Where The Road Ends

I'm Syntax and I'm an artist. There's not really a lot for me to say about myself since I'm a relatively private person. If you want to talk you're free to drop me a line or a message or anything really. If you like my art or my writing, buy me a coffee on the right! If you really like it, my commission info is to the right as well! Please do not tag any of my work as "kin" or "me".

[depsidase]

[inber]

Say you break your ankle. You could know everything there is to know intellectually about the injury. Even with this vast knowledge, you will still experience physical pain.

Now take this logic and apply it to things like ADHD, autism, clinical depression, and other less visible/divergent disabilities. You cannot think your way out of feeling.

That is to say: you are not a bad, lazy, or selfish person for struggling, even if you know why you are struggling.

[thepolymorphexperience]

Genuinely, thank you so much for this.

[phantomrose96]

I'm a broken record to say "this is a good joke" because in fact all the Among Us jokes are good.

But "species of creature where all of them are drawn as 100% identical models, but in universe amongst themselves one of them is considered far and away the hot one" is a timeless joke.

[phantomrose96]

Quick, people who have no context for this, which one of these Amonguses is the hot one

[phantomrose96]

I bequeath to you my shitty excel chart I made of [checks notes] the first 35 guesses

[phantomrose96]

I also give you the (time-stamped to the correct moment) reveal

[prokopetz]

You know what I miss the most about pre-1990s fantasy? Novels with titled chapters and tables of contents. I know you still get them now and again, but before the 90s it was common practice, and you wouldn't believe how much easier it is to discuss shit when you've got named episodes to go on.

[wtchgrrl]

can you guys stop putting typewritermonkey and her stupid comic on my dash. she’s a literal intersexist who says that those who talk about getting reassigned a gender after birth are straight up lying because she personally doesn’t understand why someone would do that

“hey, i know someone who went through this thing and it really messed them up” “erm, source? you’re lying!! nobody would ever do that!! doctors aren’t THAT bad to intersex people!! why would they be cruel when it has no point??” literally just look up herculine barbin, no one is stopping you

[genericpuff]

comicfury continues to reign supreme as the only webcomic platform that understands it's a webcomic platform

[genericpuff]

making an extra post because the tags aren't good enough

here is all the reasons why you should use comicfury (if you aren't already) :

pretty much full control over your custom site design. if you're an HTML/CSS nerd you can go as crazy as you want with it. but for those who aren't so code-savvy, there are also simplified built-in design tools so you can create a unique site for yourself and your work. reject homogeneous minimalism design of bigger platforms, embrace tradition of mid-2000's kitchen sink site design (if that's what you want, that is).

the site demonstrates its own philosophies through its extremely charming vintage 2000's-era site design. it ain't broke so it doesn't need fixing. if it's too 'ugly' for you and wards you off from using the site, then it's succeeding at what it was designed to do.

forums! remember those??? CF sure does!

full view of your comic statistics over the past month, shown as delicious daily line graphs, separated by unique visitors, web page view, and scroll view.

hosting is free. don't want that pesky 'thecomicseries' or 'comicfury' add-on? all you gotta do is purchase your own domain name. contact kyo and they'll take care of the rest.

you can categorize your pages per chapter, making for an easier reading experience

you can include page transcripts for screen-readers as well as mouseover text

you can enable comments per upload and even manage them so that all comments have to be approved by you before they're shared publicly

archive tagging!!! i.e. you can tag uploads with relevant characters / locations / etc. so people can find specific pages easier on your site.

you can run a goddang BLOG on your comic site so that people can read what you've been up to! or don't, it's your choice!

clear filters for NSFW content. the filters do what they must to inform your audience as intended, outside of that, your comic will not be taken down, flagged, or suppressed in search results just because it contains violence or boobies.

they are strictly anti-AI

they do not make licensing deals with third-party companies, so the only 'competition' you have are other indie creators like you, no Marvel or DC nonsense

you're free to embed ads and/or donation buttons on your site and CF will not take off a single cent of it for themselves.

the front page goes to Recently Updated by default, all the other tabs are simply Popular Now and Popular Overall. there's also a Random button if you want to be surprised with something new. while this might seem like a bad thing for people who prefer custom filtering, this unbiased layout prevents the common visibility issues / favoritism / etc. that happen on other platforms.

but if you DO want to find something new that fits your specific tastes? just use their search bar, unlike on Webtoons it actually does what search bars are supposed to do! within the search page you can pick and choose whatever genre tags you want, and you can filter out major NSFW flags you're not comfortable with seeing.

saving the best for last: none of those features outlined above require paying a premium subscription tier. you have access to ALL the same tools and permissions that everyone else does. you have just as much potential to gain an audience there as everyone else and you are all granted the same freedoms.

[genericpuff]

COMICFURY HAS A SCROLL VIEW SETTING THAT YOU CAN ADJUST IN YOUR SETTINGS. THE PLATFORM IS ALREADY DESIGNED TO BE CONSUMABLE ON YOUR PHONE. IT DOESN'T NEED AN APP.

ugh man i'm so sorry for popping off on this very innocent and well-meaning bystander but what did i JUST say

when i say it's a webcomic platform that knows it's a webcomic platform

that's it. no asterisk. that's the POINT OF THE MEME.

it is a website for reading and hosting webcomics. there is no app. and that is why it works.

i realize this might just be a consequence of me being Old™️ compared to the average webcomic consumer / artist, but do y'all know how destructive phone apps have been and still are to webcomic culture? because not only is developing a phone app EXPENSIVE AND TIME-CONSUMING, but it's pretty much impossible to have phone apps now that aren't managed and funnelled through Google and Apple.

