The Big Hiatus Post (Patreon)

I remember when I started production on Fantasy Dating last July. At the time it was actually called Fantasy Date. And while I can't pinpoint the exact day I began, I do know the first set of renders featuring MC, Ehrlynn, and Zimmy came out on July 18th, 2020. I think that's good enough to qualify today as the 1-year anniversary of Fantasy Dating's production.

For the most part, it has been non-stop and I never actually scheduled any breaks of production. However, after some recent events and realizations, the time for a break has come. I am going to pause the billing cycle for August.

I know the middle of the month is an odd time to start a pause. Recently I've been quite frustrated with many things. Patreon and myself taking the top spots of that list.

What began as an ad seeking an assistant writer turned into a bit of self-discovery. I'm doing things wrong. "Wrong" in this case meaning I'm trying to be like other devs, regardless of if I could actually follow through. Some previous posts (especially these two) are a reflection of that.

I have multiple disabilities, the two that primarily affect my ability to work are Dysgraphia and Autism (ASD). To be blunt, it takes me more time to do certain tasks than others. For example, writing the Progress Update and BTS posts takes me hours... for each and every one. Additionally, polls also eat up a lot of time. Hours of time that, in a lot of cases, could have been better spent on setting up scenes, character design, wardrobe customization, etc.

So why then did I choose a style of posting that I'm ill-suited for? Because I thought that was what was proper. But it doesn't fit me. I've noticed that I accomplish way more when there are multiple consecutive weeks between posts instead of weekly. It's high time I've accepted that I can't copy and paste everything from other devs. They can more easily change to fit the mold. I have to accept my own limitations.

I need to decide what that entails. Which is what I'm going to be spending my time off doing. There is a possibility I may need to edit the Tier rewards to drop BTS posts down from twice to once a month. Also, 3 progress updates a month has got to go, and I'm going to try to avoid giant walls of text to replace them (irony alert lmao).

I'm torn as to what to do with polls, I like giving you all options to pick from. And while fun for me, that isn't shared by about half of my supporters. It seems every time I post a new poll I get less responses than previous ones. This one in particular really stung, I designed 3 different versions of a male character to choose from and less than 50% of the eligible tier voted. I basically threw away hours of work for no good reason.

Make no mistake, that isn't anyone's fault but mine. I went way overboard and dumped far too much effort into something that should not have been a poll to begin with. The poll was a tie anyway, but I am officially throwing out the result. Going off on these kinds of tangents is something else I need to mitigate.

To better illustrate the magnitude these issues are causing, I will state that this month I spent more time writing, editing, an generating renders for posts than I did working my projects. Which is absolutely lopsided and detrimental to progressing towards my next content releases.

So where does this leave us? I'll occasionally be available on Discord and I may tweet out something, but not much else. I hope to figure out a better way forward and return by mid-August. Until then, don't forget to take some time for yourself when needed.