Hey, look! A poll! And news, oh my!

No, not the monthly poll for January's stories. We'll get to that in another week or two. I realized however that I forgot to ask in the year-end feedback survey: Which of these sites did you first find me on?

***NEWS***

Now for the announcements. If you do not care for the state of the Patreon as a whole, feel free to skip this. It admittedly only affects a fraction of you.

Those of you who filled out the year-end feedback survey, thank you. The following are some changes implemented after taking your suggestions into account:

1. The number of commission slots has increased by 2 to 7, but the minimum word count has been eliminated. I will simply write until I reach a satisfactory stopping place, whether that is 3,000 words or 7,000. Come January, I'll be accepting 7 commissions, meaning that although 2 weekly updates will be reserved for the poll winner as usual, the other 2 weeks of the month may be purchased.

However, note that if you do not tell me what story you want each month, or declare you want X story in perpetuity, I will assume you have no work for me for the month and that you are extremely generous with your funds as some have been in the past. Please communicate your intentions clearly.

2. For the rest of you, no, this does not mean that should I not receive enough commissions, I will write less. If the commission slots are not taken, I will simply continue to write and publish weekly at-will. Don't worry, my monthly word count is going to remain more or less steady.

3. Your minimum payment WILL NOT increase. I know, weird. Let me explain.

I learned from another creator that I can unpublish a payment tier. In which case, you all will remain at the $1 tier, while I can simply create a new tier at the $2 mark. New people looking to join the Patreon will start at $2. You don't have to upgrade, or do anything else for that matter.

Please consider this a perk of being a legacy member. You joined in the first year of this channel and I'm delighted to have you.

4. Now, I'm sure some of you are wondering, "Why is this such a big deal? It's a dollar difference, right?" Not quite... If you care, here's the math. If you don't, you can skip the rest of this.

Patreon takes 2 fees: Their slice of the commission, as well as a handling fee. Their commission is always 8% while their handling fee fluctuates depending on whether it is a micropayment  ($3 or below) or not.

For micropayments, which is what we care about, it is $0.10 + 5%. So that means, including Patreon's commission of 8%, micropayments get charged $0.10 + 13%.

So here's how the math breaks down:

$1.00 - ($0.10 + $0.13) = $0.77

$2.00 - ($0.10 + $0.26) = $1.64

As you can see, because of how the percentages are weighted, a $1 payment is actually worth less than half of a $2 payment. It's literally pennies worth of difference, but when there are hundreds of you, that's not nothing, especially as there are also currency conversion and payout fees (direct deposit).

Patreon knows this, which is why they recommend the minimum payment tier to be $3.

In any case, that's enough numbers for the day. I'm that one Asian that can't count and this was altogether way more math than I've done in a while. I have a rep to keep, damnit. If you want to see what all goes on in the back end of things (more numbers!) you can read their post about it for yourselves: https://bit.ly/3N97dfC

So, if you've made it this far, have an animal fact: Camels are more Christmas-y than reindeer. The three wise men/magi who went to Bethlehem to celebrate the birth of Christ were said to have ridden camels. Suck it, Rudolph.

Some of you may have known that from Bible school, so here's another: Kangaroos are Christmas animals too, but only if you're Aussie, because they're just fucking weird like that. There's a famous song called "The Six White Boomers" (no, not that kind), which is about how Santa has his sleigh pushed by six boomers when he goes Down Under.

Oh, a "boomer" is a male kangaroo.