CrayonQueen
patreon
Long and important post about my Patreon Discord, and my tier rewards.
🕑 Added 2021-03-16 16:46:17 +0000 UTCHey everyone! I hope you’re having a beautiful day!
So this is going to be a long post. But I want to talk about a lot of things that have been happening in the background for a while. So, here we go!
First, a quick thing. I’m going to completely restructure my Patreon. Each tier has been promising things that I have just been unable to deliver, and that’s the main thing I’m going to talk about here. On top of that, I’m going to take off anything people will get, outside of getting comic pages early, and I totally understand if this makes people leave. I just got to clear the air.
Years ago, when I started getting paid to do comics essentially, through sites like Patreon, comics became my job. And that’s when everything started to shift. Instead of comics being my passion, they became my business. When I couldn’t deliver, I felt like I was failing you guys, and it would send me into huge depressions. I’d think to myself ‘these people are paying me money, and I can’t even give them what they’re paying for!’. This included the streams, and every other thing promised in all the tiers. I know I put too much pressure on myself to do well for yall, but it was detrimental. I had to force myself to work on comics, even when I didn’t want to, and I was starting to worry the quality would suffer. I just….
I didn’t like making comics anymore. ): And, the other day I had a hard, hard look at myself, and realized that was the case. I connected Gloomverse so much so with a career of sorts, that… it stopped being my passion. I want it to be my love again, I want to wake up and excitedly work on my stories again, without any pressure of finances or letting anyone down. And I know how cool yall have been, always telling me to take my time, and that you’ll be here, and I thank you so much for that. This is definitely a personal thing, not a ‘you’ thing, I just don’t think mentally I can function with the idea of people financially supporting this project.
It doesn’t mean I’m closing my Patreon- I’m just shifting everything around to be more of a ‘if you’d like to donate you can’ sort of deal. People at the correct tiers will still get comics a day earlier than everyone else, but I’m trying to remove the ‘job’ pressure as part of it.
Now two other points of issue: the patreon only streams, and the patreon discord.
This next section will be the most emotionally honest I think I’ve ever been, and I’m just gonna let things flow. When I started getting a lot of attention online with my stories, I worked very hard to connect with fans, to stream so I could speak to them, and eventually opening my discord to be able to chat with fans daily. The fact that people enjoyed my work meant so much to me, that I wanted to connect with these people- with you guys!- and be able to talk and just, I dunno. It was part of my ‘thank you’ of sorts, I wanted to thank people directly and be directly involved with fans.
Before Undertale, I was just an introverted woman with poor social skills and unchecked mental illness, honestly. But once I blew up online, I did everything I could to show my gratitude for the people who put me there. The problem was, there were some unintended consequences.
I became friends with quite a few fans, and I thought nothing of it. I knew about the unbalanced power dynamic between fan and creator, but I thought it wasn’t happening with me, that yeah, they met me through liking my comics, but that wouldn’t mean they’d be looking at me through star-shaped glasses. But I was wrong.
Essentially, I didn’t realize it until later, but I was being put up on a pedestal by some of these people. They liked what I created so much, that they didn’t see my faults. And when friendships or relationships didn’t work out, the reaction would be so extreme sometimes that it would surprise me. I remember back when I had to cut down on all the different comics I was making- AskError, Aftertale and CPAU- I had also cut myself out of a bunch of friend groups. I was having a mental breakdown from the pressure I was putting on myself, and besides doing all three comics at once, I was also interacting in each social group every single day. And keep in mind, I’m pretty introverted! This ended up with me losing a lot of weight, not eating, not sleeping, absolute panic attacks that wouldn’t cease- I’ve told this story before, but one night I was driving home on the highway facing towards Colorado. And I thought to myself, ‘I could just keep driving. Just drive and drive and never have to deal with this again.’
