Hi, everyone. It's Bowser.

Quick disclaimer before I get into it, due to the nature of this post, I'll be watching the comments and will be prepared to disable them if things get out of hand. Please be kind and use this space in a positive way.

So I woke up to very not-so-good news that Donald Trump is going to be my next president... again. Not super thrilled.

If you've been following me on Bluesky and Twitter, you know I've endorsed Kamala Harris and encouraged FVN readers and the larger furry community to vote. I'm assuming if you're reading a story about fuzzy gay people, you likely know what's at stake for this election regarding the rights and safety of women, the LGBTQIA+ community, and people of color. I won't rehash those talking points here. I would like to, instead, speak specifically about how this will impact ChoPro and the FVN community as a whole.

Let's start with the immediate/short-term impact. Everyone on my team is not having a good day today. Their mental and physical health are top priority for me. Some of them are currently working on projects for me and I've chosen to extended their deadlines.

This will likely push back the release of ChoPro Episode 6 to December 2024. I hate to keep pushing this back, because I know you all are very excited for it. But I refuse to make my team's life harder than it has to be when I can offer them some leniency during a difficult time.

I still plan on releasing a review copy during this month for the Lydian tier subscribers on Patreon. That said, I may have to offer an incomplete build. We'll see how things pan out.

Regarding the long-term impacts, what I'm most scared of for the FVN sphere is that our funding platforms will be discarding us under a Trump administration. Patreon, in the past, has instigated purges for furry artists who create content that payment processors (Visa, MasterCard, PayPal) don't like. I'm scared that there will be legislation put into place that'll make it very difficult to impossible for Patreon and similar platforms to host projects like Chord Progressions.

My backup plan if Patreon falls under is to migrate to SubscribeStar, who would hopefully be accommodating to Chord Progressions. That said, migrating platforms is difficult and I likely would only see a fraction of the funding I see now with Patreon.

I'm one of the lucky few devs who get to have a self-sustaining project. All the money I've sunk into ChoPro has been returned in excess. It's not a huge amount of excess, by any means. It's a couple extra hundred bucks a month. I'm in a lot of debt (thanks student loans) so it's not like the money goes towards anything lavish or wonderful. It just makes living paycheck-to-paycheck a little more bearable. Losing that income would hurt quite a bit.

I work so hard on ChoPro because I can. It's my passion project and one of my life's callings. The only things that mean more to me in this life are my wonderful boyfriend, my family, and the furry community as a whole. I'm lucky enough to have the time and cashflow to keep my project up and running. Simply put, losing that funding may make this unsustainable. I'll do my best to keep it going, but I'm just one puma at the end of the day.

As a side note, please don't interpret this post as a plea from me to convince you to make a pledge on Patreon. Please only support my project because you want to, have the means to do so, and are excited about the exclusive benefits.

Patreon aside, I've also made the decision to transition off of Twitter. Simply put, I'm not interested in Twitter anymore and Twitter (as a platform) isn't interested in me. It's not going to happen fast, it'll be a slow process. But my plan is to reduce my Twitter activity and migrate all activity to BlueSky in 2025.

I don't know what's going to happen. It's the same feeling I had in 2016. But, hey, I'm still here. My loved ones are (mostly) still here. We'll get through this. We did in 2016, we'll do it again. I plan on living my life and carrying on like normal.

In the interest of carrying on like normal, I'd like to share some progress that will hopefully brighten your day! We got some new sprite art made by the wonderful Drake.

Some of you have already met them, but for those who haven't, I'd like for you to meet Randy! Randy was designed by me and my wonderful friend Arcadia. The art of Randy lounging at the beach was a YCH piece done by Neku.

Randy is a spunky and spicy Giant Indian Squirrel who will be ChoPro's first openly non-binary character! They use any pronouns. They'll be making their debut in Episode 6!

Randy will be voiced by my wonderful and talented friend Jasper! Some of you may remember Jasper as being the original voice of Cliff. I'm so so happy to give him another speaking role.

For the lady lovers out there, hope you enjoy Hayley's new poolside outfit for Episode 6 😌💖.

It may not feel like it, but you are not alone. Your presence is a blessing. You bring others hope and inspiration simply by being your wonderful self. You're a part of a community that has done, and will continue to do, great things. We'll always have each other. Please don't forget that.

Thanks for reading 💖