Early 2023 Update: This Life (Patreon)

Hey folks! I hope you've been enjoying My Bigger Boyfriend as it starts to turn into a new story direction. I'll have some cool news on that front hopefully in the next few days. But in the meantime … this update mostly affects the Massive/Colossal/etc. tiers, so I'm posting this update to you guys. Two main things to talk about, and I apologize for the wall of text.

Thing 1: Small Business Growth!

I really really really wanted to have the Small Business Growth! comic finished by now, but life keeps interrupting with unexpected ice storms and power outages, unexpected work deadlines, and other such non-fun stuff, which pretty much rendered February unproductive. So here's what I'm going to do: At this exact moment, I can't afford to pause the campaign for March, but I am going to make sure I get to these remaining eight pages as quickly as possible. If I haven't made substantial progress by the end of March, I'll pause the campaign in April and make time to get these done. I appreciate everyone's support but I also want to be giving you comics to read! Then, hopefully once I get past some deadlines in this March hump, I'll be able to get back to the regular work schedule I was setting up at the beginning of the year. Wish me luck. 🤞

Thing 2: Age Verification

Okay, right up front: This affects ME, not patrons like you. But thanks to our puritanical corporate culture, Mastercard is forcing Patreon to make anyone producing "adult content" to do an official age verification in order to continue collecting money and receiving payouts. This process will involve uploading personal identity documents AND a biometric face scan to a third-party company.

I have very mixed feelings about this, both practically and philosophically. I read Mastercard's press release, and they seem to be concerned about things like sex trafficking and non-consensual pornography. Set aside the issue of whether they're actually helping or hurting legitimate sex workers with these onerous restrictions: I'm drawing silly comics of fictional non-human characters, so I'm just not in any way connected to that kind of criminal activity. And if their concern is adult material getting into the hands of minors … there is no age verification for patrons aside from a checkbox, so this policy really does nothing in that arena either.

I don't like being treated as a potential criminal for doing perfectly legal work.

And then there's the issue of the uploaded personal data. They claim it will be secure, but who's to say when this third-party company might suffer a security breach, or get bought buy some billionaire or Russian or Chinese company who will have access to all that information, or even if they might just suffer a security breach? And there's also the question of whether Mastercard might be collecting a list of people they might sometime in the future downgrade credit ratings for because they're working in an "adult" medium.

I haven't been asked to do the age verification yet and I haven't quite decided what I'll do if and when that time comes. After Small Business Growth! I had two more bawdy but fun stories with the Coyena family lined up. I'm not sure if I'll go through with the process so I can do those here, or if I'll have to find another forum to work on and publish those stories in the future.

Looking further down the line, I was hoping to work on another story of mine, Loop Garoo, which could easily be kept more "family friendly" even as it deals with mature themes, so that's a possibility. Although I was planning to have at least another year to outline the final story and work up some character designs and visual development, so I'm not sure how quickly I'd be able to ramp that into production if I have to jump ahead to that, either.

So, yeah. Always in motion and difficult to predict is the future, and while all the tumblers haven't fallen into place just yet, there may be a bit of disruption and upheaval here over the next couple months. Thank y'all for hanging in with me this far … I really appreciate the support, both morally and financially. If the pace gets frustrating or if a more safe-for-work werewolfy fantasy transformation story like Loop Garoo doesn't float your boat and you need to cancel your patronage at some point, I totally understand. But if you're still willing to stick around I'll send all the love and good vibes your way that I can. ❤️

However things shake out, I'll keep everyone informed of what's coming as soon as I'm able to. And if anyone has any questions, feel free to message me directly. In the meantime, thanks again, everyone, and have a great week! 👍