#css and html junk

[devwell]

AAGHHAGAGAGGA

[ao3scrapesearch]

Hey so I'm not very tech savvy but I was wondering if adding random silly lines or just something that makes no sense between paragraphs/sentences on our fics can poison AI if the fics are scraped?? I tried something by adding some random lines with white text between paragraphs of my fic which don't show up on default ao3 mode but they are a part of the text nonetheless. Of course that'll involve more efforts on part of the writers to add lines and format the white text using html and workskins but if it does turn out to be effective it might make ao3 less lucrative for AI scraping if a major amount of works contain this and it'll make it harder for AI training. It does have drawbacks that it'll only work on default mode so anyone using dark skin on ao3 might have to switch to be able to read properly and it'll make works less accessible to readers who use text to audio if there are random lines in between but what other options are we left with if even archive locking our works doesn't work??

You absolutely could, but there are limitations to that.

For one, like you said, you're making your work inaccessible to certain readers. That's fully within your rights, though I think most of us strive not to exclude people using screen readers.

Second, from what I know, when you download a dataset like this and intend to use it to train an AI model, you first go through the dataset looking for obvious junk data and toss that out. So if you're putting something that is clearly not real fanfic in there, any decent data analyst is probably going to spot it and toss your fic. If that's your goal, that's a win for you. Personally, if I'm making the effort to inject poison data, my goal is to be included in the training data used so I can trash the model, so I don't want it to be obvious.

Third, I don't see anything explicitly in AO3's TOS against adding data poison in this way, but I don't see them endorsing doing that either. It feels like a grey area to me, and I'm not sure you're allowed to do it, so I am not recommending anyone do this. Rest of this post is theoretical.

So theoretically, how I would do it is putting the junk data at the end of the fic/chapter. Hide it like you're saying, by changing the font and/or background color of the section with CSS. Then put a nice, clear message right after the chapter ends and the junk data starts, something like, "Hey, readers! This chapter is over. Turn off your screen reader and move to the next chapter now." That gives your real humans a warning and stops them from being confused or wasting their time. Then dump your poison. You can also write something in the beginning A/N, I believe. I know this most recent scraper never ever pulled data from the author's notes, so the AI wouldn't see anything you put in that section.

Scrapers are typically pulling your work without the workskin enabled, so for formatting, you're really just trying to make it look nice for your real readers so they don't have to see your poison.

As far as actual poison, my suggestions:

Your own writing or writing you have explicit permission to use, so you're not breaking anyone's copyright. Easy mode: jumbled paragraphs of your own past works for any fandom except the one your current fic is for.

As mentioned above, don't put absolute nonsense in there. If it's bad enough, it'll be spotted and filtered out. Like, if it's not even real words, anyone feeding it to AI is probably going to catch that and toss your data out, excluding it from the model. It might be fine if it's all real words, but not in any sensible order. Not sure on that. But don't just insert keysmashes if you want your data to be used in the AI training.

Terrible crackfic would be good. So would writing for a completely different fandom and different tags. The writing should not fit well with the tags you use for the fics. (So if the real fic is tagged Fluff and Alternative Universe - Coffee Shop, your poison should not include that. Make the poison a hurt no comfort canon-compliant fic or something else different.)

Keep in mind you should not be putting E-rated data poison in a G-rated fic. Real humans may still see this no matter how much you hide it, particularly if they download a PDF copy of your fic. If it's content that requires a warning per AO3's rules (explicit content, graphic violence, etc), you do still have to tag for that, even if it's designed to be invisible to humans.

Use unique writing, so even if someone later using it for AI catches it once, they can't just search for the exact wording you used in one fic and easily filter out all the rest of your poison. Again, this is if you want to be included in the AI training to throw the model off.

Again, theoretically, if I were going to do this, this is the CSS code I might use for my poison section of the fic:

#workskin .fuckai { background: #333333; color: #333333; font-size: 1%; }

It would theoretically look like a weird grey gap to mobile users or be nearly invisible to desktop users, even if it contained, say... 1,000 additional words.

Finally, scrapers are trying to grab millions of fics from AO3 when they do it. They're not looking closely at 13 million fics. They're only searching for the most obvious junk. So the only reason you would want to hide it like that is to make a better experience for your real readers. You don't need to hide it to get it into a scraper's AI model.

[arcadian-vampire]

Also I can't use codepen.io bc I. don't know how to separate my css from my html. It wants that junk in separate boxes and I'm like hrghrhh whatt

[floriselle]

hi, i'm floriselle

hey. welcome to my blog.

you can call me floriselle. i go by she/thou/neos/xenos/basically anything but he/it. if you want to know more about me...

i'm an:

18 y/o

afab

transsexual

butch

bisexual

aegoromantic

autistic

stoner

on testosterone

who is:

soft as a rotten peach

ghostly as a spectre

tender as a dying animal

holy as a mall fountain wish

sleepy as an angel on benadryl

and likes:

erotic horror

sour gummies

lisps

collecting stuff

gas station coffee

ex-catholics

html/css

paul mccartney

fuzzy dice

perler beads

old hollywood women

creamy chicken ramen

but dislikes:

being touched without warning

loud noises

when lighters disappear like tiny little ghosts

shirt tags

the gender binary

minimalism

cringe culture

r/fakedisordercringe

getting ghosted

jeans that lie about being stretchy

music snobs

rainbow capitalism

queer discourse

axe body spray

here are some of the tags i'll be using:

#junk drawer = coining posts

#transsexual horror show = trans musings

#flor's special thoughts = autism stuff

#rotting fruitcore = miscellaneous

that's all for now.

welcome to the lounge.

tip your weird girls on the way out.

