#ask the operator

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

Young Hero Sent On A Quest meets other young heroes also sent on various quests—only to discover they're all being used as free child labor by the same flaky wizard as a scam to collect magical artifacts.

the Young Heroes' collective new "Quest" is now to Unionize.....

[kermdoeswriting]

The worst jobs ever lead to 0 Student debt

Have you ever been so broke that you've resorted to gigs that normally would make you seem like a minor villains goon?

Danny has.

Being practically broke, drowning in constant student debt, college student has led to some of the weirdest side gigs Danny has ever done. He can at the very least confirm that as he continues his degree in Astrophysics at MIT.

But in all honesty, he's not very picky or upset about how weird they are. Danny would rather do something strange once, then continue drowning in debt the way he was currently.

Student debt was not a joke.

And even if it were, it wasn't a very funny one, considering he himself was just scraping by on his two front teeth due to them.

Either way, the point was Danny's done practically everything in Gotham possible just to make some small bits of cash here and there. Danny only ever goes to Gotham for the sake of an extra ectoplasm boost on top of the fact it has the most jobs out of any city possible due to the crime rate.

He's been a temporary goon and a guard to several different warehouses throughout Gotham & New York City (most times there isn't even anyone or anything in them but a jobs a job). He's been in charge of covering a front temporarily for what looks like fake companies (nothing to do with drug dealing or the mob for some reason, he usually tries to stay clear of those offers).

He also was a tester for some of Mr. Nygma's traps being hired for the sheer fact that he couldn't really die and therefore could test several of Mr.Nygma's traps at once.

He took a temp job to help feed Dr.Quinzel's pet hyenas when she was in Arkham for awhile as well as pet sit. That one was his favorite honestly, Lou and Bud were sweethearts despite the carnage thing.

He recently had even been a personal insta-cart driver for a certain Penguin mob-boss strangely enough (until the guy got sent back to Arkham that is).

Danny really isn't picky when it comes to jobs unless it was just something mostly immoral and just insane, like drug dealing and/or murder & world or several life ending situations or just involved with someone like the Joker.

It's gotten to a point that the average Gotham goon usually recognizes him when he passes by during a job visit. They tended to recommend him a new job when they saw him, knowing he was just as eager as they were in this economy.

Which is how he ended up here, sitting in an empty warehouse yet again for possibly another hour before he could leave and get paid. Danny was sat on the floor doing his advanced calc homework and trying not to scream about it as he sat there.

It was something he did when the nights were slower honestly. The night was ruined quickly after that though when the glass shattered above him and scattered all over his homework and the rest of the ground.

Danny only sighed and mourned the possible money he'd be losing to that mess before shaking the glass off of him and his papers. He didn't bother looking up at his possible attacker.

"You have got to be fuckin kidding me. Not again, Kid."

Only then does Danny look up to see who broke the window. Red Hood sounds exasperated despite the mask covering all of his real voice with a mechanical voice changer. Besides him was Nightwing who seemed just as disappointed as his partner was while putting his escrima sticks behind his back.

"Can I help you Red Pill, Blue Pill?"

That made Red Hood snort while Nightwing just sighed into his hands and dragged them down his face before responding.

"Kid, what are you doing in he- Is that homework???"

Nightwing walked closer almost sounding offended as he looked down at the mess of Danny's math that he was going to have to redo before turning in tomorrow. The thought of recopying everything made him feel angry all over again.

"The one you guys wrecked by getting glass all over it? Yes," Danny leaned back into his plastic chair provided by the Goonion. "Thanks for that by the way, I'm going to have to recopy everything before class tomorrow."

"That wouldn't be a problem if you just got a normal part-time job like a normal young adult." Red Hood snorted as Nightwings slight lecture and it made Danny roll his eyes at the both of them as he sat up.

As if he hadn't tried that route already. In between his space museum internship during the day and his thousands of classes every week, he didn't exactly fit a lot of younger adult jobs schedule.

"Do you know any nearby normal adult jobs that are hiring a current university student with millions in debt and a internship schedule that only allows them to work at night?" Danny snapped back which made Red Hood start to snort and laugh again at Nightwings expression.

"Well..." Nightwing at the very least had the decency to look sheepish as if he had thought about it genuinely and couldn't think of a thing.

"Thought so." Danny slumped against the chair again, before shutting his eyes. He waved them away as he sat back, already mentally preparing himself for another all nighter for the sake of recopying his papers.

"If thats all, I'll see you next time I get a fake listing or bad job that you guys have a tendency to break into. Go away."

Nightwing only sighed again before Danny heard his grappling hook sound off back through the broken window into the night. Red Hood only chuckled one last time before ruffling his hair.

