I was pretty busy through December with holiday things that weren't questing and writing, as I'm sure many of you were also; no charges will be applied for the month. Also...
Happy New Year! I look forward to sharing many more adventures, games, and stories with all of you.
2022-12-31 16:59:09 +0000 UTC View PostI've been busy with life, work, and other projects, so no charges this month. Sooner or later we'll get back to it, but for now we're taking a break.
2022-07-01 00:18:01 +0000 UTC View PostTo start the spotlight series, I'll refer you to a classic story: The Experiment, by Mountain Man.
Mountain Man has a lot of good stories, but this one always stands out. The premise is simple: a college girl signs up for a psychological experiment, and is gradually conditioned to become a sex slave. It's a common hook for a story, but in The Experiment, the best parts are what happens along the way.
There are a few common pitfalls these hypnosis stories fall into. Sometimes, it's that the hypnotist snaps their fingers, and the victim instantly becomes a slave. This always breaks suspension of disbelief for me, because no one comes preprogrammed knowing what a master/hypnotic slave relationship ought to be like. In the same vein, sometimes the conditioning is so abrupt that it's jarring - it's one thing to convince someone to present themselves in a sexier way, but it's a totally different thing to change fundamental parts of their personality. That's just how people work on a fundamental level.
The Experiment refreshingly avoids all these problems. It takes place over months and months, during which the protagonist's conditioning is built on one block at a time.
Yet, for me, what makes this story truly shine is how it intersects with other people in the main character's life.
In one scene, the main character is tasked with hypnotizing a classmate for an assignment, and we get to see how she relates to the situation not as the victim, but as the perpetrator. Seeing her excitement over 'turning in her assignment' to the professor is fun in an exceptionally twisted way.
In another sequence, the main character's roommate realizes something is wrong. However, when she attempts to save her friend, she winds up being drawn into the web of hypnosis instead. Then we get to see the roommate turned into a tool to better serve the main character's conditioning, while the main character simply accepts her friend's corruption with a sort of detached interest.
Overall The Experiment is a long, gradual story with slow pacing, but if you're willing to put in the time, it's very much worth checking out.
A couple announcements:
First, we're at $100 a month, so I'll start the weekly spotlights series this week on Patreon. In the spotlight series, I'll talk about and review my own favorite pieces of content across the internet. Fingers crossed I can get that off the ground by the end of THIS week.
Second, I've figured that I really do like writing quest style stuff on the internet. Some of you may have noticed I've made a brief exploratory foray into CHYOA writing, in which I found it's just much easier for me to produce high wordcount while having fun than compared to more serious short story work.
While I still want to continue developing my independent smut fiction work through short stories, it requires me using my "work" brain to do so. Despite being a skeleton in a spacesuit, I too work a job to pay the bills. After a day of work (or even messing around instead of working), I like to kick up my feet and have a good time on sites like fiction.live and CHYOA. Online, I interact instantly with energetic fans, not necessarily put my nose to the grindstone to police beta and delta drafts of exploratory pieces.
For whatever reason writing chapters in the former is invigorating, writing even a paragraph in the latter is draining. So, efforts to develop short stories are now hold so I can focus entirely on questing.
I'll still work on these stories on and off, but due to IRL constraints, I think we'll all be better served if I focus 100% of my free energy into more and longer lives. If we do get to a point where I have more free time, or we get to a point where I can put more hours into writing and less hours into space jobs (refer to prior listed support goals), I'll pick the short story writing concept back up and run with it
So for the third "soft" announcement, I'll be picking up Book of Venus again sometime in the next week or two, while continuing to run Orpheus Initiative.
Book of Venus is a corruption story focused on a boy who happens onto a magic book, written under an old alt of mine (c0de). It features a bunch of themes, but the main reason I've picked this one is that I can write scenes for it at will outside of "typical" lives. It's a lower interaction quest where people make plans, and we see how those plans play out over a long period of time (a year, half a year, or a matter of months)
Finally, for Family Coins fans, I'm currently looking into getting back up to speed with the quest so I can run an occasional live (maybe once a week?) till we get it finished.
Anyway, thanks to all those who've read a story, joined a live, or participated in the Patreon. Your support is a big morale boost that helps keep me questing. With that business concluded, I'll see you at the next timer.
