CAVE FELEM - BEWARE OF CAT

My personal compendium of "media acquisition" resources!

LIST UP TO DATE AS OF 28 SEPT 2024

Technically not a "media acquisition" resource, but use JDownloader if you want to download big files or download lots of files. Also, you do not need to use a VPN unless you are torrenting; if so, ALWAYS use a VPN! (I mean, for safety's sake use a VPN, but it's not strictly required, and not using one while running a DDL won't get you in trouble.)
Also not a resource, but I highly, HIGHLY recommend the use of Firefox as a browser. I'm working on a guide to curating your electronic ecosystem, which should contain more info on the matter.
theowlclub and its sister sites, elmundodeanneysprig and espectralmcgee, for streaming The Owl House, Amphibia, and The Ghost and Molly McGee, respectively. There's also Life According to Lincoln Loud for The Loud House, but the site appears to be down permanently (link is most recent Archive.org page capture).

Note: sites are in Spanish. Content is not.
Note about theowlclub: Dana Terrace used to support the site but stopped after they posted a leak of the penultimate episode. The site's a little controversial in the fandom for this.
I've been edging away from using Watch Cartoons Online (wcofun) for cartoon streaming, but it's still a good site. Ads are very manageable; much better than kimcartoon in that respect.
fmovies.to is good for streaming movies and TV shows.
Not really media acquisition, but I HIGHLY recommend proxying Youtube videos to keep Google from snagging any more of your data. I've been using Invidious, but Youtube has put so much effort into destroying them lately that they're barely functional as of late September 2024. I am stubborn and am still trying to use Invidious until it sinks completely, but I'm open to alternatives. Some alternatives are listed here.
Newgrounds has a great deal of freely downloadable music (like this), but some songs can't be directly downloaded from the site (like this). There is, however, a good way to cheese it (this method also works with Bandcamp):
Steps
1. Go to the page hosting the song you'd like to download.
2. Right click and select View Page Source, or press F12. This pulls up the browser dev tools.
3. In the dev tools, go to the Network tab.
4. Reload the page (press F5 or hit the little circle arrow button in the upper left). A bunch of items will pop up in the Network list.
5. Press Play on the song. A new item with the initiator "media" will pop up at the bottom of the list.
6. Right click this item and select Open in New Tab.
7. This will take you to a bare-bones media player; the song will start playing automatically. If it's not the song you were looking for, search the Network page for another media file, preferably one with the type listed as "mpeg" or similar.
8. Right click on the media player and select Save Audio As...
9. Save the song to wherever you wish!
As of March 2024, Free MP3 Download has closed for good. :( lucida.to has roughly the same functionality, and its performance has improved significantly in the past months.
Video game soundtrack downloads.
All the Warriors books.
All the Animorphs books.
the-eye.eu hosts a mostly comprehensive assortment of TTRPG resources, archived from rpg.rem.uz.
- Speaking of TTRPG stuff, 5e.tools is a FANTASTIC reference for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons materials!
You can find just about any book you can think of on either archive.org (here's how to get copies of undownloadable archive.org books), libgen.rs, or the-eye.eu.
Comics!
Fonts!
Mangae!
cobalt.tools supports audio/video downloads from a bunch of sites, including Youtube, Tiktok, Tumblr, and Ex-Twitter.
FileCR is a great place to snag software!
fitgirl-repacks may be a strange name for a website, but it is the place to go for direct downloads and torrents of video games.
Again, technically not "media acquisition", but Flashpoint is an archive of just about every Flash game imaginable (and more!), and eXoDos is an archive of just about every MS-DOS game imaginable (and more!).
Wanna play console games on your computer? Use the Emulation wiki to do so! Contains info and download links for loads of different console emulators.

Of course you're going to need ROMs, too (the content in the CD/cartridge/whatever). The r/Roms megathread is a good source for ROMs from before the current console generation; for the most modern consoles (PS4, Switch; sorry Xbox One peeps but you're on your own), check here.
NOTE: yuzu was hit with a cease-and-desist by Nintendo in February 2024. Apparently they were charging money for Tears of the Kingdom stuff? I don't know the details. All I know is there's copies of one of the last builds of yuzu (and the final release of Citra, which was also taken down) here.
r/piracy has an excellent set of resources for anyone looking for anything other than what I have here! It's also kept far more up-to-date, heh :3

...and a bottle of rum!