Terms of Service
Updated: 4th November 2021
Definitions
- Artist Find: I find a number of artists who fit your preferred art style, specialise in your desired area of competence (e.g., robots, furry, dragons), within your budget.
- Asynch: Work not completed during a consultation, i.e., via email, or separately on Discord. We each work on your commission in our own time.
- Consultation: A period of one or two hours booked via my calendar. Held on Discord or Skype, and fulfilled either by text, voice call, or video.
- Draft: An edit of a written commission. Character commissions take an average of 8 drafts to be completed. A 'draft' can refer to the document I send you, or you send me.
- Infographic: A graphic designed to convey information using words and images.
- Lore Bible: A written analysis of a fictional species or setting.
- Narrated Video: A video file incorporating a narrated No Frills or Lore Bible, artwork, photography, and other imagery, and copyright-free or purchased music, made for the purposes of illustrating a character, fictional species, or worldbuilding setting.
- No Frills: A written analysis of a character.
- Synch: Work completed during a consultation.
- WIP: "Work In Progress" - an unfinished work.
Services Overview
I apply my expertise in psychology to the development of fictional characters, species, and worldbuilding settings on a commission basis, with a view to helping you gain deeper insight into the characters, species, or settings you present to me at the start of the commission.
Prior to commissioning me I strongly recommend reading these Terms of Service, and my Seven Things To Consider page, in full.
Clients who do not wish to take an active role in parts of their worldbuilding but still want the worldbuilding to be done can switch to a ghost-writing service.
Porn And Fetish Works
I don't automatically turn down pornographic or fetish works. However, they can be a poor fit for the service I provide. Please read my Seven Things To Consider page for more details.
I particularly do not wish to work on projects where womens' subjugation is treated as entertainment/fetish material, or where they are infantilized. If your work contains this, do not commission me. This is the most common form of abuse that shows up in commissions, hence it gets a special mention here. If you commission me and this subject matter arises after payment, I will terminate your commission and will not offer a refund.
Patreon Services
My Patreon is set to accept payment at the beginning of each month.
On the 5th day of each month I will make a general Patreon post to all my patrons of each tier to invite pledgers to contact me, indicating which one of their works they would like me to work on. Pledgers may reply via:
- Discord: The Character Consultancy#2701, or
- Email: @
The responsibility is yours to provide me with a link or reminder each month.
Please note that you must use the tier you have pledged to on the month that you pay for it, or you will lose the benefit. I do not allow:
- 'stock-piling' of tier benefits. In other words you cannot accumulate unused benefits from previous months.
- 'advances' where you use months in the future on the promise that you will remain pledged
- use of a tier you used to be pledged to, but aren't any more.
If you do not use the reward you are pledged to on the month you pay for it, then I will assume your pledge for that month is a donation, not payment for services.
Please also notice that the 20 minute tier is done strictly in my time, not on a synch basis. Send me a link to the work you want me to critique and I'll do it within the month. I do not accept attempts to haggle for specific delivery times. Excessive requests to do so (i.e., continuing to ask me to do a critique in the consultation style after I have said no) will result in me not providing the service.
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Consultation Bookings
Please make any bookings via my calendar.
I offer sessions of a maximum of 2 hours long. This is because character and worldbuilding work is intense, and I do my best work if I can take a break after 2 hours. If you would like to book longer than a 2 hour session, feel free to book one after the other. My calendar is set to give me a 15 minute break, which will be enough for me.
I will invoice you manually via Paypal as soon as I can once you have made your booking, and require payment prior to the session.
Please give at least 24 hours notice for any cancellations or reschedulings. Any changes to bookings within 24 hours will incur a £10 charge per booking. Exceptions will be made in the case of emergencies, bereavements, etc.
If you have not joined the consultation by 15 minutes into the session or communicated with me that you are running late, I will terminate the session. I do not provide a refund or attend further bookings under this circumstance, and for this reason I strongly suggest that you set yourself a reminder to attend.
Payments
I currently accept payment by Paypal, in GBP (GB Pounds).
Xe has an easy-to-use currency converter facility, if you wish to check the price in another currency.
Refunds
I will issue a refund if no work has yet been completed, and payment was made within the last calendar month. Refunds under any other circumstances are at my discretion.
I do not offer refunds under all circumstances. It is very important that you are transparent with me about the nature of the content you wish us to work on prior to payment for your commission. I recommend you check item 5 of my Seven Things page for full details.
