"i don't comment on ao3 because i don't wanna be annoying or weird" skill issue + you greatly underestimate the power dynamic here, writing multi paragraph comments is like feeding a bunch of deeply insane and possibly starved ducks at the park and watch them go completely mad over having received a piece of bread
“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
katon-ur (phenomaman) x fem!reader. katon-ur and his tries to flirt with the pretty woman in the cubicle next to robert's
The first time he saw you he was already mesmerized. You were just sitting in your desk, headphones on, SDN shirt looking perfect on you and big glasses sliding off the bridge of your nose. You looked so effortlessly pretty for him, he couldn't put to words the feeling he was having in his stomach. Every time he locked eyes with you, boom, his stomach twists and his palms get sweaty.
Oh, and the first time you talked to him? He was gone. Katon was talking to Robert in his desk, something about a decision on the Z Team that you didn't care about when you came to them to ask the latter about a mission report. Your voice was so sweet and velvety, he could see closer the curls on your head and the slight frizz in them that drove him insane. You were so polite, saying hi to him before sharing a small talk with Robert.
He needed to talk to you, he couldn't miss the opportunity to say something to you. But, oh no, you were already saying bye to Robert and flicking your gaze towards him to also say goodbye.
He huffs under his breath, also leaving the conversation with Robert. Katon looks around confused, taking a moment to find you again at your desk, muttering orders under your breath. He decides at that moment to come up to you.
He rehearses something in his head. 'Greetings! I, too, enjoy… mission reports.' Absolutely not. 'Hello. I noticed you are a human.' Worse. His mind pings through a dozen doomed variants until he’s right behind you and suddenly there’s no time left to be a person with a plan.
“Hi,” he blurts, far too loud and then softens, “hi” again as if the first one was just warming up.
You turn in your chair, one earphone still half on and your eyes meet his. That single glance does catastrophic things to his internal equilibrium. His solar-powered chest practically flickers.
"Hey," You say lifting your glasses with one finger.
He tries to lean on the cubicle wall. The wall is not prepared for alien density and makes a noise like someone stepped on a violin. Katon jerks upright as if nothing happened, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth in a desperate attempt at casualness.
“I, um,” he starts, and then his mind blanks spectacularly. He can feel the warmth radiating off his cheeks, he technically can't blush, but you caused that
“I noticed you were… working. Which is good. Productive. Admirable.”
He closes his eyes for half a second, recalibrating. “What I mean is… I thought perhaps I should say hello. Properly. Since earlier you… spoke. To me.”
He gestures vaguely, as if that explains everything about the indescribable way your voice lodged itself in his chest cavity.
His palms are sweating again (absolutely ridiculous, since he’s not supposed to do that either) and he hides them behind his back.
“Sorry,” he adds quickly, “I’m new to… conversational… initiating.”
A beat.
“That is a phrase, yes?” He looks at you with panic, like a supernova trying very hard to be a candle.
And you smile. He might explode.
"It is a phrase if you want it to be," you say, the warmth of your voice filling his body.
He freezes.
You keep going, because leaving him suspended in existential suspense feels cruel.
“I’ve seen you around. You’re… hard to miss.” You glance at him up and down, your tone almost teasing. “In the architectural sense.”
His eyes go wide, and he straightens as if someone installed a steel beam along his spine.
“I am… visible,” he manages, then winces because that sounded too close to bragging about occupying space. “I mean—recognizable. I meant recognizable.”
You lean an elbow on your desk. “Relax. I know what you meant.” There’s a tiny, playful glint in your eyes now. “I’m glad you said hello.”
Katon’s whole posture tilts toward you involuntarily. He clears his throat in the most heroic, overly dignified way possible.
“I am also glad,” he says earnestly. Then, after a helpless beat: “Very.”
His shoulders sag with relief, because he did it. He has officially spoken to you without exploding, imploding or accidentally lifting something heavy. And you responded. Nicely.
He stands there, trying to figure out how a normal human exits a conversation without bursting into flames.
"I will leave you to work now, beautiful lady." He bows his head before turning in his heels and walking out.
That caught you a little offhand. He was very imposing, scary for some people even, but he looked so small talking to you. And the pet name? That made you feel like an awkward alien.
You lick your lips, seeing how he exits the room from a window. He tries to find you in the room one more time before leaving. And you get it, all of a sudden. He was flirting with you.
Katon-Ur spends the next three days attempting something that, for him, is as complex as astrophysics: continued flirting. He studies humans the way botanists study rare orchids. Quietly, intensely and with absolutely zero clue what he’s doing.
Robert, regrettably, becomes his primary source of advice.
“Flowers,” Robert says, not looking up from his PC. “Girls like flowers. Bring her flowers.”
Katon nods, heroic determination setting in. Flowers. Simple. A symbol of beauty, affection, terrestrial courtship. He can do flowers.
Except he cannot.
Because by the time he makes it outside, every flower on campus is either wilted, guarded by a bee colony he refuses to disturb, or planted in a way that suggests “do not pick unless you want the groundskeeper to kill you.” Katon stands there, hands on hips, cape fluttering, staring at the greenery like it has betrayed him personally.
