State of Something 4/2024 - An Odd Mid-Spring Update

It’s not very often I come out with a State of Something halfway through the year, as a lot of this often is sharing my thoughts on the previous year. But as times start to get more rough and more…interesting among NSFW spaces (what’s left of them), I feel like this was a good time to bring them up, between seeing how the commission process has been going and those particulars.

First up, what I’m sure everyone clicked the link for, the commissions. As previously stated, commissions will be opening up on the 26th. The base price will still be $30/1k, sales prices will differ depending on what you’d like to see. The only big difference is rather than taking eight submissions at a time, I’m cutting it down to four, and will hopefully open back up a few weeks later to get another four, and repeat ad nauseum until I see it fit to change the process again.

The reason for this is simple: As I explained on Discord a while back, I noticed that there was a drop off in the number of submissions after seeing numerous people sending their prompts, going from about thirteen in December to just six in February and seven in March. And given the limit for the first quarter of the year was eight slots at a time, with a minor change in January because some submissions suggested smaller word counts, that’s not really a good thing for me.

And I’m not sure if it’s easy to tell or not, but that leaves me a little anxious. Because I’m not seeing the results or demand that I’m used to, that hits my head by a lot on a mental level. Stressing me out to the point that I try to create coping thoughts in my head, which might not be healthy. It could be something more simple and less conspiratorial, like Twitter’s garbage algorithm making it impossible to see things when they go live. Or, probably just as likely, because inflation and the economy have gotten rougher, so has everyone’s ability to buy smut as a luxury.

But yes, this anxiety is why I’ve been constantly using the @ for clients in the server as often as I did, because I was worried that someone might miss the period where I’m open or something else. I also had to leave a few reminders that the Form was the only way to send your request to me, but I feel as though that message may have been missed or, again, they don’t like the Form as the way to do submissions.

Even if that is the case, I’m standing my ground on using Google Forms as a way to accept submissions. I let my anxiety get the better of me last year and went back to the old “first come first serve” model of requests, but I’m more confident in the process this year. So I apologize if you aren’t comfortable with this new process, it just feels a lot better in giving people time to submit their request while giving me more of a choice in what I get to write.

So yes, starting with the next cycle this week I’ll be opening up and picking from four slots. Those that sent in their request but didn’t get picked will have another opportunity to send it in the next opening a few weeks later. It’s very likely that if I picked your submission one week I’ll give it some space and wait until the next cycle, but we’ll see how the numbers play out this time around before I make that as a final decision.

Onto other matters regarding Patreon, first up, if things go well, I may finally be moving forward with a project I’ve been wanting to work on, a short comic with at least a page per month until I can afford to do more. I’ve settled on an artist and will begin discussing the details and work out a deal with them at the start of the month, though after just receiving the character sheets, I trust that the art will be in good hands! This will likely be reserved for the higher patron tiers, of course, so I hope it will interest you to see what’s in store.

However, it seems like deciding to go all-in on Patreon and leave Fanbox has had something of a butterfly effect, because the last month has just been one hard slap to adult content creators after another. Gumroad banning adult content altogether, Patron saying that nonconforming is a no-no, even with fictional characters, and everyone involved has to consent. Again, yes, including fictional characters. And as I'm writing this, Pixiv has decided that if you live in the US or UK, you don't get to see their content unless your location is changed to Japan. While that's an easy fix by going to your settings, it doesn't change the fact that creators like myself are especially being targeted because how dare we create sexual content!

I could go into details about the odd 20-something year war Mastercard seems to have about this content, or how FOSTA-SESTA being signed has snowballed us into this moment, but I feel like you guys have seen that at least once or twice in the last few months. Just know that it’s getting more and more aggressive towards us, but despite that, I’m not about to call it quits.

But it’s those things that are why I don't tag fetishes anymore, because once already I've been flagged for the things that Patreon doesn't allow thinking since I use Doc links its not hosted on the sitr, and I'd rather not go through with that again. Until the day arrives where NSFW materials are fully banned from the platform, I'm here to stay. Otherwise, if something happens all of a sudden and this page is no longer available, keep my Subscribestar page bookmarked. That's where I'll be heading if things go belly-up.

For the time being, I'm just going to make as much use of Patreon as I can, and I'm likely going to try and take advantage of those of you that are here as “free members”. Since now there's an option posting just for you guys, I'm going to consider giving small “demos” of the stories that go into early access before they go public. I'm hoping that might entice you to join up for support, even for just a short rub or something.

Hopefully things will materialize soon, and things can get better for a lot of us creators, but that's all I have for now. Have a good rest of the month!