#You're Getting A Domain

[bravevolunteer-a]

me: just sitting here

brain: anyway. tma michael's apocalypse fear domain would be a small restaurant building that, when you enter it, is full of seemingly endless hallways and rooms that are a recreation of the restaurants. it invokes a feeling of bittersweet childhood nostalgia, almost LOOKS like the local places you went no matter where you were, but the air is hot and suffocating and the further you walk the more everything starts to look progressively melted until all of your surroundings are up in flames. you are compelled to try and play the assorted arcade games because for some unexplained reason you're convinced they'll provide an escape and it's Your Life, it's your life and in it everything you've ever loved is slowly ripped away and you can FEEL all of it as if it's actually happening. but the worst part is the guilt, it's all your fault and you know it, why not just walk into the flames and become part of the destruction you created? and at the center of it all where you'd expect the charred remains of its victims is just a childhood bedroom. the figure there is in flames too.

me: WOAGHWOAHWOAH WOAH OKAY. OKAY. ALRIGH-

[skyloftian-nutcase]

I'm looking at the Zora May prompts and wanna write stuff, and now my brain's just giggling with ideas LOL like--

Imagine, after Age of Calamity, that Link and Mipha get together. That has its whole set of fun and drama - a Hylian/Zora marriage would mean a lot anyway, but particularly when it's the Zora princess and the Hero of Hyrule. Link and Mipha start to have a family, Zelda is settling into being queen, and they all have their own set of stressors and joys and the three are still besties and it would be just so funny to see y'all. Like... Link takes his oath as a knight seriously, so he still assists Hyrule often, and just this scenario in my head came and--

Zelda, sighing: I hardly slept last night. I was up late researching the latest Zonai discoveries and almost forgot I had a meeting with the Rito delegation this morning. I'm so tired.

Link, hair a mess, on his third cup of coffee after dealing with one of his kids having a meltdown while the other kept everyone up crying all night, dealing with Mipha also trying to do royal duties, having just teleported over here via Sheikah towers: .....That sounds rough.

[strawberry-pretzels]

i think about how to get out of the lonely, all you need is love. to think of someone you love, to realize that the hardship of connection is better than the safety of isolation. and then to get out of the spiral, you need to trust. to trust that your dinner is coming up and you're gonna be late. to trust that the map gertrude gave you will stop the ritual. but what about the other fears?? how does one escape/combat them and their rituals??

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

I just went offline in pressure's community for a DAY then apparently some drama happening abt how zerum the creator of sebastian being overly obsessive and speard hate toward ppl who do oc x canon/self-insert x canon with him is crazy😭(there is a prove of screen shot in the community discord sever and not to mention zeal(devs)​being toxic and immature toward the fandom)​and a lot of stuff happen​ing and it's been ONE month since the game release I don't want this game to flop cuz I love the lore and game​play sm :(

I don't follow the game on discord but heard all about it. Unfortunately very rising fandom is gonna have it's drama :(

The friendly fire update just sparked a straight up fire in the community 💀

Someone on tiktok said something like "just bc there's a goalie doesn't mean you cant score" sooooo I say the shipping is fine as long as it's nothing too crazy or illegal

Im still gonna write Pressure content trust ✌✌

Also flex this fit (minor spoilers for rhe update)

[genericpuff]

on the closure of MochaJump, and why we're our own worst enemies in this industry.

"MochaJump? What was that?" is probably your first question, and I'm gonna simply respond with, "Exactly."

MochaJump was a small startup platform made by /u/nunojay2 and a second site engineer (whose name I am not informed of) on reddit. It wasn't anything extraordinary, just a startup site that aimed to offer a more viable alternative to Webtoons and Tapas, with a focus on offering equal visibility to creators, focused recommendation algorithms, loosened restrictions on NSFW content, and bigger cuts for creators on their generated revenue.

Of course, such promises are a tall order, but the creator did their best to host regular discussions with creators in art and webtoon communities to get feedback on what creators really wanted out of their platforms, and they researched what they would need to make in order to keep the site afloat (it came out pretty low at $2 per user per month). Hopes were high and the site launched with a small but eager userbase.

It stayed small. The site shut down in November 2022, just 6 months after launching in May 2022.

Now, I'm not gonna sit here on some soapbox and blame anyone for the site closing down. I unfortunately didn't get much chance to use the site myself so there's surely more I could have done on my own part to help it gain traction. But this is a regular occurrence for start-ups like this, especially in an industry that's as notoriously unprofitable as webcomics. We've seen titans such as SmackJeeves and Inkblazers fall, and MochaJump was merely an infant by comparison.

