Hello my friends in Misery, (Miserians?)

Firstly, I wanted to remind people you can request a refund at any time until February 2nd (30 days after the campaign ends). After that, no refunds will be offered. Thanks!
You can contact me at [email protected] for that.


So let's look at our First six cards of the Suit of Flesh! Enoch and I removed some of the sex elements from this suit, but the upcoming 5 does feature a giant penis, so there's always that to look forward to I suppose.

• ⬛ The House 
  • The House of Flesh is The Palace of Flesh, where people enter to spend and forget. It's a place to escape your weakness, your struggles, your lack of money, goals, hopes. It's full of shame, but it is the ultimate place of bargaining. One of the figures at the door is holding a hand out to receive your payment to enter. 
• 0 The Folly 
  • In the House of Flesh, our 0 is The Hungering Lust. It can be hard to tell where our grasping hands and impossibly hungry sex begin or end in this card. This is being caught in your shame, in your vice, your dark secret, your ecstasy, but you don't stop when caught. You continue but now deeply shamed. While this is the house of Anger and Bargaining, it is equally the house of Shame. How we bargain with our pain, how we cope, can be the salve and the shame. 
• 1 The Portal 
  • In the House of Flesh, our 1 is The Orifice. We take the flesh by the handful and pry it open to enter. We must be hard, strong, vicious to fit into this space. We get in with our rage, our fist, our wiles. It means we want it badly to go in. Release, violence, anger, trade, shame. We enter it with gusto because we need it. Even if to go in is to debase ourselves. To beg at the altar for a trade out of our situation, even if it's only temporary.
• 2 The Nemesis 
  • In the House of Flesh, our 2 is The Doll. This being is beaten and bruised, the subject of our cruelties, even as it begs us to continue. We seek something to hurt or blame, to trade, to enjoy. The Doll is not truly a nemesis, but we put a mask on it to pretend it is not actually our victim. We must convince ourselves it tempts us with its ease of being hit, taken. It is the victim of abuse, physical, sexual, mental, and it is our warning that our cruelties are being explained away when they cannot be. Should not be. The victim of our failures.
• 3 The Wound 
  • In the House of Flesh, our 3 is The Wet. This is someone peeling the flesh from their arm, ready to transform it into something beautiful, golden, forever. Our rage is self destructive. It hurts us by making us convince ourselves that if we tear ourselves down, something good will come of it. But we cannot replace our broken ugly arm with that golden one. We never could have. We tore down what we were afraid of, hated, because we didn't find peace. You cannot let go of things to gain something greater than you ever had. You must work for it over time. 
• 4 The Harmonic 
  • In the House of Flesh, our 4 is The Meat Market. The foundation of this anger, shame, bargaining, is the bare concept that us, our bodies, our time and energy, is for sale. There is a market for these things, for sex, desire, and shame. As long as it's available for trade, we will stay with it. If you stop buying into the market, you will be free of its enticement. Stop giving up things that make you feel happy to lose a few more pounds to be worth loving. Stop changing how you dress, your hair, so someone will want you. Stop thinking you can trade your own happiness to fix the problems in your life. When you can see that, you'll be able to leave the market. 

Surveys

Welcome back to another Misery Monday,

And today, I have the final set of cards in the House of Rot! You can see the full suit on the main campaign now!



Our House of Rot is now fully rotten! You can see it on the main campaign page as the full house, but here are the five new cards! The 5, 6, 7, and the Denizen and Ruler.

• 5 The Excess
  In our suit of Rot, we have The Piles. In excess, Rot is acceptance to the depression pit being reality. Garbage is not cleaned or removed, merely moved from pile to pile. It is the feeling that we are the rot itself, it is the fabric of our lives, not that we fell into depression, or that it's temporary. 
• 6 The Ecstasy
  In our suit of Rot, we have The Abandonment. At this point, we stop interacting with the outside world entirely. We ignore help, we ignore others' call for help. We no longer see other people or their problems or their lives. This is freeing. We feel a weight off our shoulders when we shrug off other people's lives.
• 7 The Finale
  In our suit of Rot, we have The Walking Dead. To leave this house is to wear ourselves outside as we are. At its best, we may look different from others. We may feel different, more likely, messier, difficult. But at the worst, we pass with the rest of the world. People don't notice we are a walking corpse, hardly alive. We are good at it. Feigning life.
• Denizen
  In our suit of Rot, we have The Trashman. This is a person who will take your burdens. Do not fear sharing your heavy thoughts and weights with others. The trashman can help bear our burden, take it away from us even, if we let it. Let your friends help. Release your pains.
• Ruler
  In our suit of Rot, we have The Great Weight. The vast weight of the creature is a crowned skull atop a mass of garbage and grasping hands. Some people don't want you to be anything, to do anything. They want to keep you small, in their shadow. It may be too late to get out of this thing. Or... did you move a little? Did you grab the dirt and pull? You must dig your way out now. You must try.