[zombvibes]

HIIIIIII I finished my “main hub” (at least for now……kinda have to draw stuff for it) and now I’m about to work on my about page! weirdly enough, I’m having a lot of fun! i mean i think my site will be bare bones once i “finish it”. i’m still not really skilled at html/css n junk but it’ll be MY site and i think that’s the cool part—

[ne0nwithazero]

ur website is awesome where did you learn html and css!! ive been looking for months now but i cant find any starting points i can easily understand

Thank you! I kind of mostly used to do Neopets template junk in 2007 and had some extremely basic and outdated HTML knowledge until recently LOL (As in that my knowledge was basically knowing that <i> made your text italic and if I typed color="blue" it would change the color of the text haha)

But yeah, I'm basically self-taught! One of the courses I did in the past did have a few Web Design classes, but I had a really hard time understanding any of it and my grades were awful, so I hardly count that as having contributed anything to my knowledge x) (We were forced to make the most bland minimalistic corporate websites so the lack of fun in that definitely contributed hahaha)

I guess starting out really depends on what you're personally comfortable with? The way I personally started was that I used one of those Free Website Makers like Wix/Weebly/etc to try and "sketch" my website! I had this old unused !Weebly portfolio website I wasn't doing anything with, so I used that

W3Schools is the MVP for this stuff since it has basically everything you can learn about HTML/CSS/etc! For my Website I remember first starting by trying to create the navbar, looking at the Weebly mockup and trying to mentally deconstruct it all into boxes to try and understand how I could recreate it with my own code!

(The reason my navbar looks so different from the screenshot was because I had a really hard time recreating it xD And I ended up with something a lot more basic to match my skillset!)

Something that always worked for me was using templates and just trial and error my way into trying to understand what did what x)

Considering my website has the three-column format, I do recall using SadGrl's Layout Maker code as a reference for my own!

And I guess that's advice I can give?? Finding websites you like, or if you're wondering how someone did something, how their font has weird colours, what animations they're using, etc etc, just go look into their source code, or use the Inspect Tool (F12) and select elements to try and understand the code!

I do sometimes hide goofy hidden text and easter eggs in my source codes, so I'm personally cool with people looking through mine to understand how I did things :)

I definitely relate to this all being overwhelming or confusing at the start, so I'd say just take it slow and make things fun for yourself! I used weird fonts and bright colours when trying to see what does what, use dumb placeholder texts and images too LMAO

Another thing that helped was that I found gifs and images I liked to place on the website and try to make it feel all the more personal and cozy!

Again this is just my personal experience and what I did to make the learning experience more enjoyable :)

[cdevroe]

Making Tuff improvements

My approach to building Tuff, my static site generator that I began working on last November, was to jump in as quickly as possible by publishing my personal website publicly very early in the development process. Doing so forced me to make rapid improvements and to focus on the most important features.

By spending 5am to 7am most weekday mornings I was able to publish my entire website publicly within 14 days of starting to code and I wrote a short blurb on how Tuff works within 30. Considering that my personal site has a portfolio, podcast, and thousands of blog posts I was surprised by that timeline.

As a quick aside, this 5am to 7am time slot for coding personal projects did not appear on my typical day post from January 2021 because I wasn't doing it then. As I get older I find myself waking earlier and earlier. Rather than blow all of that time on YouTube (I love my YouTube) I decided, just a few weeks after that post, to begin working on personal projects instead. I've done a lot of programming, photography, and side hustle business during these early morning sessions over the last two years and I hope to continue. Waking early and being productive feels like a super power.

Development on Tuff has not stopped. I've been chipping away at improvements to this website, the efficiency of the build process, and adding the capability to build multiple websites. As you can see in the changelog, each release brings a few small improvements but they begin to add up over time.

One feature that I've missed the most since switching to Tuff for my personal website has been search, which I finished a first version of yesterday.

In very early January, just a month or so into development, I added a local command line search command to Tuff to help me find posts in my archive. It works pretty well and I continue to use this to help me find older posts. But I knew I needed to add on site search so that visitors to my site could do some basic searching. I wasn't sure how I was going to go about it statically. Should I build a client side search forcing the visitor of the site to download some large index? Should I use a third party tool? Should I do what many have done and push people to a search engine?

I thought, don't be dogmatic about building static. Most modern content management systems are full of bloat, load too much unnecessary junk on the page, and have far more features than most people need for a personal site. It is why I decided to build Tuff to begin with. But that doesn't mean I have to get all self righteous about server-side code and only publish HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I can sprinkle in some server-side code where it makes sense.

That is why I'm now calling Tuff a Static+ Site Generator. S+SG. Is this a thing? I don't know. Don't forget, in my original building Tuff post I mentioned that I never looked at other static site generators. And I still haven't. I'm oblivious to best practices.

As of today, I use Tuff to build three sites; this site you're reading now, a private local network website that showcases over 100,000 of our family photos by date, and a new static site for The Watercolor Gallery that I hope to finish before the end of the year. In addition to that I'd like to begin working on publishing Stripe Transfer, Stupid, and at least three other websites that I've yet to debut with it.

Tuff is now a tool I plan to use for the rest of my computing life (see also). I love it.

