Sunday Funday 01 (07/05/2023) (Patreon)

The sound of rustling paper and beeping scanners filled Sehn’s ears as she waited in line.

For the third consecutive weekend she visited the post office, and she was starting to recognize the employees’ faces. Maybe it’s time to go to a different one, she thought with a tinge of unease. Can’t get too familiar with people in this line of work, especially after the little… incident that transpired a few weeks prior.

As she examined the small cardboard parcel, she couldn’t help but feel confident about her last acquisition. The vacuum sealer had done an impeccable job of securing its contents, shielding them from all senses until it could be discreetly wrapped, boxed and shipped without risk of anyone finding out what was inside.

Her mindless tapping on her phone was interrupted as her number was called, and to Sehn’s delight, it was the same freckled guy from last week who greeted her. He had sort of a boyish charm, and avoided her piercing purple gaze at all costs, much to Sehn’s delight, as if she was playing with her food.

The package was weighed, stamped and scanned in a matter of seconds, even through his trembling hands. Sehn paid with her card, making sure to touch his fingers while getting the receipt, then giggled to herself as she walked away. Oh, you’re awful, Sehn.

As she got into the low seat of her coupe, her phone chimed.

“Work is never done, huh?”

-

Hilda’s fried rice, sitting untouched on the living room’s center table, was quickly losing its reheated heat, and yet the stubborn oni refused to touch it until she found something to watch.

Sitting lazily on the sofa, she scrolled through a myriad of genres on the TV, until she was interrupted by a click of the door.

“I’m hoooome!” announced Sehn, locking the door behind her and leaving her purse on the tiny entryway table.

“Hey…” she replied, stammering for a bit before continuing. “Did… did everything work out?”

“Yeeep. No issues at all, as always. You gotta stop worrying about it, we’ve been doing it for a while and, like I said, nothing happened!” she answered as she walked into the kitchen and fetched a glass of water.

“Yeah, but… I’m still not sure if we should ship that kind of stuff, you know…? What if they open it? What if we get caught??”

“Uh, what are they gonna do? Arrest us? And what do you even want to do about it? In-person delivery like we’re some kind of street dealer?”

“I- I don’t know! I just… This whole thing is so sketchy!”

“But the money is good”

“Yeah, but…”

“And talking about money…” said Sehn, making her way to the living room of the small apartment and standing in front of Hilda, taking a second to sip on her drink “…how’s the next batch? Did you finish cooking it yet?”

“I think so…”

“Alright, let me see it”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“Ugh… Fine…”

With eyes full of regret, the oni let go of the remote and got up, then took off her gray sweatpants.

“Oh, now that’s the good stuff” said Sehn with a sly smile.

Can you smell what the oni is cooking? This will be a short story about my gals Sehn and Hilda, kindly commissioned by one of y'all.

I'm trying out this weekly update format I've previously mentioned. I'm not sure of how to structure things yet, so for now I'll lead with the important stuff (smut) and tackle the other topics right below.

So, let me try to answer a few questions about this whole thing, since it's the most pressing matter in this platform:

"When are you unpausing Patreon?"
Before I injured my back, I had another medical emergency, and I took a few commissions at the time to help pay for that. I ended up not being able to work on many of them due my injury, so my priority at the moment is to finish those and the Patreon rewards I haven't delivered yet. Only then I could restart my Patreon work without feeling guilty about it.

However, that leads into another question I've been asked...

"Are you unpausing Patreon at all?"
The Patreon relaunch added a lot more work to be done every month, which wasn't a problem at the time, since I wrote for multiple hours every day after work, and then some more on the weekends. That's just not feasible for me with my current health problems.

This chronic pain issue throws a wrench at any plans of just restarting things as they were, as I'm not able to sit down and pump out content as I once did. I'm hoping I can recover with time and then reassess how I'm going to tackle things.

I've already unlisted every Patreon tier but the lower ones, as this place is still the host of all my content, and patrons will still get new previews and early access when content is done, but as far as new commissions and polls, I can't promise anything.

I've thought about the idea of removing all the tiers but the first two, temporarily downsizing Patreon for just HQ releases, previews and early access, but that would require another "relaunch" of sorts, then yet another one when I'm ready to republish older tiers.

Aside from the actual work that it would take, I'm not completely comfortable with this option because it feels somewhat greedy to reappear after months and already start charging people $2 monthly, even if the financial support would be more than welcome at the moment.

Still, I would like to hear your opinion on the matter, since you all are my clients, and this change would depend 100% on you. Would you be ok with a downsize for a few months?

"Missing posts?", "SubscribeStar?" and such
I had to delete some posts as they conflicted with Patreon's ToS, and that always prompts the discussion of migrating to another platform. At the moment, since I can't even work on Patreon as it is, starting somewhere is out of the question, at least for now. I don't have the time or the energy to go through that process, and I would rather use those to finish all the projects I still owe.

I could combine the previous idea of downsizing with migrating to a new platform, but that would involve even more work, as I would have to compile all of my work, sort it in a way that's easy to browse, then upload it somewhere like MEGA so I could take it to SubStar, and that would be actually more work than just downsizing Patreon, I think. 

It would feel wrong to start a downsized SubStar and then not offer the benefits from here, as it's currently the only place with all of my work after Tumblr's demise, so even if the financial incentive is there, I wouldn't feel great about it. 

I think that's all for Patreon questions, so tl;dr: not unpausing anytime soon, but stick around for content, I mean, it's CUF, so you already paid for a month anyway, I guess.

I'm not really sure of what else to add to a newsletter update in such short notice, so I'm just gonna babble about stuff I've been doing.

I was never really someone to keep up with weekly manga. I usually either forgot to read updates, or just waited until some chapters piled up so I could read more than 15 pages a week.

This changed a bit in the past few months. Reading is one of the things I can still do while laying down, and Shonen Jump's app let me read every new chapter as soon as it's out, translated and all, so I started reading some of them. Of course, if the banner for this section didn't spoil it for you, the catalyst for that change was...

Chainsaw Man: This is such a good manga. It feels really nice to read something clearly made by someone who has plenty of worms crawling inside their brain. I've picked up CSM's manga a few months before its finale, and it was the first time I actually kept up weekly with a series. After that, I've promptly inhaled Fire Punch, and now I have a weekly appointment with whatever's crawling between Fujimoto's ears. Luckily, it also introduced me to other stuff, like...

Sakamoto Days: John Wick but less tragic and somehow more deranged. I thought the concept was funny, and the art was also fantastic so I gave it a shot and I do not regret it at all. It feels a lot like if something like Katekyo Hitman Reborn got its main plot sorted out in chapter 2 and not chapter 200 (and the characters also had more than two braincells, which like, I get that it's a part of Reborn's charm, but it gets grating after a while). Hilarious manga and ridiculous stakes.

There's also Kaiju 8, which I love the premise, but the author updates as frequently as I do, so it's not exactly a weekly read.

-

If you're still with me now, thank you very much for the patience and the support. Any feedback about this format is welcome too, so feel free to yell at me and the ideas of downsizing in the comments below. See y'all in the next Sunday Funday, folks.