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I loathe a lot of social media sites! But you don’t! Reposting my art helps me use the web I like, and you get to enjoy sharing cool things. Please, if you like my art, repost it. The permissive license is there for a reason.

I don’t like begging for engagement like this. I like to trust my audience and not treat them like babies who need “like and subscribe” jingled in their faces to know how to interact with a fucking website. However, with the amount of fucking embarrassing web artists who scream about theft if you use the same pose or something, I thought I’d make my position super clear: I would really, really appreciate it if you reposted my art. Or used my poses, also.

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I like when these children in 1999 flame each other while writing trying out creative writing with a fanfiction about all the things they love.

http://hijola.fobby.net/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000049.html

Here’s a comic:

A special Female's Fanfic (in other words, Females only!)
All SNES RPGs are enabled, and SOME Pokemon.
Why girls only?
(BROCK, GET OUT!! DON'T ASK STUPID QUESTIONS AND ADD E-MAIL TO MY ACCOUNT FOR NOTHING. That goes for anyone else who dares to do that. That was ANNOYING, Brock, but here's you answer: Girls need their time in the light, so DON'T ASK THAT AGAIN!! Excuse the outburst, but I MUST make my point SOMEHOW.)
The end!

All rips via the Spriters Resourse and Starmen.net, of course!

Custom graphic Yuko Asou (Earthbound/MOTHER 2-style) made by Jon Gandee and shadowman44.

No additional rights reserved on this sprite comic.

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Open "dr mario ai slop" directly

it fucking kills me that Dr Mario AI Brainrot is like if the first page of some gaming webcomic was actually funny. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw it: This AI Brainrot joke about Luigi shoving things up his butt is better than some dreadful webcomic I saw being mocked years ago. Dr Mario AI Brainrot hits every joke with a precision that some random 20 year old gaming webcomic couldn’t dream of. We’ve come a long way baby.

I’m too fucking old and remember too much

Continue reading →
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how many of these blobos can you name? (this is engagement bait btw. i hope it works 😉 )

Book Review: A history of webcomics by T Campbell, 2006.

This book is free to rent on the Internet Archive right now! Don’t download this out-of-print book from Anna’s Archive, that would be illegal.

A contemporary review of the book can be found on Fleen (original blog) (IA), and it makes an interesting companion piece to this blog. This review is largely negative, focuses on mistakes, and is clearly written by an reviewer as familiar with the topic as Campbell is. I think these mistakes are important, but this review won’t focus on these.

I am not Fleen. I was reading webcomics in 2006, but am not intimately familiar with the topics this book tackles. We are now almost 20 years removed from this History of Webcomics. And there’s been a couple of changes in that time. The book opens with calling 1993-2005 a Golden age. If one were telling the history of webcomics today, would this era be more a footnote? Maybe the value in this book will be to prove this is a time worth remembering. I don’t know.

Let’s get reading!

The b00k spends 2 pages explaining the history of nerdc0re, and ends it with this legendary comic page in complete earnest. Its worth remembering the times before irony poisoning. Forget irony poisoning! Forget it! And enjoy a classic! Here it is!

Does anyone here speak L337?

The book spends A LOT of time on Scott McCloud, of course. This is your invitation to re-read Choose Your Own Carl. It spends a lot of time on Dilbert, on Sluggy Freelance, on User Friendly and a drama involving hotlinking User Friendly comic strips. It keeps returning to this Nerdcore idea, which feels so dated, but I… I don’t think its an inaccurate description of this millennial zeitgeist, even if we’d use ruder words for it today.

It feels like its taken a while to get to the Gamer comics, the comics we’d most associate with this era today. PVP and Penny Arcade are most talked about, with a large section dedicate to the flame wars Kurtz of PVP would get into. Infamous webcomic CAD only gets a passing mention, in the same sentence as several other comics such as Real Life, which are both comics whose reputations have diverged significantly.

Characters from the websites Keenspot and Modern tales face off.

TWO PWNED L0Z3R5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The comic discussed platforms and businesses for several pages. Maybe interesting, but these are the same concerns all netizens are still facing. If you’re familiar with the encroach of capitalism on the web, you know the shape of this discussion.

When webcomics try to form collectives and unions, its worth pointing out there’s a turbulent history there. People will learn from experience, I suppose. The turbulence is platforms vs users, humans vs capital, and the natural interpersonal conflicts we all navigate. These don’t go away easily with time and change.

oh shit campbells on about the N3RDC0R3 again

There’s a section in here about Furry comics. I genuinely think some furries might find these pages interesting, even as they mostly litigate what are ongoing flame wars. “Is furry porn ethical” is touched upon, but it presents the phase “Furverts“. There’s some jargon for you. Never say I don’t do anything for my furry readers.

