-squeak-

Links to Other Places

In the current digital environment, the only truly good search engine that I know about is Marginalia, which specifically searches small, personal, and informational websites, leaving out the endless shitty storefronts and copy/pasted 'news' sites. A fair portion of the cool stuff I have found I found by way of Marginalia, but the majority of it was still just clicking links on lists of links on curated websites.

Here's mine. In the way of the nonfiction librarian, I have sorted it by subject. In the way of me, all those subjects are just terrible ways to sort things.

I tend to have small handfuls of links to fandom-related websites on my fandom pages, which I will not fully reproduce here. I will link to some of my other pages if they already have long, embedded lists of links.

Websites I Will Avoid Linking

Unless the content I am linking to is absolutely exceptional and not duplicated elsewhere, I will not link to any predatory websites.

That means no links to:

Any social media websites or similar (bluesky or X, tumblr blogs or other microblogging platforms)
Websites with predatory algorithms (no YouTube channels, no short-form video websites, no webtoons)
AI-made pages (or other poorly considered or misinformed content unless funny)
Websites that primarily exist extract money (disguised/dishonest storefronts, poorly-designed pages riddled with paid advertisements, predatory subscription websites with hidden pay-for-premium schemes)
And, as best I can manage, no links to scaremongering or hatemongering, though the occasional wacky opinion will inevitably be found on some of the pages I do link as they’re made by humans.

I will not be aiding these websites for the same reasons I don’t smack down a bloody mary in front of somone who's clean and sober. Again, exceptions will be made for high-quality work not duplicated elsewhere. I’m not your mother either and I hope you can decide for yourself whether or not it’s safe for you to wander over to a predatory website for a little while.

Online Libraries

I have a list of links to online libraries, mostly small libraries with well-curated collections, on the bottom of my Out of Print Books page. That's a direct link, no scrolling or searching necessary once you get there.

Wicca/Paganism/Folklore

All links related to Wicca, Paganism, or Folklore are already listed on the front of my Wicca Page. This is already a rather long list, featuring a mix of websites that simply post folklore as recorded, resources related to one tradition or another, and personal sites of modern pagans like myself. It also features a list of wiccan and pagan musicians.

Tolkien

Folklore leads neatly into my interest in the work and world of J. R. R. Tolkien. Once again I have done the legwork elsewhere on my website already; head to the links section of my Silmarillion page for websites about Tolkien's books, world, and constructed languages. This is a wide and old section of the internet and there's lots to see and learn if you've never dipped your toes in.

Vintage Internet

Websites that existed twenty years ago and are still running today!

I know I already link it in the Webcomic links below, but goddess damn it and me, I will link Unicorn Jelly twice a page on every page. I'll link it five times. Unicorn Jelly is the best webcomic that was ever made. It was unfairly maligned in its time and it was because the author was a transwoman on the early internet and she refused to closet herself. The complaints about the comic's plot and messaging were spurious. It is an incredible, beautiful, deeply considered work of art and far too many people accepted it was bad because of a transphobic smear campaign against its author. I know why some people are turned off by the art styles of the sequel comics, but the original UJ is beautiful pixel art in a thoroughly-realized fictional world. The comic comes with additional but optional bonus comics that explore the physics, biology, and culture of its universe; the website has pages devoted to its food culture, most popular board game, and a full and scaling map of its universe. I will defend Unicorn Jelly unto my dying breath.

The website of UJ's author, Jennifer Rietz, is like the comic still maintained today but contains pages of years gone by.

The work of translater and game dev VGPerson/VGHime has been a forming influence on my tastes and interests for well over twenty years. She does such good work and people underestimate how much she's done to influence not just online culture but indie media as we know it.

A similar tastemaker can be found in the webmaster of Mozai.com, a personal site with quite a few widgets and games and resources but, most notably, the painstaking archiving of a few notable TG quest threads, online stories told to internet forums and influenced by the responses of readers. It is essentially only through this webmaster's work that you can read the genre-defining work Ruby Quest and its spiritual successor Nan Quest. They viewers that Mozai built so that a person could read these intentionally-emphremeral stories in the future even preserve important comments and fanart. Mozai reminds me of VGHime partially because I think their contibutions to indie culture have gone unrecognized; you may not realize how much modern media has a bit of Ruby Quest in its DNA until you read it, and you wouldn't be able to read it without Mozai.

The internet hero who made me is Zarla Sheenaza. I've been following her fanworks, shrines, blog, and general internet content for a staggering number of years. I started making a personal website because Zarla convinced me I could. I read through her silly screencap adventures so many times when I was exhausted and unhappy in my undergrad. Thanks for everything, Zar.

