this is a formal interest check for a charity raffle with the IF community

if you are an IF author or artist and you're interested in participating in a charity-drive raffle, please check out this form! we are aiming to do one big raffle with a single prize pool, where people submit proof of donation in exchange for a raffle ticket.

prizes we are currently considering would be things like a spicy snippet or a cosy snippet, etc. potential sketches from artists or a rendered bust, etc. and we'll allow the authors & artists to dictate how much/what exactly they're comfortable offering. donating to multiple gfm will mean more entries into the raffle. we'll be offering a list of potential gfm to donate to (we're going to try and focus on ones with low funds) & any artists/authors offering prizes can specify if they want to sponsor specific gfm.

this is subject to change! we are just trying to gauge interest right now and see what we can put together on our side of things which depends entirely on the people willing to contribute & if we get enough interest.

here is the google form for artists and authors to fill out:

this was inspired by the book auction for gaza as well as the many other art raffles i've seen here and on twitter.

thank you everyone for the response so far! i want this form to circulate for a bit before we move forward with anything else, and in the meantime i'll start compiling a gfm list (i'm hoping we can focus donations and really help a handful of fundraisers or even get one fully funded?) as well as putting together forms for getting a ticket.

i will be organizing a discord server later for contributors, if you filled out the form i'll be in touch :-)

Patreon page unlaunched

Hi!

Instead of pausing billing again this month, I decided to simply unlaunch the page. That means it won't be accessible until I decide to launch it again.

To be frank, motivation to write has been low since August/September. I've tried to push through it in November, but it simply made things worse, I'm afraid. Right now, all I can do is alleviate any pressure I might feel about writing (most of them are self-imposed, really) and take it as easy as I can until I feel up to writing again.

At this time of the year, I would usually do a bit of a wrap-up to tell you how the year went for my writing, what progress I've made. I won't do that this time, because I know it's not good. This year was stressful and did a number on my mental health to be honest, yet I still feel like I should have done better.

And that honestly happens everytime I looks at my word count for the year. Each time I feel down, feeling like I should have done more. Keeping track of word counts can be a useful way to measure your progress. It feels good when the numbers go up. But of course it feels shitty whenthey don't. It also gives you a dangerous tool to compare your output to other people's, to your past self even.

Right now, I feel like it's doing more harm than good so I'm going to try not keeping track of it at all next year, see how that works out for me.

I really hope things will get better next year. But to be honest, I'm not holding my breath. There's likely a lot of stress ahead, possibly less free time for me to write. My government is growing more and more hostile towards people who, like me, have a low income or are unemployed and it's likely to affect both my time and drive to write.

I do wish you a better 2024 and I thank you for being along for the ride so far, as bumpy as it's been lately.

Patreon billing paused for December

I'm sure it won't come as too much of a surprise. Writing is still very difficult at the moment, I only returned in November because circumstances forced my hand.

I'm currently taking another break from writing. I can only hope things will become easier soon, I'm not thrilled about getting so little progress done on each of my games. But my mental health is what it is and forcing myself is only going to make things worse.

There is another reason why dealing with Patreon has become difficult as of late: the change of policy concerning adult content. Patreon now requires all creators putting NSFW content on their page to verify their age. That involves uploading a copy of their ID to a third party website.

I'm not super comfortable with the idea, I'm not going to lie. But if I don't verify my age, Patreon will eventually stop transfering my earnings to me, unless I make the page SFW and remove all adult content from it. Which is a difficult decision to make, considering the NSFW tier is the most popular one by far.

So I need time to figure out what to do about it all.

11/17/23 Update

Hello everyone!

I’m writing this update a little early because I’ll be away this weekend and I won’t be able to do it tomorrow.

It’s been a really rough week, writing-wise. I continued writing one of the questions you will ask Armine during her date but everything felt off. I’ve thought about it and decided to rehaul the whole thing. I cut off nearly 4000 words and I’m now trying to rewrite the missing sections. I’m not entirely convinced it was the right call or if what I’m writing is going to be better, but I just couldn’t continue without trying to fix things first.

I’m feeling mentally exhausted and I want to move on from 8YR at the moment, to be honest. But I can’t really leave the story as is, or I will have a huge mess to fix when I come back to it and that’s not very nice to my future self lol. So I’m going to at least try finishing fixing up those questions and then I think I’ll go back to editing Nevers’s scene in Gonzague.

I wish you all a restful weekend!

11/11/23 Update

Hi!

This week has been a little more about coding than writing. Implementing the save-to-file feature for both 8YR and Gonzague took me a bit so I ended up not writing a whole lot this week.

After I finished a scene in Armine’s date last week, I came back to the questions you can ask her. This is not the easiest part to write, to be honest. There’s a lot more variations in those and I have to add a bunch of transitions depending on what scene will come next. And as you may or may not know, transitions are the worst. I suspect it’s going to take me a while to get through this section and I might need a break from 8YR once I’m done with it.