that means CENSORSHIP. and CORPORATE INTERFERENCE. and FINANCIAL INVOLVEMENT. which is entirely opposing to WHAT WEBCOMICS ARE.

as soon as indie sites based around free content develop apps, there's a very clear shift in how that site continues to operate, prioritizing corporate standards and profit over usability and community. because otherwise, they can't justify the creation of the app in the first place, and they can't very well maintain that app on account of how expensive it is to do so.

in fact, i can even attest to this from experience! y'know Tapas? the friendly competitor to Webtoons?

this platform used to FUCKING SLAP and then guess what? they released their phone app. and in doing so, they immediately lost the entire fucking plot. their ad revenue program turned to shit, they started prioritizing their advertising and growth towards paywalled comics over the free to read ones, they started restricting the content that was allowed on the platform for the sake of 'brand friendliness' and most of all, they started caring more about what INVESTORS saw rather than what the average user experienced.

and i'm sure that's a heavily biased opinion in which i'm choosing to cast blame on one specific thing instead of all the various things that led to the downfall of this fuckass platform (and i could talk about all those things at length too) but guess what? i don't give a fuck if it IS biased, because i've been there and back and lived to tell the tale and the common denominator in the enshittification of all these major platforms i'm goddamn MEME'ING ON was the phone apps. and most of all, the normalization of corporate involvement which happens the MOMENT you build an app for the Google and/or Apple store.

modern phone apps are NOT about accessibility, they're about money and metrics. that's it.

again, big apologies to the person who left these tags in the reblogs because i know they didn't mean any ill will of it.

but EVERY FUCKING DAY i see y'all complaining that webtoons and tapas are garbage, that they don't let you consume NSFW content without censoring the fuck out of it or removing titles entirely from their platforms, how they progressively tighten paywalls and increase ads to force every last cent out of you, but never ONCE do y'all realize THE CALLS ARE COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE.

comicfury doesn't have or need a phone app for the same reason that AO3 doesn't have or need a phone app. to put it simply - because it's pointless, a waste of money and effort, and it would just destroy everything that's great about the thing that i'm trying to promote to you in the first place.

this is what usage freedom and decentralizing actually looks like. this is what has kept comicfury populated and alive. nothing more, nothing less.

[actual-changeling]

In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.

I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!

From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!

I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.

The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)

If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.

The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.

insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box

add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box

delete -> self explanatory

on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic

The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.

Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.

[gallusrostromegalus]

HERE'S THAT BITCH IVE BEEN LOOKING FOR

[dexfiles]

here is a star for everyone who’s not feeling their best today (🌟)

[hemipenal-system]

dragon who kisses you with tongue and deletes shinigami eyes from your web browser

[hemipenal-system]

“shinigami eyes is bad?” well i encourage you to draw your own conclusions of course but

[libertineangel]

Completely unsurprising post to be made by a person who consistently refuses to recognise the reactionary basis of the "transandrophobia" movement

Everyone's always very keen to forget that Shinigami Eyes wasn't actually developed to mark transphobes in general but to help aid the online safety of trans women specifically, and shockingly enough yeah you're more likely to get marked red if you explicitly refuse to oppose the trans cohort of Men's Rights Activists.

The above green-marked statements are obviously pithy off-the-cuff remarks expressing such normal women's frustrations as "men are often misogynist" and "women shouldn't give men infinite patience", but of course these things that are perfectly understandable in the mouths of cis feminists become gross insults when said by a transfem, because everything we ever say is taken in the worst possible faith and we're never allowed to be annoyed or angry.

[sedimentarygal]

Being annoyed or angry is not an excuse to be incredibly transphobic actually. One trans woman to another, go fuck yourself.

[vergess]

Hey, btw, Libertineangel is fully lying up there. Shinigami Eyes now exists solely to "protect" a specific subset of reactionary trans women and no one else, including any trans woman who even vaguely steps out of line with the "radical transfeminist" movements online.

However, when the project started, it was explicitly and specifically for ALL trans people of ALL gender assignments and gender identities.

Like. I know that person is right about the use case of the extension now, but they are straight up lying about history here. And really recent history. History most of tumblr's user base lived through on tumblr.

This is a ridiculous thing to lie about, frankly.

[hi-fi-planetoid]

Source on the extension including nonbinary people and trans men as per their guidelines as far back and 2019 btw

[goldensunset]

ok i’ve been curious about something. can you name a character who is, all three at once,

1. canonically female (no variation)

2. canonically the protagonist of her story (if it’s an ensemble cast you have to say you can legitimately see her as The main character)

3. your personal #1 favorite character in that story (ties are acceptable)

?

yes

no

super nuance bald extract button (use this wisely)

Remaining time: 5 days 22 hours

[peach-pot]

anyone wanna guess what this doesthedogdie tie is for?

[peach-pot]

thaaaat’s right!

[peach-pot]

this is kind of a gold mine

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

“I think about you when I see this character you love” is a form of love language. I hope people think about me when they see my blorbos

[outofcontexttokusatsu]

[kagayuzen]

The 42nd Traditional Kaga-Yuzen Crafts Exhibition

Furisode (formal kimono) ‘Shirobana Higan’ Kakimoto Ichiro

Author’s Comment : I tried to describe how I felt when I saw two or three white lily-of-the-valley flowers blooming resolutely in the midst of bright red spider lilies.

[depsidase]

[0mniscy]

(Animated) Artfight attack on @kettle-bird with Jackass Jenny!!

[thelastsongimwastingonyou]

no way

[thelastsongimwastingonyou]