(see bigger version on DeviantArt and full res on Patreon)

Hey, fellow nobodies, how are your holidays going?

I decided to make a news update while I'm sitting here waiting for SuperPatronFyea winner announcement, prepared to cheer for whoever wins (pfft, me? a nobody? winning a grant? and not having to work my ass off to make art for free? wild if true.)
upd: I didn't win the grant. WELP. TOLD YA. Guess here starts my carreer as a part time twitch streamer, part time pizza delivery person. lol.

What Happened in 2019.

I made about half the amount of planned pages for dreamDB and I plan to try the 365 challenge in 2020 as well. I managed to publish at least one update every month, with March being the exception because I spent the entirety of it writing. I think I'm still figuring out how to bring the story to you more efficiently without burning out, but let's be honest, it's enormous and this year I've been doing alright.

But let's not turn this into yet another year review. WHAT'S DONE IS DONE.

What's Happening Very Soon.

The closest most important thing is.. my birthday... on the 1st of January.. Oh please, don't start with the "you're so lucky, twice the amount of gifts". First of all, everybody thinks it's ok to give only one to save their money.. or just "gift" money (and by everyone I mean, like, two family members). Second of all, I haven't gotten shit for more than a decade, EXCEPT for one gift from my good old friend who gave me a book so precious I don't think I could ever match the value of it with a gift of my own.

Third, I'm turning whole 300 years old. Yes, divisible both by 10 and 5 (and 3). It's a jubilee, folks. What am I gonna do? I think I may have a birthday stream (you know? on Twitch?).

What can you give me? Shit, idk, be like everybody else and gift money xD My Ink Goal is really really close to the amount which I could cash out, and what's the point of having money if it's in Tapas's pocket? Gift me ink.

And\or join my Patreon. It's just $1. Patreon will eat up a portion of that, but you could always pledge more, and if more people joined I could pay for webhosting without worry. TOSS A COIN TO YOUR ARTIST, O VALLEY OF-... okay, okay.

Anyway, did you not know? You can't say Happy New Year anymore. As of January 1st, 2020  it's officially "Happy AJ's birthday". I will only accept other variations if someone was also born on January 1st but earlier than 3pm in my timezone which is 9am GMT. Gosh, I'm such an owl, I wasn't bothered to even be born earlier than 3pm, lmao. (That's about the same time I've been getting up all December).

What's Happening In 2020.

A new comic? Yes, a new comic. Although, it's not really new. It's an AU of dreamDB - same characters, but presented in a completely different way in a different story. dreamDB will eventually gradually become this comic, so you're going to spend a few years wondering HOW before I actually do it x) By the time we get to that point, if you've been reading this comic you'll be like "Oh... OH!"

Now facts:
- the new story is written for mature audience. there's a co-author but I can't reveal more on that subject.
- angels and demons but neither in pop culture biblical nor anime style.
- the main genre is romance and it's vvvvvery gay, but we're also going to shoot BL in the head and do something extremely different.
- no uwu cute LGBTQAI rep, only angery tired guys, gals and pals. basically we're utilising art to shout about things.
- it will rock between silly and serious all the time.
- title? "Of Horns And Halos". OHAH for short. There. I spoiled it :D
- also:

Btw the art at the very top is a part of it. In a way. Another mild spoiler :) The story will be treated as non-canon but I fully intend to make it A Whole Experience for you. All the while continuing to work on dreamDB. We're still writing it, and it probably will end at some point. (So will dreamDB... but only over my undead body!!!)

Anyway, it will be fun to juggle all of this, my sleep disorder and starting HRT while having a day job. But whatever happens, happens. And I'm a typical stubborn capricorn, I'm gonna do this one way or another. LET'S GET SHIT DONE THIS YEAR.

Thank yous to:

The two Patrons who have supported me this year.
All the people on Tapas - both active readers and those who gifted ink during the events. Your likes and comments both make me want to do more for you, and they help put the story on trending where more people can find it.
 

P.s. At least this birthday the cake will not be a lie.

Sup. This month is over and here's what happened:

Aside from being sick for a ridiculous number of days, I've had two big things to prepare: Tapas Inksgiving Special and Super Patron F Yea application.

And then done a few changes on the website:

First of all, support page has been slightly redesigned. Since more people have donated ink during the Inksgiving, I took some time and added all of the names and updated ink amounts. There's now one ink bottle per person and it will accumulate all their ink and grow bigger. I added the option to display Ko-Fi donations on the shelves as coffee cups. Also, he totally-not-evil-and-not-ominous wall of rotating eyes is now optional and can be switched on and off by poking the eye on the bottom shelf. Not gonna work on small screens though. Still can totally destroy your pc.

Second, since I have a normal android phone now, I had a chance to look at how the website works in general on mobile. So I made some changes to the menu - it should be more obvious when it's collapsed and when it can be opened. Changed the floor tiles a little since they seemed to float in the air sometimes.

