The Patreon Problem

Another xpost from my Patreon.  I'm trying to get all of this out of the way so I can hit the ground running with my regular writing as soon as 2019 hits.

Thank you to the people sending me comments over the past couple of days.

In case you were unaware, Patreon have been de-platforming creators on what appear to be ideological or political grounds.  I object strongly to this for both ethical and practical reasons.

Ethically, I believe it wrong for a company to discriminate on political or ideological affiliation and hide this behind a gauze of vague "hate speech" rules.  This has been happening far too regularly and companies that play these games deserve to go out of business.

Practically, it is hard for me, as a creator, to justify spending lots of time and energy building up a following on Patreon when my account can be yanked at any time on a whim by their Trust and Safety team.  Patreon have as much as admitted they're making up the rules as they go along with respect to their ToS.  This makes them a very unsafe and untrustworthy platform for creators, as we can be terminated at any moment for not adhering to rules that are subjectively enforced and can change at any time.

At this point I'm not sure what to do.  The ethical thing would be to close everything down and refuse to countenance Patreon's BS.  But this would also hurt me and the people who wish to support my writing (I've heard you, thanks for your comments and support).

I don't like Patreon and would like to move everything over to a more political neutral platform (ideally one that sees a "Trust and Safety Team" for the Orwellian nonsense it is) as soon as a reliable competitor emerges.  Any suggestions here will be gratefully received.

I also need to work something out for the patrons who no longer feel they can keep an account up on Patreon in the light of Patreon's Orwellian nonsense.  If you supported me during November and December I still owe you a boob monster girl short story and the next CYOA.  I'll need some way of getting those to you when they're done.  Suggestions again gratefully received.

And once again, I'm really sorry for wasting good writing time on this political shite.  I know you're here for sexy succubus smut, not to hear me sperg out about free speech.  Unfortunately, this is something I've always held a fairly absolutist position on, largely out of self-interest.  I write horror.  I write erotica.  While we might not always be first in line, we're usually somewhere in the queue when it comes to banning people and stripping their income.  That's why it's important to always take a stand against censorshit whenever it rears its ugly head.

Blegh.  I just wanted to write sexy succubus smut.

Anyway, have a lovely New Year's Eve out there, ya filthy animals!  Let's all hope for a better 2019. 

-manyeyedhydra

Something for Patrons - Stealth Tuckers

This is a xpost from my Patreon (which I will likely be exiting soon in light of the Orwellian creepiness they've displayed recently).  This is currently for paying patrons, but I might expand it to whatever platform I move to in 2019 if there's interest.

First up, apologies for the quietness this December.  Some other-life stuff cropped up at the start of the month and by the time I was through it I was caught up in the holidays.

And then Patreon decided to shit the bed…

I'm not going to go into it in great detail, but I am of the opinion Patreon is no longer a safe or trustworthy platform for creators.  If it wasn't for the fact other work had caused my current writing projects to fall behind schedule, I would have already cancelled my account here.

More on this later, but for now I thought I'd do a better job of managing expectation and lead off with the more positive stuff first.

First, as far as I'm concerned, everyone who has subbed to me up until December is owed a sexy boob monster girl short story and an advance look at the next monster girl CYOA.  I intend to stick to that plan regardless of what happens here.  If you no longer wish to use Patreon in the light of the Orwellian nonsense they've been pulling recently (or support me—I'm fully aware my own output has been very erratic), I fully understand.  If you have been a backer up until now, I will try to get the projects to you as soon as they are completed.

Whatever happens, I do want to thank the people here that have supported me, even for this brief period of time.

Because of the nature of my work, I'm aware a lot of you are uncomfortable about seeing your names in any kind of credits list.  However, I think I might have a sneaky solution that might be of interest.

All of my stories contain references to writers, movies and bands that I've enjoyed over the years.  These are usually reflected in the names of characters, but I'll sometimes use them as references for place names (street names, etc).

