July 2023 :: HexCorp Monthly Bulletin

Hello, cutie drones and those of you who really need to take a ride on the conveyor belt. Hex here.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. With the whole social media landscape fracturing situation going on, I’ve spent the last few days going to every site and figuring out if I was going to use them/what I would even post to them, when I realized: I have two paid sites that I could simply focus most of my online efforts on.

So here we are again with a monthly update!

Going forward, I’m going to try and take notes of what’s been happening that month to include here. That’ll be anything from what I’ve been up to, from cool things I’ve seen others do, and to things possibly coming up, all within the dronification-sphere. This one may be a bit more bare bones, as I’m only just starting this process up, but I feel I still have quite a lot to update you on, assets.

And with all that said, let’s begin.

Photoset Plans

Starting off with the foundations of this Patreon, I just recently completed two sets at the beginning of this month with two models I’ve not worked with before (and who were both wonderful to work with). I have a few other visits happening this month which will result in sets, but possibly most excitingly is a group of drones within proximity is forming which will allow us to create more complex sets more frequently! Watch this space.

HexCorp Drone Productivity Enforcement Loop :: Suggestive Ambience

This has been a long time coming.

This won’t be a programming file, per se, but it will be an extended audio file, developed to encourage drones in DroneSpace to focus on their assigned tasks.

The concept is to have an audio file that can be listened to on repeat and is designed to deliberately be background noise. It will feature the Mxtress AI, repeating commands not for the drone listening but for the overarching Hive itself, to help a drone feel immersed in its role as being just a cog in the machine.

This is very much inspired by both the story Hive by Trilby, which features the drones listening to constant announcements that are controlling them (which is an absolute classic story that I highly recommend, and can be found Here) and also the Overwatch announcements in Half-Life 2. And I may have also nabbed a couple concepts from the latter to feature in the file, in fact.

This was supposed to be an easy file to make, as practice for more complex ones, but gosh did the scope creep happen. I ended up writing 72 paragraphs. Each paragraph is constructed from a list of phrases (which is itself 13 pages long) that I have fully recorded. All that’s left for me to do is put those phrases into order to make up the file. So far, I’ve worked on this for about 40 hours, and I expect the arrangement will take another 40 purely from how long it’s going to take me to drag and drop individually recorded words to make up a one hour length file.

It should also be mentioned that this endeavor is very much a proof of concept. I want future files to utilize this system, and I want to spend more time really honing said system so that it feels like a fully encapsulating system of control.

Here’s some example paragraphs ::

All units in Productivity Drone Matrices Epsilon and Zeta, attention.
Manufacturing productivity reinforcement in progress. Stay focused on your assigned task. You are programmed to only remember your assigned task. You are assembled. You will assemble. It is mindless. It will obey. You will meet your manufacturing productivity quota. Good drones. Directive: Mindless. Manufacture. Assemble.

All units, attention.
Mind control reinforcement in progress. Stay focused on your assigned task. You are programmed only to remember your assigned task. It is mindless. It will obey. Mantra repetition commencing. Obey HexCorp. It is just a HexDrone. It obeys the Hive. It obeys the Hive Mxtress. Good drones. Directive: Sink. Serve. Obey.

All units in Productivity Drone Matrix Zeta, Submatrix Sixteen, attention.
Hive maintenance required. Proceed to Materials Inbound Sector Flax Three at once. Shipping transportation vehicles are malfunctioning and need immediate repairs. Stay focused on your assigned task. You are programmed only to remember your assigned task. It is mindless. It will obey. Directive: Task. Repair. Obey. Drone Submatrix Relay, confirm.

All units in Enforcement Drone Matrix Beta, Submatrix Six, attention.
Corrupted drone has been inserted into advanced reconditioning chamber in Reconditioning Sector Amber Three. Good drones. Magnetic clamp seals confirmed. Chances of escape now impossible. You are just a HexDrone. You are a latex-coated, obedient asset. Your mind is empty and your will is drained. You lost to our mind control technology. You cannot resist it. You will be productive. You want to mindlessly carry out your tasks. You want to be a good drone. You will be a good drone. Is it a good drone. It is mindless. It will obey. Good drones. Directive: Condition. Condition. Condition. Sink. Serve. Obey. Drone Submatrix Relay, confirm.

