Home to all my niche obsessions

🐞🎧🍄✍️

[tobiosty]

General useful stuff!

Guides

How to make Crumbl Cookies!

How to bookbind!

How to pirate movies/shows

How to make frog plushies

How to make a Go-bag for emergencies

How to repair clothing

How to make different a03 kudos!

How to download videos/pictures/gifs from a website

How to make various chocolate desserts!

Tips and Tricks!

A03 formatting

Back stretches!

Depression tips

Adult cheat sheet

How to regulate and understand your emotions better

Disabling Windows 11 web search in search bar

Resources

Horror game recs!

Dca fic recs!

Hand references

Free Adobe photoshop

Artist resources

Free spotify

Pirating sites

Artist resources pt 2

Helpful random sites

Homemaking, gardening, sustainability

Free libraries!

Making stuff and doing things (free book pdf)

Healthcare (medicine discount websites, guide on how to pay hospital bills)

Alternative stuff to mega corporations

[psalidodont]

late hour spore doodles

[cyborgbiscuit]

shout out to Spore™️

[notryvn]

— Rhamphorhynchus

[my-dailydreams]

[alexasharpe-art]

Beware the beast 🩸

[onenicebugperday]

Surreal insect paintings by Nathiola on Reddit (Posted with permission!)

This artist on Instagram

[knightwithahundredkings]

I really recommend the Táin Bó Cúailnge to anyone looking to get into medieval literature because it's a great story, brilliant poetry (I read the Carson translation, and the way he translates the roscada sections are beautiful) and the backbone of the Ulster Cycle, but it's also just really fucking funny. It has a very slapstick yet dry sense of humor that provides just enough comic relief to make the dramatic moments of the story even more impactful. Genuinely I laugh out loud every few pages. Go read it.

[knightwithahundredkings]

You can't make this shit up

[cyborgbiscuit]

Read this later, future me

[hypermediagirl]

HTML for People

HTML isn't only for people working in the tech field. It's for everyone. Learn how to make a website from scratch in this beginner friendly

if you're learning HTML for any reason, i can't recommend HTML for people highly enough. it's a fantastic introduction to HTML and CSS targeted towards beginners who aren't technically inclined, and it isn't patronizing towards the reader for that. it's a very relaxed and kind (but informative) resource that even i reference from time to time (and i consider myself pretty good with semantic HTML).

definitely check it out if you're interested in making a personal site, or working with HTML at all.

[1000-life-hacks]

[archeologist-prophet]

Lovely to see we have spaces where you can gain access to so much literature!

[thoughtportal]

[commasameleon-deactivated202510]

Sorry as someone who teaches rhetoric this is a wonderful response to the Paradox of Tolerance. I cannot tell you how many times my students have had debates about this. This is the response. This does indeed fix it. I cannot wait to tell this to my classes now. Philosophically and rhetorically this completely resolved the Paradox of Tolerance and I am floored by its simplicity and angry I never saw it before.

[elfwreck]

Tolerance is not a moral precept

The title of this essay should disturb you. We have been brought up to believe that tolerating other people is one of the things you do if…

Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Leave him alone, he's enjoying his meal. Too cute!

[cyborgbiscuit]

behold the glutinous creature

[vexheart]

casually reading some Carl Jung and then he hits you with this:

[kitsunegdx]

:3 feels happier than :) But not as genuine as :]

[hunterontheedge]

:3 is my favorite. Full of deceit and silliness. The jester’s face. The culmination of all that’s chaotic and ever changing.

:) can be ominous, if it’s alone or accompanied by odd context! But sometimes, it’s yer friendly ol smile. :] is a friendly face. That is a friend. Look at it. What harm could it possibly do?

[kitsunegdx]

:3!!!

[kitsunegdx]

You have the secret knowledge my friend

[hunterontheedge]

The little guys are here… the littlest of smiles… like being handed a flower on a nice day…

[hunterontheedge]

Like this almost

[kitsunegdx]

You understand the treasures!

[cyborgbiscuit]

25,000 likes!