I might do some more coding next week, if I’m feeling up to it, so writing might take a back seat again. We’ll see!

I hope you all have a nice weekend.

11/06/23 — Game update 02.8 — Save to file feature

This update is purely technical and doesn’t add any new story content.

I added a custom macro to the game that will allow you to save your game into a file that you can download. This will provide you with a back-up, should your saves be erased from your cookies.

Additionally, to make the experience loading from a file a little smoother, the save and load windows are now popups, so they’ll look a little different.

I also increased the number of save slots from 5 to 9.

A few notes on how it works, please read!

Saving The ‘save to file’ link will save the corresponding slot into a file. It will only save a pre-existing save so if the slot is empty, you won’t be able to download any file. Make sure to save the usual way before downloading the file through the provided link.

Loading When loading from a file, it will overwrite the corresponding slot. You can load the file into an empty slot if you want to avoid deleting any present save.

Old saves Due to the change in formatting, I recommend you do not save to file your old saves directly. If you want to save them into a file, load them, save them again the usual way and then download the file using the ‘save to file’ link. If you don’t do this, you could end up stuck on the save page when loading from that file. If it does happen, you can leave the save page by going through the settings or the character sheet and then back to the story.

/!\ Warning to iPhone users /!\

While the feature does work on iPhone, you may have to do a little bit of fiddling if you use Safari. Safari may add .txt to your save file when downloading it. If it does, you won’t be able to load the file into the game unless you remove the .txt extension.

To do that, you’ll have to go into your files folder, press on the file until a menu opens and choose ‘rename’. Once the name of your file is selected, tap it and a few different options should show up. Changing the extension is the very last one. Delete .txt and your file should be ready for use!

I’m sorry for the inconvenience it undoubtedly is, but there’s no way around it that I’m aware of.

Links

Demo | Bonus content directory | Support me on Ko-fi or Patreon | Join the Discord server

11/04/23 Update

Hi!

It’s going to be a short one because I still haven’t got my Internet back and I have to write this on my phone. :(

In short, despite my expectations for the worse, it’s been a decent week of progress. Not nanowrimo level of progress lol. But I was able to keep up with my usual 500 words a day.

I wish luck to everyone attempting nanowrimo (and be gentle with yourselves!), but I’m going to pass for this year.

Have a nice weekend!

Patreon billing resuming

Patreon billing is resuming as of today.

I was honestly about to pause for another month, but due to an Internet outage, I’m actually unable to do it. I guess circumstances (and Patreon’s app uselessness) decided for me. I suppose I should be glad that I was able to write a post to warn my patrons, but that’s the best I can say about Patreon’s app.

I’ll do my best to write bonus content for this month and we’ll see how it goes.

10/28/23 Update

Hi!

This week was another difficult one. Progress was made but it was minimal. I don’t foresee this to improve next week since I’m probably going to be a bit busy.

I’ve continued on with Armine’s date and finished the first question you can ask her and all subsequent choices. Instead of writing all of the different questions at once, I decided to break it up by continuing on with the next scene of the date. I think that’s the only way I can keep what little motivation I have going, so that’s what I’ll be working on next week.

It’s likely that I’ll have to switch project before even reaching the end of Armine’s date, it’s chunkier than expected (as it often happens in interactive fiction) and I don’t want to burn myself out by working too long on the same project. The next story I should be writing for is Better Off, but we’ll see how I feel about that when the time comes.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of working on a novel project that’s been on the back of my mind for a while. But it’s not ready to start drafting and I struggle to set aside the time to work on an outline. I’ll be sure to tell you more about it if I do start working on it.

As we reach the end of the month I’m also considering pausing Patreon for yet another month. I’m not happy about it, but clearly my productivity has not improved at all throughout the month so adding bonus content back into my workload is probably not a good idea.

I’ve not taken any final decision about though, so I’ll keep you posted about it in the coming days.

I hope you all have a nice restful weekend if you can. Until next week!

10/21/23 Update

Hello!

This week, writing has been a little rough. I haven’t written as much as the previous weeks, but I still wrote every day, so it’s not all bad.

I’m still working on the questions you can ask Armine throughout her date. In fact, I’m barely scratching the surface. There’s a good amount of choice in those, so I already can tell it’s going to take a while to write all of them.

I don’t foresee my pace picking up anytime soon, to be honest. After moving in January, I’m finally going to be able to start unpacking lmao. I suspect that’s going to keep me busy for a bit. But I’ll do my best to write as much as I can. We’re approaching nanowrimo and I was hoping to participate this year again, but that’s probably not a good idea. I’ll probably just keep up with my usual daily goal.

I hope you all have a nice weekend!