But it makes me think of how we view and treat these startups as a whole. How we as readers and creators alike have become so trained to exclusively use corporate platforms like Webtoons and Tapas on the promise of "bigger gains". Unlike these bigger companies, platforms like MochaJump depend on building a strong userbase as quickly as possible, and need to find ways to generate revenue to keep things running, otherwise it's only a matter of time before they close down. They don't have a massive conglomerate like Naver or Kakao to pad their pockets through their failures. They don't have the money or reach to inject themselves into society through bus terminal ads and convention sponsorships. They don't have the investors to sink money into their platform until it becomes profitable in return.

So we don't use them. Readers don't use them because we don't see the point in using a platform that has no content... and thus creators don't use them because we don't see the point in publishing our content on a platform with no userbase. Creators seek a place that's "tight knit" and "easy to get seen", but will only post to places that come pre-loaded with massive audiences; because it's not enough anymore to have a couple hundred followers, we're in 2023 now, in the year of consumer bloat, where we expect to now pull in thousands if not millions to be considered a "success". And readers seek a place that offers high-quality high-amount content at the tip of their fingertips, but don't want to pay for the access to these works, and in the case of apps like WT, have given up in trying to support these creators through the platforms themselves because they know that those artists they want to support will likely never see a dime.

The fact of this problem is simple, yet many people seem to ignore it - we cannot expect to have a platform that is tight knit, profitable, and sustainable. These places do not exist, not so long as we continue to raise the bar on what makes a "successful" subscriber count, not so long as we continue to patronize platforms that exploit their artists and writers, and not so long as we keep chasing the dragon of "what these websites used to be". These platforms never used to 'be' anything, they merely existed in one point of time that is now long gone, when owning a smartphone was a luxury and not a need, when online video content wasn't being tethered together by ads, and when the Internet wasn't owned and entirely managed by the same three corporations, the likes of which we haven't seen since cable TV.

Platforms like Tapas and Webtoons are - besides unsustainable - unable to exist and profit in the way they do without undercutting someone along the way. Whether it's underpaying their creators, undercutting their communities, or underexposing the works that have been buried, someone will get the shit hand in the deal and that someone is usually ALWAYS someone who will rarely ever stand to gain anything in the long run from using these platforms despite their issues. The 1% got theirs, and the 10% are barely getting by, while the remaining 89% are pushing onwards, because they have faith in the systemic online enshittification that demands conformity to a single formula for "success".

We are our own worst enemies in this industry. Webcomics are one of the few online mediums that still truly belong to the people - anyone can make them, anyone can find joy in them, but we're letting platforms like Webtoons and Tapas and all the other massive corporate apps rob us of that joy and accessibility in the pursuit of "success" and profiting. Webtoons was never the sole way to profit off this medium and yet I still see people every day who underestimate the existence of legitimate publishing houses and self-publishing, who think that publishing on Webtoons and landing an Originals deal is the only way to find success in this industry. This is meant to be the era of creators, of self-starting and self-actualization, and yet we're still handing all of that control over to corporations that only seek to exploit our art, bodies, and labor, while convincing ourselves that this will somehow all be worth it. We stick with Webtoons, despite the numerous controversies it's been involved in and the lack of support it's given even its own hired creators. We stick with Tapas, despite the undercutting of its most core components such as its community and the outlier genres it used to be known for hosting. We find new ways to justify using platforms that are steadily going downhill - Patreon, Twitter/X, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook - because we've been convinced that these are the routes to success, so if we acknowledge their failures, then "success" can no longer exist.

Because we need to pay rent. Because we need to eat. Because we need to survive. Because it's a lot more complicated than just "stepping away". Because the startups just don't have any of the surface level potential for us to immediately identify and get on board with, so we don't give them a chance.

I realize this post got very existential and depressing. I've been creating comics for well over a decade now, largely unnoticed, and I've fallen victim to these same limiting mindsets that we have to stick to one way, one "formula" for success - a formula that changes with the wind and only works for those who get in on the ground floor. It's been slowly killing me from the very beginning, robbing me of my joy to create, of my reason to even do this in the first place - to tell and share stories with others, to express myself creatively, to live my life surrounded by art and stories and creations made by and for others. It's made me tired and miserable, and I can tell it's done the same to those who have shared that boat with me.

But there's one silver lining I can always be sure of, and it's one I was reminded of after realizing I was still in the MochaJump Discord, with one announcement post that I hadn't yet read.

Webcomics are one of the few online mediums that still truly belong to the people. Corporations are trying their hardest to take that power away. Let's not continue to let them.

