A bunch of stuff I've come across that's been of some help to me that I hope could maybe be of some help to you! If you download any of these and are confused as to how any of them work, feel free to reach out in one way or another, and I'd be happy to show you the ropes.
Applications
First music composition tool I ever used, all the way back in seventh grade. Entirely free and great for making sheet music, though it's a starting point more than anything if you're looking to get into composition. I found it appealing mostly just because I was already familiar with sheet music, so working in that lens felt like less of a leap than a list of instruments and piano rolls and all.
(Note that I still use Musescore 3, so can't comment as much on how good Musescore 4 is. I've heard it's really buggy, so proceed at your own discretion!)
Free DAW (digital audio workstation) I found from searching up "free Windows GarageBand alternative" a couple years ago. I use it for most of my composition now, and am generally content with it (I like it more than the free trial of FL Studio, at least!). Not much in the way of default instruments, but downloading your own VSTs is no problem.
Another free DAW that I've used mainly for mixing and mastering, as it doesn't seem to be super well-suited for composition (though I'm sure it's possible with some plugins). Technically, it's not really free, but its free trial period is indefinite regardless of what the website might say.
Free tool for editing or building your own soundfonts. Takes a second to figure out how it works, but once you get the hang of it, it's super straightforward.
Free audio editing tool. Not too much to say about this one.
Art tool geared towards making pixel art, but I've gotten a lot of mileage outside of that scope. Basically just my general-use image editor. Not free, but it's fairly cheap (plus, it'll go for sale every once in a while on Steam or itch.io), and your money supports a small and dedicated team of developers! Alternatively, there's a completely free fork of it called LibreSprite, though I think it may be missing a few features. Never used it myself (since I never heard about it until after I'd already bought Aseprite), but it's worth checking out.
Go-to application for video recordings of all kinds. Also free!
Soundfonts and VSTs
Free VST with a lot of great synth presets (and a lot of options to toy with).
Free orchestral VST. Pretty situational (I'm notably not someone who makes a lot of orchestral music), but it does what it does well. There are larger versions out there, but they get pretty pricey pretty fast.
A classic.
Another free synthesizer VST with some good preset patches and a lot of options to toy with that I don't really know how to work!
Soundfont player VST, so you can actually use soundfonts in your DAW! There are better options out there, I'm sure, but this is just the first one I found, and I've had no reason really to switch to anything else.
Soundfont with a huge variety of stuff on it. Overall pretty solid.
Completely original SNES-like soundfont. Great for retro style stuff without having to worry about janky ripped soundfonts and whatever legal grey zone.
Fonts
The font you're reading right now! Credit goes to codeman83 for the original version of it, but I've edited it and added some new characters and such to suit my own needs. Some characters are still a little messy, but I'll probably periodically update things as this website develops.
Really nice bubbly font. Credit goes to asterism for this one.
Near-identical reproduction of the standard dialogue font used in the Paper Mario series. Originally found on an old blog post (and if you click on "free scrapbook fonts" at the top, there's a bunch of other stuff on offer too). The real font the games use is PopJoy, but it's notably not free and is also made by a Japanese company (thus you'd have to navigate Japanese websites), so, uh... if you really wanna get it, I wish you luck.