Surveys for this campaign (and also jewelry campaign) are pending review! They are largely the same as the surveys for the last RTS campaign I did.
Also, here are the finished stickers! I did get the bat too to speed things up, because if survey funds hit that threshold, as I'm predicting, and then I waited until charging them to order... then it would take another 2-3 weeks to get them in stock.
About the financial end:
Given the large number of errored funds with this campaign including some of the many POT orders, I only received 2.2k after fees initially, and now with successful POT charges it's $2.6k because I've taken so long sending this out. Given that over 3.5k was technically "raised" (as displayed by BK), which is basically 3.2k after fees, and I had several freebies included in goalpoints that were originally met... I would really appreciate it if as many people as possible with errored payments could fix them using the survey.
This is my only job, as a disabled artist who physically is incapable of working under someone. The outdoor pride event I was scheduled to sell at on the 18th of July was moved to August 30th out of concern over the AQI, too - and it was raining off and on all day; my sales were down about 50%. Matsuricon was the weekend after and also awful placement, weather, and sales-wise, so I'm physically not really here right now. I truly hate to sound so desperate but life has gotten to that point.
Thank you again for your support (and understanding)! When smoke tests have gone out I will send out another update!
Hello everyone! I'm updating about my work speed and why it's so incredibly lackluster; this update was posted to MGR/MGR2 as well but has been edited for relevance to each campaign. This update is shorter than those two because I have not begun fulfillment here yet.
The best I can do for survey is to attempt (and hopefully succeed!!) to get them submitted for approval next week. I have Ypsi Pride tomorrow (originally last month but rescheduled due to the wildfire pollution), and I have Matsuricon labor day weekend. The last time I was physically capable of doing 2 weekends in a row was 4 years ago so I'm very concerned.
Cryptic Compendium and I both have ME/CFS. "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is actually a really harmful moniker for it that came 2nd due to most physicians not believing it exists. Its correct name is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Now it being psychosomatic is not as widespread a belief because long covid has caused ME rates to skyrocket, and more are taking it seriously, but I have had ME since my teenage years, as has Cryptic, though his has not progressed as quickly for whatever reason (maybe due to less comorbidities?). FFC/HoloCat recently publicly announced that they have also had ME since serious health issues late last year/early this year. It's generally brought on by sudden illness or severely traumatic/stressful event lowering the immune system. This is why they are also struggling with fulfillment this year.
This is a really serious condition where the hallmark symptom is getting worse after time due to exertion: Post Exertional Malaise. There is NO consistency to what the body finds to be "excessive" exertion, so it is really hard to pace oneself. Because of this, the increase in severity of the disease is pretty random from person to person.
It's super embarrassing but my health got so bad that I had to drop out of uni, and that was 10 years ago that I had to. I have been running on fumes for a 1/3rd of my life... I didn't see there being another way to financially survive other than conventions, and it has deeply cost me physically instead.
I cannot apologize enough for not being faster. I'm so, so embarrassed over this even though I know in my heart disability is not shameful. My heart rate spikes to 120 at minimum for showering, packing orders, or any kind of cooking or even standing up quickly due to POTS and ME, and there is quite the list of other things making me fall apart. It's very difficult for me to push through the brainfog and wrestle with BK's awful pledge manager UI when I'm feeling so much less than stellar and also juggling order fulfillment for the others. I feel really terrible about my creative output so severely declining along with the rest.
I don't know if any more merch campaigns are in my future, especially since I'm trying to stop making new things unrelated to my attempt to develop visual novels. But I really can't continue to do conventions for long, as they permanently worsen my baseline and doctors will not help me with ME OR hEDS, and I can't manage my online shop at the same time as doing that. That's why I've been attempting to find the energy to run a closing sale for the last year... So the Ready-To-Ship - though that unfortunately has become a loose promise lately - markets will likely continue sporadically to clear me out of stock, but new things not so much unless collabs.
I'm doing Matsuricon with HoloCat while Cryptic Compendium is staying home and taking care of the cats, so I will task him with preparing more solo orders for spiders and geodes and packing some of the grab bags for this market!!
I am so sorry time escaped me, it's been way longer than I thought.
I'm continuing to have medical episodes that are demanding most of my time and energy and things are really not going my way there. I'm also still working on survey for Gothic Daydream and fulfillment for the monster girl campaigns, which is a hell of my own making so please don't think I'm asking for pity. It's just an explanation.
I also got my money back after over a week; as mentioned before I was randomly defrauded over 2.8k from "alibaba" right after this campaign ended (was not from alibaba). The bank initially said they didn't know if they'd give me a credit or not (???) while the claim was filed with visa, so I temporarily lost money on this campaign with no recourse other than to wait and see which was highly stressful. I'm very, very happy my funds were returned and hope that remains the case and that they don't rugpull me for some reason....
