#also op...

[thunderon]

“long hair on guys doesn’t make them less masculine. think keanu reeves, jason momoa, danny trejo, or the guy at your local dive bar who rides a motorcycle”

*the crowd nods*

“so long hair doesn’t necessarily determine masculinity”

*the crowd, more hesitant, still nodding*

“butches can have long hair—“

*GUNSHOT*

[softwaring]

lmfaooo

[themetalhiro]

If he had any.

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[borgevino]

there are so many things on gods green earth that are not platonic but are also not romantic. the erotic, the familial, the unconditional, weird codependency, weird codependency (hatred edition), etc. let us all broaden our horizons

[stargirl230]

thanks for the light

I was just trying to figure out how procreate works but then the op brainworms got to me and 35 hours later here we are! can you tell I miss home-cooked meals :')

(no reposts; reblogs appreciated)

[nesbiter]

I'm loving how Zeff put Luffy's wanted poster underneath 'Employee of the Month'.

[twilight-zoned-out]

Some things about Allan:

He’s the only one who reacts to the narrator

He’s the only doll (besides the Weird House) who isn’t swayed in some way by Ken’s takeover

He also declares himself as “Ken's buddy" (making canon his official box description) which makes his inability to be swayed more interesting

He has bendable legs (probably the only reason he tries to jump the fence instead of going around like everyone else)

He easily decked a half-dozen construction Kens and could probably singlehandedly win the Ken fight

He seems to know more about the real world than most Barbies

He knows what NSYNC is 

He knows about other Allan copies living in the real world (I’m trying to figure out if he made this up to convince the humans he can live in the real world, but even if he did, how does he know what NSYNC is???)

There are no other Allan models

[dykealloy]

what do you mean jennifer saunder's shrek 2 cover of Holding Out for a Hero didn't play over the entirety of dressrosa arc

[thunderon]

so my roommate is completely straight edge like no drugs no alcohol etc and so im sure y’all can imagine my surprise when i saw she brought home this sign

so i immediately inquired

and now you may ask. what the fuck did my roommate think that sign meant? well

anyways i moved the sign so it’s now front and center in our living room and ive been laughing every time i pass it

[raynewolferune]

DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)

Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:

~

" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.

They glanced at each other and shrugged.

Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.

Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "

~

Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.

[threateningwatercress]

their combined level of freak is unmatched

[eohachu]

WATCHED IN 2024:

Interview With the Vampire (2022-), season 2, episode 5

ASSAD ZAMAN as ARMAND

"you're going to teach me how to be fascinating."

[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.

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

in-school-suspension was honestly so extremely funny because i had undiagnosed Problems Disorder and unironically i LOVED being sent to ISS.

average day of ISS (sent there for 3 days because i was late to a class three times within a 9-week period):

arrive at school and say a silly dramatic farewell to my besties

stop at each of my classrooms to receive makeup work from my teachers which always ends up being some bullshit worksheet or textbook busywork

arrive at ISS portable and go through the daily rigamarole intro of "you are Bad and you should Feel Bad. welcome to Bad Class, a confirmation that you will never make anything of your life, you horrid creature. you are not allowed to speak, eat, or feel joy. no doodling or reading, if you don't have makeup work or homework i will assign busywork to you. fuck you. *spits*"

spend the next 4 hours doing my busywork. it is QUIET. i can CONCENTRATE. the work gets DONE EARLY.

the work only took 2 hours maximum, i spend the other 2 hours writing fanfiction manually in a composition book pretending that I'm doing textbook work. i am having the time of my life.

our lunch time is the 10 minutes between the two lunch periods. there is no line, because there's only ever 5-15 ISS students. i get to EAT instead of STANDING IN A LINE for half an hour and only having 4 minutes to scarf down my garbage.

at the end of lunch, we are led in a big duck line through the school and we each get to stop off at our usual classes and pick up work to do. i already did this in the morning, so i use my time to say hi to my friends and figure out what the homework will be tonight.

for the last 2 hours of the day i do my homework. IT GETS DONE. this is the ONLY time during high school where homework gets done. zero exaggeration. i never did homework unless i was actively in a classroom with no choice but to do homework.

we get the usual outro of "this has been your day in Bad Class, because you're a Bad Child. some of you will be here tomorrow, some of you will not, but i'll see you again in a couple of weeks, because you are Bad and will always be Bad."

the school day is over, i did not encounter any of my bullies, i did not have to 'participate in class'. i got all of my work done and then some. i got to work on my fanfics. i hang out with my friends after school and talk to others on myspace/facebook.

it is the best three days i have in recent memory.

i will be there again, probably on purpose.

[aqueductaquarii]

egghead law...on one hand i think he would choose battle-ready clothing but also end up pressing the hawaiian shirt button at the last second. on the other hand i think he would wear a shaka-esque coat...