State of Something End of 2023 (Pixiv Fanbox)

Well, here we are, inching closer towards the end of 2023.

As I’m drafting this up, it’s the mostly still recognized Cyber Monday before we dive into December, which is going to be my break period from regular commissions. However, during that time, I’ll still be working on some other stuff: finishing up Year of the Buns, working on something original yet long-form that I might get into later, catching up on anything else I might be able to do within the next month and week before we get into 2024, and all that, and all that.

At the time of posting, it’s two days before Christmas, so yeah, quite a bit to go over and re-draft.

But as usual, I also like to look back on the previous year and see how far we’ve come with a lot of things. The world outside might be pretty dangerous, as I’m sure most of you seeing family during Thanksgiving can attest to any arguments with distant relatives, but at least the internet can still be a safe haven, right?

…Ha…

In all seriousness, it does feel like things are in a bit of a hindrance thanks to the current state of Twitter. With the platform being controlled by an old guy who delusioned himself into this current state, it felt at times that things were just not so good. Not just on my end, but for creators in general. Aside from the fact that I’m already a NSFW smut writer, my reach didn’t feel like it grew all that much. Sure, I managed to reach 1800 followers on the platform, but that’s only because I stopped caring about all the bot accounts that were coming my way. There were some tweets that managed to get the word out when I had a new story release, or the occasional audio re-upload, but let’s be honest: Twitter is probably going to die out before even Impact, or TNA wrestling as it’s been re-re-christened, ever will.

I mean, only Twitter Blue users are able to use Tweetdeck! That was the only thing keeping me plugged so constantly to the website anyway!

Bluesky seems to be the way everyone is going nowadays, and I’ll talk about that in its own subsection, but the point is that Twitter’s reliability has gone down the drain and it seems like my motivation to really follow any social media has gone with it. Aside from still posting new uploads and such.

Despite that, this year feels better for me in a lot of ways, but at the same time not that much better. Cutting back on how many commissions I took per month seemed to put away a lot of the stress that buried me deeply last year, and even now it’s not the most taxing part of this time of year. That would be the full-time job. Still no escaping that, sadly, and I likely won’t for a while given how the healthcare plan is there, but that’s as deep as I want to get about that.

Like I said before, though, there were aspects that went a bit worse, like how I tried to handle the commission format for this year. Doing it DM style and having people wait to hear back from me was not the way to go, especially when they ignored the “do not ask if I’m open” notice that I had up at that point. Unfortunately, it seems I lost a few people that might be interested that way, leaving me anxious over ever getting any business at times.

I’ve calmed down about it, and had to revert to the old style of “first come, first serve” from there on the rest of the year, but needless to say I think I’ve learned from that. We’ll see for sure when I announce the way I’ll be handling things starting next year.

But hey, even there I still had a pretty good and heavy amount of highs: I got to work on Halloween Harem, which was back in 2022, but since it came out in April I can brag about it just a smidge! And it was the ten year anniversary of my time working as a smut peddler, as well as the anniversary of Fizzer and my first story on HF, Bad Religion! Both received respective stories in their celebration, yet I kept putting Futa ‘Bout the Family’s anniversary off. Funny, that.

If I had to figure out a way to explain my 2023, it would have to deal a lot with change and discovery. Trying to fix up my business model in the hopes of giving myself more time, and just being able to breathe. But in doing so it also helped me realize the things I enjoy doing, and that will likely be reflected in some of my content moving forward.

But yeah, I think I’ve rambled on about the year itself enough. How about what’s going to be changing moving forward? Let’s start with perhaps the most important section:

Commissions, Prices, & Switching From Paypal

Like I said above, how I want to handle commissions didn’t go very well, but I think anyone could see what it was I wanted to do with them. Basically, have more control over what I write, what I feel like writing, etc.

To start 2024, I’m going to do that just a little more differently than how I managed it previously. Rather than going through DMs only to find “Are you still open?” messages, I’m going to start using Google Forms. This will let me see ahead of time who wants me to write what, and decide for myself if I’m up for writing it around that time. It will likely roll itself out starting next week, so this way I can be ready to start working once the new month comes along.

While writing six commissions per month was fine, I’m going to see how things fare for January by having 8 slots instead. If it needs to be balanced out again, I’ll probably just go ahead and revert it back to 6.

The franchise sales will still be around, though I won’t break them into separate payment tiers like I tried last year. As I experimented with this past year, they’ll be coming in and out of rotation, at least one different list per month, though I may change it to three if I’m in the mood to try and shake things up. However, I do want to point out that at any given time, I may just drop something off entirely from the sales, because it might finally happen that I’m not as invested in writing something as much as I thought I would be.