That woke me up to realizing how dire my mental health was in. I was starting to avoid friends, and since my anxiety disorder was going unchecked, it’s weird to say now but I just. I couldn’t explain what was happening, to my friends. I was just under complete panic for days, unable to even approach people. They contacted me asking what was wrong, but I physically couldn’t even explain it. And it ended up with me leaving a ton of my social circles, just. Disappearing. I had signed up with a local therapist, because I was worried this stress and panic would kill me. Or at least end with me doing something terrible.
I didn’t realize until later, when people started coming up to me, who were really upset over me disappearing. They were angry at me, and of course didn’t understand the full scope of everything, because I wasn’t physically able to tell them. Heck, I didn’t even know until months and months down the line, exactly what was wrong with me, my brain was so messed up.
But they were really upset. And I believe it was coming from this expectation of me I couldn’t live up to. I think what they saw, was a creator they really liked, just vanishing into thin air one day without explanation. And. Well. I can’t blame them being upset.
This is partly why I stopped doing streams as well. I used the streams to connect with you guys, but after every stream I’d have a panic attack. Even if a stream went well, mentally I recognized that ‘these people are all fans of me’ and any mistake I’d make talking to anyone, would be magnified ten fold. I thought I hid it well enough during the stream, but afterward, my heart would race and I’d just be… well, not great!
It’s that reason why streams also ceased. The guilt I felt from that was monumental, but my health was not well.
This is also what sort of led me to opening the patreon discord. I thought to myself ‘okay, streaming is off the table, but I think a discord would be a lot of fun!’
And the truth is, it was! Without the stress of being on camera in real time, I could just chill out in my PJs and chat with people online. But this also didn’t go well.
The power dynamic issue was still there, and although to me, I thought I’d just be able to chat with fans and have everything be good, this messed up too. Just like before, I made friends through this discord server, but some people who looked up to me held me in too high regard again. So when things would crash, they would crash HARD, and it would be devastating. To me, I wouldn’t understand how things could get so bad, but recently I realized as well, that no matter how hard I tried to keep the playing field equal, and show I wasn’t some superhuman comic creator, especially younger fans wouldn’t see it that way.
Much of this was behind the scenes, but it would happen again, and again and again. Every time I’d mess up (as you end up doing eventually with friends!) it felt like a huge event, and maybe that was related to my anxiety disorder, but, either way it was pretty awful. I had some unhealthy friendships that I had also tried to pull back from and move on to new people, but these old friends were furious, and I’d feel almost trapped. And it shouldn’t be surprising, that they ended on really rocky territory.
Not only that, but some other unseen side effects would happen. I had multiple people enter my discord with the sole purpose of becoming my friend. So I’d start getting private messages from patrons, sort of. Pushing themselves into my more personal life. And as I said at the beginning of this, I was pretty introverted and I lacked quite a bit of social skills, so even though I was uncomfortable, I was unsure what to do. I mean, this person was a fan, and they like what I did! I wanted to be nice to them.
But that’s unhealthy as hell, you know? I’m okay with my small tight knit group of friends. There are plenty of people I love outside of my chosen few friends, but I only want to be close to so many people, and this became increasingly stressful.
It felt like again, some people were just. A fan of my story, and thought that because they liked my stories, that they wanted to be my friend. And I wasn’t sure how to turn them away.
Not only that, I had no idea how to manage a server, and that created problems too. I was wishy washy because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and in the back of my mind I’d remember what had happened before. So some punishments would be more severe and without explanation, and others would be way too light, and it became confusing, and a mess for people in the discord.
Not only that, this is an extreme case… and I never talked publicly about it besides perhaps in a stream, but. I had a stalker connect with me through my patreon discord. They were obsessed with one of my characters, and treating other people very badly. When I told them to stop, that this behavior was unacceptable, I started getting creepy voice messages, and at least one threat that they were going to find me in person at a convention. It was absolutely terrifying.
