Patreon - seriously gotta stop neglecting patreon

I do have this habit of giving up on stuff when it doesn't really make me as much money as it should make me. I don't do that with the short stories but everything else is a potential revenue stream. I should not have done it with Dybbuk Press since it's a revenue stream but it's also special in terms of being able to put stuff into the world. So I'm finally publishing another book through Dybbuk Press. More details later.

But other things like YouTube or Tumblr fall by the wayside. Tumblr I'm going to keep at because social media but YouTube was an experiment to see if I could get some passive income while learning how to make films. I really couldn't. I got 98 subscribers and I need 1000 before youtube monetizes it. Furthermore, no one was really interested in random shots of New York City set to music. I mostly got views by trolling QAnon. And I really don't want to do that.

But Patreon I feel like I gave up on it too soon. Of course I'm going to wait to publicize posts like https://www.patreon.com/posts/slow-summer-on-85592786?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link where I take the piss out of Convergence. I don't want to show up at Convergence and get informed that my membership has been canceled and that I'm banned from the convention.

Objectively, nothing I say in the thing is that terrible. I rehash the reasons why I was banned from panels from my side and then talk about the red flags that I've been ignoring like the fact that the "volunteer culture" is exploitative (trying to be fair that conventions would not have any money if they paid everyone who checked badges, etc.) and that the programming people can't even be bothered to find AAPI representation for an Everything Everywhere All at Once panel.

But the thing is that I have been online for years. I've said some pretty shitty things. I've believed some pretty shitty things. If you want to really get at me, you could totally go and find something transphobic or even racist. Hell, you could find enough to make me sound like a fucking monster.

So there have been many years when I went to Convergence afraid that my membership would get canceled. Because I was an asshole online.

And that would really suck if I was stuck in Minneapolis for five days without a convention to hang out at (ok I would still be in the hotel and I was still be in the common areas - but I haven't crept around a convention pretending to belong there to just go to the parties since the first time I went to Minicon all those years ago).

So there is my patreon. I'm going to do more with it. But all the Convergence posts are going to be on the down low. Well not completely on the down low but I'm not going to be pushing them on all social media just yet.

Books read in 2023 # 75 - Batman, etc.

75. The DC Universe by Neil Gaiman by Neil Gaiman and others - There's a script with Superman and Hal Jordan exploring the afterlife due to a golden age green lantern showing up. I was wondering why so many artists were working on the thing (especially since it's largely confusing and uninspired) until I read the essay afterwards where Gaimain explained that this was a story that he sold but had to take a kill fee for since it didn't match the continuity at the time (they didn't want everyone knowing Superman's secret identity).

The rest of this book consists of stories that I just read in the Neil Gaiman Batman collection. Apparently DC knows that Neil Gaiman is the one writer that is the money maker and they want to ride that train as much as possible. The Secret Origins stories are the entire issue and not just the Gaiman framing story and the Riddler story where poor Riddler feels left behind because all the other villains are dangerous psychopaths and he's still just the guy who tells Riddles. He misses all the Silver Age characters and this story is just as bathetic as it was when I read it the first time.

Also we get the Batman funeral with all the competing narratives and the Batman Black & White with Batman and Joker waiting backstage and running their lines before the big fight. Both are fun clever stories and unlike Neil's short stories, there's the comic book format to build them up against the thin plot.