From the publisher’s description: “Decolonizing “Prehistory” combines a critical
investigation of the documentation of the American deep past with
perspectives from Indigenous traditional knowledges and attention to
ongoing systems of intellectual colonialism.
Bringing together experts from American studies, archaeology,
anthropology, legal studies, history, and literary studies, this
interdisciplinary volume offers essential information about the complexity and ambivalence of colonial encounters […] and their impact on American scientific d!scourse. […] Constructions of America’s ancient past – or the invention of American
“prehistory” – occur in national and international political frameworks,
which are characterized by struggles over racial and ethnic identities,
access to resources and environmental stewardship, the commodification
of culture for touristic purposes, and the exploitation of Indigenous
knowledges and histories by industries ranging from education to film
and fashion. The past’s ongoing appeal reveals the relevance of these
narratives to current-day concerns about individual and collective
identities and pursuits of sovereignty and self-determination, as well
as to questions of the origin – and destiny – of humanity. Decolonizing
“Prehistory” critically examines and challenges the paradoxical role
that modern scholarship plays in adding legitimacy to, but also
delegitimizing, contemporary colonialist practices.”
——-
The Dine Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature – 2021.
This wide-ranging anthology brings together writers who offer
perspectives that span generations and perspectives on life and Diné
history. The collected works display a rich variety of and creativity in
themes: home and history; contemporary concerns about identity,
historical trauma, and loss of language; and economic and environmental
inequalities.
The Diné Reader developed as a way to demonstrate both the power
of Diné literary artistry and the persistence of the Navajo people. The
volume opens with a foreword by poet Sherwin Bitsui, who offers insight
into the importance of writing to the Navajo people. The editors then
introduce the volume by detailing the literary history of the Diné
people, establishing the context for the tremendous diversity of the
works that follow, which includes free verse, sestinas, limericks,
haiku, prose poems, creative nonfiction, mixed genres, and oral
traditions reshaped into the written word.
This volume combines an array of literature with illuminating
interviews, biographies, and photographs of the featured Diné writers
and artists.
——-
Moral Ecology of a Forest: The Nature Industry and Maya Post-Conservation – Jose E. Martinez-Reyes, 2021
Forests are alive, filled with rich, biologically complex life forms and
the interrelationships of multiple species and materials. Vulnerable to
a host of changing conditions in this global era, forests are in peril
as never before. New markets in carbon and environmental services
attract speculators. In the name of conservation, such speculators
attempt to undermine local land control in these desirable areas.Moral Ecology of a Forest provides an […] account of
conservation politics, particularly the conflict between Western
conservation and Mayan ontological ecology. The difficult interactions
of the Maya of central Quintana Roo, Mexico, for example, or the Mayan
communities of the Sain Ka’an Biosphere, demonstrate the clashing
interests with Western biodiversity conservation initiatives. The
conflicts within the forest of Quintana Roo represent the outcome of
nature in this global era, where the forces of land grabbing,
conservation promotion and organizations, and capitalism vie for control
of forests and land.
[…]
The Maya Forest of Quintana Roo is a historically disputed place in which these three questions come together.”
——-
Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert – Wendy C. Hodgson, 2015
“The seemingly inhospitable Sonoran Desert has provided sustenance to
indigenous peoples for centuries. Although it is to all appearances a
land bereft of useful plants, fully one-fifth of the desert’s flora are
edible.
This volume presents information on nearly 540 edible plants used by
people of more than fifty traditional cultures of the Sonoran Desert and
peripheral areas.
[…]
Food Plants of the Sonoran Desert includes not only plants such
as gourds and legumes but also unexpected food sources such as palms,
lilies, and cattails, all of which provided nutrition to desert peoples.
[…]
——-
Moveable Gardens: Itineraries and Sanctuaries of Memory – 2021
“Moveable Gardens explores how biodiversity and food can counter
the alienation caused by displacement. By offering in-depth studies on a
variety of regions, this volume carefully considers various forms of
sanctuary making within communities, and seeks to address how carrying
seeds, plants, and other traveling companions is an ongoing response to
the grave conditions of displacement
[…].
