[Author's Note] About the Side Stories and Additional Content for Patreon Tiers

Hello! I'm very hesitant to release this post because I believe it's my responsibility to offer you fair options that I hope will leave you satisfied with the content I create.

Still, I would appreciate it if you could read it to the end and vote for the option you like the most.

What is this post about?

The reason I am writing this post is because L's Side Story will be my second NSFW interactive story, which will be released at the end of November.

Since the first story was always meant to be available to everyone to showcase what I can offer, this will not be the case for L's and future side stories, as access to them was always planned to be for the highest tier.

I'd like to mention that I have already touched on this subject in my announcement post [in the "What about the next Side Story?" section] to avoid the impression that I just "want more" out of nowhere.

Does this mean there will be a Tier 5 for the side stories? [Short answer: No]

First, to better explain my monthly workload, here's a sheet showing how Patreon content is currently distributed:

I think this distribution is quite fair, and as you may notice, the side stories are not included in Tier 4 for the reasons touched in the mentioned post.

For the side stories, I considered creating a final planned Tier 5 that would include:

• [Interactive] Side Story access.

• [Interactive] RO's POV [from the side stories].

• Everything that is included in the lower tiers.

This would be a perfect solution, except for one thing: with my current workload, I will simply be unable to produce content for Tier 5 on a monthly basis as I do for the other tiers.

This means:

• The supporters will have to lower and upgrade your tier depending on when the content becomes available.

• It would be unfair to give supporters who maintain their subscription to that tier absolutely nothing between the side stories and the RO's POV related to them.

Of course, I can suggest another short story with more NSFW content, but I feel that releasing 3 short stories monthly would lead to burnout.

So, as much as I want to create Tier 5 to provide additional content while maintaining the current offerings, I can't realistically achieve that.

How will the content be distributed then?

Given everything stated above, I have come up with two solutions. None of them are perfect, which makes me very hesitant. However, for now, I don't see any other option I can offer to keep things more or less fair.

Option 1:

The first solution is simple: keep all tiers as they are, with the only difference for Tier 4 being that when a side story is ready for release, it will replace that month's short story for the tier.

Pros:

• This won't change anything for you and won't require me to charge more than what you're currently paying.

Cons:

• I won't be able to include ROs' POVs for the side stories, as those need to be interactive due to the number of variations for the MC.

  Since I don't think a single short story is equal to an interactive one, it doesn't seem fair to me, as the interactive one requires significantly more effort.

Note: If this option is chosen, only one short story will be released next month [for Isaac/Iris, as mentioned in the previous poll], followed by L's Side Story.

Option 2:

The second solution: Add the side stories and ROs' POVs related to them to Tier 4, while increasing the Tier 4 price from 7$ to 10$.

Pros:

• There will be more NSFW content and interactive POVs. Additionally, short stories will be released regardless of whether a side story is released that month.

Cons:

• You will be charged more, and I understand that this is not something anyone would be happy about.

Still, I believe that offering an expanded list of content [especially since it will include NSFW and interactive material] justifies the price increase, at least in my opinion.

This should feel fair to the supporters who want me to release more content, but it may not be fair to those who are satisfied with the current offering of just two short stories.

I'm creating this poll to gather your thoughts because it's important to me to make content that feels worthwhile of your time and support, so I'd be happy to hear your thoughts if you'd like to share them.

At the same time, I want to emphasize that I will also consider my feelings about this as a creator.

I genuinely love my story, which is why I need to be careful not to burn out. Being unfair to myself about the work I do can affect me just as much as overworking myself, so I can't promise that the result of this poll will be the final decision [now or in the future].

I promise that if anything changes, I will be open about it and let you know here and on the blog.

Moving on to the voting: which of the options do you prefer?