Update: This Patreon, potential changes, and your input

Hey, Manticores!

So, longtime manticores might have noticed this page has gone a little quiet lately, and longtime manticores who are still active on YouTube might've noticed that I haven't posted a full-length video in a while — but I have posted approximately five hundred thousand YouTube Shorts about D&D.

So what's goin' on with the Patreon?

As far as I see it, the issue thus far is threefold (that's why you subscribe to me here, for cool fancy sentences like that):

• Over on YouTube, my current stuff is structurally pretty different from my previous stuff. This isn't the first time that's been true — my stuff from a year ago is wildly different from my stuff from 2018 — but it's very true now.

• My Patreon stuff is, currently, tied to my Proper Videos™, and not my Shorts (which makes sense, since, like, I think my Patreon page might be, technically, older than the Shorts format entirely, and it's definitely been around since long before I started posting them). A lot of the perks — early access to videos, bimonthly wallpapers based on videos, names in video credits, etc — are directly tied to Proper Videos™. Like, I can't put names in the credits of a Short if YouTube Shorts are structurally opposed to the idea of credits, y'know?

• Thus, while I've been posting these Shorts that have, frankly, exploded my channel (40k subscribers in 4 months is honestly insane), my beautiful and majestic manticores — my most beloved and important of all my fans, don't tell the others — have been going hungry.

All this is kinda why I've been hesitant to post about my Patreon on YouTube recently, even though I know it would get me more patrons since my subscribers started skyrocketing.

Additionally, a lot of my current perks are, to be completely honest, a type of Patreon perk that I'm not a fan of. I know it sounds weird to be like "I did this but it's bad", but I've never really been a fan of the "exclusive art" side of crowdfunding perks.

To be clear here, I'm not talking about stuff like polls, or names in credits, or early access, or update/behind-the-scenes posts. I'm talking about stuff where I make a whole art thing — like a wallpaper — that gets posted solely to Patreon. I kinda don't like these, for reasons including, but not limited to:

• As a fan, it sucks for one of your favourite artists to have more art that they've made, but that's permanently out of reach just because you don't have the resources to fund their Patreon.

• As someone who's been on the internet, this kind of stuff is honestly just... too easy to steal. Someone can't download and repost, like, a patron's spot in the credits, but they can easily do it with a couple of PNGs.

• As an artist, it's so much more rewarding to engage with others on a personal interaction level than it is to just make a thing and then show it off, especially when people are literally paying to be here. Like, I spend way more time reading and responding to comments than I spend looking at view counts, y'know? Things like polls and conversations and sharing behind-the-scenes stuff to chat about feels a hell of a lot more genuine and engaging than "I make a thing, y'all look at thing".

With all this in mind, I'm considering doing some reworking around here. I still like wallpapers, I still like putting people's names in credits, etc etc etc, but I might reorient things to make it both easier for me to do and more focused on interaction with y'all.

Anyway, I'm mostly posting this to let y'all know there's gonna be stuff happening and that things might be changing around a bit.

The important thing is this:

PLEASE reply to this post to let me know what your thoughts are! I'd love input from my beloved manticores :) If you're not sure what to write, try thinking over these questions:

• What stuff do you think I should change here?

• What stuff do you really not want me to change?

• What stuff should I add or remove?

• What would make you happier about this Patreon?