Hello Misery Fellows,

Today, I have some cards from the House of Rot! Enoch and I were talking about the House of Flesh and needed to make some changes before we tackled that one, so we're skipping ahead a suit.

So past Anger and Bargaining, we're going right into Depression and Unreality. And we do so in style.

Each suit has had a color element going for it that really sticks it out from the others. Blades had the over the top saturated red blood. Wire had the orange-yellow wires all over. And Rot, as a dreamy escape from the other suits and Path of Misery entirely, is green-blue. And it's gorgeous.



I really love that each house, each suit, is getting a signature look so even if you don't know the different suit frames by heart, you get the clear feeling what it belongs to just by looking at it. 

• ⬛ The House 
  • The House of Rot is The Rotting Pit, where things sink down into death. This is the disgusting mass we slide into when we give up, when we feel nothing matters. And the rot, fungus, and mold here will steal our minds into nothingness.
• 0 The Folly 
  • In the House of Rot, our 0 is The Cocoon. We will slide away into our own place of isolation, and in doing so, remove ourselves from even the possibility of help. We didn't ask or yell, we merely slipped into nowhere. And here we will stay if we can't make a change. If we can't care.
• 1 The Portal 
  • In the House of Rot, our 1 is The Jelly Slit. When entering, people can see us going in. If they act quickly, they can grab us before we disappear inside forever. But we must also go in to get through. It is worth the act to try and stop people from going alone on this journey. There are other ways to feel this space than to disappear into it.
• 2 The Nemesis 
  • In the House of Rot, our 2 is The Feeder. This creature slithers over us, crushing us with its weight, as it feeds us shit. Depressive thoughts can become feedback loops, and in time our fear of ourselves, our sorrow, becomes an entity. But do not mistake it for merely what was to come, or what must be. When we see it this way, we do not even try to escape from under its weight.
• 3 The Wound 
  • In the House of Rot, our 3 is The Dreaming. This is existing purely in our minds, now. We have so disconnected from the world we exist in dreams now. And when we only live in our heads, we miss out on outside perspectives, the life of living, the world moving, shifting with other minds and experiences. Insularity is dangerous.
• 4 The Harmonic 
  • In the House of Rot, our 4 is The Rot Fields. The foundation of Rot is the gathering of our disgustingness, our depression, our mess, trash. We do not get rid of it, we simply gather into it. Then we begin to slip down inside it. It takes time, but eventually we are totally submerged. And on the way, we are alone, abandoned, or silent. We don't ask for help until it is too late. This is the substance of Rot, how it exists and continues to exist into the future.

Our Schedule

Hello my friends in Misery!

The Final Hours!

The Finances

• First, we lose $243.60 for having 812 backers. It's a small fee for the platform.
• Then, we lose $6,143.83 for platform and card charging fees.
• We paid $12,423.98 for ads, which brought in $32,962 of our pledges, of which we pay Backerkit $1910.30. We also made $22,636 from our Launch emails sent through the platform, which means we owe Backerkit $2263.60 of that. 
  • This is a Marketing total cost of: $16,697.88.
• Enoch is being paid monthly until the deck is done for $30,000 total. This increased by $2000 through stretch goals, for $32,000.
• Now, Manufacturing! These numbers are busier by a lot, so I'll try to simplify.
  • Standard sets cost me about $8.20 to produce. Deluxe sets cost me about $32.95 to produce. Current plans are to make 750 of the Standard sets and 500 of the Deluxe sets. With the extra sets of dice, reading cloths, etc we are looking at $21,192 in manufacturing.

What's Next