#Also the building

[mightybeaujester]

I'm visiting London and went on a lil "locations from the Magnus Archives" tour and not only found this bench for all your "having a mental breakdown and smoking while your boss is murdering the guy that's kind of responsible for your childhood trauma w a steel pipe"-needs, but also this door leading somewhere basement-y (like an archive?) that is apparently alarmed, and is completely obstructed by a huge spider web including spider. Absolute perfection.

[nat-20s]

name a more iconic thing to happen for the fictional qpr community than Donna Noble quite literally meeting her soulmate and being like hmm. there's no one I've ever wanted to fuck less

[kimabutch]

One of my favourite questions for figuring out a character’s motivations is which qualities they most fear being assigned to them. Are they afraid (consciously or unconsciously) of being seen as stupid? Ungrateful? Weak? Incompetent? Lazy? Cowardly? Intimidating? Like they actually care? etc.

It’s such a fun way to explore into who they are, why they do what they do, what they don’t do out of fear, and how they might be affected by the events of the story. And I love when characters have negative motivations—trying to avoid something (in this case, being seen a particular way) as much as they’re trying to achieve a goal.

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[a-method-in-it]

You know that Chris Fleming line that goes "Call yourself a community organizer even though you're not on speaking terms with your roommates"?

I honestly think every leftist who talks about the "revolution" like Christians talk about the rapture needs to spend a year trying to organize their workplace. Anyone who sincerely talks about building a movement so vast and all-encompassing that it overwhelms all existing power structures needs the dose of humility that comes with realizing they can't even build a movement to get people paid better at a badly run AMC Theaters where everyone already hates the manager.

[lylahammar]

the way that this page in particular was adapted just OOZES studio trigger tbh. like I know everyone likes to joke about studio trigger being the horny studio, but the quick jerky animation direction is what truly makes their work recognizable to me. I can practically see Lio Fotia bleeding through the pixels in that 5 frame animation of Falin peeking through her fingers

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.

[noodles-and-tea]

Twins in time au.... Would Fiddleford act as a sort of father figure to Stan? Since Filbrick obviously SUCKED to both Stan and Ford and Fidd is more than definitely missing HIS son, and of course Ford has grown to love him but they're still BROTHERS.. Maybe they could act as the father/son the other is missing?

ABSOLUTELY!!!!

[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.

[ruporas]

and together we set out on a journey to find treasure! (id in alt)

[diabolicjoy]

you can start learning anything you always wanted at any point in your life. & how nice it is to remember that

[chloesimaginationthings]

Gregory has it best out of the new FNAF protagonists..

[sunderwight]

Scenario where cumplane become friends before the Abyss, and Luo Binghe determines that actually, Shang Qinghua is potentially his biggest romantic rival.

Not because Shang Qinghua is particularly seductive, and not even because of their friendship, but because Shang Qinghua actually seems to be fluent in Shen Qingqiu's weird and at times contradictory signals.

Liu Qingge and Yue Qingyuan can yearn and pine all they want, but they can't even convey romantic interest in a format Shen Qingqiu can or will recognize, so at the end of the day they're making all of these overtures and Shen Qingqiu is just like oh what nice friends :) about it. There's way less risk of him ever accepting their suits when he can't recognize them as such, and when neither of the other guys even realize he can't recognize them as such!

But Shang Qinghua...

Shang Qinghua knows that Shen Qingqiu is unaware, too. And he knows how to make him aware. He knows how to parse Shen Qingqiu's odd double-speak and mixed signals maybe even better than Luo Binghe himself. Plus he can anticipate what things Shen Qingqiu is liable to react strangely or inconsistently towards, when again, even Binghe struggles to do that sometimes!

If Shang Qinghua ever made a move on Shen Qingqiu, he would be able to convey his intentions clearly. And before Binghe has the social standing to actually present himself as a viable alternative, he wouldn't even be able to argue against the match! It would be totally dependent on whether or not Shen Qingqiu was interested, and Luo Binghe cannot say with confidence that he actually wouldn't be? Shang Qinghua may be the weakest and least dashing of the peak lords, but he's not bad looking. He even has certain traits which Luo Binghe himself shares, traits Binghe's deliberately tried to emphasize because he knows Shizun responds to them, like being pathetic, and clingy, and clumsy, and having big eyes and curls in his hair and doing important work that helps make Shen Qingqiu's life more comfortable...!

Luo Binghe starts spying on Shang Qinghua. He is going to get dirt on him, and he is going to blackmail him into swearing that he will never ever attempt to court Shen Qingqiu! At least not until after Binghe has reached his majority and can fairly compete with him for his master's affections!

Of course, this is how Luo Binghe discovers that Shang Qinghua is a spy for Mobei Jun, and is plotting to assist in an attack on the Immortal Alliance Conference.

A revelation which accidentally creates such an untenable situation that the plot shifts irrevocably. All Shen Qingqiu knows about it is that out of nowhere the System has offered to remove the Endless Abyss mandatory plot point but only if Shen Qingqiu agrees to purchase something it's calling The Espionage Path...?

[birdiegray01]

Bruce gets Damian legos because he’s trying to connect with him and the two end up completely missing patrol because they were to busy building all of Gotham with the legos

[reimenaashelyee]

The Creator's Guide to Comics Devices is OPEN!!! comicsdevices.com

An online library of visual-narrative devices that are used in the medium of comics and other sequential art.

Happy Halloween! I'm really excited to be finally launching* what is maybe one of my most ambitious, largest work yet. This online library is the next phase of a research project that began in May 2020, when I first mused on how comics as a field doesn't have a resource that catalogues devices used in the medium. Like, theatre has devices, so does literature, and film! So why shouldn't comics? I always had an interest in comics studies and analysis. I love reading, making and thinking comics. However most of my knowledge was intuitive - I learned comics from osmosis and experience. This is true for many of my peers. Speaking about comics as a creator is hard, because we don't have a robust system of language. When we had to speak, many of us tend to reach for the language developed for film by film practitioners. If there is language specific to comics, it's either scattered in multiple blogs or hidden away in academic journals. The Comics Devices library is meant to aggregate everything and everybody into a single hub! After exploring some multiple resources, alongside some original, independent research, here is the first edition! * The Comics Devices project is still a work-in-progress! It's not final, nor will it ever be. This is why I am seeking contributors to help build this library. Translations, comics examples, etc. There is a lot of work to do! If you are interested, reply to this post or submit an expression of interest on this page.  Have fun everyone!! (Now time for me to melt x_x)

[reasonsforhope]

Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."

Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.

These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!

Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!

Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.

So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.