#i'm so Bad at it lol but i am really interested

[zeninsama]

ummmm fitness journey for anyone who is interested. cw for weight loss/dieting (and death lol) under the cut.

waaaagh i am so proud of myself, i'm like six pounds away from my goal weight ;-;

before i started working out seriously i was at the highest weight i've ever been at and i knew smth had to change because i started to feel physically awful all the time. always tired, always nauseous. sometimes when i'd lay in bed my arms would go numb. bad shit. both my dad and grandma have had type 2 diabetes (under control now) and my stepdad passed from a heart attack and he really struggled with getting his shit together so i really felt motivated.

i've been working out for a hot minute but i've recently started eating in a calorie deficit and it's made all the difference (i was working out and then accidentally overeating and wondering why i was only losing like one pound every few months, i thought it was my birth control). i love cooking so planning and prepping meals has been so much fun ;-; i was definitely butthurt as hell when i found out how many calories were in my poke bowl because that is my comfort food... and i am the kind of person to douse shit in sauce... waugh,... but right now i'm trying to deficit enough to lose a pound or two a week and it's worked!

when i first weighed myself before working out at all, i was at 165. right now i'm at 151 and my goal is to maintain 145 and get hella muscular. i'm 5'4 for reference. also oh my god the visible results??? my quad muscles are insane and my chest is getting kinda broad if that makes sense... like sexy inverted triangle chest and shoulders... biceps are looking cut too. oh my god. i've officially gone down a pants size and outgrown (under grown??) my binder too ... sheesh.

[syringaledraws]

The World Ends with Rain or smth like that

Twewy kids as a bunch of slugcats! yay

Also, additional iterator!Joshua concept thing, because of course I had to give it a try too

[tradingjack]

having fun with colors for once :P

thanks @creepycoffins for the awesome dtiys :D

[wonder-worker]

Studies of Elizabeth Woodville […] have been hampered by the continuing fascination with her brother-in-law, Richard III. The Ricardian [and Yorkist] apologetic is now largely dependent upon the argument that the Woodville family posed such a threat to Richard of Gloucester, and the kingdom as a whole, that Gloucester had little option but to take the throne from his Woodville-dominated nephew. Although this argument has [irregularly] been contested, a reassessment of the queen's role in 1483 has not yet been attempted. Michael Bennett, in his 1987 account [...] still dismissed her as `an inveterate intriguer, capable in her vanity and fecklessness of some remarkable shifts and turns'. But more often she is scarcely mentioned in general histories of the period.

— J.L. Laynesmith, “English Queenship 1445-1503” (Thesis for the degree of DPhil in Medieval Studies, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, April 1999)

[icewindandboringhorror]

I occasionally wish to reach out to old friends/acquaintances I haven't spoken to since high school/some other even earlier time in my life, but I have SOOO little social energy even for required tasks (like making dr phone calls or etc), I never have any leftover for extra ones, and it would be very odd to message someone I haven't spoken to in like 5 years out of the blue but then take 4 entire months to respond back lol.. My natural curiosity with nostalgia/collecting details of the past/etc. (literally if I were born a little earlier I would definitely do scrapbooking or something lol) is very strong, but, alas, not strong enough to beat out the Social Issues Demons apparently

[torchickentacos]

I'm reading poetry at 1 am and spiraling over like 45 emotions at once, which is how poetry was meant to be enjoyed, I think

[moogghost]

pictured: me wanting to make more friends who have more of an interest in my current hyperfixation bc i have No One to talk about it in depth to rn but my dilemma of being bad at making friends bc of The Anxiety and coming off as weird

[milkyberryjsk]

interests updates (sort of)

[oozeandgoo-art]

had an odd dream that i was reading a comic book. sketched a couple of the pages i could remember.

[sysig]

By the skin of your teeth (Patreon)

[chrisbangs]

hello... (and bye ig 👋)

[corpocyborg]

having played a decent amount of bg3 now i can say with absolute certainty that i'm going to durgetash hell

[guinevereslancelot]

oh shit it's getting real

[piratadelamor]

its a bit weird that i know both of my boyfriend's exes personally and even weirder that we all look like each other because he really has a type and there's the fact that his first ex shows up all the time on my instagram and his second ex is weirdly obsessed with trying to keep contact with him even though she was the one who left him for someone else (on december 23rd !!) and she stalked me on ig and she's friends with my roommate and like. this is my first time not being my partner's first gf so it's my first time dealing with ex gfs and it's all just super weird to me

[on-sinkingships]

y'all, I am so sorry that the new stranger skin chapter is taking a while. I'm going into my final semester of university, and it's going to be pretty stressful, so things may be a bit more erratic for the next few months. I love and care about this story so much, and it will get finished, but I think it's going to be a bit slow for a minute.

