Dandelion

Mostly art and writing refs, tips and general advice now

[mybrain-fanficedition]

Intro <3

it's long past time i do this lol

Hi! I'm Felix! You can also call me Dandelion, or Dandi, or any variation on either of those!

I am 18, french and american, and neurodivergent (probably)

I'm also aroace (...i think) and nonbinary/genderqueer/gender extremely apathetic/now vaguely transmasc a trans guy

Preferably he/him but they/them's fine too

This blog is for posting fandom stuff I think of (example: fanart, fanfics) and for reblogging writing tips usually

I've also started using this blog for just general advice/tips completely unrelated to writing cause my main accounts are way more chaotic - this is now the main activity on this account

A note on fandoms:

I used to be in the Harry Potter/Marauders fandom. That is no longer the case, however I have left up all the posts I made or reblogged because it was a fairly huge part of my life for years. Don't support JK Rowling if you care at all about trans people.

(a few) fandoms I might post about

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (by Patricia C. Wrede) {the banner}

Lego Elves (by Lego - some episodes are available on youtube wherever you are; some only in the US and there's a netflix series too)

Kpop demon hunters (by Maggie Kang and Chris Applehans - Netflix/Sony

If you follow me for any of these in particular I'm sorry in advance lol

Tags I use:

#d.flowery reblogs advice

#d.flowery posts stuff (not often lol)

And I do have #d.flowery reblogs... idk what but I have no recollection what that was meant for

As you may have guessed from the tags, my main account is @dandelionflowery , I also interact with stuff from @dandelionflowery-reblogs (I'm very creative for names, I know.)

my AO3 has:

Mostly Harry Potter because I left the fandom/stopped writing for it not too long after I had a few issues IRL and I haven't written much since then.

What was at the time of posting the only fic with Dr Facilier/the shadows [friends on the other side] (written for a friend)

A sex scene between two of the people depicted in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks (written for a different friend; in class lol)

Stephen Colbert kissed Jimmy Fallon on camera during one of his last shows; it seemed fanfic worthy (basically crack ngl)

I am editing this on my phone currently so I have no recollection of what the following links to; I'll probably edit this later on my computer

Harry Potter fics Masterlist (this link is mostly for me tbh)

dividers by @saradika-graphics and wow are they gorgeous

No DNI but a block button lol

[browniefox]

We don’t talk enough about how fanfiction writers love to give character large amounts of non-specific paperwork they hate doing

[streamofsalmon]

say more pls

[browniefox]

Yeah sure why not.

So most stories take place when Events are Happening, and this means that no matter what kind of job the characters have, they’re probably not too focused on them. Fanfics, on the other hand, often show the down time. Which means that the writer has to figure out what the hell these characters do in their jobs. Unless the characters have a job the author understands or knows well, the author is often at a loss for what to have the character doing.

So they sit them at a desk and give them paperwork. What is the paperwork for? Rarely specified. It is Paper Work for the characters Important Adult Job they have and they need to read or sign it or something. And there’s always a line about how Character Hates Paperwork. Doesn’t matter if Character is a Mafia Boss or a General or a Diplomat, here they are in an office trying to get out of Doing Paperwork.

There’s also a sense of, like, humor and mundanity that comes with it. Like the examples above, it always particularly stands out to me when a dangerous individual is griping about some paper they need to sign or something. The less you can picture Character doing paperwork, all the better to force it upon them. If Character is saddled with Paperwork, they’re usually now concerned about the physical damages their motley crew causes, because damage = More Paperwork.

Anyway I just think it’s fun or funny, Sephiroth doing paper work and Sawada Tsunayoshi doing paper work and this just in, Tony Stark is doing paperwork. Sorry, Phoenix Wright can’t play right now. Yeah, it’s paperwork.