If you want to help sustain, patronize, and contribute to the growth of sites that are still being operated by small teams (or even one man armies), please, consider checking out the following websites, some of which serve as platforms or publishers, others which operate as link directories for independent sites run by creators.

ComicFury GlobalComix TopWebcomics The Webcomic List The Webcomic Library Hiveworks SpiderForest SmackJeeves Archive Inkblot.art And whoever wants to use the GitHub source code used for MochaJump (RIP)

Let's do our part to decentralize webcomics again. We may not be able to leave the platforms that weakly sustain us, but we can still support those that strengthen and support us.

[slayerdurge]

To be fair i'm not very far into my new durge playthrough of bg3 yet but playing as a warlock is hilarious because thus far it's completely unclear who your patron is or what the terms of your pact are. So all the class-unique dialogue is just Generic Warlock Stuff. I can't even imagine what talking to Wyll must be like...

Wyll: So what does your patron require of you?

Durge: Well, you know, just kinda *makes a nonspecific hand gesture*.

Wyll: ...What?

Durge: You know, just *same gesture*.

[ravencromwell]

The poem evokes human greatness and human vulnerability. People are “godlike” in their courage and skill, but even the greatest mortals fall and clutch the dust between their bloody fingers. The beautiful word minunthadios , “short-lived,” is used of both Achilles and Hector, and applies to all of us. We die too soon, and there is no adequate recompense for the terrible, inevitable loss of life. Yet through poetry, the words, actions, and feelings of some long-ago brief lives may be remembered even three thousand years later.

--Emily Wilson's introduction to the Iliad

[bluesuedeclogs]

i am being made to witness a colleague being embarrassingly incompetent and professing ignorance in the thread containing the very paper trail of her dropping the ball

[heich0e]

sometimes this space makes me feel kind of weird and then i remember how old i am and how unserious this all is and i'm like ok time to go think about the ocean or something

[anewbrainjughead]

my brother has his friend staying over yayyyy i love doing everybody's dishes i love cooking & other people eating my food and not cleaning their dishes so i have to clean up after them i love it when my brother makes a mess in the kitchen cooking food that is gross and i don't wanna eat and i still have to clean up after him :)

[vivi-scera]

how it feels scrolling through a website you probably shouldn't be on without using tor browser

[hua-fei-hua]

i NEED you guys to see some of the shit i apparently put into this shitty bnha rpg i spent all of 2019 making instead of writing, like, pretty much any fanfiction

[ravenwolfie97]

i just had one of the weirdest and scariest dreams of my life that lasted forever and it only lasted two and a half hours?????? what the fuck

[yumichikah]

"Good morning~! Please wipe your feet and wash your hands when entering the archives or I'll make sure to remove them myself~!"

[99orphans]

This song for one, absolutely slaps

but also

it sounds like Dracula and Frankenstein doing the absolute sickest set

if i was any good at art or animation i would make this real but just imagine

Dracula on a grand piano

Frankenstein's monster (if you know who i'm referring to there's no semantic argument) on the drums with a double kick pedal

and then Dr Frankenstein on a heavily modified organ that has plugs and wires like a synth would in place of like half of the stops so it's a synth organ

and there's blue sparks of electricity when the music goes ham

do you see my vision????

please someone who can art make this

[a-yarn-of-purple-prose]

As anyone with a Diluc they use will tell you, the Crimson Witch set is cursed and it's impossible to get a Crit hat, let alone a *good* Crit hat.

So, while I generally consider myself a Diluc main, babygirl has always been my worse DPS even though I:

Triple-crowned him and got him to lvl 90 (I'm putting this here, but you gotta understand this is bare minimum for DPS characters, and I actually 9/9/9 even some supports)

I pulled him a 5* Crit weapon because I couldn't get any Standard Banner claymore (and still don't have Wolf's Gravestone)

Did my best with what I got from Crimson Witch in the Strongbox-- because the Domain refused to give me artifacts in the right set, let alone with the right major stats

At this point he had 65/140 crit, which isn't fantastic but isn't bad as well, but his ER was 109%.

This wasn't really relevant because you don't run Diluc without a reaction and a couple of supports, so any 50 points of EM will give you a nice amount of Vape damage, and the presence of Bennett makes up for bad ER Pyro characters

And then the Echo required me to run Diluc alone.

So I guess I should be grateful because I might have grumbled and complained, but looking for better ER I ended up with better crit ratio (74% now!), as well as 139% ER

Still, ass move HYV. Do you want everyone to know how much it sucks to solo most characters? Is this a move to make people want to pull the newer characters, with the cool artifact sets that give you crit?