Lililicious was and is a champion of the internet. The team at Lily scanlates and archives girl's love/yuri comics. Most importantly to me, they scanlated a lot of vintage comics I would never have found wihout them and which proved very influential to me and my art. There was a time in my life where I had read everything in the archives. Come to think of it, they don't update often anymore, so that's still essentially true...

The Gay Fiction Booklist that Doesn't Suck is long-dead but still online. The author of this list made it their quest in the Aughts, when the world of queer fiction was much bleaker, to find queer books that were't just really boring and sad. They did a fantastic job. Though the list is now dated, I promise it will lead you to fantastic reads.

If you never spent an afternoon giggling at the Gallery of Regrettable Food, well, now's the time. You're welcome!

An astonishing amount of the Anime Web Turnpike is still up and functional. BEHOLD: how we used to Wiki.

One vintage website I am astonished to still find online and functional is Twoflower's Sailor Nothing. SN is an original fiction story that uses the language of Magical Girl anime to write a horror story. It's not a masterpiece, but it was a bit of early web genre-blending and website-building I found inspiring as... gosh, as a child. SN gave me new ides about how to break boundaries with fiction. The same tricks found in SN would astonish readers of Homestuck a decade later.

I found the old but extant personal website Suburban Banshee by running into its unfinished Medieval Irish poetry page, of course; and they are rather good translations. It's always nice to run into an older website that hasn't changed much.

One fandom page I will duplicate here is Empty Movement, a Revolutionary Girl Utena website that had been through twenty-five years of updates and formats. It has also done twenty-five years of archiving. Even if you're never seen the show, give this page a scroll and look at what nearly three decades of meticulously archiving a show and all of its related media looks like.

Similarly—wow, remarkably similarly—the Gilbert and Sullivan Archive has been making the works of the Victorian Power Partnership accessible and comprehensible for over thirty years. I was exposed to the work of G&S when I was fully their target audience (a precocious child) and, though I was not in their century, I became a fan immediately. This website does not simply list the operas and facts about them, it contains enormous amounts of archives photos, vintage reviews, full librettos—this is an archive. Hats off.

One more author archive that has stood the test of time is the H. P. Lovecraft Archive. Since Lovecraft's work is in the public domain now, this website contains essentially all of his fiction. It also has little treasures like images of locations in Providence he mentioned in his writing and details about his personal interests. (My favorite Lovecraft story, by the way, is his only novel-length fiction, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.)

I'm not sure whether to put Naru's personal site in the old or the new web categories—like Zarla or Empty Movement, it's really both. Naru is an internet elf whose offbeat and heartfelt personal website just soothes me.

The Modern Wild Web

Personal websites and other little things that sprang up in the modern web like beautiful dandelions around the blocks of ugly concrete that big business and social media websites have shoved down on us.

I first found Eve G through her spectacular conlang The Language of Lords, a simultaneously phonetic and pictographic language used by a race of demons. I've since started reading some of her comics, which are also good. (Linked comic also comes with a conlang). Eve is a powerhouse of fascinating creative projects.

Tas is an online artist and comic artist who I initially found through their fantastic Lapeo Region Dex, a fan pokemon region of deep history beasties.

I loved the character and relationship shrines of the oldweb and used to spend hours happily exploring the shrines of characters I liked; the best of the best out of those reviving this practice in the modern web is surely Oubliette.nu. Both the root website and the hosted shrines are just gorgeous. The first one I found and my entry into this site was Valkyrie because holy SHIT Legend of Dragoon shrine. (For more of the same, please check out the Links page on this website.)

Lots to Learn

Various websites that will teach you if you have time to learn. There are some very niche topics here, and the factor that gets something put onto this sublist is quality.

I cannot understand why I don't see Facts and Details in every other websearch, unless the answer is 'all search engines genuinely deprioritize information and favor easy ad revenue now'. There is the fact that the webmaster got a lot of his initial information from newspapers and by calling experts and thus cannot prove all of his sources. Still, having scanned the pages about subjects I do know about, I haven't yet spotted an error, and there are quite a few pages with many sources cited. Take it with a grain of salt, but please do that it, this website is a rabbit's warren of information and insight about the world.

Here's a link to Starmaze. I'm not going to tell you anything about Starmaze. Have fun!

One of the best unexpected website finds I have ever made is running into this thesis website on Asian Traditional Theatre and Dance. They are not being lazy by just using the term 'Asian', the content on this site covers almost all of East and Southeast Asia, categorized properly. I was just looking for a solid list of what the colors of face-paint mean in Beijing Opera. I found endless fascinating facts and research instead.