Anyway, I received the freebie pins this week! I have not graded them yet because of the previous two paragraph's happenings but I did count them, and while skimming to do so I didn't see any highly egregious ones 🤞
The snake stickers haven't arrived yet but they did get shipped out!
I will update ASAP when the surveys are out!! Since most listings are a repeat of the first holiday market it really shouldn't be taking me this long, so I really apologize for that. Thank you for your patience!!!
I am getting the first deposit on Friday and will order the stickers then!
I had a really unprecedented amount of POT orders: over $1,080 was POT. That is pretty inconsequential for a RTS campaign! But it does make me nervous to turn it on in the future if I wind up doing another crowdfund, as it would very severely impact fulfillment if I had almost 1/3 of funds tied up for 4 months. Some of those POT charges have also errored, and $436.25 in pay in full charges have errored too. If you are able to fix that, please do!
In really upsetting news, I was just fraudulently charged over $2.8k to my account. That is far more than I'll be receiving from this on Friday, even (around $2.2k). It claims it's from Alibaba but I haven't logged on to Alibaba in months. I received automated emails in which I declined the purchases, and I spoke to someone over the phone who said they were blocking both my card and the transactions when they were still pending, especially as one was attempted 5x and the other 3x. But they let them go through anyway! So now I'm broke and in a huge pickle to put it mildly.
If they were supposed to be pending for 3 more days, why did they just let them through?!
I was going to just make this update short and sweet and mention I'll do my best to get surveys out in ~10 days and that be mostly it, but please be patient with me if that's not the case because I'm sincerely having an existential crisis and it's not a mild one. I hate my credit union.
Thanks for getting this past $3k!!! 🎉🎉 I'm so grateful!!
If we can get past 4k raised including survey add-ons, every backer will receive this sticker for free:
Glittery holographic and 2.5" wide! It's a new design which is why this is just a file, and the red line represents where it would be cut since it's a full-bleed design (no white border).
Thank you again so much everyone!! Make sure to check out HoloCat's inventory too as they don't offer plushies online often, and if you back us both for $15+ each you get our cool retro-pattern pins 😎
Hello!! Thank you for the wonderful first day! Early bird bonus ends in just over 24hrs!!
I kept my campaign description pretty succinct this time, so I'm taking the time here to show some of the late 2025-early 2026 items that will be in some of the lucky boxes/grab bags!
PUDDINGS
New colorway!
The purple/black one is new!
The plum is new!
SHAKERS
Eye boba! Very round and cute shape. Purple or pink straw
New colorway!
New colorway! Iris color is random
New colorway!
Purple eye boba! Went for a different shape. Purple or blue straw
There are silver stars in here not shown
Also comes in blue and purple
Currently undecorated except for logo because I messed up with the file, oops. Eye and bone beads, star glitter, and mica powder, has a filmy appearance though when not shaken.
The beaker will have a design soon!! So far I was only able to put my logo on the bottoms of them because I didn't curve the decal design enough, so I have to redesign/reorder the prints :(
BANDAGES
New jirai kei themed bandages!
NEW THEMED GRAB BAGS
There are now 6different themed grab bags available as add-ons! All are $40 each (well, innuendos is $30 because of less variety). Listed below each theme are the potential/qualifying items you may receive, totaling a value of at least double what you pay!
"Animals" • Paw pins • Snake pins • Moth pins • Fish pins • Any non-gacha animal pins • Snake stickers • Moth related stickers • Any animal related stickers • Paw button badges • Bat and rabbit keychains • Faux fur paw pompom keychains • Flawed bat bags • Paw necklaces* • Moth septums (only faux left)* • Paw septums (currently only faux available)*
(For the sake of variety, bugs are also considered animals here)
"Fashion" • Apparel (tops, beanies, earmuffs)* • Jewelry* • Bandages of any theme • Flawed bat bags* • Bag straps • Pink skelebat rugs • Omamori charms • Shoelaces • Lace locks • Deco"den" (no actual electronics or electronics cases unless LED cosmetic mirror) items in good quality that I still have
"Foodie" • Macaron charms • Food-related non-gacha pins • Jellinom gacha pins • Jellies bandages • Food-related pudding designs • Food and drink-related shaker designs* • Food-related stickers • Deco"den" (no actual electronics or electronics cases unless LED cosmetic mirror) items in good quality that I still have
"Pastel Goth" • Demon or bat faux fur pompom keychains • Any of my bandages • Keychains that fit the aesthetic, including shakers* • Non-gacha pins that fit the aesthetic • Monster girl spins • Moth spins • Stickers that fit the aesthetic • Flawed bat bags* • Shoelaces that fit the aesthetic • Succubus coffin button • "Pretty dead" beanies • Bat-themed jewelry* • Moth septums (only faux available)* • Thorns septums* • "Pretty Toxic" merch* • Pink Skelebat rugs
"Innuendos" (for those who may be disappointed I'm not including any in anything else; all other pledge items are PG) • Anything with "R18" or "XXX" on it • Tentacles enamel pins or stickers • Ahegao pins • A cringe sticker sheet I drew years ago and never sold because it was too embarrassing (would just be free and not counted towards your total value)
*there will be questions in the survey regarding preferences on these things.