From the Furry section the book transitions into a brief discussion of adult webcomics. Furries and adult media were already heavily associated lol. Although the book doesn’t mention any adult comic by name except the paysite Slipshine. Lol there’s a short mention of Paypal dicking over adult comic makers. Paypal hasn’t changed, but you need to be pretty new around these parts not to know Paypal has always sucked.

The Ice Queen. Joe Zabel often uses 3D figures created in poser to startling effect
CHAPTER SEVEN: MONEY MATTERS AND THE MODERN WEBCOMIC There is no webcomics industry. There is no large commercial exchange of webcomics. There are [only] a handful of people making anything more than extra spending money from their webcomics. —Scott Kurtz, 2005°” I do webcomics as a hobby—I don’t do it to gain fame or popularity or earn money, and it feels like too many artists are doing webcomics for the wrong reasons. All I say is, I believe webcomics should be done for enjoyment and not for money or fame. —Space Coyote of Saturnalia, 2005°"* Rare is the artist who cares nothing for success, i.e., survival! But [that] ideal is alive in the hearts of many artists who may hope for success, but won't alter their work to obtain it. —Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics?” Four of my favorite online cartoonists are Patrick Farley, Cayetano Garza, David Gaddis and Mark Martin; and I can tell you with certainty (‘cause I know these guys) that if their sites could support them financially, they'd be posting 5 times as often! And so would |, for that matter. —Scott McCloud in J Can’t Stop Thinking?”
Above: Ctri+Alt+Del sold out of its first printing before the first customer received his first book.

Space Coyote, AKA Nina Matsumoto, has absolutely turned her art hobby into a career. I’m familiar with her work. I wonder how she feels about these statements now. It doesn’t matter what this one random person thinks, I suppose. But its interesting.

The talk of monetization is also extremely obsolete. There’s talk of marketable plushies and print editions: yes. But there’s a lot of wondering if “donation drives” will ever work out. Can a comic be crowdfunded? is a question the book seems in doubt about, when we know the answer in current year is a resounding Yes.

It briefly mentions the feeling of being nickel-and-dimed, which is something I do feel. With so many patreons around, all with ever increasing price floors, supporting your fave artist feels more expensive then ever. I get that we’re in a cost of living crisis. We all are. The readers, too. Not that I don’t have a list of ppl im supporting – but this individualist pricing structure has its limitations. Support government funding for the arts, now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There’s also a lot of words on advertising, a venture in which the price floor has lowered considerably over the years. A modest page can’t get a nice chunk of pocket change with advertising alone any more – and the adverting nowadays raises massive privacy issues. Download ublock origin, now!!!!!!!!!

Not that webcomics remained breeders-only. Manga traditions had loosened up American preconceptions here, too; manga had genres specifically for gays and lesbians, and even its mainstream showed widespread acceptance. More than one well-known manga (Ranma , Futaba-Kun Change, Sailor Moon) featured a boy who spontaneously changes genders. ‘“Transgendering” found its way into webcomics like E/ Goonish Shive, where the gender-switching was similarly arbitrary, and Venus Envy, which dealt with real transsexuality.’’”> Merely gay characters were relatively populous. Gay authors were usually positive or matter-of-fact about being gay, so Justine Shaw’s brutal honesty startled the field—but soon attracted it. Naturally, gays, like women, found certain genres friendlier than others. True gay-bashing was extremely rare, but most nerdcore and gamer strips either featured jokes about heterosexual men doubting themselves or avoided the subject altogether. They were under no obligation, of course, so long as other genres were there to pick up the slack. In certain matters of faith, though, almost no one seemed willing to step up. EI Goonish Shive, above, explores identity with magical, temporary gender-swaps, while Venus Envy, right, tells a more down-to-earth story of a transsexual.

Nothing to add here, I just thought some readers might want to read about ‘transgendering’…

There’s more to read, about race in webcomics and class in webcomics. Remember to not download this book from Anna’s Archive if you want to read all about it.

Although the book mentions bigotries in webcomics, I think remembering that webcomics always tackled progressive issues is something worth remembering and celebrating.

Exhibit of webcomics alternate futures past. including world domination, micropayments, and artificial intelligence.

hm

The future.

