Friday Update #19: A Tale of Twos (Patreon)

Hello hello! CaptainCaption here with another Friday Update. I'm apparently the Stanley Kubrick of TG visual novel writing because like Kubrick, I love trying to make two separate ideas into a single cohesive narrative; however, don't confuse that with me saying I'm talented like Kubrick, because I'm really just trying to cram the Friday Update I skipped last week into this one like an impatient ADHD kid with two pieces of the same puzzle that don't fit together but look like they should.

As you might have noticed, re:Dreamer has hit two very big milestones this month: this Patreon page has over 200 patrons, and we have hit over $2,000 a month! That's over +$400 dollars in pledges and nearly 30+ patrons in just this month, which is absolutely insane to me.

Seriously, I'm blown away by the level of support this game has. I've done plenty of amateur writing and had a few odd stints as a ghostwriter for my local newspaper and college essays, but I never thought it'd be my full-time job. Before this game, I've been bouncing from various jobs such as restoring worn office furniture in a warehouse for a company my uncle used to run, driving a wash-dry-fold laundry delivery service van for 12 hours a day, working in a medical surgery kit warehouse, and being a pizza delivery day driver, but I never thought this weird kinky writing hobby I had would wind up being what I do.

(To briefly go over my TG writing history, I uploaded my first TG caption on DeviantArt in January 2015 and kept pumping out dozens of stories until I found out Student Transfer existed in February 2017 (they had done their 1.0 release a few months ago). I joined the developer team, at which point my caption/story writing slowed. I became possessed by a demon and learned Ren'Py while writing the big 2.0 scenario (Connie) in 3-4 months. From there, I kind of burned myself out and was losing interest in the body swapping high school setting of Student Transfer. I had a few false starts with trying to make a TG Twine HTML game that never saw the light of day and Dream Girl, a Student Transfer scenario, but I was ultimately spinning my wheels in place and not really going anywhere. I heard about a new TG visual novel called I Am Succubus! from the 4chan /d/ TG thread and asked for work, joining it for all of 48 hours before it came to light that the Kickstarter was a massive embezzlement scheme for two of the staff working on it and the entire project imploded from within (it's a fascinating story of idiots but one that isn't relevant here; and no, I wasn't on that money train, let alone paid for my work). Roughly one month later, Espeon, who had been messaging me on and off about random TG topics for about a month, contacted me about this TG visual novel about a phone game they were interested in financing.)

I managed to fall into the pockets of a suspiciously wealthy furry patron who had tapped me because she saw this extremely eggy AGP TG story on my DeviantArt and thought I'd be a perfect writer for her project right at the moment I was looking to write an ambitious TG story, but I'm fully aware just how extremely lucky I was and I've been trying my best not to take anything related to this game for granted. Not to sound too sappy, but working on this game has been far more rewarding than its pay. I've always treated it as a passion project that is just barely making enough money to pay my bills as I put my life in stasis, but now there's a very real opportunity to make it so much more than that.

If you were not aware, I don't take home every cent that this game makes. Patreon takes their 8% cut, but after that, I get a guaranteed $600 cut as per my agreement with Espeon, as well as 1/3 of the remainder and reimbursements for buying things such as icon packs, royalty-free backgrounds, and font licenses (if you're wondering, Espeon takes that 2/3 of the revenue and funnels it into the art budget for this game). For the longest time, I was making just barely enough to squeak by each month. It's a little embarrassing at my age (27), but I still live at home still and pay a modest rent of $300 a month, miscellaneous expenses, and various medical needs. The most expensive necessity in my life, my Parkinson's medication prescriptions, dropped from $700 to $85 for a 30 day supply after I changed what I took (you can check this Twitter thread I made for the details), and I've been using that unexpected expenditure erasure to shore up my starving bank account (but also mechanical keyboard stuff because lol I fell down a dangerous rabbit hole and I'm only just now clawing my way out haha xd I swear I don't embezzle money to fuel my keyboard addiction).

For the first time in nearly a decade, I'm... happy. It's weird, honestly. I get to do something I love, other people get to enjoy a project I'm passionate about, I get that glowing feedback and validation that being a former gifted child (I skipped second grade and was a runner-up as a state chess champion in elementary school, so yes, I was a massive dork as a little kid), I challenge myself creatively, and I make money doing all of this.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for making my dream job possible.

*cough*

A-Anyways, another milestone is coming up for re:Dreamer: the game's second birthday! Well actually, that birthday has technically come and gone because I was first contacted by Espeon on September 13, 2019 to get this game started, but much like adopted pets, the birthday becomes the day it entered the world at large, which is October 8, 2019 (coincidentally a day after my birthday; yes, I really spent my 26th birthday polishing this game for its first-ever public release). I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do to celebrate yet for either my birthday and re:Dreamer's, but I've got a few loose ideas (a dress-up sprite viewer, those cosmetic palette changes for Zoey that I've been talking about, and a few easter eggs).

I'll leave you with this server invite background and banner I made today for the re:Dreamer Discord server (in addition to people throwing money at me on this Patreon for reasons that somewhat elude me, enough people have Nitro boosted the server to get it these perks). If you haven't joined the server already, now's a great time to click this invite and do so. As of writing this, there are 1,167 members in the server with about 2-3 dozen regulars, making it a very active place. I never expected to be hosting an anime image sharing network, a supportive 24/7 trans girl slumber party, an egg hatching factory (seriously, like at least a dozen people have realized they are trans or come out as trans in this server), and a general hangout for gender bender fans, but I also never expected to be writing this game, so... (also, the server has Patron-exclusive channels where I post sneak previews of upcoming content and art assets that often don't make it to this Patreon page, so make sure you link your Discord and Patreon accounts to see that stuff).

The next re:Dreamer update, 0.8.10, is out on Friday, October 1. It'll cover more of Zach and Britney's mall date.