Supporting Goblins

[hatman]

ETA: They just hit their goal! Which is awesome. And so beautiful to see. But 30k was the minimum they needed. The more we can collect, the better off they'll be. The bigger the down payment they can make, the smaller the mortgage they'll need. And they've got other expenses. Living expenses, home repairs and improvements, future mortgage payments, their wedding, taxes, and more. Donations are still open.

Also, there's something else I'm trying to put together. Whether you can donate or not, I can use your help. Click here if you're not Thunt. Won't cost you a thing, but I'd appreciate it.

1. The webcomic Goblins is having a fundraiser. Odds are you knew that already. There's a blog post about why. In short, they need to raise $30k or they'll be kicked out of their home. (There's also now an about.com article about it.)

2. $30k is not insurmountable. If every one of the comic's regular readers donated literally $1, the goal would be met with money to spare. You can donate here. I'd like to see them pass the $30k mark, so they have a cushion for living expenses, future payments, improvements to the house, etc. If you can't afford it, don't worry about it. But if you've got a little something extra lying in your Poorly Locked Chest^tm, even if it's only $5, then please chip in. It's not much to ask in return for all the entertainment you get. You'd pay more than that if you were reading it in print.

3. Thunt (Tarol Hunt, the artist behind the comic) is awesome. Hang out with him for a while. You'll see. You may even hear Danielle, his collaborator and fiance. She's pretty awesome, too.

4. To help encourage donations, I'll be matching 10% of all donations made this Friday, July 15. To keep things sane, I'll match up to $5000 (so $500 for me). But I'm hoping we'll overshoot that target. (In truth, I will be disappointed if we don't.) If so, I may just go above, too. 10% may not seem like much, but think of it as me allowing you to give the proverbial One Hundred And Ten Percent. ETA: @jayjr2 says he'll match an additional 10%!

5. Turn off your ad blockers on webcomics sites. It doesn't cost you anything, but for many artists it's literally the money they live on. There's an eloquent post about it at The Dreamland Chronicles. Take a look at the next post and you can see some hard numbers on the difference it made. A month later they posted again to say that they were still making ten times the ad revenue they had before.

5a. When I say "ad blockers" I don't just mean AdBlock. I've had to whitelist each comic with all my in-browser defenses: AdBlock Plus, NoScript, Flashblock, TACO, and Ghostery. (Fortunately, you only have to do that once for each comic you read.) It was a big surprise to me to discover that many ads won't load at all unless you accept all of their cookies. That often means at least a dozen ad cookies per site. But the strange thing is that when I ran spyware sweeps after doing so, my scanners didn't detect a single objectionable cookie. TACO didn't find anything worth removing, either. (Though that may be due to passive protection from SpyBot and SpywareBlaster.)

That's the highlights. But I'd like to elaborate on Point #3.

I've had interactions (in person and online) with a small handful of webcomics authors. For the most part, they're nice people. Polite, friendly, happy to be appreciated. Some more so than others. Brag Guigar of Evil Inc. (which I highly recommend) is very cool. I've had one less than pleasant experience with someone else, but I wasn't at my best at the time, either^*, so I try not to hold it against him.

^*I was rushed, overheated, annoyed at having had so much trouble tracking his booth down (it wasn't on the map and none of the con organizers could help and I don't have a smartphone), and suffering from a low blood sugar. I was friendly and enthusiastic, but probably came off looking like an idiotic dork.

Thunt is different. He's in a class by himself. He's not just friendly, he's welcoming. When I said you could go hang out with him, I meant just that. Join the live chat, and you'll see what I mean. He's casual, welcoming, funny, and goofy. It should come as no surprise that the storytelling talent you can see in the comic translates over into other things - anecdotes, musings, rants, and the like. Join the stream, and you're in his home.

Sometimes, you can hear Danielle, too. She's just as friendly. Down to earth. She jokes and laughs and plays. But she's also levelheaded and responsible. She keeps Tarol focused and on track. She's the yin to his yang. His partner. And that's not only cool to hear, it brings it home that this is a family.

I don't know if I'm saying it well. Here's the thing. My life has not been going well lately.^* Thunt, he's easygoing and funny. Hanging around with him doesn't just help me put it all behind for a while, it actually makes me feel good. (Before you get any ideas, I'm straight and he's engaged. I don't mean it that way at all.) He's a cool guy, and, just being himself, he makes the world a little better. And that's not even counting all the laughs and entertainment from years worth of the comic.

^*The details aren't important here, but if you're interested there's something of an overview in the comments to this entry. If you want to know more, just ask.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: In the best of all possible worlds, Tarol and Danielle would be your awesome next door neighbors. The ones you always wished you had. That's the kind of people they are. The house they're in is beautiful. It has breathtaking views. And it's their home. Let's help them keep it.

Comments

[alvarin.livejournal.com]

Awesome post!

I've done my share, more to come next month.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't have an LJ so I'll just post sort of Anonymous. (I hung out yesterday for hours with everyone watching that number go up as Emperor_Norton)

Thunt is seriously one of the coolest people I've encountered online. Nice, funny, no arrogance at all. I didn't have the money to donate anything (hell, due to some weather issues delaying my jobs (I work outside) right now I'm in a position where I don't know how I'm going to pay MY bills), but I am so happy that everyone else pitched in so much, and hope that it keeps going up higher. Plus I want to see pgw get to donate his max :D.

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

Don't know if you'll check back to see this, but... thank you. :)

Don't know if you saw at the top of the post, but even if you don't have the money to donate, there's something else you can do.

[(Anonymous)]

This is the first time I've came across your blog, which I came to through your twitter, which I found through Tarols twitter. Well done good sir, well done. What you are doing is amazing and I wish I had the funds to follow your example. I have donated my ten cents (not literally, I gave more than that) and I am so proud of the other readers of Goblins, and the other friends of Tarol. So I repeat, thank You.