[First name], An Important Update to ILL.SAN OS
And other important changes to the service
Hi, [First name of subscriber],
We’re updating the ILL.SAN OS (hereafter referred to as “the service”), and you get to be one of the first to find out what this means for you!
Here’s a quick look at what you should know:
Most of our posts, including ELDERNET updates and PSINK installments, will remain free for all subscribers. ELDERNET itself is free to read as always.
We’ve added a small number of posts accessible only to paying subscribers. These posts are currently limited to process posts showing how we make ELDERNET pages, including pencilling, inking, and coloring. By continuing to use the service, you acknowledge that we may add more paid content in the future, including minicomics, advance announcements, or collaborations with other paid Substack services.
We’ve made this difficult decision because the state I inhabit is in both a recession and a fascist reinforcing feedback loop, all my jobs are part-time, temp, or contract-based, I’m trying to pay all the usual expenses real adults pay, and my comics don’t make enough money to pay for me to keep making them.
A monthly subscription is $5.00 per month, and a yearly subscription is $50.00 per year.
As part of our mission to make our services accessible to as many users as possible, we’ve partnered with Alternative Encryptocurrency System (AES). Each paid post has a title encrypted with a Vigenère cipher (the most recent one is "arjcgnsxmmb"). To sign up for AES, simply open the ELDERNET page corresponding to the locked post you want to view. On that page, you’ll find a string of numbers like X.XX.XX.XXX followed by letters. The first three numbers give the date of the locked post the page is keyed to, the fourth number is the page of ELDERNET with the key, and the letters are an excerpt from the page. The missing letters from that excerpt are the key to the cipher. Send us the decrypted cipher however you see fit—direct message on substack, emailed reply to the post, or DM on other social media—and we’ll send you the entire post for free.
By reading these updated terms, you acknowledge our right to update the AES if it gets too easy for too many readers to solve or if we get bored.
If you don’t know understand how the cipher works, comment on this post, ask me to show you, look it up, or just sign up for a paid subscription.
To make it even easier for valued users like you to support us, we’ve also added two $5.00 comics to our Itch page (“Chalcedony” and “Borderline”)1. We also have an online store where you can purchase physical copies of our products.
Thank you for continuing to trust ILL.SAN. As we move into this new period of growth and change, we’re excited to be able to share the journey with our users.
ILL.SAN condemns the recent actions of Itch while acknowledging the complex spectrum of causes leading to those actions. In these challenging times, it’s important to value conservative, puritan, over-represented voices as much as all others.