Shutting down my Patreon (Patreon)

Hey all, I've been sitting on this for a few days, but now that the September reward pic is finished, it's time to make an announcement:

I'm going to pause my page for October so anyone still pledged won't be charged during that time, then I will shut down my Patreon completely at the end of October. Any and all new patrons who sign up during this time will still be charged for your chosen pledge amount, I cannot change this.

Additionally, I do plan to advertise my latest Rosalina pic to get one more round of support before I pack things up, so if you're reading this as a non-patron and considering signing up, please be aware that September is my last month of Patreon content.

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If you don't need any explanation beyond that, then I just want to say thank you for supporting me and I hope you'll continue to enjoy my art on my other pages. Feel free to take this time to scroll through my Patreon archive and save whatever you wanna save (remember to check the "Round-up Posts" tag), but keep in mind that only my Patreon page is going away and that I'm not quitting art, so don't think you can go around posting my stuff everywhere, k? None of my art has ever been exclusive, everything I've made has always been posted publicly, the stuff that's posted here is just higher-resolution, so please be respectful.

If you do want more details, then I'll try not to ramble too much, but this is like 2 years worth of condensed thoughts, so please bear with me.

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If you've followed me for a while, you might remember that I actually planned to shut down my page near the start of 2022, but some sudden financial struggles required me to keep at it to help pay the bills (which seems to be less of an issue now). The reason I've wanted to shut down my page is largely because Patreon permanently locks creators into charging their supporters either monthly or per-post. I could get into the details, but the short version based on support e-mails is this: creators cannot change their billing method without creating an entirely new account, Patreon thinks allowing creators to switch methods would lead to abuse of the system, and they have no plans to change anything going forward.

For as accommodating as Patreon has been with NSFW and even kink content, this is a really restrictive system that leads to either A) pushing myself when I know I need to rest or B) repeatedly pausing and unpausing my page, which ends up taking a toll on my mental health anyway and also creates a bunch of unnecessary nonsense for all of you in terms of trying to keep track of how you're spending your money. And, to be clear, I don't blame anyone in the slightest for leaving and not wanting to deal with that or to support me for the first time and not know what the hell's going on with all the pausing and unpausing. If any of y'all have been frustrated with how I've run my page over the last year or so, trust me when I say I've been frustrated as hell too and I'm very sorry it's been such a mess at times. I'm not gonna sit here and place the blame solely on Patreon when I've been on a gradual decline for a while now due to some personal stuff, but it certainly doesn't make things easier for someone in my position that I can't just switch to a billing method that would make my life significantly easier. I've honestly considered making a new page or moving to another platform, but I do not have the energy to go through that entire process of setting everything up and posting all of my old artwork right now.

Which is really what it comes down to, I'm just tired y'all, that's pretty much the gist of it. I keep saying I wanna do this or I wanna do that, but I never get around to doing any of it because I just don't have the mental energy most of the time. If I feel like an idea won't make money or if I know it'll take too long to finish (like how that Geiru BE animation took an entire month and then some, which led to me pausing my page), then it usually gets pushed to the sidelines in favor of something quicker/easier that'll be more popular and I really don't like that. I probably have close to a hundred OC comic ideas stockpiled at this point that I just haven't bothered with because I know a monthly billing cycle isn't enough time for me to finish one and still have time to rest, and I've been doing this long enough to know that splitting my focus often leads to nothing getting done at all. And, some of those ideas just aren't even kink stuff, so I always worry about putting a ton of time into something like that, only for people to be like "okay, but where's the good stuff?". I don't know where the hell the world's heading these days, but quite frankly, I just want to enjoy art again without having to worry about a dozen different things like I do now.

I'm sure this decision will bite me in the ass somehow, either through some kind of family catastrophe or through this country devolving further into recession and strife, something where I'll need any kind of income I can get and I just won't have it anymore. Honestly, I'll just cross that bridge if/when I need to with commissions or moving to another platform or something. I've been at this for 6 years and I've lost track of how many times I've advised friends to take it easy and rest when they're burnt out, well, now it's my turn to take my own advice.

I'm still gonna draw and I'll still post everything I make on my other pages, I'm just gonna put a bookend on this Patreon thing because I can't keep up with it and I hope that's understandable. Whether you've been a supporter for years of even just a day, thanks a bunch for believing in me, encouraging me, participating in polls, leaving comments of all kinds, sending supportive messages, throwing some money my way, and of course just appreciating my art in general. Thanks for showing me that I can make a living off my art when all the right pieces are in place, and I'm sorry I wasn't able to be as consistent as so many other creators are. I hope I can figure out a healthier way to make a living from my work in the future.

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As mentioned earlier in this post, if you want to take time to go through my archive and save stuff, now's the time to do it, you've got until the end of October. Round-up posts go back a decent while so you can download monthly .zip bundles from those, but earlier years only have individual posts because I wasn't doing bundles from the beginning. Hopefully my tag system and the search bar will help you find whatever you're looking for (the "Round-up Posts" tag is where the bundles are). And, again, I'm not quitting art, so please don't repost anything that you save. I don't do exclusives, all my art is already public, Patreon stuff is just higher resolution, so please be respectful.

To conclude this insanely long post, thank you again for all the support over the years and be sure to follow my other pages if you wanna keep up with me and my art going forward:

Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/pressurizedpleasure

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Press_Pleasure

Newgrounds: https://pressurizedpleasure.newgrounds.com/