[elumish]

A very non-exhaustive list of actual paperwork they could be completing/reviewing/approving, in no particular order:

Timesheets

Expense reports

Requisition requests

Budget justifications

Payroll

Performance evaluations

Incident reports

After action reviews / post-mortem analyses

Incident Action Plans

Contracts

Contract proposals / grant applications

Reports / briefings

[redwingedwhump]

Your Royalty or Nobles in your feudal society should be doing this constantly unless you want to show how they're losing the kingdom and about to be usurped or overthrown.

petitions, speech-writing, complaints, requests, assignations, disputes, judiciary forms, declarations that need signing off on, matters requiring the Royal seal, matters requiring a royal endorsement, pardons, judgments, invitations, rebuttals, census data, crop yields projected or actual, livestock records, water rights, Sumptuary laws, taxes taxes taxes...

[val-ritz]

solid point there!

even when the royalty look like they're just fucking off to have fun, they're doing Socially Mandated Fuck-Off and Have Fun Time

Tournaments? Gotta show you're manly and virile through sport, or the nobles will supplant you. Feasts? Gotta show you're wealthy through conspicuous consumption, or the nobles will supplant you. Patronizing the arts? Gotta show you're cultured and erudite, or the nobles will laugh at you behind your back and probably supplant you.

[delicatefury]

Lawyer here. Here’s some more mundane/modern ones for you:

Invoices.

Intake sheets (information about new clients. The one for my firm is 13 pages and requires an hour long meeting. Then you have to do something with the info gathered)

Data entry for invoices and intake sheets.

Billing. (More involved than timesheets because you’re justifying to clients why you’re getting paid so much).

Form letters.

Taxes. Including 1099s for any contracted work.

Bank statements/accounting spreadsheets. Gotta track how expenses are trending.

Insurance documents.

General messages. Lots of office still use a paper system for missed calls and “important” stuff because it just works better than emails and chats for some people.

Memos. Big enough office to have at least one attorney on payroll? You’re getting memos about every legal question and concern and contract. It’s how we’re trained to communicate in formal settings.

[letslipthehounds]

And if you want to get into modern military, the forms are numbered, and people will refer to them by either their actual name, or the number. (Have you filled out the 4187 for this? Yes, I filled out the personnel action form.)

The military has so many forms.

[leebrontide]

If you want to add a rage level, there’s the Regular Paperwork and then the special hell of Fuckup Paperwork.

Cause there’s the invoice, and the follow up invoice and the we are about to have a problem follow-up invoice.

There’s the incident report and then the I swear I yelled at that worker about this don’t be mad at me if they do it again second warning documentation

The requisition form and the it has been six months now get me the fucking thing or you’re gonna hear from Cindy escalations form.

Paperwork has layers and protocols and backups.

[booberrybawls-deactivated202504]

i need this hold on a minute

[totallynotsilversora]

I forgot I have to be active here so here’s my Twitter tutorial on how to draw folds I made a while back to help a friend!

[no-one-offical]

‎

[teaboot]

Whatever artist is reading this, I want you to know. When you're dawing eyes, draw the eyeball first, then cover the eye you aren't working on and place each pupil separately

[teaboot]

allow my bad cellphone picture of a tablet doodle guide you to the way of Skeleton Laser Eyes Jutsu

*(I used to struggle super bad with eyes until I started using this trick cause I couldn't make the irises even and symmetrical and one eye always looked like it was drifting the wrong way)

[freak-phone]

I get asked a lot for tips with coloring black people, so i put together a little tutorial! (and bumps my kofi if you found this helpful)

[ao3commentoftheday]

things I wish I’d known when I started writing fic on ao3

use & for friendships, colleagues, familial relationships and use / for romantic or sexual relationships (or encounters)

not everyone reads fic. Lots of people use screen readers, and screen readers can’t see what’s on images. use descriptive text to help them out.

lots of people download fic to read on other devices, not all downloads capture images too.

there’s a big difference between No Archive Warnings Apply (NAWA) and Author Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings (CNTW). NAWA means that there’s nothing in the fic that needs to be warned for using the official Archive Warning system. CNTW means there might be something that requires a warning and the author is either avoiding giving out spoilers or they are unsure how to interpret their plot point with respect to the official Warnings. (in both cases, additional tags are where it’s at - you can explain yourself there) 

the reason why the number of bookmarks in the fic is different from the number of bookmarks on your stats page is because your stats page number includes bookmarks that are hidden

there’s a preference setting where you can receive emails with your own comments/replies.