"See you, Kid. Make sure you try to sleep before class"

Danny just huffed at him and waved him off again as Red Hood shot his grappling hook off into the night and joined Nightwing. With a sigh, Danny sat up again and grabbed his nearby backpack filled with scrap paper.

Time to restart the equation all over again.

______________________________________________________________

Basically Danny needs money to keep going to MIT so he continuously decides to take up jobs for hire in Gotham (and other places but mostly Gotham), which lead to him breaking a lot of laws for another cash grab.

Meanwhile, the Batfam is very concerned that they keep meeting this meta young adult (who doesn't even live in Gotham!!) who seems to continuously be running through villain placed ad offers like water to get cash.

How desperate for cash is this guy????

[genericpuff]

Tbh at this point you should just make your own webcomic app/website because it would probably be 100 times better than whatever going on with webtoon right now.

hahaha it wouldn't tho, sorry 💀

Here's the fundamental issue with webcomic platforms that a lot of people just don't realize (and why they're so difficult to run successfully):

Storage costs are incredibly expensive, it's why so many sites have limitations on file sizes / page sizes / etc. because all of those images and site info have to be stored somewhere, which costs $$$.

Maintenance costs are expensive and get more so as you grow, you need people who are capable of fixing bugs ASAP and managing the servers and site itself

Financially speaking, webcomics are in a state of high supply, low demand. Loads of artists are willing to create their passion projects, but getting people to read them and pay for them is a whole other issue. Demand is high in the general sense that once people get attached to a webtoon they'll demand more, but many people aren't actually willing to go looking for new stuff to read and depend more on what sites feed them (and what they already like). There are a lot of comics to go around and thus a lot of competition with a limited audience of people willing to actually pay for them.

Trying to build a new platform from the ground up is incredibly difficult and a majority of sites fail within their first year. Not only do you have to convince artists to take a chance on your platform, you have to convince readers to come. Readers won't come if there isn't work on the platform to read, but artists won't come if they don't think the site will be worth it due to low traffic numbers. This is why the artists with large followings who are willing to take chances on the smaller sites are crucial, but that's only if you can convince them to use the site in favor of (or alongside) whatever platform they're using already where the majority of their audience lies. For many creators it's just not worth the time, energy, or risk.

Even if you find short-term success, in the long-term there are always going to be profit margins to maintain. The more users you pull in, the more storage is used by incoming artists, the more you have to spend on storage and server maintenance costs, and that means either taking the risk at crowdfunding (ex. ComicFury) or having to resort to outsider investments (ex. Tapas). Look at SmackJeeves, it used to be a titan in the independent webcomic hosting community, until it folded over to a buyout by NHN and then was pretty much immediately shuttered due to NHN basically turning it into a manwha scanlation site and driving away its entire userbase. And if you don't get bought out and try your hand at crowdfunding, you may just wind up living on a lifeline that could cut out at any moment, like what happened to Inkblazers (fun fact, the death of Inkblazers was what kicked off the cultural shift in Tapas around 2015-16 when all of IB's users migrated over and brought their work with them which was more aimed towards the BL and romancee drama community, rather than the comedy / gag-a-day culture that Tapas had made itself known for... now you deadass can't tell Tapas apart from a lot of scanlation sites because it got bought out by Kakao and kept putting all of its eggs into the isekai/romance drama basket.)

Right now the mindset in which artists and readers are operating is that they're trying way, way too hard to find a "one size fits all" site. Readers want a place where they can find all their favorite webtoons without much effort, artists wants a place where they can post to an audience of thousands, and both sides want a community that will feel tight-knit. But the reality is that you can't really have all three of those things, not on one site. Something always winds up having to be sacrificed - if a site grows big enough, it'll have to start seeking more funding while also cutting costs which will result in features becoming paywall'd, intrusive ads, creators losing their freedom, and/or outsider support which often results in the platform losing its core identity and alienating its tight-knit community.

If I had to describe what I'm talking about in a "pick one" graphic, it would look something like this:

(*note: this is mostly based on my own observations from using all of these sites at some point or another, they're not necessarily entirely accurate to the statistical performance of each site, I can only glean so much from experience and traffic trackers LMAO that said I did ask some comic pals for input and they were very helpful in helping me adjust it with their own takes <3).

The homogenization of the Internet has really whipped people into submission for the "big sites" that offer "everything", but that's never been the Internet, it relies on being multi-faceted and offering different spaces for different purposes. And we're seeing that ideology falter through the enshittification of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. where users are at odds with the platforms because the platforms are gutting features in an attempt to satisfy shareholders whom without the platforms would not exist. Like, most of us aren't paying money to use social media sites / comic platform sites, so where else are they gonna make the necessary funds to keep these sites running? Selling ad space and locking features behind paywalls.

