Thread: Patreon Closure and Extra Content Location

Last night I announced the closure of the Patreon. It's explained here. (Archive link)

I'll probably keep it up until around Saturday. As said in the update Zemekis is becoming the manga's project lead. He'll be able to update you on the manga's progress through the forum. I'm giving all patrons of any tier access to the private section containing WIP content including the manga's drafts. I've encouraged any patrons who haven't signed up here to do so since until the manga goes public it will be the only way to read it.

You'll be able to see the private area in the forum index under the Outlaw Star Nexus category. In other words, right at the bottom.



If I've forgotten to add the access to your account (hopefully not, I'm going through them all to also add access to the bottom-tier patrons) let me know and I'll fix it ASAP.

Thanks to all who've supported the Patreon. As a final project I want to see that graphical audio drama finished because the first episode I put on YouTube is really awesome! (You'll love the second one.) I know that the manga is in good hands so I know 2021 will be be a great year for Outlaw Star.

Had to ponder a little bit about what I want to say here but I think I've got it down now. Sorry to see you formally step away from the manga project (for the most part. I won't downplay your financial/scan contributions going forward!) but I am enthusiastic about the manga's future. Since we speak a fair amount in private, I already understand the reasons behind this change and you have my support in doing what you need to/want to do. It's a fan project and as such there should be no obligation for anyone to stay involved when they don't wish to be.

The good news: I have 3 chapters worth of translations on-hand & I'm getting a 4th done on Sunday night (not to mention I have an entire Outlaw Star doujin translation sitting around). I'm talking to our typesetter as I write this post, so that sounds like it's sorted as well. Our current translator says he's in it for the long haul and he's an IRL friend of mine so I have no reason to think that the manga won't get completed through his assistance.

The bad(?): I'm not as much of a perfectionist as Mantis. Most readers probably won't notice too much of a change, but Mantis always put in the extra hours to clean pages to an insane degree, re-draw portions of the page and figure out elegant solutions for Sound Effects on the page...I still plan to do a good job but there just won't be quite that level of nuance that put the last bit of polish on each release. I don't have anyone on the crew with those skills or that level of dedication, so my focus will be getting the chapters out. There is always the option to revisit them later for a touched-up release. The upside to all of this is faster releases.

The future: The main decision I had to make when considering how to run this project is how transparent I want to be about the process. Since it's a fan project and nobody is making money on this, I've decided to just share how things are going whenever I'm asked. I'm not bothered by being asked repeatedly for updates or getting prodded when a chapter is taking a long time. The worst thing that will happen is that I'll ignore the question. My goal is to complete the manga in 2021. If it were entirely up to me, then I could call it a "promise" instead of a goal but as we all learned from 2020: you aren't always in control of what happens. I don't speak/read Japanese & I'd rather not handle the typesetting so I am relying on my 2 team members to make releases happen.

What I can tell you is that I WILL finish this project. Hypothetically, even if I lose my translator & typesetter I'm prepared to pay someone online to do the translations and typeset it myself in MS Paint as I've done in the past. There is no set release schedule. We each have full-time jobs, spouses, etc. to keep us busy so at times there may not be a chapter for a month or two and other times the stars might align and we bang out two chapters in a single weekend.

Now that I've set appropriate expectations, I want y'all to look forward to reading the rest of OLS in English!

Thanks for the updates, I completely understand Mantis if you want to work on other things, there is only so much time in the day after all and so many things that may require extra dedication. I signed up to the Patreon just now regardless, just as a thank you so you can go grab yourself a free coffee on me.

That sounds great Zemekis about the future of the translations. Don't worry about the perfectionist stuff, I'm sure many fans will be perfectly pleased just to read the extra Outlaw Star material.

Originally Posted by TheRedComet

Thanks for the updates, I completely understand Mantis if you want to work on other things, there is only so much time in the day after all and so many things that may require extra dedication. I signed up to the Patreon just now regardless, just as a thank you so you can go grab yourself a free coffee on me.

Thanks a lot for that. It'll be nice to put more focus on other things. I'd have found it hard to step down from leading the manga without knowing it'll be taken care of, and it certainly will. At least that's one aspect of 2021 that won't suck.