It got to a point where I had to dig into this person’s information through their username, so I could find the town they lived in, get a photo of them, and have the photo ready for conventions in their area. I planned to go to the security table and give the photo to them, to beg them not to let this person in. I had dreams that this person was going to come and stab me. The scariest thing too, is they were definitely close enough to reach one of my conventions in my yearly convention circuit. I even tried to contact the police in their town to see if anything could be done, but it all fell through. It was… really scary guys. Luckily they’ve left me alone for a few years now, but at the time I had no idea how dangerous they could be.
As time went on, it felt like there was problem after problem in the discord. In the same way as before, I’d meet people through this discord, something would happen and things would go south REALLY fast. It would happen again and again, and. Well. I was exhausted. I kept feeling like I was failing people. I felt like I kept messing up, and I just had no idea what was wrong.
Until I fully realized the power dynamic going on. And… it made me realize, that the smart thing to do, would be to separate from socializing with fans on a daily basis. It’s annoying it took this long to realize it, but it’s where all the problems seemed to stem from. One of my favorite Lindsey Ellis quotes- “I’m just a well meaning idiot”- I use all the time to describe myself. I’m a well meaning idiot trying to do my best and stumbling as I go. I’m certainly no one to be put on a pedestal. I’m just a woman who really likes making comics-- or, I did. And I never thought of myself as some grand great incredible person, so I guess the idea that other people would view me like that… was hard to grasp. Even as my fanbase doubled and tripled, even as videos came out dubbing my comics, and all these fans went to meet me at conventions- I just. Saw myself as just a normal person who liked to write stories.
Between finances, and streaming, and the discord, it made me feel like I heavily lost my way. I didn’t know the right way to go about any of this, and it hurt me, and a lot of other people too, and this seems like the smartest way to do everything.
At the end of the day, I just. I miss doing comics that I love. I miss the simplicity of it- where my comics weren’t related to Patreon, where my comics didn’t connect with skirmishes on discord, or some obsessed fans. The entire reason I used to do Gloomverse was because I wanted to do it, because I loved telling stories.
And these last couple days, I laid in bed, thinking… ‘when was the last time you actually loved making comics?’ and it was years ago. *Years*. I spent so much time caught up in trying to get to know my fans, and connect, and treat my story like a business, that I completely lost sight. And that is so, so sad to me. I’m just not a super social person, and once again. Dealing with conflict is really hard. I never know the right answers, and I feel like a deer in the headlights. And it just seems like most of my decisions to try and solve things, never seemed to. I felt like no matter what I did, I’d hurt people.
So, this is where I’m at now. I’m closing my discord within the week. I’m switching my discord to friends only. I’m taking out a ton of the perks of higher tiers on Patreon, and just limiting my social circle, so I can love comics again.
And if a bunch of people leave my patreon because of this? I understand completely, and I certainly wouldn’t hold it against anyone. I just want to give people the option of donation, but recognize why I’m moving things around. I don’t want to do comics for money anymore. I want to do comics because… I want to love doing comics again. And like I said at the beginning of this huge ramble, you will still get pages a day early, but that’s about all I will promise at this point. I don’t want to make the same mistakes again.
I think once I remove all these stresses, all these problems? It’ll get there again.
So, thank you for reading this. It feels like a huge weight off my chest, and I know it was a LOT of text. But this had been building for years, and. I just really need to take care of myself. And if I keep hurting fans or friends…? Well. Then this is the right way to go.
EDIT: One quick edit! I'm going to enact all these things in the next week. I'm worried if I remove the Patreon Discord tier on Patreon right away, people could automatically be booted out before the time is right.
Comments
Turtle
Hi CQ - I'm a year late, but just wanted to express my appreciation for your transparency & your prioritization of your health. Also, I kinda grew up with Undertale & subsequently reading your creative works - thank you for the inspiration you've given me through the years!
Unu-Nunium
I understand. While you've talked about some of these things earlier, I didn't know the whole picture. I just wanted to let you know that I've been following and supporting you for so long not only because of your comics, but because I think you're an amazing person. I was - and always will be - rooting for you, no matter what way you're deciding to take. Take your time to step back from it all for a while and breathe. You deserve it.