I should also add that I don't do "Take That's."  I only ever reference things I've enjoyed, so even my most feckless and/or despicable characters are named after creators/creations I like.  This is because of a story I heard (possibly apocryphal) about Wes Craven naming his iconic Freddy Krueger after a bully who used to torment him at school.  It might have been initially intended as a Take That, but then Freddy Krueger became a horror icon.  My imagination pictures that bully looking at a film poster years later and thinking, "I used to beat this runt up at school and he went on to name a horror icon after me, how cool is that!"  So, no Take That's, ever.

More recently I've been moving away from this.  It's fine for a random nobody on Literotica, but starts to look icky on a sort-of erotic horror writer with multiple books published on Amazon, especially if people come to the erroneous conclusion they were intended as disses.

However, this does leave me with something I can give back to those of you who've supported me here.  Whatever happens in the future, I'm still going to be writing stories and those stories will have characters and places that requires names.  It doesn't even need to be a name.  It can be a little snippet of description—something you'll be able to recognise and think, I helped fund this.

If you would like to be included in this, please comment below with the name or little descriptive tag you'd like to see used in a story at some point.  If you want, also add your favourite monster girl or fetish and I'll try to use your reference in an appropriate story.

Just to be clear, this is just a minor name or descriptive tag rather than any insert characters.  When it comes to storytelling, I always do what I feel is right for the story first.  On that note, it's quite likely your name might get dropped on a less-than-stellar example of humanity (my succubi do love slurping up assholes).  If you really really don't want this, let me know and I'll try and apply your moniker to a less-assholish doomed succubus meal instead (my succubi also love slurping up the innocent as well).

Also, if you'd prefer even this sneaky reference to be totally anonymous, feel free to DM me rather than commenting.  My aim is to put a private list together and dip into it for future stories.

(And maybe even grow that list with future subscribers if this political nonsense blows over, or an apolitical competitor to Patreon emerges.)

Obviously, I can't put a timeline on when I'll sneak your reference in—there are over a hundred of you for starters!

Once again, thanks for your support and apologies for the uncertainty.  I'll try to post again over the weekend while I try to figure out some backup plans for 2019.

Fuck Censorshit!

-manyeyedhydra

A Textbook Example of Censorship by Mob - Tournament of Rapists

I read this:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/09/11/social-justice-warriors-attack-tabletop-gaming-get-their-facts-hopelessly-wrong/

and, ugh.

The tl;dr version.  Somebody put out a (tabletop) role-playing game book with the title of Tournament of Rapists.  From the synopsis it sounds like a Mortal Kombat/Bruce Lee Enter the Dragon type scenario where the players infiltrate a tournament of death to bring down the corrupt ringleader.  The Perpetually Offended Of Social Media caught wind of it and deployed their usual strategy of Point and Shriek and Dogpile until the retailer made it unavailable.

I've been trying to avoid harping on about SJW nonsense, but this is encroaching on my own artistic freedom.  It's close to an idea I've been meaning to work on (monster girls fighting with exotic sex moves similar to the arena section of Monster Girl Quest) as a book or maybe even a game.  I'd like to be able to do this without worrying about a pack of screaming monkeys throwing faeces at me.

Healthy criticism and not liking something is fine.  Gathering together a mob to pressure retailers into not selling certain items because you don't like them is not.  Stories like this need to widely circulated so that people are aware of what's going on.  At this point we need to shout back and let these online thugs know in no uncertain terms that this type of shit is no longer acceptable.

If you're one of the people that threatened to remove your own products unless this book was banned, you are a cunticle of the highest order and I sincerely hope you look on your business in a year's time and see nothing but ash.

Uh oh. Blogger have dropped the Prudehammer

Blogger have changed their Adult Content policy.  I (and many like me judging from the displeased mutterings on Twitter) received an email last night informing me of the changes.  Here they are . . .

https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/6170671?p=policy_update&hl=en&rd=1

. . . and yeah, they're not good, not good at all.  It looks like I'll have to pack my bags and find a new (online) home come March 23rd.