[esam12345]

(via Easy-Online-Income-MRR)

Easy-Online-Income-MRRIntroduction

It appears that the internet could be of more benefit other just watching funny cat videos and playing video games – you can build your business and make some money from it too. There are so many opportunities for you to apply yourself in the vastness that is the internet. If you can apply yourself in just the right way, there is a very good chance that you can make a living doing some of the things that you are currently doing. The following are just but a few of the life hacks to start you off on the right track.

Developing Websites

Here, you can assume that the vastness of the internet is like a vast piece of land. Then if this is so then websites can be likened to tracts of real estate. In the real physical world the overall worth of real estate is quite high; in fact it is one of the most coveted items that you can have today. Digital real estates would basically operate under the same principles as this. When it comes to developing a website, it can be equated to building a house on your piece of land.

How it is done

Just like you would on your own piece of physical land, when you have space on the internet you are at liberty to do as you please with your website. However, we are concerned with making money and therefore there are going to be some few limitations to this; you will need to be more specific with the content that you would like to put up on your website. Let us be honest, only good content will yield good returns. There would be no point of having your digital real estate looking like a junk yard; you will be lucky if you get any visitors and if they visit they are definitely not going to stay long.

When you are developing your website, it would be advisable that you spend some significant amount of time in selecting a platform that would be desirable. A platform can be described as the format in which your website will be hosted on. If you are not particularly tech savvy, this would immediately sound like a task that is overly complicated and the thought of millions of lines of code downright off putting. This was definitely the case a number of years ago when the platforms were a tad bit complicated; the popular platforms were HTML, Flash or CSS. In order to put up your website you would need to invest a significant amount of time to code your website (a task that in itself required countless hours to master). However, you can now breathe easy as this process has been significantly simplified thanks to Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress. Simply put, CMS can be describes as a platform that is user friendly that is used in the development of websites and the management of online content. It gets even better, these CMS are mostly free!

Once you have selected an appropriate platform, you should then proceed to select a domain name that would suit you and a host. A domain name can be described as a web address like a thisismywebsite.org. Hosting, on the other hand refers to a service that will be able to connect your site to the internet. Earlier we mentioned that making use of a platform like WordPress will be free, however in order for your site to be hosted it may cost you some bit of money. But there is no need for you to be alarmed by this, it is not an amount that will be capable of breaking your bank; it will cost less than you spend on coffee around $3 to $5. You still have the option of having you site hosted for free but the implication of this is that you website will not have a professional appeal. For instance, it would be very unattractive to have a website that reads thisismywebsite.freewebsitehosting.com. Spending a little extra on the hosting will go a long way into ensuring that your brand has an attractive outlook.

After you have come up with an appropriate domain name and you have chosen a host for your site, you only need to tweak and adjust your site a little bit. You will need to add some templates and the necessary layouts for your website so as to increase its appeal. Think of this as the interior decoration of the digital real estate that you have built. Once you have done this, you will be ready to launch your website.

How do you make money?

#book

[tomyancey]

SLOTS SLOTS SLOTS

I started a new project that emulates a slot machine. It's built in React (HTML + JavaScript + CSS), with a few image assets created in Aseprite. If you don't wanna read all this junk you can also just give this project a spin here

Why a slot machine?

My big idea is to have a roguelike game, where in between levels, you can upgrade a slot machine, and then spin it to get your rewards. I could make the mechanic pretty basic - where you sometimes win a bonus or some extra coins OR perhaps the slot machine picks your loadout for the next level, to force you to try different play styles. Maybe the slot machine has to be pulled for every attack, who knows?! Anyways, to get started, I developed a somewhat flexible slot machine system, where any number/order of items can be placed into any number of reels. It was a little tricky at first getting reels of 1 item to work properly - but it leads to some fun slot machines like this:

Surprise, you're always poisoned!

Getting there was kind of difficult, I had a few challenges:

Looping the reels

To give the effect of a spinning wheel, the flat reel of items is repositioned at the last second. When the reels are hidden via a clipping mask, it's like they aren't even there!

The amount of spin and animation is achieved by using some some RNG and applying an easing function to the Y value

Each item can have any number of attributes - the attributes can match up to form a combo! Eventually I'll include some wildcard to make achieving combos a little easier.

What's next

sounds

money/score or status effects, so you have an incentive to keep spinnin'

ability to add and remove items to the reel on the fly

You can give it a few spins here! https://thyancey.github.io/slot-machine/

[nianeyna]

Ever wanted to print and bind your own customized bullet journal, but then inevitably discovered that finding or making a suitable dot grid pdf file is weirdly hard? Like, maybe you find one, but it's never the right scale, it looks crappy, you can't edit it, it includes some junk you don't want... and then you go to try and make your own and it's like, ok get a png of one page of dots and copy-paste it into a document 200 times - what! nightmare! I'm not doing that! ...uhhhhh, not that I have any personal bullet journal typesetting related trauma or anything. haha.

But I mean, it's just dots, right? you should be able to go, ok I want 200 pages of dots 5mm apart on half-letter sized pages, make it so. Why is that so hard?

Well, now it's easy!

Click the link, follow the instructions, get your journal, print that sucker out and bind it using your preferred method. I promise it's that easy. Please don't be daunted by the command-line stuff - you do NOT need any coding experience to use this template (although if you can figure out a bit of html and css, you'll be able to do even more customization than what I've already built in).

Also, I've dedicated this code to the public domain, so you are free to do just about anything with it including modify, redistribute with or without credit, use for commercial purposes, etc etc. But, if you like it, feel free to tell me how cool and pretty I am in the notes. ⤵

[198d]

...