Because ya girl is tired and most of my stuff is in suitcases right now, here are reference photos of my recent convention display:
Unfortunately I forgot to take pics once my pompoms were up...and the pudding cup missing the squishy is the "chocolate" dead tired. I noticed when an attendee pointed it out later...
These bat bags were most of my *final stock* since they all have flaws
Likelihood is that come survey time, we will also have some grab bags of Cryptic Compendium keychains (puddings, shakers, and jet tag as possibilities). There are decals of his I haven't ordered yet since I'd been putting off ordering the new beaker art and would combine them, it was such a bummer that the original didn't work right.
Most new offerings are puddings and liquid shakers, as you can see, since that's where I invested a lot of my energy (and funds) last year lol...but I'm really proud of the designs! These all required me ordering 30-50 at once so I have plenty of stock of everything except the plum pudding, but I'm really destashing everything! Even low qty items, I'm not reserving them for anything.
I would like to offer another freebie if we hit $2.5k raised, but I'm not sure what so I'm attaching a poll.
Thank you for your support!!
P.S.: Since I am paying for a small reorder of the highly-requested bat septums in clicker-form from this event's earnings, I may open up some slots for them in the preorder store post-campaign if people are interested.
Both colors will be reordered of star bat
I'm also getting the heart remade with a flat clicker bar, but in black only.Let me know via comment if that's something you would want! (Comments are open to all backerkit members for this post!)
Black only for heart bat. Faux also being reordered for this one as I'm sold out of that too!
This may be the last ever reorder for them because it's become so complicated to order the stones, though I'm doing this because I still have a few conventions left before I stop and they are requested dozens of times at each one. I was originally planning to keep the heart bats in my back pocket as official merch because I "gave them" to one of my characters in my game. (My game is mentioned a bit more in the last section of the campaign bio here!)
The character in question...you can juuuust barely see it. Lol. Sprite artist is Sasamekuh, character design is by me as always.
Surveys for this campaign (and also jewelry campaign) are pending review! They are largely the same as the surveys for the last RTS campaign I did.
Also, here are the finished stickers! I did get the bat too to speed things up, because if survey funds hit that threshold, as I'm predicting, and then I waited until charging them to order... then it would take another 2-3 weeks to get them in stock.
About the financial end:
Given the large number of errored funds with this campaign including some of the many POT orders, I only received 2.2k after fees initially, and now with successful POT charges it's $2.6k because I've taken so long sending this out. Given that over 3.5k was technically "raised" (as displayed by BK), which is basically 3.2k after fees, and I had several freebies included in goalpoints that were originally met... I would really appreciate it if as many people as possible with errored payments could fix them using the survey.
This is my only job, as a disabled artist who physically is incapable of working under someone. The outdoor pride event I was scheduled to sell at on the 18th of July was moved to August 30th out of concern over the AQI, too - and it was raining off and on all day; my sales were down about 50%. Matsuricon was the weekend after and also awful placement, weather, and sales-wise, so I'm physically not really here right now. I truly hate to sound so desperate but life has gotten to that point.
Thank you again for your support (and understanding)! When smoke tests have gone out I will send out another update!
Hello everyone! I'm updating about my work speed and why it's so incredibly lackluster; this update was posted to MGR/MGR2 as well but has been edited for relevance to each campaign. This update is shorter than those two because I have not begun fulfillment here yet.
The best I can do for survey is to attempt (and hopefully succeed!!) to get them submitted for approval next week. I have Ypsi Pride tomorrow (originally last month but rescheduled due to the wildfire pollution), and I have Matsuricon labor day weekend. The last time I was physically capable of doing 2 weekends in a row was 4 years ago so I'm very concerned.
Cryptic Compendium and I both have ME/CFS. "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is actually a really harmful moniker for it that came 2nd due to most physicians not believing it exists. Its correct name is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Now it being psychosomatic is not as widespread a belief because long covid has caused ME rates to skyrocket, and more are taking it seriously, but I have had ME since my teenage years, as has Cryptic, though his has not progressed as quickly for whatever reason (maybe due to less comorbidities?). FFC/HoloCat recently publicly announced that they have also had ME since serious health issues late last year/early this year. It's generally brought on by sudden illness or severely traumatic/stressful event lowering the immune system. This is why they are also struggling with fulfillment this year.
