#look give me this

[verfound]

Tag 3 People You Want To Get To Know Better

I got tagged by @goldenlaurelleaveswrites & @blueberry-macaron...I think sometime in the past day. 😂 what is time

Currently Reading: ...I have two physical books that I've slowly been reading through for over a year now. I am ashamed to admit that. 😂 I refuse to even say what they are bc I'm 90% sure they were the same books I was reading the last time I got tagged with one of these. So we'll just say an assortment of fic? I haven't been reading as much lately due to health and time reasons.

Favourite colour:  I am absolute trash for color - the brighter the better - but if I have to pick a favorite, it's turquoise. I have a ridiculous amount of turquoise things. (Sometimes it's called aqua, sometimes teal, sometimes seaglass, but it's that lovely shade of shiny blue-green. 🖤)

Last Song: "If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?" - Mayday Parade. It's been a Week, and Week's usually find me blaring my All Time Low Pandora. This song came on this morning (MP is slowly taking over my ATL station 😂), and I'm desperately trying to ignore the Luka Wrote This Post-Truth vibes I'm getting. Valentine's is just around the corner, dammit!

Last Movie: ...mum was watching Wakanda Forever when I crawled in tonight. I saw just enough to find out a favorite dies when mum said "Well I guess doing two shows was too much for her." Does that count? 😂

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: ...right now my throat's so raw I just want soft and warm 😂 I had spicy soup for lunch to help with my sinuses? I love spicy, I like sweet (I'm a baker), but savory? It all depends Idk I like food I'm fat ok 😂

Currently working on: The Valentine's Epic I swore I wasn't gonna do but [Redacted] demanded with great prompts. And that's all I'm at liberty to say for twelve more days. 😝

Bonus: ...IT came to fix something at the school I was at today, and I'm ok admitting I'm just shallow enough to admit he was a cute nerd that left cat memes on the desk. That was actually the highlight of my day, even though I'm pretty sure no one else in the kitchen appreciated him. 😂

Tagging...have the usual suspects all been tagged? @chromemist @bloody-no-kissu @fenheart87 did you guys get hit yet? I know Quick & Mal have 😂

[crabussy]

challenged myself to make simpler redesigns that match the show constraints because I often create very complex designs and I wanted to see if I could make something I liked without going too over the top!! pretty happy with these [:

if you have any questions about my design choices ask away!!

part 2 with ten gazillion background characters including sunburst, luna, and twilight's canterlot friends!

[canisalbus]

✦ I've been saving all my summers for you ✦

[hansoeii]

crowley

[musubiki]

my favorite fields of mistria boys 🥰

[lonesomedreamer]

ALIEN LANDSCAPES of STAR TREK

[batbabydamian]

*you opening the love letter* what does your damijon look like, pls pls pls pls pls pls pls, i know it would be so cute, i just know it 🙏🙏🙏

here you go! thank you for the ask, this was a lot of fun to do! they're working on a case together ^^

[jinaxxo]

the dunmeshi party if i were to be the lord of the dungeon.. just a glimpse into my dark reality..

[e-turn]

links to some translations under the cut

и заодно выложу пару любопытным образом перекликающихся переводов потрясающих фанфиков!

тьма нынче обретает жизнь великолепного автора @/goodlucktai

и еще одна покорившая меня зарисовка rem - а тени пусть уходят

[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.

[herd-reject-arts]

So I'm leaving work and something darts in front of me, maybe 10ft away, too fast for me to see what it is. Peek around the tree blocking my path and I see this

Just like... a whole ass hawk. Dude's gotta be about 1.5ft tall. Massive fucking bird. And it's just staring me straight in my soul like this, even as I try to move ahead. It didn't budge. And there's only this path back to my car unless I want to walk on a busy highway. So I have the option of Death By Raptor or Death By Truck.

So I walk in the poison ivy filled patch off the sidewalk. Guy still isn't moving. Still staring me directly in the eyes. And I do this thing when animals are behaving strangely where I'll talk to them, so I'm just like, "Hey, man. I don't know you. You don't know me. This feels really threatening. I'm just trying to get to my car, dude. Can I get some space please? You're a big fucking bird. I see those claws. You could kill me right now, but I'd appreciate if you didn't, ok?"

It didn't move until I was about 2ft away. Again: I'm as far from it as I can be without walking into the street. It clearly wasn't going to budge. I walk past, thing flies up (silent, btw. Scary) and lands on a brick wall a little further ahead

Anyway. Weird guy. Nearly shit my pants when I noticed a bird big enough to carry off a fully grown cat was just... there, staring me in the face, unwilling to move away from me, a human, something it should see as a threat. I watched behind me the whole rest of the way to my car, just in case this bird decided to help me shed this mortal coil. 10/10 experience. Super cool guy.

[ghosted-jazz]

I am not immune to this car salesman fairy and his traumaised iPad kid

[lazylittledragon]

Dadstarion has me in a chokehold and the way you draw him being so GENTLE with Kit is so precious, I would die to see the transition from his new parent terror to how comfortable he eventually gets with him :O

of course he got there eventually <333

[bacchuschucklefuck]

no more fan-ta-sizing about it! everything's already changed~

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton draws FNAF tape girl for Vanessa,,

[egophiliac]

was this anyone else's first thought, or