The Plan (Patreon)

(This will also be posted on the main site, In the coming days there will be a post detailing the new reward tiers)

First and foremost, what a launch! Glad to be back. Thank you for all the well wishes, kind words and honest criticisms. The team and I are loving the energy. You have made us feel very welcome in a sometimes overwhelming space.

In a continuing effort to be as upfront as possible about things..

On the 30th of October, we are going to restart the Patreon. This was a sort of heavy decision that we understand may not sit well with some people so we want to be forward with you about it. We want to allow people the time to sort out whether they’d like to stay subscribed or not. Patreon exclusive content will be made public after a few months. This will consist of non-canonical one-shot comics, behind the scenes visual development, sketches, storyboards, writer/artist update commentary and a few other things that we will get into on the Patreon itself. I want this to be something you choose to do because you support what we’re doing, and never because you feel like parts of the comic are being withheld behind a paywall. The comic will still update on the main site as always.

So, how will this time be different? This might be a lot to read for those of you who are not interested in this, but I want to do things differently this time. I want to give the readers as much clarity as I can afford.

First up, we need to be very transparent about where the money is going. This time we are paying all of it to the HS:BC team. Unlike previous projects, we won’t have a larger absent entity dictating what is and isn’t necessary for us. This time there will be no third parties taking large percentages of money that could be paid to the people who contribute instead.

Every month, aside from basic operating expenses (web infrastructure, hosting costs), 100% of patreon funding will go directly to the HS:BC team. For the first few months 80% will be split up evenly among the current team of contributing members and technical crew. The remaining 20% will be used to backpay the current team several months of work done for this initial buffer of updates.

Secondly, the update schedule has been a hot ticket item of discussion. October will see two updates to get us started. After that the plan is to switch to one update a month while we continue to produce more and feel things out a bit. If we are able to get into a groove, we would like to increase this number. I do not want updates to be tied to how much money the patreon makes, though I won’t pretend It wouldn’t be nice to quit our day jobs and do this full time.

The team has been building a sizable backlog of pages, which is sort of a new thing for HOMESTUCK. All the hits are here: aspects, classes- you get it.  We have taken a lot of care in developing and resolving story beats and character arcs and making sure a lot of these things happen on screen. Though, some of these things will take time. We aren’t even out of Act 1 yet! A lot of passion has gone into continuing and evolving the story we have inherited by a group of people who care very much. And so far they have been doing it purely for the love of the game. In that regard, we truly are so back. 😲

After I have paid the team for this buffer and development time that number will change to a 95% even split revenue share with the HS:BC team. 5% each month will be saved in order to provide any capital for [S] pages, Albums, Merch, etc. The money made from those endeavors will still be paid to the individual artists. We can talk about a financial breakdown for that when the time comes, and if you still want to know. I do not mind.

For albums and merch I want to do a much fairer split than the current system. The money would go to the musicians and the artists. I do not have a company to run so there is no reason for me to make money off of contributing creatives, other than recuperating any costs (which shouldn’t really be much). This is something I would like to work out with people individually and I am slowly beginning outreach to the old music team so this may take a while. I am also interested in new blood in this capacity, so I’d love to hear from some fan music groups too. I will try and set up some channels for this in the coming months. There is a lot of work for us to do. Hm. I take it back. It truly is so over. 😒

I think that just about covers the plan. Here is the short version:

- The Patreon is coming back and will begin again starting November 1st.

- The money from this goes directly and entirely to the HSBC team.

- We operate independently from What Pumpkin and VIZ Media, and we will not be paying them.

- Another update will be coming in October.

- Starting in November, updates will be once a month while we feel things out.

- Small percentage going to [S] pages, merch, and more music.

We are going to be updating the reward tiers and will talk about that a little more in the future. We want to conclude the bonus update stories, but if and when we do that we will probably tackle the important threads from those in the main comic so that things don’t feel paywalled. Overall, I want to have more community involvement and engagement, and I think the first step towards crossing this bridge has to involve us being more open with the fans.