Progress Report, Future Concerns: 23/01 - 26

Hello everyone and welcome to another progress report!

The EDI comic has had its secondary main part resolved, and while I'll be doing a lower quality test render of the whole thing to see if I can spot any errors, I'll otherwise just have to fix up the "outro" section and we'll have Chapter 3 of it resolved. Estimated release will be sometime next month, and early if I have any say in it.

Lulu's project is also seeing some progress. Asset hunting has gone well, script is coming along, and I am in the process of capturing in-game footage for use in the editing process. The project has now also been renamed from the old "Blitzballs" into the more fitting title of "Trophy Wife", and to give a hint as to the script direction I am recording a whole lot of footage where Wakka is doing a very poor job as a goalkeeper in the aforementioned sport.

The Power Girl scenario is also fully underway, and will be released sometime during next week, depending on how badly I bit off in terms of workload this time around. It's looking good so far though, so I'm looking forward to getting into people's hands.

On a less joyful note I'd like to delineate some potential, shall we say, shifts in the near future. Not in terms of content direction or the schedule or the likes, but rather in terms of sadly having to contend with material reality. I seldom speak of economics or political matters (in fact, these topics are explicitly banned on my Discord) and will only ever bring them up if I believe they might impact my ability to deliver on the content I promise my backers, and as things are there's potential for, for a lack of better words, upheaval that might force me to adapt and which I'd like to be open about here in the event "shit hits the fan" as they say.

The first consideration is, as I've spoken about a while back, a potential currency shift. The US dollar has become weaker with time while the SEK has stayed relatively strong (if not gotten stronger), meaning that the dollar is approaching an exchange rate value that has not been seen in many years and which, crucially, means less bang for your buck on my end. While I'm not in any immediate danger of going belly-up, I will readily admit that I had to dig into some savings during 2025 to get by, but because my backing increased towards the end of that year and into 2026 it means I, as of this moment, remain relatively steady. Still, if the USD continues to go down, or if it was to nosedive, should for instance Europe pursue the whispers we hear up here about selling off US treasuries, I will almost inevitably have to undergo the process of freezing the Patreon before waiting the allotted time (upwards of 75 days) necessary for all the processing from the Apple store to take place, and then switch to a more stable currency. During a Patreon freeze no one would be charged anything of course, and I would be sure to warn people well ahead of time before I'd resume operations, but suffice to say I'd have to find a way to make ends meet in that time that wouldn't permit me to work on this stuff, so the schedule would be similarly suspended in such an event.

Apple doing Apple things lies at the core of this freeze matter. Here's another reminder that the iOS store app thing simply slaps on a good 30% price increase that they take for themselves if you sub to a Patreon creator through it, and us as creators simply see nothing of that price hike while we have to wait a good 75 days before any of your backer money gets to us. This is why changing currencies is a pain on Patreon - the Apple store is effectively keeping the money hostage, and so long as a transfer is "underway" for those 75 days, the creator account currency cannot be changed since it can only contain one form of currency.

Still, none of this is set in stone, and the USD may yet stabilize at a point where sticking to it still works. The main reason I am mentioning this now is so that it doesn't come as a sudden shock to people should things suddenly move pretty rapidly, where I'd have to react accordingly. Transparency and all that.

Speaking of rapid movement, there is also the second consideration, which is the extremely minuscule chance, though it does still exist, that I might be mobilized should an invasion of Greenland occur, either to outright participate in its defense or to be on standby on the mainland. In this event the same, immediate freeze to my Patreon and Substar accounts will occur as with the currency shift, where you won't be charged for anything, but with less certainty as to the time frame of my absence. I definitely hope it never comes to this (and I don't believe it will either), but these are pretty crazy times we live in, so you never know. Thumbs held, as we say up here.

And those were my Future Concerns - in the meantime, the schedule shall keep being maintained, as per the gods' demand, so I'd like to thank you all, as per always, for your continued support and for all of your kind words. Maintain bonds with your fellow people, be kind to yourselves and each other, and take care of yourselves out there folks. These are wild times, and cooler heads must prevail.
/DH