[eroscestlavie]

Genuinely incredible single serve site I just found: a guy made a search tool so you can find completely empty AMC movie screenings in your area and enjoy a private or near-private theatre.

[knitmeapony]

awesome if you are still very covid-conscious and have some flexibility

[fluffy-critter]

this site is how I just learned there's a "that time I got reincarnated as a slime" movie, and its upcoming screenings are all very, very empty

[sodorz]

thinking abt how fucked up steam engine boiler explosions can look. theyre just pipes under there

gives me the idea of a ghost/monster engine that looks normal, albeit a bit battered, only to swing their smokebox door open and a myriad of pipes come bursting out like fucked up tentacles

[marlynnofmany]

I didn’t know a train could be an eldritch horror, but here we are.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

The monster eats rocks, with teeth made of flame.

A snarling beast that rides with steam and the squeal of metal on metal in its wake.

Bound to lines of metal that cross the land, mountains having been leveled or bored through to make way, or timber and steel piled high to let them cross chasms.

Should it slip from the appointed path, fire and death ensue.

A single glowing eye the last thing those who stand before it see before the end.

Tendrils of water, fire, and steel, bound tightly within its heart.

.

.

is that enough horror for you?

[lurkerwithcomputer]

Oh, “Chu-Chulhu” is making my day!

[iphysalian]

Small fantasy worldbuilding elements you might want to think about:

A currency that isn’t gold-standard/having gold be as valuable as tin

A currency that runs entirely on a perishable resource, like cocoa beans

A clock that isn’t 24-hours

More or less than four seasons/seasons other than the ones we know

Fantastical weather patterns like irregular cloud formations, iridescent rain

Multiple moons/no moon

Planetary rings

A northern lights effect, but near the equator

Roads that aren’t brown or grey/black, like San Juan’s blue bricks

Jewelry beyond precious gems and metals

Marriage signifiers other than wedding bands

The husband taking the wife's name / newlyweds inventing a new surname upon marriage

No concept of virginity or bastardry

More than 2 genders/no concept of gender

Monotheism, but not creationism

Gods that don’t look like people

Domesticated pets that aren’t re-skinned dogs and cats

Some normalized supernatural element that has nothing to do with the plot

Magical communication that isn’t Fantasy Zoom

“Books” that aren’t bound or scrolls

A nonverbal means of communicating, like sign language

A race of people who are obligate carnivores/ vegetarians/ vegans/ pescatarians (not religious, biological imperative)

I’ve done about half of these myself in one WIP or another and a little detail here or there goes a long way in reminding the audience that this isn’t Kansas anymore.

[geeko-sapiens]

A few nitpicks just because I'm autistic:

Seasons are just fancy delineations of Earth's orbit around the sun and axial tilt. Further away it gets cold enough that water vapor condenses and freezes into snow, closer to the sun it gets hotter, plus there's two transitional periods where life prepares to deal with warmer or colder times. You can alter that, but you'll need to either involve Weird Magic or start fucking with orbital mechanics (which invites physics nerds and will still likely just be variants on warmer/colder).

Jewelry is just something that's sparkly and pretty, and precious gems/metals are what we generally think are the most sparkly/pretty, but it's also used socially as wealth signifiers. Anything used in jewelry will be considered either precious (and valuable) because it's rare, or tawdry (and cheap) because it isn't. Tawdry things can be made valuable, but just because of the amount of effort put into creating them (which costs value).

The northern lights are always around the magnetic poles, regardless of where the planet spins, and the "equator" is just an arbitrary line we've drawn that divides the earth between magnetic poles. IIRC, magnetic poles usually stay fairly close to the planetary axis of rotation just because of how that rotation causes the mantle and core to spin, and any reversals that move the magnetic poles away from the axis are temporary and just part of the process of switching which pole is on which side of the equator.

Domesticated animals - and I mean fully domesticated, not just "we keep them as pets" like snakes or parrots or some insects - are always going to be social animals that are small enough that we can sorta control if they breed and with who, because they need to be social to include us in their social group and they need to be controllable so we can breed them to be friendly enough to include us. That puts a fairly stringent limit on what kinds of personalities can develop. You can look outside dogs and cats for pets, try pigeons or chickens or the like, but your starting stock has always gotta be social and friendly.

