#like collectibles

[michelangelos-last-judgement]

IT'S HERE !!!!

[flouryhedgehog]

Turning off the reblogs on this. At the time I wrote it, it felt like what I needed to say. There's not as much activity on the post now, but when there is, I feel...sort of hollow. We're so far past the point where this even means anything.

Y'all remember "cops aren't supposed to kill guilty people, either", right?

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to die beneath the rubble of their homes.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be shot with expanding bullets that cause massive tissue damage leading to amputation.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to have their flesh burned away with white phosphorous.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve their fishing boats blown up.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to see their husbands and fathers executed in front of them along evacuation routes.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve an anonymous phone call threatening to destroy their lives and families.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be detained for years without charges.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be tortured, starved, and sexually assaulted in prison.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be deprived of water.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve their olive trees to be uprooted while they look on.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve sixteen years of blockade.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve to be prevented from traveling for lifesaving medical care.

Palestinians who have done something wrong don't deserve this genocide.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

historical drama/sitcom where two gay best friends (woman and man) get lavender married--and proceed to spend the Fancy European Honeymoon their parents paid for acting as each other's wingman

[crookedtines]

I finally took the time to photograph my vintage dip pen nib collection, and I need to share with you all how wonderful and diverse their designs are.

These two are my favorite. Just look at them! One of them is named Gorille and the other Mephisto, but to me they're little pumpkins.

And of course you gotta love the Pinocchio nib. You get to write with the nose of a tiny guy! Just not something you get to do anymore.

[daturanerium]

obsessed with this genre of images

[cheekedupwhiteboy]

thinking about her

[xx-k1tsun3-k1d-xx]

the mobile phone museum is a online museum featuring over 2000 types of old and funky phones that’s amazing for seeing old phones and getting info about them for stuff like writing/art or just because they’re so cool and i love them look at them

behold! some of my favourite silly creatures :3

[unholyhymns]

still one of my favorite bits i ever got to commit was pretending not to know who jesus is when a street preacher was evangelizing to me. he was like "do you know who jesus is?" and i had so much time before my next bus and i wanted to know what would happen so i said no. and you know what. he had clearly never been told no to that question before because if i hadn't actually known who jesus was, his baffled and fumbling attempt sure wouldn't have told me. literally reversed the roles. now you get to stand here feeling very uncomfortable and wishing you could be somewhere else because guess what buddy, this is my bus stop, im early (and can catch like five other buses from this exact stop), and im now thoroughly invested in hearing about this mysterious jesus figure. you're locked in here with me. im eating the key as we speak. i will kill us both before i let you out of here.

very highly recommend this bit if you can pull it off and if you have time to kill

[captain-mozzarella]

I headcanon that all of Yoda's finest teacups were made by younglings

In fact most masters of the order's finest teacups were made during crèche crafting time when the kids were learning pottery.

[your-local-granny]

"We have to make sure you become recognized as a first-rate prosecutor, don't we? .......It wouldn't be very interesting otherwise."

[braininatankwithalaptop]

I like to imagine Marcille deals with her grief of outliving Falin (her wife) and Laois (her platonic soulmate) by looking for new friends that are just as weird/obsessive as the Touden siblings. Through this process of finding generations of weirdos she starts to notice genetic patterns and similarities to the point that she "discovers" autism. She names it Touden syndrome though.

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF nightmare foxy is a huge fan of Roxanne Wolf,,

[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.

[tawnysoup]

(You nod furiously.)

[acinonyxxx]

pov: ur the touden siblings and have just come back, leaving the rest of the party unattended for an indeterminate amount of time

ORIGINAL UNDER CUT

[parisoonic]

pals drinking together (hand practice that got out of control)