Did this book from 2006 predict the future?

Shifting hierarchy: This book predicts new comics will replace old mainstays. A very safe prediction, and one that is absolutely and obviously true.

Decentralization and DIY: I think the book unfortunately got this one wrong. But the future it predicts seems more rosy that the reality we got. Webcomics are almost exclusively on platforms now, as are most netizens. That’s not to say decentralization and DIY have completely fallen by the wayside, and are usually where the most interesting webcomics, if not the most successful, exist right now.

Short-form as a vanguard, long-form in development: Short comics continue to be shared and spread most on social media, as short form content is just more shareable. One-offs are just as likely to do numbers as shortform strips from a bigger comic.

Techno-art: Stagnation tbh, as art becomes #content for #platforms. Nothing wrong with PNGs, ain’t broke. Although I think new web technologies are increasing potential out there.

Generation One. Cartoonists who had grown up with the Web joined the field and began to change its aesthetic from the inside out: Yes, true.

Organic ties to readers: ok…

Demographic expansion: Other web media took some of webcomics attention. The audience for webcomics is no doubt larger, but that same audience has more web multimedia taking their attention. This is a good thing

The elite reader. For good and for ill, webcomics’ own creators and their biggest
fans exerted a disproportionate share of influence on their surrounding culture. Criticism
was difficult and fan-service was easy. I’m not sure what the prediction here is, but uhhh,,,, true?????????

An industry in embryo: There’s more money in webcomics today compared to 2005. True I guess.

The book also proposes six broad scenarios for comics future. The sixth one is the web vanishing completely. Could still happen. Of all of them, “the expanding long tail” scenario is the most pressing and accurate. It predicts a move to platforms, who aggregate the efforts of artists into large platforms for themselves. It also proposes a scenario where webcomics remain populist and serve the lowest common denominator: an anxiety still expressed.

WHATS THE REVIEW, POINDEXTER???????????

pic goes hard, who drew it.

This pic that goes hard was on page 108 of the PDF. I’m lost in the credits.

from the bookcore

this is da nerdcore

its got L337

like a elite

comics

bcomics

the internet

moar liek teh splinternet

anyway heres this classic by beanytuesday

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I love government funding for the arts!

Its ok when an artist who receives government funding creates something ugly, niche, or bad. I’m just glad when money is spent on bad art, instead of the military.

However, its far more often that an artist makes something that rules.

I think we need more government funding for the arts. They can never spend enough on art! No arts budget is too big, its impossible to do.

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Tay + Brinsley

I don’t want to post here every time I do a new art.

But i was just thinking I hate time stamps mate.

I hate timestamps, they reminded me its been months since I’ve made something. Fucking hell.

Also I’ve added Reactions to my posts. As a fun feature. I might remove it some day, if I get bored. I want the viewers to know I can totally fake these numbers, but I won’t. pwomise.

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“Dont talk about rom hacks” “Don’t talk about abandonware” “loose lips sink ships” < this shit sucks. discussion and sharing is how the good stuff spreads online. What is the fucking point of people posting rom hacks and abandonware if we don’t know its happening? This silence also benefits corporations.

We, the average blogging guy/forums guy, should discuss such things openly and fearlessly more often.

A handful of corporate owned websites that the normies visit should not.

Anyway:

https://www.romhacking.net

https://romhacking.com

https://eeveeexpo.com + https://www.pokecommunity.com/#fan-games.289

https://www.smwcentral.net

https://forums.qhimm.com/index.php

https://www.myabandonware.com

https://vimm.net

https://archive.org

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The Intertidal Zone is a short comedy edutainment comic made by Stephen Hillenburg in 1989, and is considered a precursor to the Spongebob Squarepants television show. The story focuses on larger than life show anchor Rocky the Shrimp and his cohost Bob the Sponge, as they interview the inhabitants of the eponymous intertidal zone and discover their unique traits.

This comic was considered lost media, until it was scanned and uploaded to the internet archive by MasterDonut on 24/04/2024. Cheers, mate. This is a cleanup of MasterDonut’s scans, and I am pleased to present them here today.

Dropbox download | Read online here

NEW! Grab the torrent here.

I can’t seed this torrent 24/7. If I ever stop seeding it forever i’ll remove the link from the page, but as long as the link is here, I will get back to seeding it eventually. Also: Help me seed it! I could really use a hand, thanks.

