If The Gentle Light had continued, what, do you think, would Yo Han's immediate thoughts/feelings have been upon seeing Ga On again?
Well. I mean. I don't really think — I know. Because I'm sometimes forced to write down the Yo Han bits that just won't leave me the fuck alone. Usually just short snippets, often ones that aren't even connected, but yeah. If I don't, they'll keep looping inside my head, slowly driving me insane.
So anon can have some Yo Han POV, as a treat:
Yo Han took another sauntering step forward, gaze wandering over Kim Ga On's terrace. Pots, plants, and various tools littered the space, but it was by no means cluttered or disorganized. Everything had its proper place, either tucked away in practical plastic crates or arranged in neat little rows. Even the plants were positioned with great care, lining the otherwise empty space — enveloping it, turning it into something more than just a terrace.
Like a small oasis of life — delicate yet vibrant — right there in the heart of Seoul.
Yo Han shook his head and walked over to the shelf placed against one of the walls, plants of all shapes and sizes crowding together inside it.
How very like Ga On, to surround himself with so much life.
And to be so desperate for something to care for that he hoarded these frail little plants, showering them with the love and affection he couldn't find an outlet for elsewhere. It seemed that Kim Ga On might very well cease to exist if he wasn't allowed to care for and nurture the living and breathing things around him, the need going beyond instinct into outright compulsion.
That innocence and selflessness was a weakness — a big, blinking target, so easy to exploit — but, at the same time, so breathtakingly beautiful it only added to Ga On's radiance.
Yo Han was frustrated by how much he adored it.
He reached out and slowly ran his finger along the leaf of one of the nearby plants. Yo Han was no expert, but it looked paler than it probably should have — closer to yellow than green. He frowned, his gaze flicking between the plants in front of him.
Almost every single one of them looked the same.
Discolored, with drooping leaves, some even edged with dry, crusty browns.
A small flicker of discomfort — of dawning realization — was all the warning Yo Han got before his chest clenched. He had no time to brace himself, the bloom of concern fierce enough to almost knock the breath out of him.
The implication was all too clear.
Kim Ga On might be withering away faster than Yo Han had anticipated.
___
Though I guess that's technically BEFORE he sees Ga On? So here's the one when he actually turns around and sees him for the first time in months:
Yo Han had pictured the moment many times over. He'd wondered — maybe even fantasized — what it would be like to see Ga On again after so many months apart. But none of those scenarios, each studied and evaluated down to the smallest detail, could prepare Yo Han for what he actually found when he turned around.
Not even once, at any point during his musings, had Yo Han thought that the first thing he would feel was a sharp, painful pang of guilt.
The eyes meeting his — those soft doe-eyes, usually so bright and vibrant — were flat and empty. They looked too big on Ga On's face, too black and bottomless against the paleness of his skin. As if there was nothing but a gaping emptiness behind them.
There was no spark. No light.
Nothing.
The world seemed to shift, just a fraction, but still enough to make Yo Han's stomach drop. The curl of dread was paralyzing.
He'd always known he was fated to eventually smother that gentle, fragile light, but he hadn't expected it to happen like this.
Not this soon.
He wasn't ready for that loss yet. He honestly never would be.
And so, for once, Yo Han didn't know what to do — or even how to react. The longer he stood there, staring into those blank eyes, the more the guilt grew. He could feel it seeping into his veins, slowly taking hold.
It hurt to breathe.
A pain which didn't ease even when something finally did shift inside Ga On's eyes. Because what Yo Han saw wasn't life, excitement, or even hope, but the heart-wrenching hunger of a desperate, half-starved creature, so weak it was a miracle it could even function.
The emptiness in Ga On's eyes suddenly made sense.
He was empty. And Yo Han could see the hunger growing — the near-frantic need to fill that cold, hollow space. And he knew exactly what had caused it.
Exactly what Ga On needed in order to fill that void inside of him.
If Yo Han had wanted to make Ga On less dependent on him, he'd failed.
___
... I guess the short answer would be: "... oh fuck."?
Bear in mind that I currently have no plans (or time) to write another chapter from Yo Han's POV, but yeah. I hope you enjoy the snippets?
Also, to be entirely honest with you all, it fucking hurts to write Yo Han's POV, especially these emotional scenes x'D Like, I feel for Ga On when I write about him and his struggles, I definitely do. But Yo Han is too similar to me in how he deals with and processes emotions so I'm, like, in agony when I write stuff like this because I can relate to it too much.
So some of my stubbornness not to write his POV is honestly sheer self-preservation at this point x'D
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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.
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