Recent Changes/PSA (Patreon)

For those of you who aren't aware, Patreon is going very soon to change how patrons are charged. I strongly recommend that you read up on the changes they're implementing, because a lot of people are pretty upset about it and I don't blame them. 

TLDR: Previously for every $1.00 donated, Patreon takes 5% and a fluctuating percentage for transaction fees is also deducted, roughly $0.85 - $0.90 goes to creators. The transaction fee is shifted off onto patrons, so not the donation formula is $(([Donation Amount] x 0.03) + 0.35)... which means a $1.00 pledge will cost the patron $1.38 and the creator receives $0.95.

This is a bit of a bad change for the particular setup I have going, wherein most of the pledges are $1.00, so if anybody feels the need to back out of this particular patreon or switch to free mode (...I THINK people can see most posts if they're non-pledging subscribers? It should mostly be the same—please correct me if I'm wrong because that means this thing isn't set up correctly D:!!!) know that it's totally reasonable to do so as proportionately it's a hefty service fee.

In other news, this month started off with a negative balance, caused by Patreon discovering that one of the top pledgers (and Jen's biiiggest crazed fan) had been contributing a lot of money through what they claim was a stolen credit card. Their current policy is to refund all the pledges the offender has ever contributed back to wherever they came from (fair) and then not tell the creators that they've deducted it from their balance, or that the fraud actually occurred (...the fuck??) 

I'm adamantly for having the funds returned because keeping them would be grossly dishonest thievery, but I don't think there's a way to pay it back directly as I don't know where they actually originated from (meaning I'll have to let Patreon sort it out via deducting from my balance out of future pledges.) It'll be at least another month or so before my negative balance is back in the black and the mess is cleared. This isn't a huge setback for me, but if you have a patreon of your own and are more reliant on its income to get by please be mindful of this practice, as a year's worth of pledges COULD suddenly be rescinded under such a scenario. Red flags are red.

On a more positive note I'm finally on a much needed vacation from my day job next week ;v; It's a staycation, I spend these precious days getting a lot of art stuff done. It is a magical time wherein I get to live again.

Anyway, thanks for hearing out my longwinded rant. More stuff this weekend!

-Scott