Hello all, I've been pondering my backlog recently for something to work on in between Orpheus lives. Family Coins is forefront in my mind to finish, but I've wanted for a while to find out which quests you guys were most interested in seeing continued / finished to help inform my decision.
Two quests are not listed, RITH and Self Aware, since these two I hadn't really started yet.
2022-03-13 16:51:01 +0000 UTC View PostIt's been a while since I've posted here, though I've frequented our discord more often. The last few months have been a real bitch.
Anyway, here's the "chapter 1" of one of the stories I've been working on. Working title is Favor for a Friend. Let me know what you think. Progress has been slower than I would've liked due to IRL speedbumps, but I think we get some back and forth conversation going it'll help keep things flowing.
There's more written but I'd like to get a serialized structure going instead of dropping novel-length works on the doorstep every few months. Posting a chapter, seeing your guys' feedback or reactions, and then progressing would overall be a superior system.
This is all beta-draft version stuff so things can change. If it doesn't read well, or there's themes you're interested in seeing explored more thoroughly, let's talk about it. Be aware that the end of the day I've got to follow my own instincts as a smut writer, but there's a lot of wiggle room in what that means. As a QM especially I enjoy finding out where player and reader feedback can take a story.
2022-03-08 20:27:26 +0000 UTC View PostNovember's always a tough month for me in terms of time required by work, family, and other commitments, so as you've seen I haven't run much or written much. Thus, no Patreon fees will be collected tomorrow.
I appreciate everybody's support, whether here or in chat or in the discord. When things pick back up again (as they always do) we'll have some fun.
As for December, it's always a mixed bag. Sometimes I've got a lot of time free and I produce a tidal wave of content, and other years my schedule's packed with so many events that I barely have time to get a full night's sleep. We'll see what this month holds.
On another note, I've been reading and writing a lot through November, and I feel that I've improved my midrange-longrange planning ability for games and stories immensely. This won't really impact the conclusion of Family Coins too much, but for future projects things should feel better for everybody; players, readers, and QMs included.
After some thought, I've decided to go ahead with writing short stories and putting them up here and on other sites. What I write will be a mix of new content, old unpublished content, and revitalized quests converted into polished chapters.
The time I take to do this will be from those days that I'm naturally unable to handle a live due to scheduling constraints. Oftentimes I find myself in limbo caught between wanting to run a game and not being able to run a game, so this will help me address that specific situation when it arises.
Since writing a chapter or a short story isn't as big of a commitment as launching a quest, I don't have to be as picky about what I choose. Thus, I'll discuss my choices and ideas with the Story Council (our community discord group) to help decide the projects or order in which I pursue them.
All stories that I publish will be kept private to supports for some initial period to be determined, such as two weeks, before they are made public.
Over the next week or so, I'll be devising a new approach to content creation.
It's occurred to me that waiting until I have supporters to see if doing extra stuff is justified is a little bit silly. My stuff is good (I've read a lot of stuff), people like my stuff (they've told me so), and there's a lot of those people around. As Sun Tzu once said, "If you build it, they will come." My next step will be to figure out what it is, exactly, I'm trying to build.
If want to make a long trip, you should figure out where you're going before you step out the door.
Those interested in seeing my current and potential future lineup of quests can have a look at it here, on google docs. Those interested in discussing the possibilities with me and each other can do so on the Roadmap channel of the discord.
While I'm usually all about transparency, I've decided to keep my detailed future quest plans limited to my supporters. The reasoning for this is two fold:
First, as a QM, it's important that I'm able to exercise creative control of my projects.
Revealing to everyone what's on my mind may prompt avid fans to attack my feelings toward any given quest. While it's been several years since I've run some of my most popular unfinished quests, new fans are joining the ranks everyday, and they're being drawn in from all corners of the internet.
You guys are the exception because you demonstrably like what I'm doing enough to encourage me to keep doing it, unmolested.
Second, I have more important things to do than to repeat myself ad nauseam to anon after anon.
Those familiar with me know that I sometimes become too focused on debating and chatting with players during lives. I'd rather not open the door to debating future quests and my arguments behind them to just anybody, not at the early stages.
Using Patreon and Discord, we can keep a record of your feedback, my reasoning, and any conclusions or workarounds we come up with together. In an ideal world I'd go back to and finish most of my discontinued quests eventually, whether in quest form or written form.
