Fly On - Links

I have a lot of links. Here's the overly large list, separated by category.

• Communities: LiveJournal communities, forums, and YahooGroups that I'm a member of.
• Egyptian: The kemetic and egyptian websites I find useful, interesting, or pleasing to the eye. This is separate from paganism because I have so many egyptian sites bookmarked.
• Paganism: The pagan and metaphysical websites I find useful.
• Redwall: Websites around the Redwall Online Community. I used to be a very active member of the ROC; now I just visit a couple places to keep in touch with people.
• Rennaissance Faires: Sites related to renfaires. I'm on cast at Great Lakes Medieval Faire, and love faires a little too much, so I have a number of links I use.
• Roleplaying: Roleplaying games and gaming sites I enjoy or enjoyed when I still played.
• Therianthropy: Various therianthropy and otherkin websites I find useful or interesting.
• Webcomics: The online comics that I read.

Communities

• bad_rpers_suck: A LiveJournal community for roleplayers who need to rant about the awful and/or aggravating RPers they've run across or had to deal with in their roleplaying experience. The snarkiness is wonderful. I love this community; it's hugely busy though, so I generally just rummage through it when I'm bored or want to rant about a bad roleplayer.
• dot_pagan_snark: A LiveJournal community for snarking about aggravating, moronic people, things people have done or said, etc, all relating in some way to paganism. Always highly amusing; people on snark communities come up with the best turns of phrase.
• Empathy: A semi-active YahooGroup on empathy. It was helpful for me a number of years ago when I was dealing with the concept.
• glamourbombs: I love this concept. An LJ community all about glamourbombing - the faery version of poetic terrorism. Shake up someone's life and get them to think about magic for a bit.
• godothemonth: Wonderful LJ community, great idea. Members study and work with one specific deity for one month, then post their experiences and research on the community. Absolutely fascinating and very educational. Once I get more settled and have more time, I'll probably be doing this with a few deities.
• Gryphon Guild: This is the place that introduced me to the concept of otherkin and therianthropy. I spend a lot of time in the Guild chat, though I'm almost never on the forums. Not everyone there is otherkin - in fact, a lot of people aren't - but they're all fantasy fans, people who enjoy mythology and mythological creatures, especially gryphons. It's a blend of furries, otherkin, roleplayers, and other fantasy fans.
• Mystic Wicks: A so-so pagan forum; it's large and active at least. I just recently joined; we'll see how it works out.
• nonfluffypagans: A LiveJournal community for less-than-fluffy pagans. I wouldn't say "non-fluffy"... that's a hard term to define, these days, and sometimes posts venture on the fluffy side of things.
• Redwall Fanfiction Board: I don't spend as much time here as I used to either, but I learned a lot at this place, and it's a good community, although perhaps dying out now.
• therianthropy: A more active LJ community for therianthropes, though it's less active nowadays and gets its share of raw overeager newbies. Not a bad place though. There's occasionally interesting stuff.
• therithere: The LJ community for the therianthropy/otherkin/etc webcomic, TheriThere. And what's amusing is that this comic's weekly strips generate more discussion (and more intelligent discussion) on therianthropy and otherkin than most of the therianthropy LJ communities out there.

Egyptian

• Akhet Hwt-Hrw: According to their site, Akhet Hwt-Hrw is "a school dedicated to the research, reconstruction and practice of the Ancient Egyptian spiritual tradition." I've heard mixed things about them; but then again, I've heard mixed things about all the major kemetic groups.
• Ancient Egyptian Virtual Temple: Neat place. Lots of information. It's dedicated to Sekhmet, but it has tons of info on various other aspects of kemetic religion and egyptian life.
• Ancient Egypt: the Mythology: Wonderful resource, with information on netjeru, myths, symbols, and Egypt itself.
• Caroline Seawright's Egyptology Column: Seawright writes semi-regular articles on various topics of egyptology. There's a lot of fascinating and useful stuff here, ranging from deities to glyphs.
• House of Netjer: Kemetic Orthodoxy. One of the largest (if not the largest) Kemetic Houses out there, and also the first, from what I understand.
• Jim Loy's Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Egyptology Page: Loads of information on the egyptian language, hieroglyphs, names, grammar, and some links to other information on Egypt. Wonderful site; it'll tide me over until I can get my talons on Faulkner's Dictionary of Middle Egypt.
• Per-Ankh: According to their website, Per-Ankh is "a sisterhood of temples dedicated to the practice of the Kemetic religion (Ancient Egyptian) in the modern world."
• Tour Egypt: It's commercial, yes, but it's actually a decent resource. Check out their overview of ancient egyptian religion.

