CSS override for Bear's 404 page - Blaugust the Twenty-Third

22 Aug, 2025

An unclean hack....

In my un-ending thirst for imposing my broken sanity upon the internet, I have inserted myself into further corners. Digitally. Figuratively.

Ok, so yes—you can override the Bear 404 page… But not in any manner that would be called clean or blessed by sane front-end architects. This is a shadowed path, friend.

Bear, in its infinite minimalism, does not serve a proper static page for 404s. Instead, it injects the error message directly through JavaScript, like a parasitic thoughtworm threading itself through your DOM.

The 404 page is a ghost —stripped to its bones. You get: • Your site’s CSS, mercifully. • The blog title, still clickable, still linked home. • And a body class named… not-found.

Which means… if you squint and mutter the right selector…

Example:

body.not-found main::after {
  content: "This is my custom 404 text";
  white-space: pre-line;
  display: block;
  text-align: center;
  margin: 0 auto 3em;
  line-height: 1.6;
}

The Bear-injected text? You hide it like the bones beneath the floorboards. Then you conjure your own cursed message with ::before or ::after.

Want images? Inject them as background-image URLs. Yes, even the glitched, screaming ones.

The Blood Price

This is not a true override.

CSS pseudo-elements are phantoms—they don’t exist in the DOM. You can’t put real links in them. They whisper, but do not touch.

Sure, the title link is there, hanging like a moon over your prose, and you can float it beneath your injected message to simulate an “inline” link…

But it’s fragile. Brittle. The whole thing is a dream on the edge of accessibility. Usability groans beneath it. Screen readers may blink and pass it over. The illusion frays.

Still.

It works. And if you’re the sort who prefers weird power over pristine elegance— you’ll feel right at home here.

You may enter some jibberish in the URL of this page to view mine. Or be lazy and click here.

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