Third, push notifications were glitching a bit, and I still don't know why. But they seem to be working now. If they're available, you'll see a tiny bell in the bottom right corner. So if you tried to subscribe before but got no notification, please try one more time! Also, tell me if you see no bell at all.

Fourth, the snow is real again.

Still no idea how any of this looks on Apple devices. *shrug*

Plans:

I am almost 170 pages behind what I designated as my goal for this year, and I've also not made that much for DDB during November. So, let's hope I don't get sick again, and I'll try to crank out as many as I can before the year ends.

Now there's a notifications subscription button in the website menu. You can find the same button under every comic page. It's just a pop-up thingy where I moved all the buttons for Discord, Patreon, etc etc. All sources listed there are completely free and I'm clarifying that because "subscription" can mean something paid.

Also in another coding rush I connected browser push notifications - see the first button in that list. They should work in all browsers including mobile ones (except for Safari - I don't really care though. If you're an apple device user, I'm sorry, but I doubt that the website even shows properly on that, and I've no way to check, lol).

To turn push notifications on and off you only need to need press the button. However, if you've blocked such notifications in your browser for all websites then nothing will happen (I mean, that's exactly what you wanted). So you need to look at your address bar and click the lock icon (or whatever it is that you have there) to the left of the address and allow notifications. It should work after that.

Of course, I need people to test this. I'll wait a couple of days to let more people subscribe and then I'll send a test message. What will the message be? Subscribe and you'll find out :)

Oh hey it's that time again. Ink god demands sacrifices. I'm drawing but slowly and lazily, and I'm already late, and not following prompts but drawing my favourite people. But you know what, somehow this year it's more enjoyable, so I'll continue. If you follow me on social media, you'll catch updates. Also, new pics should show up on the website in the art section.

I've also decided to open quick Ko-Fi commissions which will only last until the end of Inktober! You get a drawing for 1 coffee, recorded process for 2, and I'll even send it to you over the post for 3. All info and terms here, my Ko-Fi page here.

Also, I've started streaming recently. Sometimes playing games, sometimes drawing. Follow me on Twitch or DLive. I'm trying to put some effort into my streams and even bought a good mic. I haven't decided yet which platform I'll pick as my main, both are currently equal in follower numbers. So, go make a difference! :D

I'm testing a feature on the website. I sat down and wrote a bit of code, and from now on I can publish new pages and they will be available to patrons only, and patrons can log in and view them on the website.

Basically what I've been doing on Patreon before, except better: I've removed a lot of unnecessary steps for myself, and made it more obvious for those who would want to read new stuff. I don't have to publish pages twice, they're finished, and I need to press only one button to convert them to public whenever I want.

The code is still a bit shaky on my side and I can think of two or three ways to improve this, so I will keep testing to make sure that they work better, but for now it is good enough and I'm going to roll out the updates on the website. Honestly, I'm way too happy that I managed to pull this off. There was a point in time when I was thinking about moving the entire website to Wordpress because it has Patreon plugin. But hey, I have brains! I wrote my own thing for GetSimple!

Anyway, I would much appreciate new patronage and help with testing this thing.

Okay, okay, but.. How does it work?

Simple!

1. Open dreamdb.com and witness something like:
   
2. Become very excited and click the link.
3. If you're logged out on Patreon, it asks you to register an account or log in, and then one of three things will happen:

• If you're currently my patron, you give permission to my app to store some data and give you a cookie, and then you can read the page.
• If you're not a patron, you get redirected to a page where you can become one, and then proceed as above.
• You don't login, don't pledge, don't get access, get lost somewhere in the links and nothing happens. That's a possibility.

Followers don't get access. People who don't pledge to a tier don't get access (custom pledge to a tier is ok, but custom pledge without isn't).

If the process was a success, you'll see thumbnails, "unlocked" icon and won't get redirected anymore:

I will also make sure to notify everyone when new pages become available for Patrons and when they go live for everyone.

Why do this at all?

Sometimes I post a thing, and then go back and change it. Sometimes, I make mistakes, copy-paste the wrong stuff or forget to erase something. It's a messy process and I would love for people to lend me a pair of eyes and say if anything is wrong anywhere. I've also been sharing pages on Patreon before and it felt like I needed to do 3000 extra things to publish everything after that. Also Patreon's post editor still FUCKING SUCKS. So this feels more natural and I have more control over presentation. If you help me, we could make this thing become better (and I could pay website bills and maybe eat). If you don't want to or can't support me, then nothing changes for you: pages will go live whenever I decide to make them public and you still will read all the stuff. But I will still share secret art on Patreon, and there still will be free posts about how I make things, so maybe consider at least giving me a follow (for free! did I mention following is free? FREE).

This post on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/29126703/