So, working on a project and one aspect of it is making a really simple scientific poster. I'm the design guy, I do the front nd design since I'm the only person who knows basic html and css, the only person who has taken art and design classes, and I do this stuff for fun so I go ahead and take charge of the poster. Plus they really just don't have the intuition for design at all, even when I or the professors give clear instructions on How To Do Things Right. We have to make tons of drafts and get feedback on them, and its kind of a dripfeed because staff would make comments on some things, neglect to comment on the other things, and make us turn in another draft based on those missed comments.

Every single fucking time my teammates would work on it, I would have to go back and fix allllllll of the margins and padding they neglected, and I would have to remake every image of a diagram into a simplified, vectorized. Every time we had to change text or images based on the feedback, I would have to go back and change those as well. Today, while I was working on this, one of my teammates was literally trying to edit the same thing at the same time (using figma and diagrams.net). I was going to lose my mind because I was just trying to fix all of the issues, like I had to do multiple times, that my teammates would neglect from the feedback, and so this was actively happening while I was trying to fix them.

I had everything in their own groups, so that it would be easy to change things out. My teammates didn't know how to work with that. Earlier teammate literally did not understand that a file cannot have two different file extensions, and sent me a rasterized image of a diagram instead of the actual editable file, because diagrams.net just lets you have an "editable (so like, able to move around the individual elements) png" saved to your google docs, exported it as a plain png and posted it in the project chat. When I couldn't open it they then tried to tell me like, well it worked for me and well it has the other extension too so it should work. It was only the filename that had the 'extension' of the proper file format. (this is the big csc senior class btw)

The fact that we went back and forth so much on that diagram to begin with was frustrating because they could've given me access to the editable file at any time, and would constantly ignore or forget feedback which meant having to fix it many, many more times, and most of those fixes were still missing the core design feedback like 'make the text size bigger' and 'eliminate unnecessary whitespace'. If anything, it would've been much better if I went through with porting it to figma instead of relying on them, but I'm over here not wanting to be a total control freak so I'm like... whatever.

So when I get access to that diagram I fix issues from all of the feedback, but at the end of our final feedback they go and try to edit at the same fucking time as I am editing, and I had been fixing the diagram all day up to that point. Then the same thing happened on the figma document, and of course they deleted my group for the section the diagram was supposed to go in, so I had to make it again, fix the margins, fix the padding, fix the sizing.

They also completely trashed my design for a page I worked on for the project itself like waay earlier in the semester, so I was like. Okay. You guys do your thing, I can put in all my junk later. I would like to avoid wasting my time as much as possible, considering how mentally ill and exhausted I already am.

oh yeah and also the examples the professors put in the powerpoint for posters had the same (margins and spacing or text inconsistencies, bad looking screenshots, that kind of thing) or worse issues (think black impact font on a busy patterned background, for fucks sake) that they kept nitpicking us for, so its kinda like. please actually showcase something that's relevant thanks.

At least it's finally(?) over.

[hgsummerofcode]

Holy shit

Okay so I wrote this basic html and css a few months ago and TODAY I figured out how to populate it with real data. I made a database of boards. Each one has a name, a category, and a description. So the page not only displays the boards, but takes the categories from the boards and lists the appropriate board under each category heading! That took an embarrassing amount of work. And then, as you can see, I figured out how to link up my css, which was also harder than it should have been.

Just for reference, here's the basic site with no backend, just filled in with junk data so I could mess with the css properly:

Oh and the links actually work now too! Well, the board name links do. Not the user or post links because I haven't.... made those yet lol.

This is the point where I think I'll be happy stopping and picking it up later. Next I'll need to figure out how django's built-in authorization works. Then make a form to sign up. Then make the pages for individual boards and posts (displaying comments).

Then uh... replace all the placeholder data that's still in here with real data. And working links. And then make forms for making new posts and comments and theeeeeeen. Idk make it pretty. Give each board an icon (since I left the space for it). Tweak the css to make it look pretty. Maybe let some friends sign up and make test posts and stuff. Before I move everything to a real website and database (I want to leave this version up for portfolio purposes).

But for now! I'm going back to ghost dating sim! Ugh I need to like. Make the graphics. Can you tell that "making things look nice" is my weakness?

[queenlua]

hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue.  see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP.   and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP.  so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on.  there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc.  you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

[phantomrose96]

Where did you learn HTML/CSS/JS?

All on the job!

I took kind of a weird track in college, started out in biomed engineering, decided I liked computers much more, and veered left into computer engineering

Ultimately decided I wanted to do software and not hardware. But because of my engineering focus in school, it meant my software skills were a little half-baked and I had NO web-dev experience from school. Luckily the team that hired me was like “lol k you’ll learn.”

So my learning path was a bit... backwards and unconventional. And my team works within a pretty huge infrastructure with a lot of libraries and frameworks we rely on, so my knowledge of vanilla HTML/CSS/JS is a bit slapdash and random. But it’s always fun when I get to apply it to junk!

[star-anise]

Basic Dreamwidth for Tumblr users

For people who want to use Dreamwidth, but are totally confused about how it works!

What is Dreamwidth?