[webcomic-character-tournament]

Genuine question. Why are comics from online only publishers discouraged? What is the goal behind discouraging paid webcomics?

sorry for taking so long to answer this!

i got really excited about answering this but also am not very good at communicating things clearly, i often get lost in the details in my passion about stuff like this, so i hope this is still interesting to read and intelligible lol!

i dont think there is any one thing that inherently defines what is and isn't a webcomic, it's an amorphous category that i enjoy the ambiguity of. but for me, what first led to my wonder for them as an 11 year old, and what has been a major factor in my passion for them even as an adult, was their low barrier to entry in both making them and accessing them. if you have internet access and time, almost anyone can make a webcomic if they want to! of course, without editors (or often even full story plans) or sensitivity readers or more people on a team to collaborate and contribute to the comic's vision, and the huge effort that it takes to do all the tasks of writing, inks, coloring, lettering, etc. all on ones own often without professional resources to facilitate that, that means that a lot of webcomics are really rough in some way or another. but a lot of people have interesting ideas they want to work with, but don't have the technical skill, desire or ability to market themselves or be beholden to external work deadlines, or connections in some way or another to be able to share those ideas through traditional publishing. regardless of skill or ability, a lot of marginalized people are barred from having their stories accepted by publishers due to bigotry and expectations about what kind of story is profitable.

as a disabled lgbt kid, i definitely read a lot of really bad webcomics i wish i hadn't, but also some of the media i was exposed to that most represented me back then was in the form of webcomics from people a lot like me. and i could read so much of it easily and for free without having to risk much to access it behind my parents' backs!

obviously that isn't the case for every webcomic, but for me and my history with them, them being easily accessible to both publish and read has been really important.

there are absolutely a lot of good points to be made about how publishing free to read webcomics isn't always the most accessible thing for a lot of people, especially for poor and disabled people. making webcomics takes a huge amount of time and effort, and sometimes even if people are passionate about making a comic, they just can't afford to find the time for that around all the other responsibilities of their day to day lives unless it can be a consistent income source. thats why even if paid online comics arent my platonic ideal of webcomics, i absolutely would never exclude them. i want small creators making stories i want to read to get the money they need to survive and keep telling stories without burning out!

it could be argued that online publishers who specifically focus on webcomics don't always present the same barriers to entry as traditional publishers, and many don't restrict the scope of marginalized creators' stories at all or to the same extent as people have struggled in other more mainstream avenues. and from my outside understanding of publishers like hiveworks, i'd absolutely agree with that! i love a lot of hiveworks comics and think its an awesome thing! (of course literally my icon is from a hiveworks comic, tiger tiger!) nonetheless however, part of my goals with this tournament is to highlight lesser known comics, and as publishers like hiveworks help advertise and promote their comics, even if i still want everyone to read all my favorite comics published by them, and certainly there are limits to those advertising resources, they still don't need as much help as other comics without that support. so its not as much 'try not to submit these' and more 'as you submit stuff like this, try to submit stuff with less advertising resources and popularity too!'

going into this tournament i also had a similar sentiment for stuff like webtoons originals. there was an added element to me in how i feel like i know a lot of people nowadays who read webtoons but don't have much awareness of other forms of webcomic, but even if in my love for webcomics i want people to come to appreciate all the breadth of ways they can exist in, thats obviously not something to make a huge priority. it's incredible the amount of forms comics can take (sidenote but reading scott mccloud's "understanding comics" a couple years ago was really formative for me in cementing how much i appreciate that, i'd highly recommend it!!!), and the way infinite scroll comics like webtoon style comics more fully make use of their digital medium, using time scrolling to pace things in place of traditional gutters and panelling, is really really cool. of course they're becoming more popular in a world where more people have smartphones, where webtoon style comics are a lot easier to read than many other forms. i love a lot of webtoons, and id feel regressive to discourage stuff like line webtoon original comics any more than stuff like hiveworks comics, just to go against current trends in what comics people seem to prefer. they have a similar low barrier to entry (through contests) as other online publishers, and it's cool to see creators get the opportunity to get paid for their work and get help from professional editors and stuff

but in the past couple weeks of running this tournament, i ended up reading a lot more about the behind the scenes of what its like to be a line webtoon original creator. line webtoon's expectations for their creators are incredibly unrealistic and exploitative, with grueling deadlines leading to a lot of creators to get repetitive strain injuries, all while working for well below industry standards. obviously a lot of webcomic creators make an inconsistent poverty level income out of it as independent creators, and that shouldn't happen either, but it's absolutely inexcusable for a company to profit off this labor and then manufacture these same conditions. without any organized labor movement surrounding that issue, that of course isn't an argument against reading or promoting these comics on its own, creators are more likely to get more income if their comics get more popular, and despite the promise of popularity by becoming an official comic, they absolutely still aren't all promoted equally. what has made me want to slightly more discourage (but still absolutely not disallow!) stuff like line webtoon official comics has been the combination of that along with learning that much of the editing of webtoons originals carries less of the benefits of having experienced creatives collaborating with creators to elevate their stories to new levels, and very often instead ends up taking the form of 'simplify this plotline and make this character look more attractive and fit this archetype more fully so we can market this better and have readers easily consume each update while they're scrolling their phone without having to think about it too much'. while obviously there are a lot of amazing webtoon official comics in spite of what i've heard anectdotally, hearing that just really went against so much of what i've most valued about my experience with webcomics!

i want creators to be able to tell stories no matter how weird and unmarketable, where they'll never have to worry about pushback for making stories with characters and themes that resonate for them as a member of any oppressed group, and where there's as little pressure as possible pushing them to work harder or faster than they healthily can or want to! so for me, even if i still love a lot of online published comics and want them to be celebrated and want their creators to be able to make a comfortable living out of them, i still just want to highlight stories that had that level of freedom that has created some of my favorite experiences with webcomics just a little bit more.