The Introduction to Cumbric will tell you just about everything you need to know about a long-dead and somewhat controversial Celtic language. That's information you were looking for, right?...

While I have it on the Folklore page too, I've rarely seen internet scholarship like Tam Lin Balladry. It's a truly special website which gets deeper and deeper the further you dig.

If you like podcasts or audio media, it is my opinion that the best of the best is Mike Duncan's Revolutions, a long-running show about eight different real-world revolutions (or revolutionary periods), cause, course, and effects, top to bottom. Ignore the bonus ninth season about a fictional revolution on Mars—my reccomendation for where to start is Season 4, Haiti. It's shorter than most seasons and, in my opinion, one of the best, and as such a perfect starting point. If you have a long daily drive or need to deep-clean a house, Revolutions will both get you perfectly into a flow state and radically alter your outlook on the modern world.
As a little fun fact: my husband and I spent a few years living with my parents. While I lived with them I cooked dinner most nights (because I love cooking, and because they didn't have to do that). I played my podcasts out loud as I cooked and everyone learned about revolutions with me. But, whenever I played a different podcast, my mother would say 'This one isn't as good as the Revolutions guy.' Ha ha.

For something rather off the beaten path, take a gander at a homemade scholarly research website about Aristasia, a seperatist lesbian cult with an elaborate alien world mythology. I have spend so much time reading this website.

Kalliope Poetics provide a whole online course in poetry forms and writing poetry. This is the sort of thing a person who knew a lot about a subject and passionately loved it would make so that anyone could access that information. These courses always have a handmade, personal touch that I think is really worth something.

I could link you to a thousand good webpages about studying King Arthur and Arthurian myth. I could. Instead I give you Vortigern Studies.

Dead Languages

My Dead Languages page is almost entierly links about learning a handful of dead languages I'm interested in and the cultures that spoke them. If I have more language-based links I want to add to the website, though, I will surely add them here.

Webcomics

I have been reading webcomics since I was eleven or twelve years old. My favorites vary from long-ended classics to flash-in-the-pan unknown, unfinished entities to comic operas that have been updating since '99. I like interesting and heart-felt comics made by amateur artists as much as experimental, 20-page surreal sequences as much as polished online graphic novels by veteran authors. I like manga as much as newspaper comics as much as DC and my taste in webcomics is just as simultaneously total and eccentric.

This list will be sorted into three sections. Back in the day, a lot of webcomic authors sorted their own recommendations with the same dividing line: the living and the dead. Dead comics are either finished or abandoned (or on a five year hiatus that sure make it look like it's been abandoned), living comics are still updating. I am also adding a third 'liminal' categories for stirips that... might be dead, but I don't think they are.

THE DEAD

Comics that ended long ago, or stopped updating long enough ago that it is clear it passed on quietly.

Unicorn Jelly: It is my heartfelt opinion that Unicorn Jelly is the best webcomic ever made. As I explained above, it gained a bad reputation unfairly because of a hate crime of a smear campaign waged against its transgender author. UJ is a subtle, emotional, complicated story told in a fully-realized alternate universe with its own deeply considered physics, astronomy, biology, religion, and culture. The universe of Tryslmaistan is so fully realized that sometimes I remember that I can't go there and it hurts. While the sequel comics are drawn in a different and undeniably less charming artstyle, the plot of spin-off comic To Save Her, at least, is so good that I still highly recommend reading it after you finish the original Unicorn Jelly.

Ozy and Millie: Dana Simpson's classic webcomic has a newspaper-comic feel, which is not a coincidence; she tried to get into the papers several times but they didn't like that her cast was fully anthropomorphic with no visually human characters. Funny, because she wrote some of the most human characters I've ever seen in a newspaper-style strip. Ozymandius and Millicent are two off-beat and outcast kids that get along oddly well, considering their opposite energies should just explode on impact. They and their parents, guardians, and friends get into hijinks that are both genuinely funny and unpretentiously intellectual. An evergreen classic that I read as it was coming out along with my sister; she and I still have many Ozy and Millie-based inside jokes.

Doe of Deadwood: Author/artist Songdog is a prolific comic creator who has made about a dozen webcomics over the years. They are all animal stories, and Doe of Deadwood is by far my favorite of them. A short but complicated story about predator/prey relationships, mortality, and the nature of love, if you give Doe a fair shake you will not be able to stop thinking about it. This isn't nostalgia speaking; I first read it when I was thirty years old. The unpolished art, in my opinion, really increases the horror of some scenes in the same manner as KKHTA; sometimes, slightly undefined art has the same power as grainy filling to force your mind to fill in the details with whatever it finds scary.

