Creideiki-SE

I used to consider Patreon as a shining example of micropayments done right. Aggregating payments monthly to minimise transaction fees was obviously the right thing to do to make micropayments workable in the current regulatory environment. It has allowed me to support around 25 creators with $1-2 monthly for several years.

In fact, let's do a roundup of those creators I support who are also Deviants. In no particular order, these people create entertainment of a high enough quality that I want to give them money even though most of what they do is available here for free:

Now, with very little warning, Patreon is taking away this their only unique service, moving to charging people's credit cards individually for each pledge, adding a processing fee each time. This will make my $1 pledges about 40% more expensive. Most of the creators I support are small and depend on these $1-2 pledges, and many have already posted about losing patrons who cannot afford these extra fees. I have not yet decided how I will respond - I no longer trust Patreon, but I still want to support all the creators making wonderful art.

While Patreon is busy committing PR suicide over this issue on Twitter, it's time for their users to remember always to have an exit strategy from every platform they depend on, and to look for alternatives. The current favourite seems to be Drip, which is made by Kickstarter, so at least they seem to know what they're doing. Let's hope they see what's going on and welcome the refugees from Patreon with open arms.

1. Fizzlepop Berrytwist is the most Pony thing I have ever heard.
2. Read this TVTropes article.
3. Look at this face:
   
4. Go see the movie.

My little pony: The movie is out, and people have started posting reviews. Apparently, it's quite good. Not that I get to know for myself. My local cinema monopoly refuses to believe it exists, and considering they are the same people who would only show Wall-E with dubbed dialogue (because animated films are by definition for kids too young to read subtitles) they'd probably mess it up anyway.

At least we'll get a DVD. In six months. yaaay.

When Legend of Everfree was released, I thought I would try to be like one of the kids these days and watch it on Netflix, since it was released on there at the same time as in cinemas. I got a free 30-day trial subscription, tried five different web browsers on three different computers until I found a combination that at least gave me an image in 720p, and then it turned out that no, of course it wasn't available here just because it was available in the US.

I wonder if anyone still thinks this ridiculous exclusivity nonsense actually makes any money, instead of pissing people off and pushing them to the Big Video-on-Demand Server In The Cloud.

As may be gleaned from my extremely sporadic Pony warfare series of journal entries, I quite like grimdark horse words. However, there is one epic pony war in the distant future I haven't dared dive into: Fallout: Equestria. With 620k words in the main story, 1.8M words in the most popular side story I'm aware of through popcultural osmosis, hundreds of other spinoff stories, games and pieces of music, there is no way I'm going to be able to even scratch the surface.

However, there is now a way to remedy this problem! There is an IndieGoGo campaign to hire a professional voice actress to record an audiobook version of Fallout: Equestria. At an estimated 70 hours, this would provide me entertainment during approximately two months of commuting to work. Take a look at their page, listen to the samples they have already recorded, and think about how you really need something to distract from the mutants every time you leave your Stable to roam the surface. Then give them money to make it happen, because professional actors are not cheap. As of this writing, they've raised $5.5k of their $26k goal with one month left, and given the popularity of Fallout: Equestria I believe they will make it. Then we have to wait until autumn 2018 before it's released, but there are lots of other horse words to read until then.

Update: More recorded samples!

Update 2: Final tally: 164% funded with $42 733 from 391 backers!