Dreamwidth is a social media platform founded in 2009 after Strikethrough

It's made out of a heavily-modified version of Livejournal code

It's based around producing your own original content, and seeing original content other people post

The site is owned and run by fans and aims to provide creative people with an Internet home

Getting around your account

Your journal is like your "home". It's where you keep your stuff. It's got different parts:

Recent Entries: View your posts in chronological order

(yourusername.dreamwidth.org)

Profile: Your "about" page

(yourusername.dreamwidth.org/profile)

Archive: See your posts as a calendar

(yourusername.dreamwidth.org/archive)

Tags: See all the tags you've used and go to their posts

(yourusername.dreamwidth.org/tag)

Memories: Like the "Likes" feature on Tumblr

You also have a "Reading" page (yourusername.dreamwidth.org/read)

This is like your Tumblr dash

It's where you read entries from your "circle", the people and communities you're subscribed to

You can customize it a lot with filters and control who you see when

Finding new things

Listing an Interest in your profile is like getting listed in the phonebook. This is opt-in, choosing to say, "Yes! I'm really into this thing! Consider me a person who blogs about it!

Content Search is the more powerful way to search through the blog of everyone who's opted into it, so you can look for everyone who's posting about a certain thing right now. However, you'll have to wade through a lot more junk.

Communities are Dreamwidth's social hubs. They're places where a lot of people can share content they're interested in and talk to each other. Unlike Tumblr tags, they're managed by specific people and have rules, so people behaving badly can get kicked out.

Paid members can see the Network page, which shows entries from everything everyone in your circle subscribes to. It's a great way to discover new stuff and also learn what awful taste some of your circle members have

Latest Things is a direct firehose of EVERYTHING PUBLICLY POSTED TO THE SITE, HOMG

Privacy controls?! That's a thing?!

You get to choose who sees your posts! You can make your posts public, private, or "locked", which means only people you've added to your access list can read them

When you add a new person to your circle you can choose to subscribe to them, to make their posts show up on your Reading page, and/or to grant access, which lets them see your locked posts. You can do one, the other, or both!

Likewise, communities can make posts viewable to members only.

You can also create custom access filters, to allow only some of your access list to see a post.

Banning someone means they cannot leave you comments or send you messages. There are more advanced tweaks to make sure they never show up on your reading page if they post to a community you subscribe to, or remove them from the comments on a post.

Comments

The comments to a post are where the real fun happens.

Comments are sent to the email of whoever you're replying to. They're a real conversation. You're not shouting into the void--you're talking back directly to the post's originator and other commenters.

You can edit your comment so long as it hasn't been replied to, and you can delete your own comments.

The originator of the post, and administrators if it's a community, can delete threads, or "freeze" them, leaving them intact but preventing anyone from replying to them.

You will add new skills to your resume

Dreamwidth leaves a lot more "backend" open so you can customize your experience to a huge degree. However, this means learning or using coding languages like HTML and CSS

The comment box on entries does not have a built-in text editor, so you will have to add your own HTML if you want to add <i>italic</i>, <b>bold</b>, or <a href="http://websiteurl.com">links</a>.

There are lots of cheat sheets and informative guides around, like HTML on Dreamwidth and Dreamwidth-specific markup tags

[comicteaparty]

Webcomic Recommendations

Check out this plethora of webcomic recommendations archived from Comic Tea Party’s Webcomic Recommendations Channel!

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Children of Shadow: Ashes https://spiderforest.com/comics/children-of-shadow-ashes/ Genre: Anthro/Horror/Urban Fantasy Trigger Warnings: Rated Mature for blood, gore, and intense scenes Reasons: Some of the most lovely pencil work I've ever seen, well-rendered animal art and a compelling world!(edited)

Heirs of the Veil https://spiderforest.com/comics/heirs-of-the-veil/ Genre: Drama/Urban Fantasy Trigger Warnings: Rated PG-16+ for transphobia, dysphoria, mental illness, blood, trauma, body horror Reasons: Absolutely gorgeous artwork, really compelling illustrations of the lgbt experience

Aloe https://spiderforest.com/comics/aloe/ Genre: Adventure/Drama/Sci-Fi Trigger Warnings: Rated Teen for violence and blood Reasons: I'm normally not into sci-fi but this comic is so bright and colorful, I really love it a lot. Also the main character is non-binary!

Millennium https://spiderforest.com/comics/millennium/ Genre: Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-fi Trigger Warnings: Rated PG-13 for Mild Violence and Mild Language Reasons: Lovely art, fun characters, and an engaging space world! I love it so so much.

Sombulus https://spiderforest.com/comics/sombulus/ Genre: Adventure/Comedy/Fantast Trigger Warnings: Rated Young Adult, no warnings Reasons: An absolute blast, super fun story and characters, with a nice long archive too!

Arbalest https://spiderforest.com/comics/arbalest/ Genre: Fantasy/Horror Trigger Warnings: Rated Mature for partial nudity, blood/gore, sex, themes of abuse Reasons: A really compelling story in a non-traditional narrative style, and super spooky to boot.

And finally, to top this off, I'll drop in my own comic as well! Court of Roses https://spiderforest.com/comics/court-of-roses/ Genre: Adventure/Fantasy/Comedy Trigger Warnings: Rated Teen, for Fantasy Violence and Alcohol Use Reasons: Because this is my comic and it's my pride and joy and I love my bards a lot. :3

AntiBunny

Dead Winter http://deadwinter.cc/ Genre: Zombie Apocalypse Trigger Warnings: Violent Reasons: Well it's a straightforward zombie survival comic. What's impressive is how well the artist has studied comics as an art form and put thought and purpose into every panel.