Hopefully opening a dialogue with you all will facilitate that.
The community Discord server is now live. If you have your Patreon account linked to your Discord account, you should automatically be shoved into the "Story Council" channel.
Let me know If you're having problems. While I've used Discord extensively for brainstorming and gaming in the past, my experience is from the user rather than administrator side.
Let's move on to the current status of our projects - namely the currently active quest.
I'm very happy with Family Coins at it's current stage. When I began the quest, I had planned a mind-bending journey where family members were redefined over and over. In the process the protagonist would inadvertently corrupt everyone involved. That's where we are right now.
In the beginning, an unexpected take on Everett's characterization in the first act led to a slower, more atmospheric and psychological start than I'd intended. Frankly, the quest didn't meet my creative goals till happenstance produced Joel's Coining. Since then it's been a bumpy road, slower than expected, but leading a satisfying course.
I expect Family Coins to be completed within the next few weeks. Before then, I'll be exploring the different directions we can take things with the next quest. I'll have a Roadmap up for patrons in the community discord for preliminary discussion within the next few days.
Thanks for joining us for our first official update. I'll you at the next live.
Due to the fast-acting efforts of MGSPHY, Alexander Lease, W Wilson, and my frequent QM pen pal Rav, within 24 hours of starting this up I've been convinced there's an actual interest in what I've proposed.
I'll be working to get the Discord set up over the next couple of days. In addition, I'll start keeping you guys up to date on what my quest plans are, or at least what feelings I have about what's going on now and what my next steps might be. I think this might be the start of something really fun for everybody involved.
As many of you know, I've long memed about fleecing internet bucks from hapless fans. Well as it it turns out, real life is a bitch and it's time for meme fiction to become meme fact. The call goes out: give me money.
But a few important details first.
1. No quest or content will ever be behind a paywall. If you want to support me, I want it to be because you like what I do, not because I tricked you into seeing what's behind some curtain. (The caveat being that if we get to the "Bare Bones" support tier, the short stories produced will be available only to patrons for a brief span of time before being made publicly available)
2. I calculated all goals and patron tiers with the express purpose of subsidizing a standard productive month of questing. I do not plan to significantly increase the amount of time I put into questing, rather this Patreon's intent is to decrease how much real life is able to eat into that ideal amount of questing. Conversely, this Patreon is not a threat to stop questing if I receive no support. I love doing this for its own sake and have run quests for years and years before now without ever receiving a dime of compensation. So be advised that while I won't be running any less, there's also a ceiling on how much I can do this to avoid creative burnout. If I'm not having fun, believe me, you won't be having fun either.
3. If over the course of any given month, if in my estimation I am not being productive in running quests and creating the kinds of stories I enjoy creating, I will not collect Patreon fees. Those in the know are aware of the sudden hiatuses I've gone on in the past. Rest assured that if you pledge your support, you will only be supporting me when I'm actually active. However, in accordance with point #2 on this list, one of the goals of this Patreon is to see if I can't make it so that I don't need to take those leaves of absence anymore.
So, onto other business.
While I don't have 100% of everything up on Patreon just quite yet, you will see from the write-ups of my funding goals that I do have a detailed plan - I recommend reading through some of these so you can see what I have in store if this winds up taking off.
Furthermore, only the most basic patron privileges have been detailed, and at this point, not all of these will be active till we meet certain goals. For example, until I see proof that people are actually interested in this Patreon to the level of the first support goal ($25) I'm not going to bother making a community discord, or keeping this Patreon regularly updated.
So okay, maybe that all sounds good, but what if you don't want to give me your money? What then? Well, the TLDR is that I'll probably be writing more smut and giving recommendations on where to find the good stuff if we achieve some of the lower tier goals, so that's what the future holds for you. Praise be to the wonders of capitalism!
And that's that.
If you'd like to support what I do, read through the patron tiers and pick the one that sounds about right to the level of power you'd like to put behind my cause.
If you have to choose between throwing money at me and paying your rent, though, please do the latter. Running sex simulators on the internet with strangers is more than irresponsible enough for me, I think.
Thanks to all of you for reading, playing, and discussing my quests over the years. I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. Anyway, back to writing.