big fan of romance horror. big fan of terrible people still being loved. big fan of bending morality and turning the grotesque into something beautiful.
Envisioning a better world, one game at a time.
WHO
Hello⌠Garnet K needs your support for Help Oxtail Studios keep the lights on an
Envisioning a better world, one game at a time.
WHO
Hello there! We're Oxtail Studios, a fledgling creative studio for a small group of writer friends whose dream is to create the dating sim RPG they've always wanted to see out in the world. The thing all of us at Oxtail have in common is a love of story-rich games, and we're currently working on Sugartop, a pixel RPG with vestiges of the farm life sim genre - a small town of wonderful NPCs (16 romances), adventure, and a lush, green backdrop full of mysteries and intrigue.
THE GAME
In Sugartop, you play as a financially struggling person in Los Angeles who one day gets what looks like a spam email with the headline, "MOVE TO SUGARTOP FOR FREE!!! (FREE RENT)" - too good to be true, right? But the circumstances are dire, your savings have shriveled to near nothing, and desperate, you experience a lapse in judgment, deciding that the antivirus on your laptop will have to do some heavy lifting as you open up the video attachment.
It's a scrappy ad trying to convince you to go live in this small town called Sugartop located on an island off of the coast of Southern California. Do you continue to live your life as is, in dire straits, or do you take the risk of investigating further?
WHY
Unfortunately, as many creatives tend to be today, we are struggling to make ends meet as underemployed and unemployed creatives who have to worry about bills month to month and have little to no savings to fall back on. We're dealing with the aftermaths of layoffs in our individual careers in an increasingly brutal job market, and we urgently need your help to keep the lights on at the studio.
If you want to play a hand in helping a group of queer Black and Brown creators give life to their creative visions and love narratively compelling video games with a lot of heart, please consider supporting us today.
WHAT
Although we would be overjoyed with making even $50 total, our goal is to be able to fund our overhead costs (studio rent, accounting fees, attorney fees, fair compensation for visual artists) for five years of operation to lessen the financial burden on us as we struggle to find jobs. Without jobs, we can't self-fund the project.
THANK YOU!
If you choose to support us today, thank you so much. We're incredibly grateful for your kindness!
Studio links: click here
The pixel art used for the campaign is "Sugartop" by Kathy Chow.
DISCLAIMER
Note: We at Oxtail Studios are not providing any goods or services to donors on GoFundMe in exchange for donations. This means we will not be providing you any copies of Sugartop for your donation.
answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
hey! a good friend of mine is looking for some financial support for top surgery to cover cost/a little bit of support while being off work. anything helps
Today I learned about the Totally Kid Carousel in Harlem NY.
Artist Milo Mottola was inspired by the rush of winning an art contest as a child and wanted to give children in the community that feeling of pride and accomplishment in an even bigger way. Each child whose drawing was chosen for use in the carousel received a $50 savings bond (the Prize the artist won as a child) as well as free rides FOR LIFE!
You can visit THIS SITE to see the art that inspired each creature and the sculpture that brings it to life!
Opinion Hereâs how to get free Paxlovid as many times as you need it
When the public health emergency around covid-19 ended, vaccines and treatments became commercial products, meaning companies could charge for them as they do other pharmaceuticals. Paxlovid, the highly effective antiviral pill that can prevent covid from becoming severe, now has a list price of nearly $1,400 for a five-day treatment course.
Thanks to an innovative agreement between the Biden administration and the drugâs manufacturer, Pfizer, Americans can still access the medication free or at very low cost through a program called Paxcess. The problem is that too few people â including pharmacists â are aware of it.
I learned of Paxcess only after readers wrote that pharmacies were charging them hundreds of dollars â or even the full list price â to fill their Paxlovid prescription. This shouldnât be happening. A representative from Pfizer, which runs the program, explained to me that patients on Medicare and Medicaid or who are uninsured should get free Paxlovid. They need to sign up by going to paxlovid.iassist.com or by calling 877-219-7225. âWe wanted to make enrollment as easy and as quick as possible,â the representative said.
Indeed, the process is straightforward. I clicked through the web form myself, and there are only three sets of information required. Patients first enter their name, date of birth and address. They then input their prescriberâs name and address and select their insurance type.
All this should take less than five minutes and can be done at home or at the pharmacy. A physician or pharmacist can fill it out on behalf of the patient, too. Importantly, this form does not ask for medical history, proof of a positive coronavirus test, income verification, citizenship status or other potentially sensitive and time-consuming information.
But there is one key requirement people need to be aware of: Patients must have a prescription for Paxlovid to start the enrollment process. It is not possible to pre-enroll. (Though, in a sense, people on Medicare or Medicaid are already pre-enrolled.)