GIF – Before – After

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Hello, RSS Feed fans. This article is for people who’ve chosen to use RSS feeds, and picked an RSS feed reader. Those choices are outside the scope of this article. What this article is about is filling your empty feed reader, deciding what to put in there and how to surf the web in search of feeds.

However, I can’t just tell you what exactly to pop in there. I will give you a few direct recommendations in the end, but you need to find things you enjoy and add them in yourself. These are some guidelines to help you select things to add.

How do I know if a website has an RSS feed?

The common feed icon depicts the tip of an antennae, with two or three radio waves rippling out of it. The RSS Logo is typically orange, although it comes in other colours. If you see this icon, it should represent an RSS Feed.

Not all websites will have an obvious link to their RSS feed. but it will still exist.

If a social media platform debut’d in the 00s, there’s a good chance it supports RSS. There’s a bit of an RSS support gap in mainstream social media platforms which started in the 10s. But RSS is still common enough that if in doubt, you should always check and see.

It depends on the culture in which the website was developed, as well. Websites from the computer geek side of the web, open-source and GNU nerds (affectionate), have RSS support a lot. VC-funded web startups that want to be the new Facebook, the people who want to build a web silo, are less likely to build RSS support into their website. A fediverse site like Mastodon supports RSS feeds, a fediverse site like Bluesky or Threads doesn’t.

[see: Footnote 1]

My web browser automatically detects RSS feeds, and adds an icon to the address bar if it detects one. If yours browser doesn’t, there are browser extensions. Haven’t got a specific one to recommend, just look around.

Some RSS feed providers will automatically detect a feed if you put a URL in. You can also use a service like getrssfeed.com can detect RSS feeds on a website.

Search engines can help you find RSS feeds for platforms the manual way. Type Platform + RSS Feed into a search engine, and it’ll let you know if feeds exist.

About Large Platforms and Social Media

Although it might seem like an easy way to fill your feeds, just duplicating your existing social media feeds is unadvisable. Give yourself new things to look at, or you’re going to get burned out seeing nothing but repetitive notifications.

There’s probably a large social media platform full of very talented and interesting users, but you don’t really want to use it for whatever reason. And if the platform supports RSS feeds, well, there you go. As a personal example, I don’t go on Deviantart much any more. Even less, since I moved the few people I followed into my RSS feed. “But Deviantart doesn’t have RSS after the Eclipse update” says the person who didn’t search and see the first result for Deviantart + RSS Feed.

So, what I want you to do, is think of a person you already follow. Think if this person who’s posts you already like, and is using a platform you don’t. A Tumblr user you like also uses Mastodon. Now, you don’t use Mastodon in this hypothetical, but you want to see that poster’s sweet Mastodon posts. Mastodon is a website that supports RSS feeds. Add their feed to your reader, follow the posts, all without needing a Mastodon account.

Sometimes, its ok to just duplicate your existing social media feeds, if the feeds are algorithm-driven and unreliable. People question Youtube’s reliability, I think its superstitious but you can add Youtube channels to your feed reader so you KNOW you’re not missing anything.

About Small web, independent web, niche social media.

One of the good things about RSS is how you don’t need to limit yourself to notable platforms. There’s a large web out there, and RSS feeds can help you keep up with it all. I know its the harder work, but you’d be surprised at how easily they accumulate in your feed once you start. This is about exercising your web surfing skills. Be curious, and bias towards subscribing to a webmaster rather than not subscribing.

Web native media like blogs, webcomics, and podcasts very often have RSS feeds. There’s even a website just for webcomic feeds, called Piperka.

You can use RSS feeds to automate forum lurking, although even forums software from the heyday of RSS have patchy support. The best forum software RSS support I’ve found is for Discourse, which one of the newer forum softwares on the block. New as in its ten years old, but u get it. For example, PHPBB has been around twice as long and has RSS support that sucks out of the box. Webmasters can choose to extend the RSS feed support of forums with plugins, but you know, they don’t lol. Feel free to ask ur local forum webmaster to install the RSS plugin if u want. Still, if a forum is slow-moving enough, it having just the one feed might be enough to lurk it.

RSS where there isn’t usually RSS.

Kill the newsletter

Some webmasters opt for an email newsletter instead of an RSS feed. But you can subscribe to that newsletter as an RSS feed, using kill-the-newsletter.

I think experiencing newsletters as an RSS feed makes a huge psychological difference. The contents of an email newsletter feel like an Object, like A Spam, to me. Reading them as a feed just feels more natural and enjoyable. Even if you hate email newsletters, give it a go. Throw a donation to the developer if you love it too.

