New system for character design feedback and shorts requests

tl;dr both of these rewards are now claimed via the channel discord, there are specialized rooms set up to receive and archive the requests, and you can ping me as often as it takes to get me to remember them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Longer explanation:

Character design feedback as a reward has been an albatross around my neck for years. Most people who sign up to those tiers of the Patreon don't actually use the rewards (which is normal, and I very much appreciate the support), which meant that whenever someone DID claim the reward it always came out of nowhere for me, usually while I was in the middle of other work, and organizing time to actually respond to it or plan around it was... difficult.

Didn't quite understand WHY it was difficult until I got my ADHD diagnosis, which upon further reading about what my condition is and how it affects me, has made it clear to me that I chose possibly THE single worst format to organize these Patreon rewards for my brain to handle.

So let's try it a different way.

If you want feedback on a character design, there is now a dedicated forum for it on the channel discord - post your character design there along with some actionable questions and feedback requests, and then ping me repeatedly to make sure I remember to get around to you.

I have removed the monthly limit on feedback, you can in theory ask for as much feedback on as many characters as you want, although, y'know, please do not abuse it. I'll try and give more detailed and extensive feedback to people who support at higher tiers, but mostly my goal is just to give useful feedback for everyone who asks for it.

Similarly, if you're in the Cornerstone tier and want to suggest topics for Shorts, there's a room in the discord specifically to put those in, where I can go and find them and see them, and you can ping me to remind me if I do not respond.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADHD is a f*** of a brain problem to have, because it affects every part of your ability to plan and make decisions. I saw one neuroscientist describe it as an acute form of time myopia - we literally become near-sighted in time, blind to anything that is not "now."

So, for example, trying to make a plan like "I am going to do this thing once per month," which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a neurotypical person, becomes an absolute landmine to an ADHD person because AT BEST you're setting yourself up for last minute panic every single month when the deadline sneaks up on you, but much more likely you will simply not be able to consistently plan for one day a month to do a particular task, because a whole lot of things which are more "now" are going to pile up in front of you, and trying to clear them all out of the way all at once to do the thing you "planned" to do becomes a progressively more impossible task every time you try.

This new system, hopefully, is going to be more accommodating to my need for the "now" because it's going to be a list of things I can tackle at any point when my attention and executive function are available, rather than something I have to remember to trigger every month myself. I am removing the limits on rounds of feedback for the same reason, because trying to keep track of all of that is an administrative task that is, again, perfectly reasonable for a neurotypical person, but absolute murder on an ADHD brain.

I feel bad about asking you to ping me repeatedly about getting your feedback and rewards - that feels like an unfair task to lay on your shoulders, and I can imagine it could trigger fears of "being annoying" or demanding and such. But I also know that my memory is deeply affected by ADHD and reminders are absolutely crucial to help me organize myself, so it's something I am going to have to ask for.

Please be assured that you will never be annoying or demanding by pinging me, you are doing what I asked you to do, and you are helping me organize my time.