Hello again, people who I in no way think are weird! I always imagined that, occasionally grandiose ambitions (and poorly executed jokes thereabout) aside, Homicidols.com would be just some kooky little corner of the Internet where a few roughly like-minded people would share music and tell their friends and no big deal. And that’s pretty much true, though there are way more of us than I reckoned!

To keep up with costs and maybe even get a little more ambitious around here, I’m introducing something that I definitely didn’t think I would ever want to, let alone need to, but here we are: It’s the Homicidols Fund Drive!

At the recommendation of dofphoto, I’m using Patreon, which is more about building a network of sustainers than doing one-off donations and gifts, and comes with it the option to set up rewards and the like. I like that — if you give, you should get — so this is the platform of choice.

If you’re interested in helping out, great! Every penny is welcome! If you’re interested but like “Maniac, I rub together nickels to make myself feel like a big spender,” that’s okay, you stand to lose nothing. And if you’re like “Maniac, I hate your stupid guts and want you to spontaneously combust,” well, that’s unfortunate.

You can see the basic details by clicking through here:

As you can see, there are some goals sketched out. Basically, can we raise enough total money this week only* to pay for the maintenance of the site for a full year? What about get enough cash together to do some updates? Send actual currency to the contributors? SEND MANIAC TO TORONTO? And so on.

Growth is a funny thing — the more folks came by over the past year, and the more traffic that I saw come in, the more I felt like I should do more. It’s actually never enough, as the various obsolete (and/or missing) profiles show quite well. But it feels like there’s demand, and I want to meet it, because having a goal of helping idols become more popular is kind of a silly thing if you aren’t putting out more idol stuff for people to look at.

As such, I work a lot! And certain initiatives, like the Best Of and the Corenament, take not just regular ol’ making-stuff time, but brain time and often sleep time. Which isn’t to complain — I enjoy it for the most part — but rather to say that at a moment like the one that ol’ Maniac finds himself in now, feeling a little pinched financially and looking for how best to make ends meet, choices need to be made, and whether to keep things around here humming at their usual pace, or even whether to keep things around here humming at all, has become a little bit of a concern.

That’s not to levy threats/promises that I’ll have to slow or shut things down; I just wanted to be realistic about where things stand. My bad jokes will remain, as will the translations from so many good friends and the banter in the comments and Kerrie’s various forays into shining some sunlight on your heart.

But You Said Something about Rewards

That’s true! I don’t know how to reward you, is the thing, because none of the content that would have that level of value (for instance, exclusive interviews!) is something that I’d want to keep away from folks. And I don’t create enough, not out of my personal creative juices (disgusting) to warrant saying “exclusive songs and artwork!” because there aren’t any from me, and the art is Kerrie’s anyway.

But I do have an idea! Tell me what you think would be a good reward. Right in the comments! I’m sure there will be cockamamie suggestions, or at least ones that I don’t want to do, plus recommendations of personal violence — also not gonna do that, not even for money, pal! — but I bet your big ol’ brain will make some good suggestions, and we can take it from there.

So What Should I Do?

Click on that link up there, or, like, right here. Say to yourself, “I’m going to pledge at least $1 per month to the sustainability of Homicidols.com.” There are many of you — it would go very far! Then do what that website tells you to because I haven’t walked through the procedure myself yet and trust me, I’ll probably get distracted and then it’ll be Tuesday. Also, I can’t troubleshoot anything over there because it’s not my website!

Thanks guys!

*I’m only promoting it this week, but the campaign website doodad will live forever so it can continue to manage things between me and my awwwww patrons. XOXO