#ask new!

[mushroomjar]

(Part 1) Vetted fundraisers that have reached out to me:

@bilal-salah0 here (verification)

@reemshehab / fahedshehab9 / danashehab / fahed-shehab-9 here (verification)

@hyamshehabnew11 here (verification)

@mahmoud-sharif here (verification)

@hamzahilles here (verification)

@wafaaresh here (verification)

@mohiy-gaza here (verification)

@aymanayyad82 / mayadayyad81 here (verification)

@bisanalbalawi18 here (verification)

@mahmoudayyad here (verification)

@save-salem-family2 here (verification)

@noorabd1992 here (verification)

@fidaa-family0 / fidaa-family2 here (verification)

@fedao here (verification)

@ahmedalnabeeh11 here (verification)

@anqar here (verification)

@islamgazaaccount2 here (verification)

@karamrafeek here (verification)

@save-salam-family here (verification)

@mohammadyaser1980 / y2082008 / yasermohammad here (verification)

@samiraayman here (verification)

@yousefhamaad11 here (verification)

@aseelo680 here (verification)

@mahmoud1995 here (verification)

@abdelmutei here (verification)

@hayanahed here (verification)

@noor-family here (verification)

@abeeribrahim2006 here (verification)

@mahmoud0hilles here (verification)

@as-maa-56 / asmaa2005 here (verification)

@girlquee here (verification)

@frhatfamily here (verification)

@aslambalousha here (verification)

@ahmed-mohammed1 here (verification)

@heba-baker here (verification)

@khaled-gaza here (verification)

@aya2mohammed here (verification)

@save-hijazi-family2 here (verification)

@help-mona here (verification)

@hazempalestine here (verification)

@atalah-mohammed here (verification)

@hanaa987 here (verification)

@ahedalshaer here (verification)

@children-gaza here (verification)

@ahmedkhabil here (verification)

@abood-family-gaza here (verification)

@bshaeromars-blog here (verification)

@hsalem-1 here (verification)

Last updated: August 7th, 2024

EDIT: I reached the limit number of mentions you can make in one post, so I'm continuing in a reblog. You can find it here

[firestia]

Little pony princesses 💗

[yourangle-yuordevil]

That time in ancient Greece when Aziraphale needed a speedy horse and accidentally invented the pegasus

VS.

Whatever Crowley had going on in medieval times

[sergle]

ALSO IMPORTANT TO NOTE, people dropping mad mad sums of money on gfms and charities and stuff are extremely impressive but that DOES NOT MEAN that putting like $5 towards someone's fund or any good cause is any less valuable, a lot of crowdfunding is about momentum and those single digits add up super fast, you do not need to be Rolling In The Dough to make someone's day!! moving the dial at all is extremely positive!!

[krysmcscience]

I have some questions about karaoke night, Alex Hirsch. Very Important Questions. Which I will happily scream at a poor hapless baby triangle who can have no answers for me, and possibly also does not have object permanence yet.

Follow-up that is I guess suggestive, but let's be real here, Bill's a fucking triangle:

Dude slipped right into his birthday suit, lmao

this is so stupid :D

Anyway, I don't care what anyone says, this brilliant individual knows what's up - Bill is absolutely way more of a monsterfucker than Ford could or ever will be, full stop.

[bighornerherder]

This payment is WILD, the package is just a dinky old poker chip. Anyway, wish me luck everyone!

[kenvamp]

Uhm. Hello hermit nation🫣

[zipper-neck]

You know the fic is going to be great when 😈

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!

[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.

[propagandistisk]

komaeda and ouma charts i made for myself for future reference, one day i'll draw something more specific with them lol

[dellta-danger]

Have you ever broken the law and what is the story behind it? Bonus points for multiple stories

[communistkenobi]

how did you know you were trans

thought about it

[reasonsforhope]

Sorry I'm kind of dissociated and my vocab crashes during that can you explain the Biden drug thing in just. Shorter simple sentences.

Sure! You're not the only one who's mentioned being unclear on what it means either, and I'm happy to help

(Context for anyone else: US Sets Policy to Seize Patents of Government-Funded Drugs if Price Deemed Too High, via Good News Network, December 11, 2023)

From the very basics:

When drug companies create new drugs, they get a legal protection called a "patent." The patent means no one else can make or sell the same drug for whatever number of years.

Usually, this is about 10 years after the drug starts being sold to the public.

So, for those years, that one drug company is the only source of whatever medication. And since people need their medication, drug companies can charge however much money they want.

Meaning a lot of drugs that people need to live cost way too much money to buy.

So, with this, Biden told drug companies "Fuck you, if you keep making medicine too $$$ for people to afford, I'm giving your competition the right to make and sell those drugs too."

The US has never done anything like this before.

This is a huge threat to the whole (awful) drug industry in the US. It will save people thousands of dollars. If he does this, it will save lives.

--

Edit 12/17/23: Quick note, as people have said in the notes, this only applies to drugs made in part using taxpayer money. Which is! Literally all of them!

[hinamie]

spiraling

[rehabsh98]

🚨 dangerous 🚨

With the beginning of winter..

The obsession with fear has become great

Air breezes increase in frequency with the arrival of the evening hours, and with their arrival they move the tent fabrics and curtains left and right, and the sky is clear for one hour and cloudy for another hour, with a feeling of coldness sweeping through the bodies at night. These are signs that indicated the arrival of the awaited autumn season for winter lovers, indicating the end of the summer season with its scorching flame.

With the first light showers of rain falling on various areas in the Gaza Strip governorates on Sunday morning, seawater submerged hundreds of tents set up on the seashore.

Last night we lived through a difficult night in which there was a mixed feeling of fear, fear of the (Israeli) occupation and its targets, and fear of rain water!"

High prices of caddies Today we are witnessing a sudden and

unprecedented rise in the prices of shaders in the markets, as their price has become 5 times what they were a month ago. In addition to that, we need wood to install the shader, and the price of wood has also increased.

Shader: It is what is placed over the tent to protect it from rainwater

The tents we live in are at risk of drowning in the coming days, especially since we are meters from the coast, in a low-lying area, and we have not been able to buy blinds.

I ask you to provide assistance to my family of 4 members, including 2 children, who are in desperate need of you and your support in light of the extreme danger surrounding them.

Note:

Vetted by:

@bilal-salah0 here

@gazavetters Our team at #GazaVetters has rigorously vetted and approved this campaign, earning it a spot on our official list at #46 . here

@a-shade-of-blue here

@ibtisams here

Dear Palestine supporter… I have seen your great interest in the Palestinian campaigns, and this is a great honor for us. I am happy to get to know you and talk to you ♥️

@appsa @sar-soor @sayruq @stuckinapril @heritageposts @neptunerings @feluka @malcriada @queerstudiesnatural @rizzyluke @determinate-negation