Hemlock: This is a little rude of me, as I am declaring Hemlock dead for its author, who has never declared it so. I would love to move it to living or liminal but don't foresee that. Hemlock features absolutely gorgeous art and design and story set in pre-modern Finland. The main character, Lumi, is a suspiciously immortal witch with a heavy burden to bear. She lives in a big snail and has a three-eyed frog. The tone of this comic is not whimsical but magical, not fairytale but folkloric, and trends dark as it goes. I warn you now that it ended before the last chapter but despite that it's well worth a read.

Girly: A vintage internet classic following up author Jackie Lesnick's even more vintage internet classics, Girly is going to feel dated, but it is also going to feel wonderful, warm, and sincere. Lesnick is a girl's girl. She loves lesbians. She just loves lesbians. A silly story that, as the author herself describes it, "went everywhere and did everything, for better or worse." (Note: I don't usually 'warn' for adult content because I don't like aiding the puritans, but I will mention that Jackie's website is especially adult and you will notice this immediately.)

LIMINAL ZONE

Comics that appear dead but aren't really. Sometimes I know this because I've been watching it and I know it updates once or twice a year suddenly, sometimes I know this because I follow the author's blog/website/patreon and I know they're working through some stuff right now.

Kagerou: I know Kagerou ain't dead because I know Luka ain't. That said, Kagerou doesn't update often these days. With a huge back catalog of evolving art and fantastic characters, Kagerou is a vintage manga-alike that is well worth a binge. Kagerou is the story of a man who has been transported to a fictional world... but he thinks that it's another one of his hallucianations, as he's spent his life going in and out of treatment for his psychotic disorder. The spirit-based magic of this new world quickly begins using his fracutred psyche as a pocket dimension and loophole so that battles, conversations, and characters move in and out of the landscapes of the world and his mind. I read it when I was rather young for its psych horror content, but I remain a fan. And the colors in this thing are so colors.

Root and Branch: Once updating frequently, now updating rarely and sporadically as the author Pink Pitcher raises her first child (good for her). Root and Branch is a criminally underrated comic with some of the best worldbuilding I've ever seen around humans and non-human sapient species (here, elves) interacting. The elves do not feel human, they feel like a fully realized 'other' race, just as complex and alive. Pitcher's understanding of psychology and people's emotional worlds are woven into the narrative and turn it into a thought experiment you cannot stop thinking about; the constant push and pull between the optimistic, loving, trusting protagonist Ariana and distrusting, jaded, wounded deuteragonist Jayoda is an electric force that has me doing constant rereads. Om top of that I've rarely seen anyone so good at making the most minor two-page character feel alive. A gem of a story that just feels real.

Pepsiaphobia: Dead, resurrected, and on hiatus, Pepsiaphobia is the sweet and silly story of a single Amazonian mother living in mythic Greece with her teenage daughter. Daisy Finch's storytelling, art, and sense of humor are all so good. She freely pulls in pop culture or genre-breaking elements for whatever will be the best joke; and by 'best' I don't mean 'whatever most exploits the meme of the moment', I mean 'best.' Genuinely funny, clever, and compassionate, the only reason I'm not upset Pepsiaphobia is on hiatus is because Daisy other comic, Yellow Brick Ramble, a webcomic retelling of The Marvelous Land of Oz, is just as good and very much alive.

Alexander, the Servant, and the Water of Life: is NOT dead. It just updates very slowly. Once of the best-drawn AND most thoroughly-researched webcomics I have ever seen, Alexander Etc does not aspire to be the modern retelling of the Alexander Epic, it actually just is the modern retelling of the Alexander Epic. I am telling you that an addition to an ancient canon is happening right now. You really should read it.

Sakana: Oh, this is a liminal dead/alive/undead comic. For the past five years Sakana has been constantly going on hiatuses that go for many times their predicted lengths. I cannot let it go. Sakana is just an adorable and cleverly-plotted and lovely little story about a group of young adults who work in a fish market. They love, hate, and fear each other. The interwoven subplots vary between 'asking a cute girl across the way out but you're so nervous' to 'aggressive asshole's much, much worse ex is stalking him' to 'The Yakuza'. Every time I foolishly reread this thing, I reread the whole thing in a day.

THE LIVING

Webcomics that are going strong, give or take a hiatus.

Paranatural: Paranatural is the only comic on this page that for which I have a seperate fanpage, if that tells you anything. What appears to be a school story about a club of kids who fight ghosts slowly becomes a tightly plotted generational saga about how we treat each other and how to break the cycle of mistreatment—if you can. Pnat has some of the best character design I have ever seen and somehow also the funniest writing I have ever read.