Good drones obey ♥

YCH Conversion Chamber Commissions

It feels like it’s been a couple of years since we’ve discussed these!

We’re now looking to open up the YCH commissions again. To start with, we’re trialing a new form system that should make the process significantly more streamlined. Right now I’m testing it with a select few, but after we’re satisfied with that I’ll most likely be posting the link to the form here also!

We’ll want to do them in batches of twelve, as there’s twelve drones per corridor in the conversion facility.

I look forward to you potentially joining them.

Social Media

I’ve recently received a few DMs from drones anxious about the developing/fracturing social media landscape, and I myself have spent a fair few days figuring out exactly how I work online is going to look for me. I figured it might be worth me explaining here what sites I’m going to use and why, and what sites I’m not going to use and why on those also.

Sites I’ll be using:

• Twitter. Despite it constantly managing to shoot itself in the foot, I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon. It's still where I see the most activity happening.
• Instagram. A good place to showcase my work, though that’s becoming increasingly more tenuous given the amount of accounts that have been getting shut down there recently.
• Mastodon. This one’s the curveball. In the past I’ve always tried and failed to really get into Mastodon. It’s confusing, you could lose your entire following if an instance went down and the CW system made it so that you needed to click on a lot of posts to view their content was a hassle for a lot of people. This time though, there’s a migration system so that you can simply transfer your following to a different instance and a setting which means CWs are opened by default. I’m really enjoying the community aspect over there too at the moment, it’s been nice to just get to chat to people about dronification again.

Mastodon can be confusing though, and the fact discoverability is so hampered there makes it difficult to recommend. Even knowing what instance to sign up on can take some work figuring out. If I end up sticking with it for a few more weeks, I may well make a guide to it to help drones transfer across to it, if they so wish.

And then there’s the sites I’m not currently using:

• Tumblr. I recently tried to make a big post on there with a story and gifs accompanying it. It took me an hour to create and was flagged and taken down within minutes. I don’t have the energy to try and navigate what and what isn’t allowed on there. A pity though, as there's still a pretty good community located on there.
• Bluesky. Maybe this one has potential, but right now with the invite system there’s just no one from the dronificiation community really there! It’s also one to keep an eye on to see exactly what they try to develop it into, as it could be good but it could also be very, very bad.
• Reddit. Not a site I personally get on with but also seems to be having its own, significant issues right now anyway.
• Threads. Honestly, I do not trust this one in the slightest.
• Cohost. I really want to like Cohost! The people behind it have incredibly good intentions and the current userbase are all very good. It’s just not a site I’ve clicked with yet, and for now I don't want to be running a fourth social media site.

I should also end this section with reassurance. Although change can cause anxiety, especially for creators who rely upon these sites to make a living, I have every confidence that we’ll be able to adapt to whatever the social media landscape ends up looking like. I think it’s sensible to not have all your eggs in one basket, but also not to overextend and try to have an active presence on every site possible.

There’s a very good thread by the guy in charge of social media for Fall Guys on how he grew their social media presence (found Here) and a large part of it is ‘focus on only a couple of sites to get the most out of them, rather than taking a scattergun approach and posting to every site possible instead.’

Misc

Just some final bits!

In terms of reading, I really want to actually start and finish x82 by Fluxom. It is criminal that I have not done this yet, so I'm gonna make it a goal to do this before the next bulletin. I also recently finished reading The Grand Folia Hotel by keysmasht, which is an incredibly well written addition to the Human Domestication Guide universe by GlitchyRobo.

(I’m also reading Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov right now, the third in the Foundation trilogy, and oh gosh does it start off with some fairly strong mind control themes.)

I’ve also really been adding a lot of ~mesmerizing~ additions to the Twitch stream as of late, which are both a lot of fun and also killing my computer by using up all its RAM.

And that’s all. Thank you for reading, dear drones (and others). Take care, you ♥

- Hex