State of the Campaign Update (Patreon)

Hey, folks! This is gonna be a long one, for which I apologize, but it's important, so please give it a read if you can!

Thanks for bearing with me … Small Business Growth! is complete, albeit a bit later than I'd hoped. To be honest it was hard to focus because I've been anxious and depressed about a few things, one in particular being the Mastercard/Patreon situation. And, this week, I finally got my email telling me I need to verify my identity to continue posting adult work.

Identity Verification

I've talked about this before, but I really don't want to go along with this for several reasons:

1) Philosophically, I don't like the way financial corporations and the government treat adult entertainment workers. I don't believe these policies will do anything towards their stated goal of preventing sexual crimes, as actual perpetrators will continue to operate in dark channels unaffected by these rules; but in the meantime they're driving legal and ethical workers either out of work, unable to collect their income, or back into the shadows where they can be abused or taken advantage of again.

2) Personally, I'm offended at the notion that the adult work I do—silly naked funny animal cartoons—is in any way connected with child sex trafficking or non-consensual pornography production. I don't like being treated like a potential criminal over nothing.

3) Practically, I don't trust the verification process of uploading my sensitive documents to a third-party company that went bankrupt a few years ago after its CEO resigned in disgrace, and the company was bought by a private equity firm. Who's to say they won't be sold to China or some random billionaire in the future? I also don't trust Mastercard not to make a list of "adult entertainment workers" so they can reduce credit scores or lock them out of loans or apartment rentals or whatever.

So what can I do? Well, here's the plan going forward.

The Plan Going Forward

1) First up, I'm going to pause the campaign immediately for at least a month, possibly two or three. No one should be charged when August rolls around. This will buy me some time to take care of the next few things.

2) Secondly, I'll need to clean up my account and delete any posts with that horrible, offensive, crime-ridden NSFW material. Primarily that means the Coyena Comics, but there are also some sketchbook sketches I posted awhile back, as well as some of the wallpapers. So if there's anything you want a copy of, please grab it this weekend. Once those posts are deleted, I'll need to apply to have my account reclassified as a Safe For All Audiences account so I'll be able to withdraw funds again.

3) Third, I'll need to plot out what comics I'll be working on next, since the ones I'd been planning on all involved a level of playful nudity similar to the last two Coyena stories. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to rewrite a few of those stories to take out the nudity, or if I'll come up with some new stories to take their place. But that will take time to work out, and I want to get back to a cycle of getting pages done on a regular basis, so I won't bring the campaign active again until all that is sorted out.

A Few Notes

• Whatever I end up doing, I will keep everyone posted and give a heads-up when the campaign is about to go active again, so everyone can make their own informed decisions on what they want to do with their pledges. Please feel free to stick around until then; you won't be charged any money while the campaign is paused.

• I'm going to try to keep My Bigger Boyfriend going during the pause, although I may need to take a short sabbatical or two depending on how time and funding are going during the pause.

• I'd like to continue doing some fun NSFW stuff in the future, if and when I can make the time for it! In addition to Patreon, please feel free to follow me on Mastodon or on my Telegram channel or anywhere else I'm active so you don't miss out on any announcements!

Thanks for reading along, everyone, and thanks again as always for all the support you've given, both financial and moral. I'll try to get all this worked out as soon as I can. If you have any questions you can comment below or ping me through messages or any of the usual channels. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your summer, and hang in there! Love to y'all! ❤️