#ope ask

[opera25]

TRUTHLESSSAGE MAKES ME GO ABSOLUTELY FERAL. They're an old married couple in my brain. Sage is rambling about 28577375 different topics and Truthless is just sitting silently and knitting or something

Headcanon that Sage doesn't fly around like Smilk but would randomly starts floating(objects included) when he's lost in thought

They are so old married couple yes;; I hope nothing bad ever happens to them!!

[yupokaysuremhm]

op turned off reblogs but I want this forever

[carry-on-my-wayward-butt]

its so brave that you have such a 2012-coded url in this 2024 world

would you call a bear brave for standing in a new construction suburb or would you recognize the unfamiliar world they built around him

[tendersugars]

[smatterbrained]

I need to draw more rodimus, he so silly and I love his big boots and crippling sense of inadequacy

[o0kawaii0o]

raiding the fridge AGAIN

[soapbbox]

In regards to the cog-less megs comic: im sure op would be sooo normal and well adjusted if he found out abt that happening/saw him without his cog

I was actually working on another (angst) version of this but you get the funny haha version first :3 Bee and Elita are giving Optimus a 10 minute window before they intervene (they’ve seen OP moping around and are hoping this will help him get some it out of his system. They’ll have to step in at some point or else he probably won’t let go).

Why he’s small here and here

[misslovasstuff]

GUYS GUYS SOMEBODY SAID THAT SANJI ALWAYS LEAVES HIS RING FINGER OPEN

[chaosmenu]

i cant stop thinking about the fact that the us and uk killed one million people in indonesia as part of the cold war effort and barely anybody knows about it much less cares. trying to tell somebody about it especially in the west will just garner laughter and celebration -- genocide is okay if they are (true or suspected) communists, no matter what. one million people

[bastardlybonkers]

Poor bumblebee he’s gonna be stuck for awhile figuring out his door wings but in the bright side some of his other friends (Autobots that don’t know flutters unless someone told them) he can get away with for now with them while he learns hopefully Starscream help him keep it in check.

(Also is Megatron and Optimus alive in this AU I can’t tell cause I was gonna make a comment on how it would be interesting if Megatron saw this since he’s been around the jets and everything that even he would know the flutters and would debate if he should tell prime it just shrug it off??)

its less of an au and more just 'idw but afterwards starbee happened' so unfortunately my guys are not among the living...well i mean ig megs could be imprisoned for life idk its left kinda ambiguous. but hes probably dead 😔 the idea of them finding out about their relationship IS very funny though i think megatrons processor would fall out of his head and optimus would short circuit

[opera25]

Your Etho design is everything to me, he is just so...!!! I will be thinking about Etho with goggles for a very long time now thank you

Oh Anon he is everything to me as well... Etho doodle for you

Real talk, it's interesting how my Etho designs sorta change over years(maybe it's the art style?) but the goggles stay the same, except now they're not round anymore, more minecraft-ish to me me thinks :P

[kaison07]

Fell and falling

[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.

[mister-peregrine]

this was my favorite x-men: first class deleted scene

[smatterbrained]

Optimus should just bite Megatron really really hard that would fix a lot of things 

No.. I fear that would create a whole new problem