HiddenElephant

http://welcome2earth.webcomic.ws/ Snarky alien crashes onto Earth. Not enough people are reading it in my opinion.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R: http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/ Genre: Action, Comedy Trigger Warnings: Blood, Dismemberment Reasons: A recommendation for @Goobatron . It's my comic. The creator is me. Super Galaxy Knights is a story about Mizuki Sato, who goes on adventures through a strange world, making friends along the way. The dialogue is like... 70% banter, 30% total non-sequiturs. The art style uses 3D models, in like a weird cel-shaded style that's meant to be reminiscent of games like Wind Waker and Dragon Ball FighterZ. And there's also a bunch of animated panels/pages. There's also a ton of really strange characters. Like there's a dude whose power is that he always wins knife fights. There's a wizard who shrinks hot dogs and carries them around in capsules. Etc. One warning - the early pages are a bit rough-looking. Some have been redrawn recently, but others haven't yet, so it can be a bit jarring to go back and forth between styles.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Clockwork http://www.clockwork-comic.com/ Genre: Fantasy / Drama CW: Some language and violence Clockwork is a comic about Cog Kleinshmidt, a moody teenager with an uncanny talent for repairing machinery. He feels he’s a nobody, but is swept into the turbulent world of politics, and is forced to learn magic in a world where magic is strictly forbidden. The art in this comic is incredibly polished and lively, and the characters are all instantly endearing. The writing is also top-notch. The first time I read it, I was completely sucked in after only a few pages. It’s currently on hiatus while the creator prepares the next chapter, but it’s well worth the wait.(edited)

Moral_Gutpunch

Micheal Morbius: Freelance Vampire http://freelancevampire.thecomicseries.com/ Genre: Drama, comedy Trigger: mentions of death and violence, talk of abusive relationships, mention of rape. It's all in dialog. Micheal Morbius, from Marvel comics, struggles to adjust to a as normal a life as a vampire can have. He helps a friend get back on her feet, he goes through therapy, and he's visited by Spider-heroes, this time a new one. Meanwhile, a true monster lurks int he shadows. The art isn't good, but the story and dialog are worth it. It's my comic. I hope after I get a few more pages going people will enjoy the story. It's a story I've been wanting to write for ages and I figured I'm not going to write for Marvel anytime soon (yes, I checked copyright law, Marvel allows this). Dedicated to Stan Lee.

Pakky

The Boy Who Fell http://boywhofell.com/ Genre: Drama, Adventure, Action, Comedy TW: Violence, blood, fighting, ptsd, suicide, death Synopsis (from the website): The Boy Who Fell revolves around an innocent, softhearted and almost-spineless boy named Ren who suddenly finds himself in Hell after accidentally falling off a school rooftop. He is then forced to partake in a tournament full of powerful and vicious beings in order to attain his only way of going home: an all-powerful wish from the ruler of Hell himself. As the story progresses, lines between allies and enemies are blurred, dark pasts are revealed, political issues come to light and all the while, Ren slowly realizes that in order to survive this journey, he might have to give up the very things that make him human I love this webcomic and have been following this artist for over 10 years now and recommend their work to anyone who will listen haha! Super long running webcomic with a well developed storyline and world.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

Broken http://broken.spiderforest.com/ Genre: Horror Trigger Warnings: Military, death, monsters Reasons: Broken offers a very interesting twist on the concepts of fairies, presenting you with a fairy general on the battlefield fighting against corrupted abominations. The concepts and worldbuilding here are very interesting and the battle/action scenes are great. Often makes use of animation and some HTML/CSS for extra effect. Of Magic and Muses https://xiicomic.com/magic-and-muses/ Genre: Magical Girls, mystery Trigger Warnings: There's a big monster at some point? Reasons: It's a magical girl story! Except nobody knows what's happening, the powers the girls get are maybe not of a friendly nature and they wear armor? The escalation of events is suberb. It has a large (and growing) cast, but each character has their own unique personality, making them super easy to follow and love. Ghost Junk Sickness https://www.ghostjunksickness.com/ Genre: action, sci-fi Trigger Warnings: violence, limb loss, death Reasons: There's a lot to be said about this comic! I really like the characters, who are deeply flawed and charming and make a lot of mistakes (the main duo having an especially interesting, yet sorta problematic dynamic). The worldbuilding is interesting and quirky to match. The mysterious bounty The Ghost is a looming presence, and apparently we'll be learning more about them soon. Super exciting and fun action scenes too!

Desnik

https://monsterhead.net/ Genre: LGBT+ American rural occult fantasy Trigger Warnings: Animal death, mild body horror Reasons: The author/artist is an OC-loving member of the LGBT+ community, and her work deals with self-love in the face of weird circumstances. Love the colors, Carter is an appealing and relatable main character, and the worldbuilding is something I've never seen before.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

http://www.phantomarine.com/ Genre: Fantasy, Supernatural Trigger Warnings: Death, Mild Body Horror, Mild Violence, Mild Language Reasons: ...This is my comic! (edited)

Phantomarine is a spooky-but-sweet fantasy webcomic about a ghostly princess and her perilous journey across a haunted sea, hoping to save her soul from a devious, shapeshifting death god known as the Red Tide King. Expect all manner of maritime mysteries – monstrous sea creatures, sacred lighthouses, strange afflictions, accursed marauders, feuding gods, grand sea battles, and a heaping helping of humor in-between.

