State of the Vortex May '25 (Patreon)

Hey everyone...

So, business first. https://www.patreon.com/posts/113957695 is now available to all patrons.

Edit: oh great. Fucking MARVELOUS. After MONTHS of there being no issue at all, all of a sudden Patreon's white knighting got Chapter 6 locked. I guess they must have some AI fucker scrawling all posts. I had to delete the lemon and resubmit it. Fuck you, patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/archive-of-iii-127704180 is now posted. It will be the last of the harry potter stuff for a while. I got a fair bit into chapter 4 and then the muse abruptly died, so I moved on to Thunderous Soul. I'll hopefully have chapter 10 ready by the middle of the month.

If that's all you're interested in, enjoy! As for me, I do have to rant for a little bit, so if you're eager to see me vent my spleen, stick around.

This has been the WORST single month I've had in years, if not the worst ever. Ever since the beginning of the year, I had a goal I was rushing towards and everything looked fucking GREAT. It was just fantastic! And now it's basically in flames.

Since the new year, I've basically tossed every dollar I got from patreon into paying off my car loan faster, with the goal of being completely debt free by July and quitting my current job so that I could focus on you guys. I love writing and I want to do more of it. I want to churn out more content for you all. The only reason I've only really been able to turn out two chapters a month is time constraints. I wanted to eliminate that so i could write more. I wanted to try to get to the point where I could do a decent-sized chapter a week, or a BIG chapter every two-weeks-ish at worst.

And with patreon going so well, I thought that goal was in reach. I really did.

And then April 2025 fucking ATTACKED. Between a whole bunch of bullshit, last month alone I lost $12k out of my savings. I won't go into it more than that, but that's about what happened. Only about a fourth of that went into something productive (paying off the car loan faster). And then, for some strange reason, I simultaneously had my absolute worst month on patreon in terms of month-to-month revenue that I've ever had. It wasn't even close.

And I really don't know what happened. Membership was pretty steady. it's not like I LOST a whole bunch of patrons. I just didn't get a whole bunch of new members like I normally do. Did we just NOT like the harry potter content or was it something else? I DID forget to mention the Patreon when I posted Supernova publicly last month, and if THAT was the reason... just... fucking hell man, that might be the costliest mistake I've ever made LMAO.

I don't know man, I'm just... bleh.

So double fucking whammy of pure, monetary agony. And it means that even when I'm done with the car loan in June, it would be SUPER fucking irresponsible of me to put in my notice. Just... Just PAIN. I was SO CLOSE.

I just want to forget last month ever happened. FUCK

Well, that's it for me. Thanks for all your support, guys! I'll hopefully see you on the 15th with more Thunderous Soul!