Third ill (Patreon)

"ill" was a series of comics I did back in college that all had sort of messed-up or disturbing themes.  It only went to 3, and the first two are not worth sharing even if I could find them.  Looking at this reminds me that I used to take a lot more care with my comics, instead of farting them out in a desperate rush to meet the deadline, like I do now.

Today was busy and I didn't get jack squat done, which is why you're seeing another relic from the archives.

On August 1st, my front page said I had only 75 Patrons and $583, which is not enough subscribers for Lana to get sheared, and not enough money to produce three Zandar pages this month.  ($600 is the threshold between two pages and three.)  I figured this was the usual billing-day churn which happens at the first of every month, and it would clear up.  Today is the 3rd and it still says the same thing.  As Burnside would say "Sump'n ain't right."

What's odd is, according to my notifications nobody left.  This means that Patreon has bolloxed up the billing process AGAIN and a bunch of people's credit cards got declined.  Actually, it might not be all Patreon's fault, because the banks are getting persnickety.  Not content to hoard other people's money, they are now getting into the Social Manipulation business.  Last month, because I occasionally draw what can be considered "adult" content, I had to submit to Enhanced Surveillance and provide scans of my driver's license and a webcam photo of myself as "proof of identity" to satisfy some payment processor's (I think it was Mastercard but don't quote me on that) new requirement.  As if Patreon hasn't had my tax info for years; isn't that sufficient proof of who I am and that I'm an adult?  I didn't want to do it, but I rely on this site for half of my income, so I went ahead and complied.  Will the information they obtained be used against me at some later date?  I'm pretty much counting on that.

To a certain person:  You can stop saying "SubscribeStar" as if that's a solution to anything.  Last time I looked, SubscribeStar seemed to be built for podcasts, not what I do.  Plus, porting all of my content to a new platform will take HUNDREDS of hours, and it's simply not imaginable that I would earn enough money there to make that worthwhile.

I already have a Ko-Fi page (I'm Tegerio over there too, if you're wondering) that is mostly ignored.  To set it up properly I would again have to spend weeks nonstop porting content, and to get the "Gold" plan with tiers and subscriptions I'd have to pay them a fee upfront, which I'm not at all certain I would get back from pledges.  It might wind up not only costing me time, but money as well.

This is quite a bummer.  It's looking like I would be better off all around to quit this nonsense and just get a real job.  I mean a second real job, since I already have one ... and a half ... in addition to posting something every day here.