eliushi [Keyspace]

https://tapas.io/series/KEYSPACE-A-Winged-Tale/ https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/keyspace-a-winged-tale/list?title_no=322364 Genre: YA Science Fantasy, LGBT+ Trigger warnings: Mild body horror/violence/monsters, death Reasons: My comic Blurb: Florence thought her idyllic life living with the winged beings would last forever. However, when her mother disappears from a mysterious expedition, she fears for the worst. Through exploring hidden laboratory tunnels beneath the forest, facing Machines from a century-long war against humans, and seeking guidance from the Lost people from a civilization gone by, Flo and her winged friends must piece together the past in order to save all those they love.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

O Sarilho https://www.sarilho.net/en Genre: Post-Apocaliptic/Sci-fi Trigger Warnings: War, military, death Reasons: I make it Short description: A small team goes on a mission to enemy territory to find the remains of an ancient satellite and they end up finding a lot more. There are computers and dams and electricity-worshipping future romans (edited)

GGY

Tile: Over 8 Miles https://tapas.io/episode/859067 Genre: Drama, Comedy, Slice of Life Reasons I make it: Cause its fun and I enjoy sharing the existence of my characters and their life outside my brain

Emma (Friends or Lovers?)

Dreamwalker Felix by KT and TK https://tapas.io/series/Dreamwalker-Felix and https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/dreamwalker-felix/list?title_no=182487 Genre: Fantasy/Supernatural Trigger Warnings: There's some body horror in there Reasons: The art is just beautiful, and it has tons of funny moments Friends or Lovers? by yours truly https://tapas.io/series/friendsorlovers and https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/friends-or-lovers/list?title_no=49520 Genre: Romance/school slice of life Trigger Warnings: Mentions and depictions of bullying Reasons: It's my comic, so I'll just quote a reader: "Your comic is more accurate to real teens in love in high school than most. It's really good stuff"

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Earth in a Pocket http://earthinapocket.spiderforest.com/ Genre: Retro Sci-fi, Iyashikei Trigger Warnings: none Reasons: This comic posted its final page very recently! It's a relatively short read; very gentle and hopeful without being cavity-causingly sweet. The creator has put together such a heartwarming story that I've been adoring for a while. One of my faves, now complete!

renieplayerone

O Human Star https://ohumanstar.com/ Genre: Scifi, Robots, Drama TW: Dysphoria, Depression Reasons: The characters are so well written and emotional, plus I love the simplistic color palette. They get across the journey of self-discovery in such an interesting way.(edited)

carcarchu

Arcane Flames https://tapas.io/series/Arcane-Flames Genre: Fantasy Trigger Warnings: death? Reasons: I've been following kutty sark for many years now and I've really been looking forward to this comic which I'm pleased to say even exceeded my expectations. Fantastic art and the tone of the story is just lovely, i adore al'vis

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

https://sfeertheory.com/ The art is incredible. Every character, even the background ones, is full of personality. I love a good underdog story, and Luca's speech in chapter three made me scream into my hands and tear up. I can't recommend it highly enough

Tantz Aerine (Without Moonlight)

http://secondcrimeanwar.thecomicseries.com/

The Second Crimean War is a powerful and fun story in an alternate 1990s decade in Ukraine. The art is black and white and improves in leaps and bounces as you move on in the story! The story itself draws you in from page one. There's suspense, there's (black) humor, there's atmosphere and adventure. Highly recommended if you like war/action/suspense.

varethane

Have you ever read Nasty Red Dogs? https://nastyreddogs.com/

oh golly, haha

yeah, it's a fun and twisted and surreal little tale, the early parts especially are like walking through a really bizarre dream that if you describe it, it ought to be called a nightmare, but at the moment you're in it, it doesn't FEEL like one lol

the creator also does a comic called Feast For A King, which I think is more well-known but I haven't read yet (will at some point tho): https://feastforaking.com/comic/

kelly-zine

Title: Zyra Slash Genre: Sci-Fi, Comedy, Slice-Of-Life TW: None (for right now at least, it just started!) Reasons: I love Alex and their characters so much! ZS is a project I’ve been following and chatting with them about for a long time and it’s amazing to see it come to fruition. I think you’ll like it too. (Note that it’s on hiatus at the moment!) https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/zyra-slash/list?title_no=373763

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Title: Ark https://www.arkcomic.com/ Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Anthro TW: violence (nothing heavy yet, but my Spider Senses are tingling) Reasons: A 1920s-inspired, extremely believable fantasy setting. Hints of racial tension and a possible war brewing on the horizon. It's pretty early in the story, so hop in and claim the front row seats for this gorgeously illustrated comic! (edited)

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Tamberlane https://www.tamberlanecomic.com/ Genre: slice of life, heartwarming, Anthro It has a cast of colourful characters. Charming story of a clumsy bat named Belfry who adopts a little human. Various animal neighbors to love

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I found one of the Chinese webcomics I use to follow, is now on Webtoons. They rename the title to: The Emperor's New Body because it's about body swapping and has interesting depth while some silly hijinks https://tapas.io/series/the-emperors-new-body(edited)

trinketfox

May as well rec my first ever favorite webcomic! Warrior U! https://warrior-u-thecomic.tumblr.com/ It's so expressive and funny that I've always wished it would become a show on cartoon network or something. Only the first few pages are still up on this tumblr since the official site is down, but all chapters are on the artist's gumroad!

It's an episodic comedy fantasy that goes from page-long gags to full episodes. Reccomended for it's humor and a really fun art style.

