in my years of being a terminally online girlfailure i've racked up a substantial amount of helpful little tools/websites. everything here is 100% free, and usually open source if i can help it. anyone should be able to have the ability—if not that, the knowledge to attain the ability—to pursue what they want to pursue. go wild.

drawing on your computer

krita, a free and open source illustration program

this is hands down, in my opinion, the best program you could choose here for digital art. it's what i started out with and a damn good piece of software too. has capabilities for basically anything you could ask for from this type of program. also, snag rakurri's brush set, another completely free and open source resource which puts a shit ton of high quality general use custom brushes for the app. with both of these you should be set to create anything your heart desires.

photopea, a free and open source web-based photoshop alternative

genuinely amazing. will lag and stutter a bit on lower end systems but it has everything you'd need. this is where i made all of the graphics for this website. incredibly useful.

gimp, a free and open source photoshop alternative

not my personal favorite but i've heard good about it. gets the job done from the little i've used.

firealpaca, a free* illustration software

again not my personal favorite, however my stupid chud friend insists upon using it for basically everything and her art is amazing. has an ad everytime you boot though, so there's that. pretty capable. incase you're wondering the asterisk is because some features happen to be locked behind a paywall.

libresprite, a free and open source pixel art program

the worst piece of shit ever. actual hell. that being said it's literally the best pixel art program out there, so, take of this what you will.

drawpile, a free and open source collaborative illustration program

a pretty decent art program that allows you to draw with other people. even if you don't do that it's still a pretty good piece of software.

composing on your computer

reaper, a free* digital audio workstation

genuinely super customizable and powerful but GOD is it a pain to learn. you can do basically anything in this. the free version is marketed as a trial but it's like winrar. nothing's missing and the entire software still works after the deadline. hard recommend.

lmms, a free and open source digital audio workstation

i mean... it's a music program! not the best, not the worst, but it'll get the job done.

openmpt, a free and open source music tracker

great piece of software. great for making vgm/anything electronic based. it's a tad different than the standard way music is made nowadays, but it's still a relatively powerful tool. good midi alternative and there're tons of neat little tricks you can do within it. it's also just really fun, so that's always a bonus. hard recommend. oh yeah, pick impulse tracker for a piano-like keyboard layout when it asks you.

milkytracker, a free and open source music tracker

basically anything i said about openmpt is also true here. not my modus operandi however it's still a pretty good program. the only downside i can think of right now is that it doesn't support vsts (external plugins), all of the audio has to be made out of samples, or from the prepackaged synth that comes with it.

musical artifacts, a free and community ran soundfont repository

this site has almost every soundfont you could ever need. very helpful for anyone aspiring to be the next tricky tony.

plugins4free, a free vst repository

a treasure trove of free plugins.

unplugred, a free* plugin label

genuinely some of the most visually and sonically unique plugins i've ever used. payment plan is once again, adjacent to winrar.

miscellaneous

7zip, a free file archiver/extractor

winrar with no annoying pop-ups. does what you'd expect it to do.

foobar2000, a free music player

my personal favorite audio player. not as customizable as the latter but it gets the job done.

wacup, a free music player

winamp resurrection, not much more to say here.

cmus, a free and open source tui music player

amazing terminal based music player for linux.

ublock origin, a free and open source adblocker

the best adblocker of all time. period.

cnvmp3, free audio/video converter

essentially the best "online site to mp3/mp4" converter out right now.

yarr 'ready know

qbittorrent, a free and open source torrenting client

awesome application for p2p file transfers. you will be using this a lot.

soulseekqt, free soulseek client

gui to browse the soulseek servers. modern day limewire.

nicotine+, free and open source soulseek client

does the same thing as the one before it, but i like this one better.

vimm's lair, a free rom archive

the biggest collection of roms to date, spanning 35 consoles.

r/piracy megathread, plundering index

a TON of free shit.

freemediaheckyeah, plundering index

so much treasure...