#it looks easy

[purpleleafsyt]

Rin-Rin Doodle 💚

[hinamie]

post-graduation trip airport looks

[hansoeii]

crowley

[musubiki]

my favorite fields of mistria boys 🥰

[esthena]

everybody's falling in love

while here i am, alone, in a pitch black four cornered box, breathing with only one unblocked nostril and sneezing from time to time, having cold feet both literally and metaphorically, feeling every mixed emotions i could, and constantly fearing the idea of gradually transitioning into an adult, which have i mentioned alone? yeah probably

[buttercupdemise]

i think about this a lot. what if a deaf human fell down the mountain. would he make his threatening language accessible

[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.

[doesephs]

jean moreau came back to himself in pieces

[spielzeugkaiser]

Being on the nostalgia train this week really helped stretching my artistic legs again. So here, have some old things and some new! For now I'm done with this.

[writeouswriter]

People sorting ao3 solely by stats and only clicking on fics with a certain amount of kudos or comments, you will not survive the winter, nor the summer, nor at all, *brings out knife,* run

[beybuniki]

they should go on a fishing trip pt.1

[paimt]

smiting_friends.psd

[hinamie]

alongside someone like you

[wanologic]

#besties

[melonsharks]

like a thing, make a character lineup to figure out how i would draw them. thats the way my brain works! you can find close-ups under the cut!

these were fun :] theres a lot of characters in this show that would be fun to draw, is there anyone you guys wanna see next? 🤔

[mccromy]

Tbh I think people should be more rabid about moshang. Like, talk about an artist falling in love with his creation, then upgrade it to infinity.

I mean, it is not like Shang Qinghua made Mobei-Jun and fell in love with him because he was so beautiful. Shang Qinghua designed Mobei-Jun to be what Shang Qinghua considered perfect. Every single flaw was included lovingly, every virtue, every inch of his body and face to be what Shang Qinghua found the most handsome, attractive. His ideal man. He made Mobei-Jun for himself, he made him with the intention to love him.

He told a history about a boy who was wronged, who had every ounce of kindness bleed out through a thousand cuts. Who took revenge on every single person who hurt him, even if by negligence. Made the whole world revolve around him, changed it to satisfy his readers.

And then made Mobei-Jun for himself. He made him silent, strong, mistrustful, arrogant, spoiled and beautiful and set him up for betrayal. Made his life tragic in that way authors do with their favorite characters.

(Luo Binghe was perfect in the eyes of the world. Shang Qinghua crafted Mobei-Jun to be perfect in his eyes.)

Can you imagine? If god made you solely with the intention to love you. Perfect in the eyes of god, literally.

And then Shang Qinghua became Mobei-Jun's servant. Mobei-Jun was both his King and his favorite creation. (As if god made himself a personal deity to worship.)

Their relationship was rocky (mountain sized rocks) for what amounts to decades. Shang Qinghua's perfect man was so incredibly flawed it made him near impossible to get along with, he was also destined to kill Shang Qinghua. And Shang Qinghua was far from perfect himself, he was also destined to stab Mobei-Jun in the back. What's more, Shang Qinghua wove those threads of fate himself.

(In the end none of that happened. But think about it.)

Even better, when put like that, Moshang sounds so poetic. And it could be!... If moshang was composed by anybody else other than Mobei "to get your man you need to beat him up at least three times a day" Jun and Shang "the best way to seduce someone is to be so pathetic and lame!" Qinghua.

Shang Qinghua is literally Mobei-Jun's creator but he's also his little minion going nice one, boss!, the LeFou to Mobei-Jun's Gaston. The sleazy car salesman to Mobei-Jun's Nepo baby CEO. The Connecticut Clark to his Malfina.

How, just how is it possible that I have to channel my inner truffle hog when sniffing around for moshang brainrot? Everybody should be losing black brain matter through their nostrils about them, and yet.