SteffieMusings

Nebula Beings https://tapas.io/series/Nebula-Beings Genre: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror/Thriller Trigger Warnings: Violence, scary imagery (especially in chapter 7), talks/implied past abuse Reasons: It's a fun series and the two main characters learn to overcome challenges during their travels.(edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

http://humoncomics.com/elftaken-1

Very short comic about the fae!

shadowhood {SunnyxRain}

For anyone who wants really strong character development/plot/art in general, I’m recommending Heir’s Game https://www.webtoons.com/en/drama/heirs-game/list?title_no=1445 For slapstick humor and characters with strong platonic bonds I give you Waffles and Pancakes https://www.webtoons.com/en/slice-of-life/waffles-and-pancakes/list?title_no=1310 And because why not, and if you like Victorian romance with a cute bickering couple, I give you Miss Abbott and the Doctor https://www.webtoons.com/en/romance/miss-abbott-and-the-doctor/list?title_no=707

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Encephalon Genre: Sci-Fi, Horror Trigger Warnings: Blood, Gore, Strong Language A rescue crew sent to an abandoned space station comes face-to-face with a bio-computer experiment gone horribly wrong. A sci-fi webcomic with body-horror elements. Very creepy stuff! It's just getting started, but after seeing the rest of the story in thumbnail form (my IRL friend is the making it), it's going to AWESOME places. Please check it out! https://encephalon-comic.com/

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

This is: Mirror Mirror for 'Brain' short story contest entry. The 1st ep caught my eye and I'm invested in it https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/mirror-mirror-b/list?title_no=427186(edited)

carcarchu

https://www.lezhin.com/en/comic/freak Genre: fantasy Trigger Warnings: violence? Reasons: sakon's art is brilliant and incredibly consistent. season 1 is now available to read for free!

sagaholmgaard

Genre: Supernatural, urban fantasy, slice of life Trigger Warnings: Maybe abusive parents? idk i feel like it will be explored in the future Reasons: I love the art style and the latest chapter have some CHAOTIC ENERGY and im living for it!! https://tapas.io/series/bygonesbe

GGY

Just got back from hiatus! If y’all are interested in some slice of life + comedy drama I’d like to share my webcomic Over 8 Miles: https://tapas.io/series/O8M/ep39

carcarchu

Veni Vidi Vici https://vevivi.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-1.html Genre: slice of life, comedy Reasons: reading this comic feels so comfy and it reminds me of being in roman studies class again. you can really see the love and care that Ruby has put into this comic and her passion for ancient rome is really on full display in this work

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

This is the comic books for Cafe Suada I used to read way back. It's a fun slice of life about a teahouse shop keeper rivals with a coffee shop manager https://tapas.io/series/Cafe-Suada The artist used some traditonal tea staining for the textures. The story inspired me to draw my own slice of life series(edited)

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

The Strange Tale of Oscar Zahn https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/the-strange-tales-of-oscar-zahn/list?title_no=685&page=1 Genre: Paranatural Investigation with just a dash of Cosmic Horror Kinda spooky, some light/fantasy violence From the website: Follow the journey of the world's greatest paranormal investigator - Oscar Zahn. Friend to lost souls, enemy of evil, he may lack a body but that doesn't mean he's missing a heart! The art is INCREDIBLE, the tone is really fun with some neat Hellboy vibes, it's complete and it's a good binge read. I really enjoyed it!

carcarchu

Short story about a cat, make sure you've got tissues ready https://akimiya.tumblr.com/post/129049384624

boogeymadam

just caught up with wychwood and it's such a huge treat!! there's some amazingly fun worldbuilding, a lot of intrigue about how the protagonists came to have the powers they do, and the motives behind the things that made the world the way it is * _ * it's also got soooo many pretty derelict environments, cool creature design and fun training montages! http://wychwood.sevensmith.net/comic/1

Yung Skrimp (Carefree)

I started reading Cloven Hearth, it’s interesting and has a really cool art style

https://twitter.com/ruinationcomics/status/1254126660007399425?s=21(edited)

carcarchu

Hana and Mr. Arrogant https://www.ciayo.com/en/comic/hana-mr-arrogant Genre: romance Reasons: Easy breezy read, with nice art and a super likeable heroine! Nothing we've never seen before, but delivered with genuine heart that makes it stand out

LabsZach

This one esp, with the greenery shifting into dirt, roots, and mushrooms, and how it compliments the figures on it is just aces. https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/cloven-hearth/touch-of-the-divine/viewer?title_no=396780&episode_no=14

boogeymadam

recently binged malverav's comic Love and War and it is sooo satisfying, about 2 competitors in a medieval tournament involving jousting, archery and more! The banter between Svanhildur and Marinelle had me grinning a lot. Also, it's a wlw rivals-to-lovers romance aka a GREAT kinda love story!! (my favorite kind ) it's on tapas https://tapas.io/series/Love-and-War/info

carcarchu

cronaj's sports comment got me thinking about this and how damn good it is https://tapas.io/episode/968762 Genre: Sports, drama Reasons: it's insanely creative and the art is so intense, i found it extremely memorable and powerful to read(edited)

carcarchu

Came across this stunning webtoon today. It was originally published on taiwanese webtoon and the author has decided to tl into english to share with a wider audience https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/intertidal/list?title_no=371176 Really gorgeous traditionally drawn comic and a lovely poetic writing style

carcarchu

the winner of this year's eisners awards for best webcomic. definitely worth checking out! https://friedricecomic.com/