there’s a site skin that hides stats so you don’t have to see them

writing in rich text format makes my life easier

knowing html allows me to do fun things in the comments section like comment/reply with reaction gifs

knowing html also allows me to do interesting formatting in my fics that I can’t do with rich text alone

those little blue bubbles with the question marks in them will answer my questions a lot of the time - and also teach me something new

the FAQ is linked under the word About in the header

if you write your fic in the draft window, you might end up losing it so make sure you copy the text before you hit Post, just in case

they aren’t kidding when they say drafts are deleted after 30 days

[beck-a-leck]

Here’s some additions.

The Anonymous collection will allow you to post anything you want and retain ownership over it.

Your identifying information will not be anywhere within the fic to any other reader. Though you will see it from your end when looking at it as a logged in user.

When you reply to a comment, it will anonymize you, so feel free to respond to your commenters!

You can take your fic off Anonymous at any time

When you are signed into AO3, you can easily access your Anonymous fics by looking at the “Works In Collections” tab on your page. Nobody else will see these Anonymous works on this page.

Works can be added to the Anonymous collection at any time

Just because a fic is Anonymous does not mean it is Abandoned or Orphaned.

Speaking of Orphaned fics:

If you have posted a story and for whatever reason you no longer want it on your account or associated with you, you can Orphan the fic.

Orphaning fics will remove all of your control and ownership of the story.

Orphaning fics is not a reversible process. Once a fic has been Orphaned it cannot be taken back. You cannot delete it. You can’t check stats and it does not show up on your Works page anymore.

Orphaning and the Anonymous collection are great options for when you no longer want a fic associated with you, but you don’t want to delete it either.

[cacodaemonia]

Also: dark mode skins are great! I use Reversi on this page and it’s much easier on the eyes than the white background. Here’s how to use skins.

Also also: how to use html om AO3.

[buckskinblues]

Don’t know if someone else has already said this in the notes but unless your bookmark is private the author can look and see what tags or additional notes you’ve put on the bookmark (I like to check them to see if anyone has :D). Also, yes, you can add your own tags to bookmarks and make different lists to organize them! You can comment on fics anonymously (though I think you have to log out to do so as of now, really wish it was an option while signed in but still great it’s even an option at all!) You can save new chapters on fics as a draft (without the 30 day limit if I remember). I do this a lot. There is separate sections for both beginning and ending author’s notes (you can use both on the same chapter or one shot) and using the author’s note doesn’t include your rambling as part of the word count. Which is nice as it doesn’t artificially inflate the numbers.

[soyala04]

On site skins:

You can combine existing skins by creating you own skin scroll to the bottom under ADVANCED and then Parent Skins. Example, i use AO3s Reversi and then XParrots Shortening Long Tag Field

Also, you can exclude stories in this area too! I got this from another tumblr post so i can’t take credit for it, nor do i know how to expand it to other things like tags or pairing or author.

.blurb#work_430075 { display: none; }

Just replace the numbers with the work you dont want to see anymore.

[mikkeneko]

Just a few points to add that I hadn’t seen listed above:

-In addition to beginning and ending author’s notes for the overall story, there are also beginning and ending author’s notes for each chapter of a multipart story. When you first create the story, before you add additional chapters, it will treat your author’s notes as overall story notes – meaning your “so that’s chapter 1!” note will be kicked to the end of every subsequent chapter unless you move it to chapter 1 specifically.

-There is, in fact, a character limit in the author’s notes. I’ve run up against it a few times.

[darkstaroverlunasea]

This is a helpful guide for hiding stats, users, specific fics, and other things in your skins.

[dogweedanddeathcaps-deactivated]

masterlist of resources for writing disabled/chronically ill/neurodiverse characters

Disclaimer: I do not have every condition listed here (though I do have quite a few). I have verified as much as I could that each resource is a good source of information. If any of these is misleading or wrong in any way PLEASE let me know. I will fix it accordingly.