This is a really serious condition where the hallmark symptom is getting worse after time due to exertion: Post Exertional Malaise. There is NO consistency to what the body finds to be "excessive" exertion, so it is really hard to pace oneself. Because of this, the increase in severity of the disease is pretty random from person to person.
It's super embarrassing but my health got so bad that I had to drop out of uni, and that was 10 years ago that I had to. I have been running on fumes for a 1/3rd of my life... I didn't see there being another way to financially survive other than conventions, and it has deeply cost me physically instead.
I cannot apologize enough for not being faster. I'm so, so embarrassed over this even though I know in my heart disability is not shameful. My heart rate spikes to 120 at minimum for showering, packing orders, or any kind of cooking or even standing up quickly due to POTS and ME, and there is quite the list of other things making me fall apart. It's very difficult for me to push through the brainfog and wrestle with BK's awful pledge manager UI when I'm feeling so much less than stellar and also juggling order fulfillment for the others. I feel really terrible about my creative output so severely declining along with the rest.
I don't know if any more merch campaigns are in my future, especially since I'm trying to stop making new things unrelated to my attempt to develop visual novels. But I really can't continue to do conventions for long, as they permanently worsen my baseline and doctors will not help me with ME OR hEDS, and I can't manage my online shop at the same time as doing that. That's why I've been attempting to find the energy to run a closing sale for the last year... So the Ready-To-Ship - though that unfortunately has become a loose promise lately - markets will likely continue sporadically to clear me out of stock, but new things not so much unless collabs.
I'm doing Matsuricon with HoloCat while Cryptic Compendium is staying home and taking care of the cats, so I will task him with preparing more solo orders for spiders and geodes and packing some of the grab bags for this market!!
I am so sorry time escaped me, it's been way longer than I thought.
I'm continuing to have medical episodes that are demanding most of my time and energy and things are really not going my way there. I'm also still working on survey for Gothic Daydream and fulfillment for the monster girl campaigns, which is a hell of my own making so please don't think I'm asking for pity. It's just an explanation.
I also got my money back after over a week; as mentioned before I was randomly defrauded over 2.8k from "alibaba" right after this campaign ended (was not from alibaba). The bank initially said they didn't know if they'd give me a credit or not (???) while the claim was filed with visa, so I temporarily lost money on this campaign with no recourse other than to wait and see which was highly stressful. I'm very, very happy my funds were returned and hope that remains the case and that they don't rugpull me for some reason....
Anyway, I received the freebie pins this week! I have not graded them yet because of the previous two paragraph's happenings but I did count them, and while skimming to do so I didn't see any highly egregious ones 🤞
The snake stickers haven't arrived yet but they did get shipped out!
I will update ASAP when the surveys are out!! Since most listings are a repeat of the first holiday market it really shouldn't be taking me this long, so I really apologize for that. Thank you for your patience!!!
I am getting the first deposit on Friday and will order the stickers then!
I had a really unprecedented amount of POT orders: over $1,080 was POT. That is pretty inconsequential for a RTS campaign! But it does make me nervous to turn it on in the future if I wind up doing another crowdfund, as it would very severely impact fulfillment if I had almost 1/3 of funds tied up for 4 months. Some of those POT charges have also errored, and $436.25 in pay in full charges have errored too. If you are able to fix that, please do!
In really upsetting news, I was just fraudulently charged over $2.8k to my account. That is far more than I'll be receiving from this on Friday, even (around $2.2k). It claims it's from Alibaba but I haven't logged on to Alibaba in months. I received automated emails in which I declined the purchases, and I spoke to someone over the phone who said they were blocking both my card and the transactions when they were still pending, especially as one was attempted 5x and the other 3x. But they let them go through anyway! So now I'm broke and in a huge pickle to put it mildly.
If they were supposed to be pending for 3 more days, why did they just let them through?!
I was going to just make this update short and sweet and mention I'll do my best to get surveys out in ~10 days and that be mostly it, but please be patient with me if that's not the case because I'm sincerely having an existential crisis and it's not a mild one. I hate my credit union.
Thanks for getting this past $3k!!! 🎉🎉 I'm so grateful!!
If we can get past 4k raised including survey add-ons, every backer will receive this sticker for free:
Glittery holographic and 2.5" wide! It's a new design which is why this is just a file, and the red line represents where it would be cut since it's a full-bleed design (no white border).
Thank you again so much everyone!! Make sure to check out HoloCat's inventory too as they don't offer plushies online often, and if you back us both for $15+ each you get our cool retro-pattern pins 😎
