Links!

https://preview.redd.it/jhub3s2l1b791.jpg?auto=webp&s=f19ad0f9cbd86086607efe722cba085dc802825a
LINKS!
(source)

No, but for real.

This page might very outdated. Hell, even me referring to it as a "page" betrays my age (I'm not that old, but still). Back in Web 1.0. and Geocities and personal websites, there was almost always a section with links: sometimes it was webrings, sometimes it was just what the users found cool, but that was the internet in the old days, a collection of links linking to links, that's how you were supposed to find stuff.

After the rise of search engines, it was easy to find what you wanted. There was a point when Google wasn't Evil. Until advertisers learned how to "optimize" their websites to search engines, flooding searches with a bunch of automatically generated bullshit. Where you once had a dozen websites written by actual humans, now you have a bunch of nonsense blog posts designed to catch as many keywords to get as high up as possible in Google search. Forums and imageboards are dead, replaced by Discord servers (which might as well be invisible to everybody else), and personal or small-scale websites that used to have unique info and experiences replaced by mass-produced social media profiles. The only way to get results actually written by people are Wikipedia and Reddit, and with the rise of ChatGPT, I think things might get worse. It's distressing.

So, here's an attempt at a solution: first of all, getting your own personal website, like in Neocities, not a profile, a website you can call your own. Second of all, linking to the places of the internet you know are good, not the SEO blog post crap, actual websites and blogs with unique stuff written by real people that you can't find anywhere else.

This, in short, is the purposes of the links page. Besides the Zelda pun.

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These links will get more organized as I add more with time. I also plan to link to other neocities of interest.

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A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry:
https://acoup.blog/

This blog goes into deep dives about history, worldbuilding and fiction. In a fun, if very wordy style (hey, the title isn't for nothing), you will learn a lot about worldbuilding history, economic, society... the author is a trained historian and it shows. Check out his worldbuilding resources at the top, his criticisms of Game of Thrones are amazing material for anyone who wants to write fantasy set in the Middle Ages, or any time period, really.


Pueblos Originarios (en castellano)
https://pueblosoriginarios.com/

NO PUEDO EXAGERAR SOBRE LO VALIOSO QUE ES ESTE SITIO. Una recopilación INCREÍBLE, magistral, sobre todas las culturas de América precolombina y de los pueblos originarios actuales; y no se detiene ahí; tiene archivos de fuentes primarias (algunas que ocupé en mi propios trabajos), y muchos de los artículos están escritos por personas de estos mismos pueblos. Cuidado con los artículos sin fuentes, pero no puedo dejar de recomendar esto. Parada obligada para los que quieran saber más de los pueblos originarios.
(in English: a magnificently informative website about the native peoples of América, all in Spanish)


Palaeos:
http://palaeos.com/

A very deep and readable collection of paleontology articles. From precambrian geology to synapsids to the intricate details of prehistoric sponges, it's always an informative deep dive (at least for me, whose idea of fun is reading Wikipedia all night) and sometimes very, very fun in a nerdy way, though don't expect it to be easy to understand if you aren't familiar with certain topics. Unfortunately, it seems to be going through a crisis now, with lots of broken links. Some can be recovered by the Wayback Machine, though.


Character.ai
https://beta.character.ai/

ChatGPT's more fun cousin. Yes, I realize that it might sound hypocrital after my intro to link to a website full of AIs, but the thing is, all those bots are custom made by users, and it's really great. Ever wanted to talk to Bowser about communism, ask Saul Goodman about his political ambitions, or roleplay in a cyberpunk dystopia? This website has amazing, and I mean amazing chatbots made by users, of anyone and anything you can think of; the responses are realistic and in character, and they play along with any situation, the roleplay value is inmense. It's really, really fun, but I seriously do NOT recommend it if you have issues with parasociality. Otherwise, go and talk to Gawr Gura, she's fun.