I do experience cosmetic formatting issues with Kill the Newsletter, but these don’t impact the readability.

Websites I follow this way are mostly normie stuff, local businesses and government institutions, and news websites.

Alternative front ends

Many major websites may have alternative front ends available. A front end is the user interface side of a website, the way a website is presented to visitors. The back end is the machine side of a website, the underlying data a website processes. An alternative front end is a way to view the back end data, in a way that’s designed by somebody who’s not the website’s owner. It’s the same contents but a different interface.[see: footnote 2] And sometimes these different interfaces support RSS feed, where the official front end does not.

So, what I want you to do, is think of a person you already follow. A Youtube user you like also uses Tiktok. Now, you don’t use Tiktok in this hypothetical, and Tiktok doesn’t support RSS feeds. But Tiktok has an alternative front end called Proxytok, that does support RSS feeds. Now, you can see all the videos just with your RSS feed.

I’ve also seen Tiktok described as unusable due to its algorithmically-generated feed being bothersome for potential users. If you do enjoy Tiktok videos and want to exclusively build your own feed, with no algorithm nonsense, you can do it with ProxyTok and RSS feeds.

My most-used alternative front end is Nitter. It’s a Twitter front end. I quit Twitter, for the normal reasons. But I can still follow all the same users on Twitter, without using Twitter. I get the back end stuff I like (microblogs from good posters), without the frontend stuff I hate. It also means Twitter can’t show me ads, or track my activity to sell to advertisers. I don’t financially contribute to Twitter’s ecosystem any more, which is great. It’s like i’m stealing Twitter, which I love doing.

There is a list of alternative front ends here. You want to click on the Main Instance or Public Instances links. The others are for advanced users, you don’t need to self-host or worry about onion links. Keep things simple unless you really, really want to make them complicated.

Not all alternative front ends support RSS feeds, though. You’ll have to research them (try using them) to find out.

Keep at it

I stopped using RSS feeds when everyone else did, when Google Reader shut down. When I first got back into RSS feeds, it wasn’t much to look at. I followed a few things. Feeds weren’t fast. This may be desirable for some people, but in the Google Reader days, I was checking my RSS feeds daily. I wanted that pace back, and was frustrated when it wasn’t. I was bored, I wanted to give up again. But now, I have the pace I want.

It must be so hard for people just starting out. It was probably hard for me starting in the Google Reader days, but I don’t remember. I went back and re-subscribed to feeds I remember having, I had a starting point. I don’t know how hard it would be for somebody with no starting point. But treat it like a project, and keep at it. You didn’t onboard to social media you like in a day, let the onboarding of RSS feeds take a while.

Here are some things I subscribe to, that a general audience might like.

  • Blenderartists.org Forums: Finished Projects. Website | Feed
    • Blender Artists is a forum for people who use the 3D software Blender. So its just a feed of indie CGI art, which is neat! A lot of artists here also have personal sites and portfolios, so it can be a good jumping off point for web surfing if this is your jam.
  • albumoftheday Website | Feed
    • It’s an album! Every day! Gonna unsub to this one, because it links to Spotify and I don’t use Spotify. u can have it instead
  • Overclocked Remix Website | Feed
    • Vidoe game music remixes.
  • The News
    • Whatever news you like here.
  • FediVideo Website | Feed
    • Curated list of variety video recommendations hosted on the fediverse platform Peertube.
  • me its me
    • blatant self promotion

These aren’t really for a general audience so much, are they. Ask me about the even more niche stuff in the comment’s if you like, ask me shit like “do you subscribe to any anime sites”. Except don’t ask that one because i’m answering it now with Jojo News Website | Feed.

Footnotes

Footnote 1. This image was taken from “RSS Autodiscovery” by Rogers Cadenhead, James Holderness and Randy Charles Morin of the RSS Advisory Board
– https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
– (alt) https://web.archive.org/web/20081106104156/http://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery
Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Cheers!

Footnote 2. The explanation of alternative front-ends is stolen from:
“You Probably Want to Know About “Alternative Front-ends” by Justin Hanagan.
– https://www.staygrounded.online/p/you-probably-want-to-know-about-alternative
– (alt) https://web.archive.org/web/20230522232310/https://www.staygrounded.online/p/you-probably-want-to-know-about-alternative
I just paraphrased this info to suit my post. Visit the original articles for more details and a more complete explanation, it’s a good article.