#you can get anything you want

[reachmouse]

Tradition.

[icarus-suraki]

Happy Thanksgiving

[unseenphil]

It's that time of year and I just want to get it out there before everywhere is inevitably swarmed by memes featuring Mariah Carey or something called a "Padoru"

[sophiewillardvansistineart]

Happy Alice’s Restaurant season! If you wanna impress your friends with a cool shirt that looks like merch for the ACTUAL restaurant, you can buy my original design on Etsy! My drawing is inspired by Arlo Guthrie’s album cover and classic American diner imagery :) you can purchase in my Etsy shop @WillardVanSistineArt !

https://willardvansistineart.etsy.com

[fortunaestalta]

[el-ffej]

@freshgratednutmeg:

So I’ve probably told this story before, but - my Gay and Lesbian Studies professor. He’s fairly elderly; he was young in the ‘60s. And he was called up for draft for the Vietnam War. And, like most everybody who was drafted for the Vietnam War, he didn’t want to be in the Vietnam War.

This is the story of how his draft went, as best as I can remember how he tells it.

“Well, son,” said the doctor assigned to do his physical. “You seem healthy from here. Is there any condition you have that would disqualify you from serving in the United States Army?”

“Yes, sir,” said my professor. “I’m gay.”

The doctor blinked at him.

Looked at the door.

Looked back.

“Do you understand what you’re telling me? Do you understand what this means?”

What this meant, in 1969, was that he would be sent home, with the information given to everyone in his hometown about exactly why he had been sent home. It meant he would be disowned by his family. It meant he could pretty much never get a job again. And this was decades before Lawrence v Texas, so it also meant he could very well get arrested.

But, you see, my professor had already been outed. And all these things had already happened.

So “yes, sir,” he said.

“Are you absolutely positive?”

“Yes, sir. My boyfriend is waiting for me outside. Would you like us to demonstrate?”

My professor did not go to Vietnam.

[tweedsmuir-library]

Songs of Peace: Alice's Restaurant

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American friends, family and neighbours! Along with Turkey and football games, another staple of American Thanksgiving for many is listening to the 18 minute classic, “Alice’s Restaurant.” November has been Peace month in the School Library, with an emphasis on understanding peace education, the antiwar movements, civil disobedience and other non-violent means of…

[ravenmccookies]

Weird phenomenon I've seen on tumblr

[chloesimaginationthings]

William Afton is very normal about his wife in FNAF

[cometblaster2070]

i'm making myself laugh thinking about this but I wholeheartedly believe madame morrible absolutely HATES the thought of glinda and elphaba being together like the mere mention of gelphie would probably send her into immediate cardiac arrest and it's not even because she's homophobic or anything I just fully believe she dislikes glinda so so much she's just like this is absolutely NOT happening in my house.

glinda and elphaba are having their gay ass moment and she's like "I sense a disturbance in the force; the wind is telling me those fucking lesbians are at it again."

like IK this woman hates to see glinda's fruity ass coming for several reasons but first and foremost I believe it's because she's so fucking ANNOYED by how much elphaba loves and cares for her, like this pink bitch is throwing a wrench in her plans just by EXISTING and being herself.

and she can't even really do anything to glinda because it'll make elphaba upset and she really can't have that so she just has to sit there and be like

[mipexch]

I WAS MADE FOR YOU // YOU WERE MADE FOR ME

[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.

[lazylittledragon]

what if i broke all the bones in your legs actually

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[qoldenskies]

i think its so funny when people take the way donnie acts at face value even though its a horrible lie because he's a horrible liar, while understanding leo is bullshitting very well despite him actually being GOOD at bullshitting. many such cases

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again