The World... (Patreon)

...that I am building, what exactly is it, and why?

Let me preface this by saying that this patreon is not exclusively about the "Hides" IP, I will use this as a springboard for all my personal projects in whatever setting, be it fantasy, our modern reality (or rather what I make of it) and even SciFi stuff I dabble in occasionally. Hides, however, has been with me for a couple of years now, and I want to invite you to explore it with me.

Starting in 2016 I began dreaming up this blend of visual novel and RPG that would take place in a world where anthro and human characters coexisted at various degrees of peacefulness and generally very high degrees of perversion ;). The game would be set in a low-fantasy, late medieval to early modern, european inspired land. Starting out around the city of Thelmbridge and its surrounding lands (see the attached map), where aforementioned anthros were second class citizens at best, often derided as the titular "Hides" by their human compatriots.

Interspecies tension is of course not the most elegant theme to build your yiff game around but I do believe that having a serious core to a spectacle of debauchery can be a rewarding thing, as long as the story doesn't lose its self awareness. In the same vein, I would ask the audience (that is you, hopefully) to also not take this too seriously. There will be concepts in this world that would be absolutely horrible if they happened to real people, but lets not forget that this is at most a consequence free caricature of reality, where fantasy people and creatures can take, uh, species-ism, "surprise sex", and sudden loss of limb, life or freedom in stride. The concepts of sexual orientation, decency, and libido are highly flexible here if you catch my drift. If any of those things, however unrealistic and absurd my portrayal of them, are too much for you (which I can absolutely understand), I invite you to ignore any post tagged "Hides", as there will be enough content of a more palatable nature in my other works.

Having gotten that out of the way, I very much do not try to make this an exercise in grimdark. The general tone of Hides related material will be lighthearted. Warhammer Fantasy is a great inspiration of mine and it manages to balance the horrible nature of its world with a meaty layer of humor and absurdity. I might have taken a cue from their hodgepodge of cultural influences too, because the illustrations I have created in exploration of this world (one might suspect they were only lumped in with this as an afterthought, and that wouldn't be terribly far from the truth) wildly mix european and oriental influences and different historical epochs. I find myself quite enjoying this mixture, and again count on you good people to not see the cultural hallmarks I steal as a representation or comment on their real life inspiration, but merely as appreciation. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

This body of works is not intended as high literature. It will be full of backwards tropes and cliches and I am fully aware of them. I do appreciate the strides modern fantasy writers have made and do not aspire to help bring the genre into the future with Hides. First and foremost I seek to emulate the cozyness and comfort found in low-brow, low-fantasy works of the past century, perhaps my contribution can be a perverted parody on the cultural missteps that have unfortunately pervaded this somewhat - here we go - problematic subgenre.

Now that I have sufficiently offended everyone and ruined your interest in this universe, let me give you a quick rundown of the physical world of Hides, that has since expanded beyond the scope of the initial game pitch. Indeed, the game, if I find the time and resources to make it, has taken a bit of a backseat as I strive to introduce some narratives to get a feel for the - so far unnamed - continent.

Attached to this post you find a very early map undoubtedly subject to revisions. You can see two cultural centers in it. The already introduced, human dominated northern lands with their (disputed) capital of Thelmbridge. Then in the south you find a more mediterranian and arid biome that encompasses some of the Illustrations you may have already seen. Here humans are in the extreme minority, so much so that if you are seen by one of the Hides (I wouldn't call them that there, though) you might become a spectacle. Once sprawling empires, through external and internal influences these cultures have decayed to the point of becoming rather isolated cities. The north and the south exist in a state of relative ignorance of each other because of this. Perhaps, this ignorance extends to places and creatures condemned to myth by either culture...

I hope I managed to get you a little excited to see how the denizens of this world rediscover each other. If not, maybe this will excite you: There will be lots of shagging.