Mar/Apr: State of the Nation

CIVIL WAR

Been a harrowing couple of months for yours truly as I've tried tackling multiple things with limited success, and stumbled through a couple of other things besides. Decisions must be made as we move into the next exciting episode of...TDL Z!

The Real World

As ever, it causes the most trouble. I'm moving into a better place, which is good as it means I'll have the space and freedom and location I feel I need...but it's also going to be roughly twice as expensive as the place were I'm currently living. A little over double, infact.

I also cut down on my main source of income to focus on trying to get a more promising career off the landing-patch, but it doesn't feel that it's coming through for me right now because I don't have all the pieces of the plane together. 

So the issue is pretty simple, I either get a similar 'main source' timewise, but that pays more per hour, (hard to see a way to fulfil this option) or something that has the same amount of money but more hours (definitely more doable, but means less time for other things). All of which led toooo... 

Volition

The reason Volition got so delayed is because I was thinking of rushing through the rest of this chapter before canning it or putting it on haitus to an undetermined date so I could work on a script. Much as I like working on it, there's so much to do on each page that it's taking about 4 full-time work days out of 14 days to do a 2-page update (which is still better than 3 days for a 1 page update, but still). And that kind of time-commitment is a big investment. And I wouldn't mind except I know I'm going to need to eat in the future and the monthly bank statements don't look promising.

...However, turns out that your motivation to do something bottoms out when you're thinking of just cancelling it, so along with the difficulties of the subject matter (ain't done too much of this kind of 18+ thing before) it led to very slow progress that actually took up even *more* time than sticking to the previous schedule did.

So, for the time being, we're back on the old schedule with no concrete plans to stop, but with an idea to step back at chapter's end and be like 'do I really *need* all of this shading?' and similar questions, and maybe a different workflow as previously discussed. I dunno...I'd poll y'all, but this more feels like something I should figure out (I assume you have a vested interest in scheduled debauchery that may mar your objectivity. Who knows why I think that. ;) )

Thrallworks the Movement/Harmony project

(Shengen, a demure and lovely teacher running the village school in the Harmony game...if I run the game...)

For similar reasons as above, I haven't done too much toward these projects...but I have thought more about that CYOA thing and Fiction.Live. I think I could probably spare one evening a week to running a 'short' ongoing game of this. Say like 4 hours. But my 'regular' work has an annoying habit of booking my workdays all over the week, so until I change that job I can't underline an exact day for it, which is a pain. All the more reason for a change, I guess.

But shall we throw up a day just to have a trial run of one of these sometime in May? Gauge interest and all of that. If so, which to go for? Answers on a postcard. I'm not sold, and it might be one project too far- as I say, I am going to need food, and the time spent here is time not spent on the bottom line.

Other Art...and Commissions?!

Also been doing smutwork for a friend's ERP fantasy game, as you all know! And I've even got some smut and non-smut commissions, which is nice. I'm not sure I'm quite willing to open the floodgates on something like smut-commissions just yet, but it may well be a thing. For those interested in a look, here's the commission prices and an album of what can be expected:

Prices
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VFLvWsryoTTVKT9zXrVKRuNAMTzQXb93lVN7oXZd_SI/edit?usp=sharing
Examples
https://imgur.com/a/lDnMJZ8

Though I doubt I'll be open to work on new commissions for several weeks. Watch this space!

Reward Tiers

With the potential of a new CYOA and Commissions on the horizon, I think I might shake up the reward section a bit to give everyone a little more bang for their buck; shift more into the free and patron sections, give the 5-hollas some tastier options, and maybe even make higher-tier slots for something like...a commission raffle? Discounts? Super-votes? Something like that.

Anything Else?

Nah. Just thanks for continuing to support me, actually. I've been quite amazed at it over this hard last month; honestly surprised, and it's probably the reason why I found it in me to pick Volition back up again instead of just agonizing over it further. So y'all're great!

Have a good day everyone, and I'll speak to ya soon!