In theory I could comply, but it would mean deleting nearly every screenshot of every game I've written about and as I know a lot of you out there enjoy those posts, that's unacceptable to me.  Also in theory I could mark this blog as private going forward, but as the primary purpose of this blog is to publicise my books, it wouldn't be doing a good job of that if no bugger can find it.

With discussions like these it's impossible not to invoke the dreaded 'C' word.  Personally I think anyone using the hur derp, "It's only censorship if the government is involved," argument is a moron that isn't aware the world has moved on in the last century and a half.  I've argued before that if the end result is the same, people are going to use the closest word that fits.

Of course, against that we have to weigh up that Blogger is Google's platform and they are fully entitled to decide who or what goes on it.  It's disappointing that Google have taken this line, but it would also be churlish of me not to be grateful to them for giving me a nice set of tools to get my voice online essentially for free for the past five years.

I'd put this in the mild censorshit bracket - a damn nuisance, but not an oppressive gag as there are plenty of other alternatives.

Last night I purchased the manyeyedhydra.com domain.  It's about time.  I have a nice author page on Amazon, I might as well get a proper web address.  Currently it should redirect to this blog.  Next month I'll look at migrating to a new, more tolerant, online home.

I'd like to think we're moving to a future where companies will stop doing this as it will generate more bad publicity than good.  Sadly, until then, those of us working with adult material are a soft target and will have to continue to expect and work around arbitrary chilling effects.

Enough moping, it's time to get back to writing

Okay, that’s enough moping around.  Time to bash the black dog’s head in with a shovel.  Who am I kidding, I doubt I could stop writing even if I had to.  I enjoy it too much and I’m not going to allow a spot of holier-than-thou bullying poison the satisfaction I get from writing these stories.  I’m probably worrying about nothing anyway.  One of the problems with writing horror is that the mind gets very good at spinning out a scenario and stringing together the worst combination of outcomes.  I doubt the person was credible and even if they were the most it would likely amount to is some awkward conversations with my workmates.

(Note: this is my situation.  For other writers of erotica the circumstances might be very different, which is why an attitude of “They should write under their own name so we know who they are” is the mark of an ignorant asshole.)

I’ve had a week to think things over and I’m going to make a few minor changes.  I let myself drift a little too close to the world of “serious” writing.  My personal opinion is those online communities are toxic.  They’re highly politicized and if – like me – you don’t fit rigidly within a political ideology you get a clubbing from whichever side you get too close to.  I don’t think they’re healthy for budding writers either as they’re stultifying environments detrimental to creativity.

(Some might be reading this and thinking:  Hey, that doesn’t sound like the warm and friendly community I know.

Well bully for you.  Your face fit, someone taught you the secret handshake, or you found an entry point manned by the many decent people I hope don’t feel as if I’m tarring them with the same brush.

Unfortunately I saw a lot of unpleasant sneering assholes, took one too many brickbats to the face and decided I was better off staying right the fuck out of it all.)

“Serious” writing appears to have forgotten the contract between writer and reader and become obsessed on the things that are only ever proxies to this contract between writer and reader.  If you write something and even if only ten people read it and enjoy it, congratulations, you have still increased the overall happiness of the world.  Do not let anyone else try to tell you otherwise.  Only the worst kind of person tries to dictate to everyone else what their fantasies should be.

And hrarghhullll.

That’s another sticky black hateball I had to get off my chest.  I hope I’m not going to make a habit of this, otherwise I’ll have to stick a note on the blog – “It has been 7 days since Many-Eyed Hydra’s last online meltdown.”

Plus I assume you’re all here for the sexy succubus action, not a bunch of whiny ranting from someone who should be old enough and wise enough to know better.

The tl;dr version – Fuck the snobs and holier-than-thou bullies, I’m not going to stop writing the stories I enjoy writing.

To show I am most emphatically not done with this writing lark and as a thank you I’ll post one of the stories I have saved for the next collection.  There’s even going to be a choice:

Busted Bankster: A city trader is drawn into a deadly cage fight with a succubus and is smothered by her large breasts.

A Special Tube of Lube: A work-at-home software developer is given a sensual ‘4 hands’ massage by two busty students that ends up with them demonstrating a very special tube of lube.