Paganism

• College Wicca: Handy site for college pagans, and non-college pagans as well.
• Comparative Religion: It's like Sacred Texts, with free texts from just about any religion, only it's better organized and has very active, very specific forums.
• House Kheperu: This wisdom tradition is a little bit Pagan, a little bit New Age, and a little bit Otherkin. Great people and great resources.
• Internet Sacred Text Archives: I love this place. It has everything from the Book of the Dead to the Vedas to the Bible and Torah.
• Universal Empath Report: A sort of "empathy 101" site and collection of essays. This place was extraordinarily useful when I was first coming to grips with my own empathy.
• Wicca: For the Rest of Us: Wonderfully practical and sensible site. No frills and fluff.
• WikiPagan: A wiki for pagans. Useful.
• The Witches' Voice: WitchVox. It's basically a directory of pagans. Very extensive.

Redwall

• Black Arch Fort: A great Redwall goodbeast RPG set in a Northlands fort.
• The Long Patrol: Useful Redwall website. They host essays, but I think their best feature is the Redwall Newsline.
• The Redwall Encyclopedia: Snowfur has done a great job here, making a vast encyclopedia of the places and people within the Redwall world. And she's kept it up over the years too, which is more than I can say for my Compendium.
• Redwall Fanfiction Board: It's not so active in the Redwall department as it once was, but it's a decent Redwall fanfiction community, and has its place in my heart.
• Redwall MUCK: Ah, the old MUCK. It's been around for ages and refuses to die out. I've had some good times on the MUCK, though I never got into it as deeply as a lot of people.
• Redwall.Net: Nice site with free redwall.net email addresses.
• Redwall.Org: The official Redwall and Brian Jacques website.
• Terrouge: The most active, longest-running, and best-written Redwall online magazine (e-zine). I'm not biased because I'm a some-time reporter there, really! They have decent forums as well.

Renaissance Faires

• Great Lakes Medieval Faire: My home faire. I've been on cast here since the '04 season. Great place, excellent street cast, though the shopping's not as good as it could be, and the roads could use work. But don't blame the cast for that, because we rock. The people at GLMF are my family of sorts.
• Griffin Works: One of the vendors at GLMF. Their leatherworks are to die for. One of these days I will be able to afford one of their incredible leather cloaks.
• Medieval Faire: Trevor's picture archive site. Tons and tons of pictures from GLMF. This place staves off my faire addiction during the offseason.
• Medieval Mayhem: Trevor's board for faires and Great Lakes Medieval Faire especially, since the board at the GLMF site was closed down for all but cast.
• Ohio Renaissance Festival: They have incredible shopping. It's a huge faire, and they've got such a variety of vendors! The entertainment isn't bad, but the street cast is nearly nonexistant. Go here for shopping, go to GLMF for entertainment.

Roleplaying

• Black Arch Fort: A great Redwall goodbeast RPG set in a Northlands fort.
• Handbook to Roleplaying: Anyone just starting out in RPing should check this place out. So should people who've been roleplaying for a while. It's excellent.
• NERO: A LARP that I and a few friends participate in.
• OGRE: The central Ohio chapter for NERO.
• Shadow Star: This fantasy play-by-email freeform RPG will always be near and dear to my heart. Jenn and I built the place in summer 2000. It's still going strong today, with 100+ posts per month - and just about every one of those posts is well-written and meaty. The original fantasy world is constantly expanding. It's a wonderful RPG. If I had the time, I'd still be part of it. As it is, I just keep tabs on its progress and plot, and direct anyone wanting a good active RPG to its pages.
• White Wolf Online: The website of White Wolf games, a company that makes such tabletop games as World of Darkness (Vampire: the Masquerade, Mage: the Ascension, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, etc) and Exalted. I'm a bit obsessed with Mage (I have most of the books), and I'm enjoying what Exalted I've played.