That said, yes, there will be an increase in prices, as there usually has been in the past. For the start of 2024, here’s how everything looks:

$30 will be the maximum price, for everything not covered by a sale

$26 will be the themed sale, if any, covering fetishes for content not already covered by the franchise sales

$22 will be the lowest price possible, covering the franchises that I have listed as being familiar with

The extra $3 per 1k after 8k words will still be in effect. Privacy fee will still be an additional 30% towards the final price, though for some stuff private sales may end up being the only way I’ll take certain commissions.

See, I’ve come to realize while I might be comfortable writing celebrity stories, I don’t feel as comfy post them publicly anymore, even if it’s just to HF. It’s nothing against them, but a matter of someone finding them should I end up getting bigger in name, though that concern is only reliant on any future projects I might end up doing in one fashion or another. So stories with celebrities of any tier (A-list, B-list, internet-level) will ONLY be written privately, with the privacy fee added onto it. Scat, shota, loli will also only be written privately with an added privacy fee as well.

I may finally get rid of the temporary list of ‘will not do’. The reason for existence is simple: Either I was getting too many requests for them, or I was just getting tired of writing the same or similar things. Maybe both. But for something like Jaune, I’m likely going to be very restrictive on how I write his character. When it comes to requests featuring him or similar archetypes, some requests lean heavily into the ‘Gary Stu’ levels of writing him, and I can only do that to a certain degree. Writing a romance with him as I see him, fine. Writing him as a harem-winning stud? That’s not Jaune to me. Anything that’s still ongoing, I will work to the end, but yeah, there’s all of that.

There’s also the issue of Paypal, which constantly worries me from day to day when it might be my last time dealing with their site for payments. Between the rise in rates they can take away frim commissions, and how they could just dump your account without any warning, I’d rather altogether move away from it. The problem being that there haven’t been too many alternatives in the past. Like I’d love to move over to CashApp, but because it’s exclusive to the US for reasons I can’t fathom. Not dabbling into crypto, either. Wise looks to be the best potential option, so I’m hoping at some point I can use that for payments instead of Paypal. It’s just trying to get through the setup because *hey*, I decided to be a business and they need all this info! If not January, maybe February. And if it somehow doesn’t work out, well, back to Paypal…

Audio

As you probably noticed, there hasn't been any new audio releases since Parking Violation went up. That's mostly because by the time we got to that point, I was feeling a mix of burnout, falling behind, and just plain out like it wasn't worth the investment.

After posting a lot of the audio back up on Whyp and editing the trailer for Monika's Revenge, however, I realize that I do still want to go back to doing that sort of thing. I like the editing, I like sharing the fruits of all that…but I don't think doing it while I'm also working on commissions so much per month is going to be the solution.

So for the time being, what I intend to do is create stuff. It doesn't have to be a monthly audio…hell, it doesn't even have to be audio. Something will show up on Patreon, be it an audio, a comic dub, or even a comic page. There will be something, maybe not once a month, but I want to have more than just my writing be what brings people in. That will require reaching out to others for their assistance, which I’m more than fine with doing.

But when I do make audio content, you won't see it going up for public release two months from now, as I was doing previously. Those will remain exclusive for possibly a year instead. And they will likely be put at a higher tier spot rather than be available for all, like I had done before. I want the audios something of high quality, and the tier where they'd be placed is going to have to reflect that. So about $5-10 tier supporters will likely experience these projects.

Patreon and Fanbox

Sadly, January will likely be the last month that I make use of Fanbox, leaving everything fully exclusive to Patreon once again. Once we enter February, it won’t be part of my uploading regimen.

Yes, I know that Patreon isn’t always kind to NSFW creators as well, yes, I know that there have been NSFW content creators nuked from the platform as well, but there are reasons that I’m putting all my eggs into its basket, and a lot of that unfortunately has to do with how I’ve come to feel about Fanbox. Is it comfortable? Yes. Is it reliable to me, a non-Japanese content creator? Well…

Since I started using it in 2020, I was hopeful that they would end up utilizing an international choice in currency, as it only used JPY, Japanese yen. Unfortunately, three years on and that still hasn’t happened. And three years on, I think things may have gotten a little worse as well.

While I’m sure most people are using Fanbox because JPY converts better for them in payment, the truth is that the exchange rate between USD and yen seems to have fluctuated by a LOT from where I started, and it doesn’t feel as though things have gotten better for Japan since it favors US most days. When I set Fanbox up, it was for what the equivalent of the dollar was at that time, but with so much fluctuation, it means that I’m not getting as much as I would be now compared to three years back.