What other ways can you do books in fantasy, though? As compact information storage goes, you can't really beat a book without complex technology (or magic substituting for technology) - thin pages tightly compacted and bound together in the proper order. Scrolls are still the same principle except the "pages" are bound together at both edges instead of just one. You could have complex engravings that can be read by touch, but then you have the two issues of needing tools that can engrave that finely and needing to write xenofiction about beings that prioritize touch over sight (are they all blind, or have limited vision? do they echolocate? how do you write an entire book from their perspective when so much of human perception is sight-based?) and that may be more than you're willing to take on, and every other method of non-book low-tech information storage I can think of has similar issues. If you want to involve magic, well, then that doesn't answer how Grandma writes down her recipe books and also how do you do that in a way that isn't just Magic CDs?

Yes, I know all of these can be simply answered with "it's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit." So please, don't take this as discouragement! I just mean that if you do these things you're going to have people like me asking how and possibly why, and going insane looking for answers.

[marlynnofmany]

Oh sure, you could easily just handwave most things and blame it on magic, but you don't have to for all of them!

For something like the seasons, it could be as simple as having different names for things. Maybe instead of dividing a year into four seasons, a culture divides it into six. You can still have summer (peak heat) and winter (peak cold), but the warming-up and the cooling-down periods each have two parts, with very different cultural connotations. That way you can have a Midwinter Ball as well as a Thaw Cookoff and a Hatchtime Egg-Painting Competition, with some time still to go before summer.

Jewelry can absolutely be anything we find pretty. That doesn't even need to be otherworldly, as long as there's some creativity put into it. I think the inclusion of that one on the list is to get people thinking about the possibilities instead of just sticking to the most obvious and over-used examples. I've seen some photos of gorgeous gowns decorated with iridescent beetle wings. Peacock feathers are a known quantity when it comes to spectacular birdstuff, but there's a ton of other possibilities there. The world is full of pretty things; as you said, it's all a matter of how valuable any given culture considers them to be.

Seeing an aurora near the equator would probably have to be a magic thing, but there are Southern Lights as well as Northern Lights, and all sorts of other atmospheric phenomena that aren't as famous. Maybe the story could include light pillars or anticrepuscular rays instead.

For domesticated animals, we do have plenty of real-world possibilities for pets other than cats and dogs. I don't think that entry in the list was as much about treating wild animals as like tame ones, as much as it was about inventing fantasy animals but treating them exactly like cats or dogs. While a shoulder dragon that behaves like a cat is adorable and lovely, there's untapped potential for going other routes. What about a dragon that overgrooms like a bird, or gnaws through the back of the snack cupboard like a hamster? A domesticated unicorn that uses its horn to unlock gates like the most troublemaking goat? Or some wholly made-up creature with behavioral quirks that can't be pinned on any existing animal?

Books are a tricky one. I wrote about a culture that uses knot-tying as a form of writing (inspired by quipu), though that does have limitations. Magic will probably have the most possibilities. Even if the end result does turn out to be Books But Different, or some form of Magic CDs, a bit of flavor will at least make it interesting. Maybe one culture uses pixies as scribes, and they write by dancing across the page like a tiny version of the Dinotopia dino-print alphabet. Maybe the common folks use clay tablets, pressing the edges of a stylus into the clay when wet, then drying it -- for an extra fee, they can have it enchanted to recite the message aloud when read or it can include a mental imprint so the reader gets a thought from the writer when they read. There's lots of leeway for making things interesting, even if they're not fully original.

I love thinking about stuff like this. Creative approaches to common things, clever explanations, surprises instead of everyday norms. Sure, you could just say that the wizard has a blue cat that teleports, and that's very cool, but you could also say he has an enchanted hairbrush that needs to brush something daily or else its bristles will overgrow, and he has to remind it to use the bundle of horsehair that's tied to the coat rack for just that reason. (Or the wig in the spare room. Or the stonework outside. Just not the wizard's hair; that's thinning enough as it is.)