Hello Hacker News!

We bring to you today 2 things:

1. Our passion project - LaoTzu Writer Studio - a modern writing application

2. Thoughts on the abysmal state of Kickstarter - likely well known to you all, but having experienced it for the first time, it is disheartening

So lets start with the good stuff:

LaoTzu Writer Studio - LaoTzu helps you build the framework of a novel, but still leaves the writing for you to do. That means there are indeed AI elements - like our Guard section that flags inconsistent canon in your universe, or the analyze section that determines writing stats, rhythm, mood, etc. - but there is no AI writing the story for you. That is an explicit intention - we want you to have support in your writing journey, but the story itself, that's still for you to do with your meat sticks on a keyboard. (To answer the question before its asked - no I did not use AI to write this post either - I just like dashes)

Our main site is here - https://www.redwoodrhetorica.com/ - and there is a limited demo available online if you want to futz around with it.

And our kickstarter is here - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/laotzustudio/laotzu-wri...

We believe in this as a tool / workbench for writing and we're looking forward to evolving the app over time. The kickstarter is primarily for professional refinements of the platform so its less obvious that 1 guy with no sleep made this. We'd be much obliged if you joined the kickstarter, but we'd also just love testing and feedback as well - whatever you want to offer we'd appreciate.

Kickstarter itself - My goodness. We've both been on the backer side of kickstarter for a while, so we were excited to kick off the campaign. Well, from day one we've seen folks backing and un-backing as bait for scams left and right. Folks trying to circumnavigate the boundaries of the platform to try and "help us out" with all sorts of shady promises.

We are admittedly total amateurs when it comes to this, but it's been pretty off-putting to see the platform has, evidently, manifested a full on black market layer to it. Anyone else have experience with this? Any experienced heads want to opine on what they did to navigate kickstarter or kickstarter-esque platforms for their projects?