Therianthropy

• Absurdism: It's actually two sites. Spotted Fur, the musings of a snow leopard named Katsune; and, well, I'm not sure what Quil's website is called, but he's a leopard and there's lots of good writing on his site. Both Quil and Katsune are quite literate and have a lot of interesting stuff to say, and they say it well.
• Awereness Forums: Decent forums. They could be better, but then again they could also be worse.
• Embracing Mystery: Another of those rare otherkin sites that have skepticism and questioning.
• Felinity Reclaimed: Writings of a leopard called Keller on the community. She hasn't updated in a while, but it's well worth reading.
• Forest's Edge: Padfoot-Blackshuck's writings; Padfoot is a ying-lung/maned wolf. Always something interesting here.
• Kinhost.Org: A site and forums for otherkin with multiple personalities. A friend of mine is otherkin and multiple, so I do research on such things.
• Lion Templin's Archive of Animal Spirituality Essays: Lion Templin's about as pragmatic and blunt as therianthropes get. His writings are great eye-openers.
• The Marsh: The writings and thoughts of a coyote/marsh deer, Liesk. Several well-thought-out essays here.
• Mokele's Jungle: Mokele left the therianthropy community, but his writings are still up for anyone to read, and they're well worth it. He's skeptical and terse, but does his thinking and his research.
• The Rigors: The owner of this site, Reemul, died not too long ago (1970-2002), but there's plenty to read, and most of it's in poetry form.
• Swiftpaw's Tree: A jaguar's writings and ramblings. It's not being updated anymore, but what's archived there is very much worth reading, even the old stuff.
• Tabula Rasa: Sarah (lynxspirit on LJ)'s site. Sarah's great, and her site's excellent as well. There's extensive information on felines, there's some good essays, and some good writings.
• Thébaïde: The thoughts, writings, and art of a french corvikitty. Feline-corvid contherianthrope, if you want to use community terminology. He always has great things to say and says them with style.
• Trueform Within: One of the better otherkin/therian forum communities out there.
• Turns Into a Question: Writings of a lioness, Kefira. It hasn't been updated in a while, but there's a lot worth reading.
• WereChild.Org: One wolf's thoughts, drawings, and pennings. Well worth a read.
• WereLibrary: Yeah, I'm plugging my own site. It's an index of writings on therianthropy from all over the web.
• Werelist: It's a vast directory of therianthropes and otherkin, complete with demographics; it's an essay archive; and it's home to forums populated by some of the more sane and logical therianthropes out there. There's always interesting discussions going on here.
• Wild Ideas: Misslynx has a vast amount to say, and she says it with style. Her site is a "celebration of the wild in all its forms".