Wanting to branch into writing more diverse characters? Wanting to include representation for those who are neurodivergent, disabled, or chronically ill? The first step to branching out is to research the various conditions/diseases/disorders your character could have. You also need to research what day to day life would be like for them. These links should provide a starting base of information in writing and portraying these characters:

Resources for writing/handling a chronically ill character:

4 tips for writing a chronically ill character

Writing about a chronically ill character

Spoon Theory

Writing about chronic illness (many different chapters about it)

Writing a character with Chronic Pain

Treating disabled people like humans

Trauma and chronic illness

Talking to disabled people about their disabilities

Spoon Theory Graphic

Executive Dysfunction

Chronic Pain First Aid Kit

How Hogwarts A Mystery can be used to describe spoon theory

Why you should never say “but you don’t look sick!”

Writing disabled characters

Writing a neurodiverse character

What it means to be neurodiverse

An interview about a neurodiverse character and author

Resources for learning more about various chronic illnesses/neurodiversity:

Mental illnesses/Neurological Disorders:

depression

anxiety

post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

bipolar disorder

ADHD

obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)

boderline personality disorder (BPD) / more resources

eating disorders / more resources

Cushings

autism

Tourettes

Epilepsy

Dyspraxia / more resources / more resources

Autoimmune Diseases:

rheumatoid arthritis

type 1 diabetes

lupus / more references

inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s

Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

Guillain-Barre syndrome

Graves’ disease

Hormonal/Reproductive Disorders *these disorders are not only women’s health issues. trans men and non-binary indiviudals can suffer from them as well. please do not refer to them as solely women’s health issues*:

Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)

premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) / more information /

Adenomyosis

Endometriosis

Gastrointestinal Conditions:

gastroesophageal reflux disease

Barrett’s esophagus

Celiac Disease

Skin Conditions:

Rosacea / more resources

Eczema / more resources

Psoriasis / more resources

Various other illnesses/conditions:

Ehler-Danlos Syndrome

B-cell prolymphocytic leukemia

Type 2 Diabetes

Iron deficiency anemia

Chronic migraines

Arthritis

Fibromyalgia

Recommended places to look for more information on your own:

The Mighty

PBS list of resources

PCOS awareness association

Right here on tumblr. there are tons of posts under tags related to the topics as well as the “#chronically ill” tag and “#spoonie” tag

Try and find either government websites or websites that belong to the specific research groups for those conditions

Psychiatry journals/texts

Reach out to those you know with a chronic illness (but ALWAYS be sure to ask if it is okay. for some people talking about their illnesses is traumatizing and personal. others (like me) are okay with it!

If there are illnesses not here that you would like represented, let me know! I plan on keeping this updated and continuing adding to it. Every link should take you directly to the source/post.

Remember, a lot of these are more common than you think. there will always be someone out there who feels represented by a character with one of these conditions/disorders/diseases. this kind of representation helps normalize the idea that it is okay to exist as a neurodivergent, chronically ill, or disabled person. you are allowed to have adventures and live a happy life.

[anistarrose]

disability pride month starts in less than a week so here's an early reminder to write IDs (image descriptions) so your posts are accessible to many groups of disabled people, especially those who are blind and use screen readers. here are resources to help with writing them if you need them

[luna-azzurra]

The most interesting question you can ask about any character is not what do they want. it's what do they believe they deserve. because those two things are almost never the same and the gap between them is where your entire story lives. a person can want love completely and believe they don't deserve it and that belief will destroy every good thing that comes toward them in ways they won't even notice they're doing. write the gap. the gap is the character.

[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

[wow-very-emo-such-bands]

What people think why i became a bookbinder: Oh she wants to explore her artistic horizon with those pretty leather bound books of hers. She even gives them out as gifts to her friends. It most likely helps her with anxiety or maybe she just wanted a more special costume made notebook.