Kill Six Billion Demons: KSBD is nearing its conclusion after a decade of quality writing and art—get in now! An absolutely breathtaking comic, epic in scope, about a woman who is pulled into a realm of demons and gods. KSBD has an utterly unique setting with endless little bits of worldbuilding and detailing. You can read just the comic itself, but I highly recommend paying attention to author's notes and the side-stories sometimes posted in those notes. There is a small side-story titled Prim Leaves Her Father's House that in itself is so good that I've retold it at storytelling events more than once.

Girl Genius: When goddess WHEN will the Foglios grant us mercy we have been screaming in agony for thirty fucking years as the plot threads wind tighter and tighter about us. I am CAUGHT LIKE A FLY IN THE HORRIBLE WEB

DMFA: Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures first appeared online in 1999, and I appeared on its list of regular readers not long after (in the grand scheme of things). A compelling, complicated fantasy story that takes place in a vast and multifaceted world of dozens of sapient races and their endless schemes and feuds against each other, DMFA balances cute stories with adorable fuzzy characters and End of the World Shit remarkably well. You can watch the art evolve from pencil sketches in 1999 to what it is today. I love DMFA so much; the author/artist has been losing steam over the years, and who can blame them? I am grateful and thankful for thirty years of smiles and laughter and couldn't ask for more.

The Priestwife: The Priestwife is a fantasy about a blind priest who serves an ominous divine Tower and is himself served by his 'Priestwife'. This Priestwife is our POV character, and he is a burly, bigmouthed, shitkicking, concussion-dealing brickhouse-built motherfucker with a fantastically horrible attitude and so, so much hair on his big and sexy body. What a 'Priestwife' is, why the two of them are hunting lingering, malign spirits in a small town, and what all of that has to do with the Tower they worship are questions the webcomic is still unravelling. It hasn't been running long, so get in on the ground floor with this one; it's good and it's only going to get better. Trust.

Clown Corps: Hell yeah. HELL yeah. Incredible comic art, some of the best designs I've ever seen, and you will not believe how Chounard balances absolute melodrama and unapologetic slapstick. It's so. I just. I don't care if you like clowns. I don't care if you hate clowns. Read Clown Corps. Number One 'Cannot Believe This Read is Free' pick on the list.

Endless Cycles (in the Dreamtime of the Saucer People): A passion project that is really going somewhere. The author/artist states that they started building this story based on their research in the social dynamics of cults and especially how those dynamics warp when the original cult leader dies. The story so far has been about how rising dissent in a saucer cult has caused a 'problem child' in the ranks to team up with a revenge-seeking outsider in a plot to kill the leader, who is also his lover. Considering said leader isn't dead yet and the comic already regularly delivers razor-sharp character dissections in its eight-to-twelve-page updates, I cannot imagine how bonkers it will get when the promised assassination finally comes.

As It Is In Heaven: I don't remember how I ran across this comic. This rare pick is a delightfully bizarre historical science fiction that just has everything. Fantastic real and alternate historical fiction intermingled, Age of Adventure exploration, backstabbing gay clergy, Quetzal-people, lots of wacky explicit gay sex. This bonkers comic is delightful in ways I could describe but will resist spoiling; suffice to say that boldly explores and it makes me laugh a lot. Sometimes I recognize renditions of historical paintings in the backgrounds of wacky gay sex scenes.

Theia Mania: There are a lot of comics about Greek Mythology running these days being written by people whose sum total knowledge of Greek Mythology is half Disney at best. This is the one that I can confidently say is better. The author's knowledge of mythology, religious practice, and culture are thorough and it shows in her work. Like anyone writing the stories of the Gods as a comprehensive narrative, she has to pick and choose her myths, but she often picks lesser-known myths and explores them well. The Gods feel like people here in the best way possible.

Grayling:: Many years ago, amateur artist Arborwin wrote a webcomic called Grayling about a pantheon of Gods in a small world who, after ruining the lives of their human companions over and over, eventually came to the conclusion that the only right thing to do was seperate themselves from humankind and live apart from them. After finishing that comic, Arborwin immeidately announced they were making the same comic again, but way better and way longer. I read Grayling once and goddess as my witness I read it again.
Fun Fact: I can't prove this was me in any real way, but there was a Grayling merch shirt made for me because I asked for it. It says 'Moranerial did nothing wrong', which is my Fadia-specific political position. For some reason I can't find it at the moment but when I do I'll at least take a picture of the shirt.

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