Webcomics

• JACK: Updates bi-weekly, I think? JACK is disturbing, graphic, gut-wrenching, and absolutely incredible. The overreaching story is about the Sin of Wrath / Grim Reaper, Jack, and much of it takes place in hell. But most of the "chapters" so to speak take place on Earth, around mortals, and it ties in to Jack at the end when he must retrieve their souls to judgment. It's obviously very dark - but utterly amazing. The emotional response this forces out of the reader is vast, and the author gets you to care deeply about the characters, even those that only appear for a short chapter. Read this comic, even if you don't read any others on the list.
• Alien Dice: MWF (varies). One of my favorites. It's a bit soap-opera-y at times, and the art isn't the best, but it's got good writing and enjoyable characters. Sci-fi with a touch of fantasy and a heap of anime. The expanded text below most of the strips is a nice touch.
• Your Wings Are Mine: Variable. I adore this webcomic. Incredible art, incredible story. It's somewhat traditional shounen-ai. There's been times when this comic has had me near to tears. There are lengthy archives, so you'll be kept busy for a while. However, the artist goes on hiatus a lot, and she's going to make future updates subscription-only for a while until she gets back on her feet. But reading the archives is very much worth it.
• General Protection Fault (GPF): It updates every day, and has done so for years. So reading the archives takes ages. When I first found this webcomic, I stayed up almost all night for a couple nights catching up. It's awesome. Computer geeks meet sci-fi and drama.
• Geebas on Parade: MWF. By the same author as Devil's Panties; this is her LARPing webcomic. Utterly hilarious, utterly wonderful; if you LARP at NERO, SOLAR, or similar systems, or are curious about what LARPing's like, read Geebas on Parade. It's an accurate depiction of LARPing and great fun. Reading this before I went to my first NERO event prepared me for what it'd be like, and then reading it afterwards was even funnier as I could relate.
• 9th Elsewhere: Weekly. Beautiful fantasy/psychological webcomic about "an unhappy girl and her oddball muses trapped in a dreamscape." Excellent art, excellent writing. Intriguing concept and story.
• Clan of the Cats: MF. An excellent urban fantasy webcomic about Chelsea the Chattan Witch, who can shapeshift into a black panther.
• Inverloch: Wednesdays. An absolutely incredible fantasy webcomic. Good writing, gorgeous art, nice exposition, likeable characters. Very much worth a read.
• Oh My Gods!: A pagan webcomic, featured in PagaNet News and other similar papers. It's absolutely hilarious if you know much about paganism and the general pagan community.
• Theri There: I just started reading this one, but then again it just started up. There's only a few pages, but the art is great and I love the concept. You probably won't get it unless you're familiar with otherkin/therianthropes, and it's probably only going to be amusing/meaningful to otherkin, but still. Worth a read.
• Wings of Change: Sundays? A fun fantasy webcomic with a lot of heart. It's about a winged elf/human girl who wants to be a ranger, and her minidragon teacher, as well as a bunch of mischievous pixies. I just started reading this one; got through the archives, and it's a great read.
• I Drew This: Weekly. By the author of Ozy and Millie. Haven't read Ozy and Millie, but I enjoy I Drew This - it's a political strip. Lots of often humorous, sometimes wrenching, always informative political commentary. Is it bad that I get half my news from webcomics and friends?
• Cheshire Grin: Sporadic updates, because the artist moved from Lakewood OH to somewhere westwardly. I love this webcomic. Yeah, the art isn't the absolute best (the current strip is the writer's stick-figures, not the artist's usual decent art), but the writing is incredible. It's a comic about tabletop gamers, but not the usual "let's just focus on the game and table" gaming comic - it also stretches outward to focus on the gamers' lives, jobs, relationships, and homes. It's got a lot of heart.
• Two Lumps: MWF. Read this if you love cats. Hell, read it if you hate cats, but know what they're like - Two Lumps portrays feline attitudes hilariously well. This comic always brightens my day.
• Devil's Panties: MWF. A semi-autobiographical webcomic of a webcomic artist who LARPs (the LARP stuff is a separate webcomic), goes go goth bars, works at a comic shop, and goes to conventions. It's funny, easy to relate to, and comes across as rather sincere. And it's sometimes surprising too - apparently she knows some of the vendors to the medieval faire I'm on cast at, and occasionally includes them in her webcomic! o.o
• Carpe Diem: MWF (sort of). Also rather soap-opera-esque... but I love it. Awesome art, great writing, wonderful characters. A bit shounen-ai, but tasteful.
• Faux Pas: MWF. A cute comic about a bunch of animals on a farm mostly run by the animals. It's fun, lighthearted, and well-drawn.
• VG Cats: Mondays. A video gaming comic; it's quite amusing, and quite disturbing at times. It parodies a lot of video games. Good art quality.
• Neko the Kitty: The author doesn't update much anymore, and when he does update it's sporadic. Another cat comic, not as good as Two Lumps in my opinion but still amusing. It's decent.