But there are leaves. Many leaves. And one is particularly… nice. Symmetrical. A pleasing shade of green. Perhaps humans appreciate variety. Perhaps this leaf is a flower in spirit.
He plucks it with reverence, holds it as though it's an artifact, and heads inside before he can overthink and combust.
You’re typing when he appears beside your desk again, quiet for such a tall presence, holding something behind his back. His posture is stiff with purpose and terror.
“You,” he says, then swallows. “You are working again. You do that often, I notice.”
You spin slowly in your chair, eyebrow raised. “That is sort of how jobs work, yes.”
His face lights like he’s being praised for discovering fire.
“Yes! Precisely. And I have brought—” He thrusts something out toward you, then hesitates mid-motion, grimacing as if bracing for impact. “I have brought you this.”
You look down.
It is a leaf.
A perfectly ordinary, unremarkable, wonderfully green leaf.
There is a beat of silence so delicate it might shatter.
You meet his eyes, and they’re wide with earnest hope and absolutely no sense of how absurd this is. He looks like a puppy who’s brought you a sock and is praying you’ll treasure it forever.
“A leaf?” you say, letting your voice tilt warm instead of confused. “For me?”
He nods vigorously. “Yes. It is botanical.” Another nod. “Robert said flowers. There were obstacles.”
You try very hard not to laugh, not mockingly but affectionately. Impressed by the softness you didn't expect from a man capable of punching through steel.
“Thank you,” you say instead, smiling as you take it from him. “It’s lovely.”
Katon-Ur practically malfunctions. His hands fly up in an awkward half-gesture, his breath catches, his shoulders rise, his entire demeanor flickers between relief and sheer cosmic delight.
“You… like it?” he breathes, as if the universe itself hinges on this answer.
“There’s thought behind it,” you say, brushing your thumb over the leaf’s edge. “That matters more than anything.”
His knees nearly buckle. He steadies himself on the cubicle, gently this time.
“I will bring you more,” he vows heroically, then freezes. “Not leaves. Unless you desire leaves. I can acquire many. Infinite, even.”
You laugh softly, and he looks like he’d kneel at your feet if you asked.
“Maybe,” you say, “you can just keep talking to me.”
He inhales sharply, loudly, as if you’ve given him oxygen he didn’t know he needed.
“I can do that,” he promises, glowing brighter than any sun. “Conversational initiating. Continuation? Ongoing dialogue.”
“Katon,” you say gently, “you’re adorable.”
He goes still. If he had a tail, it would be wagging so hard it’d be hazardous.
He leaves your desk that day with the stuttery gait of someone whose entire sense of gravity has been knocked askew. You watch him go, broad shoulders, cape flicking behind him like he’s walking through a heroic wind only he can feel. And the ridiculous part? He looks good doing it. Too good.
That’s the inconvenient truth you’ve been skirting around: the man is awkward as an unplugged Roomba… and yet somehow hot in the way a star is hot. Big, bright, earnest, capable of melting things if he gets too close.
You spend the rest of your workday touching the edge of that leaf like it might still carry some trace of the way he held it, fingers too careful for someone who could crush cement.
And Katon?
He spends the rest of his day thinking about you.
He tries to train afterward, or something like training (lifting a comically large metal beam) which he usually does with smooth precision. But today he drops it twice. The second time he mutters your name under his breath and startles himself so badly he nearly launches into the ceiling.
By the next morning, he’s decided a new mission directive: Get braver. Get closer. Do not combust.
You’re running an errand in the hallway when he spots you. He tries to approach casually, failing.
“Beautiful—” he begins, then aborts mid-syllable. “Human lady— no. You. Hello. You.”
He stands fully upright, and suddenly the hallway feels smaller in comparison. He’s massive, yes, but it’s the warmth in his eyes that hits you, like catching sunlight on bare skin.
“Katon,” you say, grinning despite your best efforts, “breathe.”
He does. Loudly. Dramatically. As though you gave him permission to inhale for the first time all day.
“I wished to…” He pauses, gestures to himself. “Present myself. To you. Again. Properly.” Then, with reverence: “You look very nice today.”
You raise an eyebrow. “You think so?”
“Yes,” he says, no hesitation at all. “Your hair is… curly.” He nods, pleased with this observation. “Very curly. It is good. It makes shapes.”
You bite back a smile. “Shapes?”
“Pleasing shapes,” he amends, cheeks heating in that not-technically-a-blush way of his.
“Thank you,” you say, leaning slightly closer without meaning to. “You look good too.”
He blinks. Once. Twice. Then he looks down at himself as if checking whether that could possibly be true.
“I do?” His voice drops an octave, surprise wrapped in something softer. “Truly?”
“Uh-huh,” you say, steady but warm, “you’re kind of cute.”
His breath catches.
You watch his hands curl and uncurl at his sides, like he’s physically restraining cosmic-level reactions. His whole chest seems to brighten, not literally glowing, but close.