Once the questionnaire is complete, the website generates a voucher within seconds. People can print it or email it themselves, and then they can exchange it for a free course of Paxlovid at most pharmacies.
Pfizerâs representative tells me that more than 57,000 pharmacies are contracted to participate in this program, including major chain drugstores such as CVS and Walgreens and large retail chains such as Walmart, Kroger and Costco. For those unable to go in person, a mail-order option is available, too.
The program works a little differently for patients with commercial insurance. Some insurance plans already cover Paxlovid without a co-pay. Anyone who is told there will be a charge should sign up for Paxcess, which would further bring down their co-pay and might even cover the entire cost.
Several readers have attested that Paxcessâs process was fast and seamless. I was also glad to learn that there is basically no limit to the number of times someone could use it. A person who contracts the coronavirus three times in a year could access Paxlovid free or at low cost each time.
Unfortunately, readers informed me of one major glitch: Though the Paxcess voucher is honored when presented, some pharmacies are not offering the program proactively. As a result, many patients are still being charged high co-pays even if they could have gotten the medication at no cost.
This is incredibly frustrating. However, after interviewing multiple people involved in the process, including representatives of major pharmacy chains and Biden administration officials, I believe everyone is sincere in trying to make things right. As we saw in the early days of the coronavirus vaccine rollout, itâs hard to get a new program off the ground. Policies that look good on paper run into multiple barriers during implementation.
Those involved are actively identifying and addressing these problems. For instance, a Walgreens representative explained to me that in addition to educating pharmacists and pharmacy techs about the program, the company learned it also had to make system changes to account for a different workflow. Normally, when pharmacists process a prescription, they inform patients of the co-pay and dispense the medication. But with Paxlovid, the system needs to stop them if there is a co-pay, so they can prompt patients to sign up for Paxcess.
Here is where patients and consumers must take a proactive role. That might not feel fair; after all, if someone is ill, people expect that the system will work to help them. But thatâs not our reality. While pharmacies work to fix their system glitches, patients need to be their own best advocates. That means signing up for Paxcess as soon as they receive a Paxlovid prescription and helping spread the word so that others can get the antiviral at little or no cost, too.
Holy shit, please reblog this. This is incredibly useful information! Paxlovid not only helps reduce the severity of covid but also goes a decent way to preventing long covid. I cannot stress this enough â even if you think this isnât relevant to you because youâre perfectly healthy, you could get covid TOMORROW and permanently have long covid a month from today if you got unlucky.
And, of course, if you suspect you have covid, take a test or see a doctor ASAP. Paxlovid MUST be taken within the first five days of developing symptoms. The Paxcess copay card seems really easy and quick to fill out, though!
Listen, this is the largest scale of Israeli violence in the West Bank since the second Intifada.
Israel is destroying the infrastructure in West Bank refugee camps like Nur Shams to the point where drinking water is no longer available in the camp.
How can I explain to you that Israel is launching an aggression against refugee camps? How can I get you to understand that this area is occupied by Israel yet it is invading it and conducting airstrikes against it? The language in the media will have you thinking this is between two armies. Please understand that Israel is launching these attacks on civilian areas, refugee camps, against resistance groups.
israel's invasion of jenin is so aggressive and inhumane that it speaks volumes how underreported it is in mainstream media. blocking aid from the refugee camps (classic starvation tactic), displacing at least 20 families in the last 24 hours alone, and now setting fire to jenin's market. they are razing streets with bulldozers. people are left without electricity, food, or water. and now they're targeting ambulances and medical staff without even trying to pretend it's erroneous or they're just terrorists. this is what complete impunity looks like
i truly don't understand how anyone can look at any of this and go "well it's been a year of this, so not my problem anymore!!" like it is your problem. it's everybody's problem. if you are choosing to care less during the time where everything is literally 10000x worse than it ever was, then you never cared. that's the truth
#and all the media can focus on is the fucking hostages that israel themselves killed with their bombs and abject refusal to end the genocide #that and the strike action taken by the colonisers in protest at their âcountrymenâsâ deaths #not the deaths of thousands in gaza nor the grinding of the war machine #to them and the western media one israeliâs life is worth a thousand times more than a million palestinians #truly an irredeemable nation of hitlerite genocidal colonisers whose every word is hung on by pathetic genocidal bourgeois press
Palestinian tiktoker Medo Halimy was martyred yesterday. He was growing a garden and making "a day in the life" tiktoks while in Gaza. He was just 19 years old and now he's gone, but y'all wanna pretend that people wanting hard stances against genocide is some kind of moral superiority issue and not the fact that people are literally dying.
This is his family's gofundme that's still linked to his tiktok. Please send some help their way so they no longer have to lose more of their family.
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