Why I actually became a bookbinder: I just illegally downloaded and printed out several of my favourite fanfics and books and started binding them into books cuz I love reading them but looking at screens for too long gives me headaches.

[dial666]

op youre fucking big brained oh my god

[wow-very-emo-such-bands]

If you want to i can send you a link to some of the Tutorial videos i started binding my fanfic books.

[cyanidevamp]

PLEASE SEND ME THE LINK I WANT TO DO THIS SO BAD 

[alexstyx]

PLEASE SEND LINKS OP PLEASE I BEG YOU

[wow-very-emo-such-bands]

@laughuntilourribsgettough @starduststyx upon request: A tutorial playlist for my personal favourite bookbinding methods

Longstitch binding

https://youtu.be/a_LZ-BWhH_Q

2)Japanese Binding

https://youtu.be/j-r6c_trSxY

3) Belgian Binding

https://youtu.be/w-oct9Ttp1g

4) Coptic stitch binding

https://youtu.be/TdHo8NtDOXc

5) Case Bookbinding

https://youtu.be/Av_rU-yOPd4

[hacvek]

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

[olyia-stories]

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

[dragonpyre]

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

[serinos-kitt]

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

[dragonpyre]

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

[serinos-kitt]

So what is a rain shadow?

[lethalbutterfly]

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

[roach-works]

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

[beatrice-otter]

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

[whetstonefires]

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

[beatrice-otter]

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

[cannibalcharon]

Western Washington vs Eastern Washington is a good example of a rain shadows effects for fellow writers.

Western Washington:

Eastern Washington:

For fantasy writers, Washington is a really cool state to study because we have nearly every biome from alpine forests, desert, alpine desert, rainforest, riparian forests, wetlands, coastal, and so on. We have two main mountain ranges, the Olympics and the Cascades. We sit on three tectonic plates which give us said mountains (and earthquakes). Our ecology is really neat here.

[insert-the-4thwall-entity]

yyyellow!

WHAM! SINGLE PIANO ATTACK!

You look like you've never fought a piano battle before, so I'll go light on you... for now.

[oh dear Carcosa beyond, what have i done]

[yknow, i should've expected this tbh, considering how active the community is] [Anyways, im gonna take this as a sign to start watching Numberblocks again] [Ive been considering that only because i remembered about 18 and the Whatiffer] [but i suppose the universe wants me to do so] [but for now..]

[return to sender]

[kekefan1225]

how are people using these custom colors like how

[insert-the-4thwall-entity]

hey

you can put that basic html coding from 8th grade into use

[click here for more useful tutorials]

[suitdup]

A nice place to start. (via http://nihilnovisubsole.tumblr.com)

[fuzzystudios]

have you ever wanted to code a Google Classroom into your ao3 multimedia fic? no? hm? what's that? "you're insane"? I know!

now introducing:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/85698126?view_full_work=true

my very own Google Classroom workskin template, all within ao3~ have fun and take care everyone :3

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[catmask]

i dont consider myself a 'fashion guru' by any means but one thing i will say is guys you dont need to know the specific brand an item you like is - you need to know what the item is called. very rarely does a brand matter, but knowing that pair of pants is called 'cargo' vs 'boot cut' or the names of dress styles is going to help you find clothes you like WAAAYYYY faster than brand shopping

[catmask]

this also goes for aesthetic or -core titles. 'y2k tank top' is going to get you resellers and fast fashion brands advertising to people looking to meet a current trend. 'thin strap crop tank top' is going to get you a diverse group of results and not upcharge you to hell and back

additionally, shop second hand when you can, second hand and thrift sites typically organize clothes by the cut and color. theyll be more affordable than a depop seller curating you a style to sell you

[daftpatience]

useful terminology for different kinds of clothing shapes :)

[cutabello]

here are more terms! these are all from enérie. it is a really good blog that has lots of fashion terminology and it's a good mix of menswear and womenswear! they also have a book as well compiling all their diagrams. you could also look into getting a visual fashion dictionary for terms as well!

[angstandhappiness]

Neat