The destruction of homelands, fragmentation of habitats, and
post-capitalist conditions of modernity are countered by thoughtful
remembrance of tradition and the migration of seeds, which are embodied
in gardening, cooking, and community building.Moveable Gardens highlights itineraries and sanctuaries in an era
of massive dislocation, addressing concerns about finding comforting
and familiar refuges in the Anthropocene. […]”
——-
La Raza Cosmetica: Beauty, Identity, and Settler Colonialism in Postrevolutionary Mexico – Natasha Varner, 2020
“In the decades following the Mexican Revolution, nation builders,
artists, and intellectuals manufactured ideologies that continue to give
shape to popular understandings of indigeneity and mestizaje today.
Postrevolutionary identity tropes emerged as part of broader efforts to
reunify the nation and solve pressing social concerns, including what
was posited in the racist rhetoric of the time as the “Indian problem.”
Through a complex alchemy of appropriation and erasure, indigeneity was
idealized as a relic of the past while mestizaje was positioned as the
race of the future. This period of identity formation coincided with a
boom in technology that introduced a sudden proliferation of images on
the streets and in homes: there were more photographs in newspapers,
movie houses cropped up across the country, and printing houses
mass-produced calendar art and postcards. La Raza Cosmética
traces postrevolutionary identity ideals and debates as they were
dispersed to the greater public through emerging visual culture.
[…]”
——-
No Species Is an Island: Bats, Cacti, and Secrets of the Sonoran Desert – Theodore H. Fleming, 2017
“In the darkness of the star-studded desert, bats and moths feed on the
nectar of night-blooming cactus flowers. By day, birds and bees do the
same, taking to blooms for their sweet sustenance. In return these
special creatures pollinate the equally intriguing plants in an
ecological circle of sustainability.
The Sonoran Desert is the most biologically diverse desert in the world.
Four species of columnar cacti, including the iconic saguaro and organ
pipe, are among its most conspicuous plants. No Species Is an Island describes
Theodore H. Fleming’s eleven-year study of the pollination biology of
these species at a site he named Tortilla Flats in Sonora […].
Among the novel findings are one of the world’s rarest plant-breeding
systems in a giant cactus; the ability of the organ pipe cactus to
produce fruit with another species’ pollen; the highly specialized
moth-cactus pollination system of the senita cactus; and the amazing
lifestyle of the lesser long-nosed bat, the major nocturnal pollinator
of three of these species. […]”
——-
Whale Snow: Inupiat, Climate Change, and Multispecies Resilience in Arctic Alaska – Chie Sakakibara, 2020
“Whale Snow explores how everyday the relatedness of the Iñupiat
of Arctic Alaska and the bowhead whale forms and transforms “the human”
through their encounters with modernity. Whale Snow shows how the
people live in the world that intersects with other beings, how these
connections came into being, and, most importantly, how such intimate
and intense relations help humans survive the social challenges incurred
by climate change
[…].”
“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
This is a long post so I just want to say: Neocities is AMAZING. They promise never to put ads on your website, and they make it as easy as possible to start building a webpage of your own.
You create an account and they give you a page which says something like “This is a page! Here’s how you make bold and italics! Here’s how you add a picture!” and it has all the coding to show you how to do those things, and that same coding is on every new page you create for your website, so you don’t have to worry about remembering it. They have a bunch of other free tutorials too.
That same starter page, and every new page, has all the code preformatted that will tell the internet “Make this look like text and not code.” It even has a basic CSS stylesheet auto-linked so if you don’t want to mess with the look of your website at all, you don’t even have to pick a font or anything – you can literally just start typing.
They also let you edit right in your browser, with handy color-coding so you can easily see which parts of your website are code and which ones are words people will see. You get a gigabyte of storage space free, which is *insanely* large if you’re only doing text, and if you’re uploading a shitton of pictures you can subscribe at $5 a month to upgrade to 50GB. They do mention that they just don’t have the space or capacity to be especially good at hosting video.
Their terms and conditions also look pretty damn impressive, if you’re worried about the ways the interwebs is getting scrubbed of anything not advertiser-friendly. You’re allowed to post anything that isn’t illegal in the state of Oregon, they say they won’t comply with takedown requests for content that they believe falls under fair use, they specifically state that they won’t take down websites containing sexually explicit material unless the material is actually illegal (in Oregon, so drag queen websites are safe, for instance).
ALT