“No one has ever…” He fumbles. “I mean, they have said things, but not…”
He gathers himself, squares his shoulders, and looks at you with a sincerity so intense it could bend steel.
“You think I am cute?”
He says it like you’ve handed him the moon.
You nod. “Yeah. I do.”
He looks as if he might ascend.
“I will attempt,” he says, voice hushed and full of wonder, “to be worthy of that.”
Before you can respond, he adds, softer but bolder than anything he’s said yet:
“And you are… far more than cute.”
His gaze lingers, warm and earnest and a little hungry in the most innocent way imaginable.
He’s awkward, sure. But he’s also very attractive, very sincere and extremely focused on you.
phenomaman masterlist a/n: this idea came to me bc i've been saying a leaf? for me? thank you all day and i thought it could be cute. haven't watched the movie and i'm lowk not planning to. i'm tired of 2025 gothic aesthetic
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for”. We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
people are saying do it scared, but you also gotta do it alone. you'll miss out on so much you want to do if you wait til someone will do it with you. do it scared and do it alone.
This is broadly good advice, but I actually disagree with #3.
What people write and what they like to read may have less overlap than you would think. I frequently find, looking into the bookmarks of an author I like, that their taste covers another area entirely.
No, what you want to look for are the favorites/bookmarks of other readers of this author's fic. Especially if you can find regular commenters.
Your best shot, in my experience, is to check near the top of the fic, under the header, and see if anyone else has added this fic to a collection. That's when you've hit the jackpot, because you have found a fan who likes to curate bookmarks, and they like the same things you like.
Things I learned in college that they really should teach everyone and not just those who pay for it:
How to protect, take care of, and perform maintenance on your PC. Being able to use a laptop doesn’t mean you know how to own one.
How to file a dispute with the credit bureau. This is incredibly useful for stopping any financial fraud committed against you, aka shitty company practices and scams involving money and debt.
How to use a spreadsheet software. Sometime in your boring adult life you WILL need this
Financial literacy, financial tools, and how to build a strong credit score. You need to know how to handle money.
Speed reading with enough comprehension to understand what was said. Our lives are digital and that means both a fast paced life and constant reading
Outdoor safety and survival skills—I took a course on backpacking and I still use these skills despite dropping the hobby. It’s just good to know how to survive wildfires, flash flooding, lightning strikes, extreme heat or cold and getting lost.
First Aid. Not just for you but for your pets as well.
Rhetoric. Just a GOATed guide to reading comprehension, media literacy, and effective communication skills.
How to collaborate with people and what that should look like.
Information research and citing/spotting reliable sources. Helps me distinguish liars and propagandists from people who actually know what they’re talking about.
Ethical use of technology, including issues with AI. You know, I really hoped that this skill wouldn’t become as relevant as it is now
How to make something that you created easy to understand and accessible to everyone
How to teach yourself new skills and stay always learning—this is how I learned to fix things around my home
Honestly the importance of each of these things cannot be understated and it’s why a thorough education that, bare minimum, covers these skills should be available to everyone.
I am begging you. Please learn about stress/discomfort tolerance. Practice raising it. You need this to survive. If someone online can ruin your day with a throwaway comment, you desperately need to understand discomfort tolerance and consciously, systematically build that shit.
Also! Stress tolerance is such an important skill that having a learning disability in that area is a major symptom of a whole lot of other disabilities/mental illnesses! Struggling with it is a huge part of life! It sucks!
Am I saying everyone with misophonia needs to listen to chewing noises all day? No. But you need to find ways to tolerate it enough that you don't treat others like shit if they make a mouth noise near you.
No, you don't have to read the fic with your trigger tags. But you do need to be able to handle scrolling past the tags without being upset.
It is hard! But not having it also makes you so so so easy to manipulate. That grandma is racist AF because her mom raised her to be uncomfortable around black people and she never fought that discomfort. Trans people make so many cis people uncomfortable and that discomfort turns into bigotry real fast.
Letting your discomfort dictate your actions and beliefs about things is a great way to become a terrible person. Learn. Discomfort. Tolerance.
You know what I think is really cool about language (English in this case)? It’s the way you can express “I don’t know” without opening your mouth. All you have to do is hum a low note, a high note, then another lower note. The same goes for yes and no. Does anyone know what this is called?
These are called vocables, a form of non-lexical utterance - that is, wordlike sounds that aren’t strictly words, have flexible meaning depending on context, and reflect the speakers emotional reaction to the context rather than stating something specific. They also include uh-oh! (that’s not good!), uh-huh and mm-hmm (yes), uhn-uhn (no), huh? (what?), huh… (oh, I see…), hmmn… (I wonder… / maybe…), awww! (that’s cute!), aww… (darn it…), um? (excuse me; that doesn’t seem right?), ugh and guh (expressions of alarm, disgust, or sympathy toward somebody else’s displeasure or distress), etc.
Every natural human language has at least a few vocables in it, and filler words like “um” and “erm” are also part of this overall class of utterances. Technically “vocable” itself refers to a wider category of utterances, but these types of sounds are the ones most frequently being referred to, when the word is used.