No Frills: I do not provide refunds once I have sent you the first draft.
If you have concerns over whether I may terminate your commission, please contact me using any of the avenues available on this web site, including in the footer of this page.
Non-Payment
If you have difficulties making your payment due to an issue with your bank account or Paypal account, then it is your responsibility to resolve the issue and ensure that The Character Consultancy receives payment. I will not waive fees on this basis.
Consultations: If you book a consultation but do not pay for it, and then book further sessions, TCC will invoice you for the further sessions but not attend until all consultations, past and future, have been paid for. We will not waive your fee for past sessions that you no longer wish to attend.
E-cheques
E-cheques are accepted, however we will not provide any service until after the e-cheque has cleared.
Delivery of Services
Please note, I am currently in college and building a therapeutic counselling practice so every week is different for me. This means I may be busier doing non-TCC work some weeks than others, so the following details are goals rather than a promise. If you would like me to keep your commission to a schedule, let me know.
Works in Progress (WIP)
Lore Bibles: These are delivered in Google Docs format unless requested otherwise. Normally you will have access to the document at Editor level, allowing you to write comments and add other information.
If we work in Google Docs, then once you pay for updates to your Lore Bible commission I will temporarily adjust your access level to Viewer. This is to ensure that no further updates are added by you while I'm integrating your previous updates, as this can create confusion about which are the previous set of updates and which are new. I will restore your access to Editor once I am done.
No Frills: WIPs are provided throughout No Frills, Infographics, and Video commissions, and are integral to the No Frills commission process. No Frills, Infographics, and Videos are all based on written analyses, so the first stage of the commission process is the same.
You can find an example of a finished No Frills, complete with all WIPs documented, here.
Turnaround Times
I aim to maintain the following pace:
- Artist Find: Within 7 days.
- Asynch: Within 14 days per 2,000 words
- Critique: Within 14 days per 3,000 words.
- Infographic: Within 7 days of the completion of the written work
- Lore Bible: Within 14 days per 2,000 words
- Narrated Video: Within 28 days per 3,000 words
- No Frills: A new draft within 14 days of your last draft to me.
- Reading: Within 14 days per 10,000 words.
Presentation
Your finished works will be presented as follows:
- No Frills:
- In .txt format, uploadable to DeviantArt and Furaffinity with a 'mugshot' icon of the character or the TCC logo.
- In .pdf format to be uploaded to my web site.
- Lore Bibles:
- In .txt format, uploadable to DeviantArt and Furaffinity with an icon illustrating a specimen of the species, portion of the setting map, or the TCC logo.
- In .pdf format to be uploaded to my web site.
- Infographics: In .png format, via the sta.sh facility on DeviantArt.
- Narrated Videos: In .mp4 format, via Youtube.
- Artist Find: In .xls, via Google Spreadsheet or as an Excel Spreadsheet file.
Corrections and Adjustments
- No Frills and Lore Bibles: Adjustments are integral to the development of No Frills and Lore Bibles. When I believe that all necessary corrections and adjustments have been made I will check with you to ensure that you too feel that the work is complete.
- Infographics: You have the opportunity to request changes when you view your Infographic on the sta.sh facility on DeviantArt. NOTE: Only minor text changes can be made (e.g., spellings), and changes to colour scheme.
- Narrated Videos: You have the opportunity to request changes when you view sections of your video on Youtube. NOTE: I do not accept changes to the text after it has been narrated.
Counselling and Psychotherapy Services
Please note that although I am a counselling and psychotherapy trainee, I do not provide therapy to The Character Consultancy clients. The service I offer through The Character Consultancy is a character analysis and worldbuilding development service, and that is all I will provide. If I come to believe that you have therapeutic needs during the course of our work together, I will suggest you seek therapeutic support from a therapist in your area. Please see my blog post on how to do so.
This is in line with the ethical guidelines I follow in my capacity as a trainee counsellor, and my own personal preference to keep my two careers separate. Please respect this.
Chat and Freebie Requests
I frequently get requests to work on other peoples' projects for free. Please note that I prioritise my paid-for commissions, and when those are up to date, I then prioritise finding more work, so I will never be able to work on other peoples' projects for free. For further information please see my blog article about this, where I give the subject the attention it deserves.
Misc.
Please note that the opinions, beliefs and values in my work are not necessarily representative of my own. If you're not sure, please check my Seven Things To Consider page.
Looking for the quote-word mentioned in the questionnaires or calendar booking form? It's in the Seven Things To Consider document.
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