📢 Stories Announcement! (edit from Rose at the end)

Hey patrons!

We would like to inform you about a small change in the story system! All stories will still be available for 🍑PEACHES at first, BUT only for a couple of weeks. Thereafter, they will switch to 🎃PUMPKINS.

We saw a huge influx of people who get the peach tier to read all the stories and delete their pledge right away. It's unfair to those who play fair, and unfair to us, too. Some of the stories took dozens of hours of work to make and mostly cost only 3€, it's very demotivating for our work morale.

So if you're a Peach and you're interested in the stories, make sure you download the stories asap, for we will soon lock them behind the 🎃PUMPKINS!

Overview:

• "The Magician" will continue to be available for 🥚EGGS

• New stories will appear for 🍑PEACHES for a limited time, then switch to 🎃PUMPKINS & 🛒Patreon Store

• 🎃PUMPKINS and higher will always be able to read all the stories

• Independently from your pledge, you can unlock a story forever when you pay for it. We recommend doing that when you're lower than 🎃PUMPKIN or if you enjoyed a story a lot and want to show extra support!

• Nothing changes for those who have bought the stories in the 🛒Patreon Store! Thank you for your purchase!

This change shouldn't affect you peaches too much and only the cut and runners.

Edit Add-On from Rose personally:

Hey! Rose here. After receiving some comments and a couple of personal DMs, and having been struggling personally over this topic for years now, I want to open up directly about the issue.

Firstmost, I want to remind you that we are, in fact, two people — that this is Sapphic's artwork Patreon, and that my occasional stories were never regular and always an optional bonus I wasn't rewarded for. The overwhelming majority didn't come for my work specifically; and the very very few who did were disappointed because, well... it's Sapphic's art Patreon, and they didn't get regular story content for their money (except for "The Magician" as of lately).

There also was never an option that I would be rewarded specifically for my work. I did extra work, but we got the same amount of reward. More often than not my stories even felt like they were of no worth at all, just barely tolerated next to Sapph's stuff, which demotivated me greatly. I never knew how many people actually enjoyed my work. It sometimes felt like it was just maybe three or four. Sometimes none. There were likes, but they could also be because of Sapph's art in the post, or just as a principle. It really was demotivating, and it also made it hard for us to figure out how much cut I would get from Patreon for my work. So we ended up just paying me for my management work.

For those who feel like "I'm taking something away from them", I want you to see it from my POV: Since the Patreon store option, I am finally rewarded for the extra work I do. Before that it was a constant struggle. Like throwing stuff into the void. In case you haven't noticed, I even had stopped the story polls, because with just one or two people acknowledging it after I did hours of writing, sometimes weeks when I wasn't able to write coherently, hurt.
And even though still not many people comment on my works, they now pay for it, which in itself is feedback and gives my work worth. I can now finally be roughly paid for what I do, and people who are just interested in my stories and not Sapph's art have the option to pay exactly for what they are here for and nothing else. This whole change made me finally feel good about writing again, and motivated me to give it another try (including The Magician, btw).

At first I wanted to make all the specially formatted & new stories I wrote lately store exclusive for that reason; After all, it's my work, not Sapph's (except for the few stories with her drawings in it). Then I thought about making, indeed, a new Patreon, just for my own work. But since I don't write regularly, it would end up being all store exclusive, too, probably. And it would be an extra effort to host several Patreons.

Eventually, we thought doing it the way mentioned above—having the regular Peaches+ still access and save it, but just for a limited amount of time—might be a good compromise. This way, the regular peaches won't really suffer from it (except for a little less comfort by having to download the stories), and the cut&runners won't fuck everything up by paying 6,50€ once and getting EVERY story for free. This way I unfortunately won't know for sure whether the peaches pay for my content too or not, but I do love this Patreon, and I do love our patrons, and I'm willing to look over it so things can stay relatively comfortable for those who support us.

To summarize: All I wanted to do was to prevent people from stealing my labor. Without penalizing actual supporters.

So, admittedly, getting pushback for this decision hurts... a lot. It feels as if I am not allowed to ask for compensation for my work. It feels as if I'm mean for making sure my stuff gets rewarded. It feels like I'm being accused of taking something away from you, while I haven't been writing much in the last years to begin with, and the very reason I managed to write more again is that I finally feel appreciated. It makes us both feel like we're being greedy, while we're just trying to survive with Patreon being our main job and while we're trying to give so much (several weekly posts! Personal sketches! So much different content, three polls a month, extra content!! The lowest real level gets 8 content posts a month, that's insanely much!!!!) for those who pay us. As if we're being unreasonable.

It's not just demotivating, it also makes me reconsider things. I'm sure I will eventually calm down again. But I'll be honest: With just doubting, negative, or even angry feedback regarding this right now, I'm very tempted to go back to how things were before: That this is Sapph's art Patreon, that you will get just maybe 3 stories a year as free extra content, without any added work (formatting, option to download as a file, extra illustrations), and that everything extra will be completely store exclusive, without any level having free access. Or maybe returning this Patreon to what it was initially altogether, Sapph's Art Patreon. This way I don't have to deal with any of this, and it's pretty clear what you guys get from the get-go.

I will have to think about that. I know this must feel like a huge reaction to many of you, but have struggled so, so much with this issue and my labor's worth for far too long. And now that I'm finally trying to stand up for myself, I feel taken for granted, as if everyone who pays Sapph is also naturally entitled to my work, feel stupid for my feelings, and stupid and embarrassed for sharing them.

Right now, I don't want to write anything at all anymore, and I'm thinking hard about how to make this work for me again.

By the way, asking us for our reasoning or clarification was completely ok. I'm sorry if we were unclear in the original announcement. The thing that got to me was the ratio of just pushback VS not a single initial supportive comment/message, combined with the despair of feeling just barely acknowledged/rewarded for years + maybe also the guilt some people tried to trip us up with when we decided to rearrange this Patreon so we could live off of it. We're human, just like you... we're not machines..... Please stop trying to get as much as possible from us with minimum payment, as if we were vending machines you found a way to exploit........ We give so much, even for free often......... it really hurts