So much like Subscribestar, you’re welcome to continue supporting me through Fanbox if you want to, but after January, don’t expect too much in the way of updates. I would, however, still recommend moving to Patreon if possible.

Exclusivity

One of the things that I’ve always struggled with on Patreon has been the matter of exclusivity. I feel like everything should be allowed to surface to the public eventually, and to leave it squarely behind a paywall till the end of time feels wrong.

But sometimes, like I said above about audio and stuff, I feel I have to do something in order to keep up with myself, and sometimes just the written content won’t do it on its own. However, I’ll be working on something to sort of test the waters and see if it might interest people into further support by creating something original to Patreon itself. While I have stuff written, it sadly doesn’t feel like enough to hold things over through the year, as I skipped some spots and wrote more of the middle spots rather than work on the beginning points.

So you might see it, though be warned: it’s not smut. It might still be a little more mature, but it’s not going to be anything heavily smutty. Just a story that I want to tell, have it out of my head, and work as hard through it as I can before the motivation dips. I won’t say much about it at the moment, but the best description I can give for now is “I’m In Love with the Villainess” meets “My Next Life As the Villainess”.

Prompts

I have to be honest, at the moment I have no clue how much longer I'll be doing the prompts with Patreon. While they’ll still be ongoing for the foreseeable future, I don't think my heart is in it any more, and I feel like it might be affecting those of you on those tiers. The creativity doesn't quite hit the same way as it did, with slight exceptions, but aside from that and the word bank, I'm not sure what else to do for the $5 and $10 levels until I start getting the other content I talked about already out there.

If there are any suggestions, I'm okay to hear them out, but I can't say I'm going to take it too seriously.

Branching out

So in the past I think I've made mention of writing out a script for a comic, another short story potentially for Amazon and Smashwords, and potentially growing out into creating YouTube content, possibly as a reviewer. Because I just like to talk. A lot. Like God can I talk about nothing. I think this State of Something can quite easily showcase that.

So where is any of this now? Well, the first step is going out and approaching an artist within my price range who might be able to do the first one. The second one is just cold feet over the content featured, plus I want to find someone to illustrate the cover, which is partially the third issue…how overloaded Amazon is with AI generated content.

Like I used to think the stuff was interesting and just fun to screw around with, but after seeing how companies are utilizing all of it, from art to writing to voices to deep fakes to…just…fuck. And yeah, it's looking more and more difficult until Amazon or someone can get AI under control, but that's still rough.

As for the last one? Well, it wasn't until August that I had the assets I wanted ready, and you could see that in the Monika's Revenge video. It may also a matter of what I think may be ADHD, but can describe as “I can't find the time to get started on it” or “I have the time but either forget or lose focus”. Which I think contributes to the audio stuff, too.

And, yeah, there's also the fact I'd be a smut writer trying to fit into the mold of a more vanilla audience, which…yeah, again, the shift in how I handle celeb content kind of contributes to that, too. Maybe I should try XVideos or something…

It might also just be the big issue of actually following through with it. Kind of the same thing with writing, you won’t know what happens until you try. So I just need to see how to motivate myself into going down that path.

But…well, let's see how well all of that goes. It's a matter of balancing things and figuring out what will and won't work. And a lot of this part of the section, honestly, has just been rambling.

Social Media

Like I was saying, I've been going into other methods of reaching an audience thanks to how Twitter has gone down the drain. I keep all of my links on Linktree to catalog all of them and a few other things, but here's the rundown.

-Mastadon: I'm not too big a fan of this one. I think maybe Baraag is more popular and more reasonable to gather an audience, but I still have yet to try getting on there.

-Cohost: Very lacking in finding a following. I still post on there because it's simple, but it's still only links.

-Bluesky: Probably the best possible experience, even though a lot of functions from Twitter are still yet to arrive on there. But I definitely see more people I know utilizing it, so that's pretty helpful, if not convenient.

Now that all the NSFW creators I know are on there, I have plenty of invitations to send out. I'll likely be giving out those invitations to my followers on Discord, because Twitter is a cesspool of bots and the like that could take them instead. So sometime in the next week, it’s rather likely that I’ll paste a picture of the links for those of you to use and help find myself and those you want to follow on Bluesky while it’s still an invite-only beta.

Lastly, Thank You

I feel like I might be missing a few other things I wanted to discuss, but even if I did miss anything, I do want to just say: Thanks.

2024 Is probably going to be a large mess of a year, and we can only hope for the best. But I wouldn’t still be around here if it weren’t for you guys still supporting me, whether it’s commissions, Patreon, or helping me in a third way. I’ll likely still be here for a good long while, so I just hope you all keep coming back.

Merry Christmas, happy new year, and I’ll see you guys soon! Take care.