And this is especially true for a lot of budding sites that don't have the audience to support them via crowdfunding but also don't have the leverage to ask for investments - so unless they get really REALLY lucky in EITHER of those departments, they're gonna be operating at a loss, and even once they do achieve either of those things there are gonna be issues in the site's longevity, whether it be dying from lack of growing crowdfunding support or dying from shareholder meddling.

So what can we do?

We can learn how to take our independence back. We don't have to stop using these big platforms altogether as they do have things to offer in their own way, particularly their large audience sizes and dipping into other demographics that might not be reachable from certain sites - but we gotta learn that no single site is going to satisfy every wish we have and we have to be willing to learn the skills necessary to running our own spaces again. Pick up HTML/CSS, get to know other people who know HTML/CSS if you can't grasp it (it's me, I can't grasp it LOL), be willing to take a chance on those "smaller sites" and don't write them off entirely as spaces that can be beneficial to you just because they don't have large numbers or because they don't offer rewards programs. And if you have a really polished piece of work in your hands, look into agencies and publishing houses that specialize in indie comics / graphic novels, don't settle for the first Originals contract that gets sent your way.

For the last decade corporations have been convincing us that our worth is tied to the eyes we can bring to them. Instead of serving ourselves, we've begun serving the big guys, insisting that it has to be worth something eventually and that it'll "payoff" simply by the virtue of gambler's fallacy. Ask yourself what site is right for you and your work rather than asking yourself if your work is good enough for them. Most of us are broke trying to make it work on these sites anyways, may as well be broke and fulfilled by posting in places that actually suit us and our work if we can. Don't define your success by what sites like Webtoons are enforcing - that definition only benefits them, not you.

[technically-human]

i loved seeing the moment of stone realising he was going to stick with robotnik (─‿‿─) could we see the moment ROBOTNIK realises stone is here for good?

Robotnik isn't used to people being happy to see him

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

hi, i wanted to ask what you think about those japanese zoo's training exercises were someone dresses up as an animal and pretends to have escaped and all that, are they effective? what do U.S zoo's do to train for things like that?

They look silly, but they're a real emergency drill! They force people to think through how they'd problem-solve in real time and in the physical space, which is a very different experience than just thinking about it.

There's no consistent requirement for emergency drills in the US federal regulations for zoos, but there is a contingency planning one. Facilities licensed by the USDA have to identify and create plans for addressing likely emergencies they may have to deal with, which is everything from like natural disasters to animal escapes. That's all done as paperwork and provided to the government to prove they've done it.

BUT. That doesn't mean that zoos and other animal facilities don't do more planning on their own. Some of the third-party accreditations (it might be all of them but I don't have the docs in front of me to confirm) require regular drills for all types of emergency scenarios.

Now there's a slight problem there - a real escape drill, run fully on grounds with real people and stand-in animal, interferes with the daily operations of the zoo. You might not have to physically shut all the guests into buildings during a practice leopard escape, but you do need them to not get in the way, and you don't want to scare people who think a drill is real, etc. So there's an alternate option.

US zoos frequently run emergency management drills as TTRGPs!

Like, they use a printed scale map of the zoo and roll dice to randomize the situation. This is absolutely recommended as a strategy by the Zoo and Aquariums All Hazard Partnership: there's a whole webpage about it, including instructions for the Drill Master.

There are in-person drills, of course, because you have to practice dealing with these problems in meatspace. But a lot of them are done tabletop! I cannot express the extent of my mirth when I first encountered this in the wild at a conference about a decade ago, when the idea was really taking off. It was Very Serious Zoo People on a Very Serious Topic about preventing Really Bad Things from happening... and then suddenly there was a d20 on the screen.

[rookiebe]

btw i dont care if loki is canon 6 foot whatever. i think its funnier if he is a shorty <3

[sevastiel]

Sol’s wounds, Lua’s tears

Thinking about umbra drifting in the void post mid-new war-happenings with nothing but the corpse of another lost child.

[reality-detective]

Operation Northwoods...

What else have they done in the past that seems similar to this? 🤔

[narusasuart]

Nooo Gojo, you can't gift someone a stolen flower from their own flower shop!

... Nevermind, it worked.

See Geto's pretty flower shop under cut

[a-most-beloved-fool]

spirk using telepathy to keep each other alive. kirk, desperate, psy-null and untrained, reaching clumsily into spock's dying mind and pulling, dragging spock's essence into himself, wrenching him forceably from the very jaws of death and holding him there through sheer strength of will, saying you can't die, i won't let you, you can't leave me, i need you, and binding him to life and to himself until it's impossible to fully separate them. spock, more skilled, carefully managing each one of kirk's vital signs - keeping his heart beating steady, his lungs drawing breath, his temperature within a safe range, all while suppressing kirk's pain, and at the same trying, vainly, to keep their minds from tying themselves inexorably together, but they're pressed too close and he can't, and he hopes that kirk will forgive him, for bonding them like this (he will, of course he will), but the alternative, letting kirk die, was - unthinkable.

[kaiserouo]

"Huh."

[dasketcherz]

okay, fiiine... your sister's not so bad, goggles.

[zoe-oneesama]

Also, curiosity, what’s your take on Amelie’s personality for Scarlet Lady? Just curiosity. Cause siblings in canon are usually opposites. So, this mean SL!Amelie, instead of main character syndrome, has background character syndrome? Or low self-Steem?

I'd put SL Amelie as So Normal. Like she's born into this bizarre English family that still does arranged marriages in this day and age (not totally knocking the practice, but it's definitely implied it's being done against Emilie's and Amelie's wishes), has a super dramatic sister who runs off with her equally dramatic husband (who Amelie barely likes) to become a fashion mogul's actress wife, rubbing elbows with the Mayor of Paris and a bunch of weird rich people who throw bizarre Diamond Dances to show off their kids as if they're a spectacle and holding Eyes Wide Shut parties in their house.

And Amelie's just like "anyway" on the sideline.

[sequinsandfins]

Carlos’ millions of followers want to know who he’s giving heart eyes to behind the camera of so many of his videos.

Or a little carcar au ficlet idea.

Oscar rolls his eyes at the first question Lando reads out before realising that Carlos’ eyes are on him, an amused twist to his lips.

Oscar knows this because he’s had to review and edit hours of footage featuring Carlos.

.

When Lando first asks Oscar to be his ‘cameraman’ for a client, Oscar just looks at him dubiously, but Lando promises that it is legitimate, he just needs someone he can trust.

Turns out his client is Carlos Sainz Jr.

Oscar doesn’t live under a rock and so is well aware of the popular influencer, thrust into the public eye care of his famous father, Carlos had stayed largely out of the public eye until in 2020, seemingly bored out of his mind during lockdown Carlos had started a public Instagram.

Five years later and Carlos had over 10 million followers and had decided that he needed some professional assistance.

.

The goal of a good reality filmmaker is to blend into their environment, to capture their subject and not affect what is happening.

Turns out Oscar isn’t great at any of that.

Luckily for him Carlos doesn’t seem to care. Quite the opposite, over the last six months that Oscar has been assisting Lando with filming, Carlos has made it his mission to get Oscar to laugh.

He doesnt mean to become a viral sensation. In fact it’s all Carlos’ fault.

If it were up to him the footage would never have been uploaded. Unfortunately for Oscar, he doesn’t make those calls.

The video is pretty standard, it’s an ‘AMA’ style with Lando reading out questions and Carlos answering them. That is until Lando asks, “Carlos, describe your perfect date?”

Carlos feigns deep thought for a moment before responding, “April 25th because it's not too hot or too cold.” And Oscar can’t stop the snort from escaping. Carlos looks triumphant and yells “Aha!” Pointing to Oscar offscreen, even as the camera is dropping downwards and to the ground, you can hear Carlos crowing with glee.

Needless to say the internet goes insane trying to work out who Carlos is so happy to amuse.

In the end, Oscar thinks Carlos might actually be trying to break the internet, and his mind when he starts throwing out suggestive double entendres.

His main goal, to get Oscar to drag them behind the nearest closed door, leaving Lando behind.

Lando is thankful they are away from the public eye, but he also looks like he’s questioning every single life choice he’s made up until that point.

Oscar doesn’t regret a thing.

[fizzyboy]

Hi moot, just popping by from my hiatus cave to show you a little something I'm working on.

Look! My boy! He might get wrecked, but look at him go!

[avocadoonthetrain]

This might be the most chaotic thing I have ever done in my life

I recently have gotten a coworker's portrait drawn and printed on stickers and button pins, which I then distributed to all our other coworkers, who wasted no time and started immediately showing them off on their bags and tablets. Stickers then started appearing around our workspace. Someone brought them abroad during vacation and left them in public spaces.

This man's face is now slowly becoming viral.

When asked why I did this, all I could answer was: because we love him and having his face go viral seemed like a good way to show him how much he means to us!