A Real Life Goo Girl: A researcher studying an unusual slime girl brought back from H-space is trapped in the lab with her when she escapes.

Pick the one that most takes your fancy and let me know in the comments.  I’ll post the one with the most votes tomorrow.

(don’t pick the one I haven’t finished editing yet . . . don’t pick the one I haven’t finished editing yet . . .)

Thank you all for your messages of support and I'm sorry for being stupid enough to allow myself to get distracted from what's important - supplying the world with sexy succubus smut.  Next week normal service should be resumed.  I’ll wrap up the walkthrough of Violated Hero 4 and after that I have some reviews of some other monster girl hentai games I’ve played recently.

And of course I'll keep scribbling away on new stories/chapters, it's what I enjoy doing.

So a writer at The Guardian threatened to dox me today...

Doxing, if you're unaware, is the process of posting personal information about someone, effectively revealing the real life person behind the online pseudonym.

This is a fairly nasty threat against anyone who writes explicitly about sex.  By and large we live in more enlightened times, but they're not that much more enlightened.  People are still highly judgmental about matters of sex.  Writers of erotica write under pseudonyms with good reason!  They don't want their enjoyable and harmless online hobby causing potential problems in their real lives.  There are school teachers and other similar professions that use writing on places like Literotica as an escape valve.  If the nature of their hobby became exposed it could cause them considerable difficulties in their careers.  For people with the misfortune of living in more repressive regimes, being unmasked could have far more serious repercussions.

I'm fortunate that I'm not in that situation, at least I think so.  Which is the problem.  Maybe my employers would be cool with what I write, maybe they wouldn't.  Maybe my friends would mostly remain my friends, or maybe they'd spend all day squinting at me sideways as if I was an alien.  That's the problem with these things, no one can really tell.  Which is why the majority of erotica writers choose to use pseudonyms.  It's safer that way.

I don't know if the threat was serious.  It was a heated discussion.  I and others were hurt and offended by the article and let the author know.  When the red mist rises cross words are typed.  The threat might not have been any more credible than the average twitter death threat.

But...

As much as I dislike bowing down to holier-than-thou thuggery, there are real life risks and consequences.  I have a family and a career.  The fear of a threat like that starts to eat away.  Was it serious?  Were they bluffing?  If they weren't and my real name leaked into the public domain what then?  Will I lose my job and then have difficulty finding future employment?  It's easy for the mind to prey on worse case scenarios.  This is a fun hobby I enjoy a great deal, but it is a hobby and I have to weigh it up against a career that puts food on the table and pays the bills.

I'm sorry to the people coming here in expectation of fun fantasy stuff.  I'm going to have to take a pause and think on this.  I love what I do, but I also love my real life job and I can't take a chance on jeopardising that.

I really loathe bullies, always have.

Now Exiting the Holier-Than-Thou Wars...

Anyone following my twitter feed might have noticed an increase in the rant-quotient of late.  Yeah, getting involved with the latest SFWA kerfuffle over sexism in their Bulletin magazine...probably not the wisest of moves.

The teeth-grindingly annoying part is I'd like to think I'm on the side of 'good'.  Greater diversity of voices and perspectives leads to a greater number of interesting and imaginative stories, which can only be a good thing.  And frankly, some of the shit women writers had to put up with in the past was abominable.

But I also subscribe fully to freedom of expression, and the chilling effect of censorship, whether it be the dictionary definition of the word or the quasi-censorship by mob that essentially results in the same outcome, scares me greatly.  My publisher, eXcessica, was nearly shut down when our payment processor, an organisation with an effective monopoly, had a sudden attack of morality.  So yep, censorship, or rather the not-quite-censorship we don't have a proper word for, concerns me a lot.

The problem is whenever someone tries to voice these concerns they usually get a battering.  Some of the people reading this (who am I kidding, I'm a grotty horror/porn writer, no one is reading this) are probably already rolling their eyes and thinking:

"Here we go again, another stupid SWM that completely doesn't get it.  All 'Blah blah Art! blah blah Fantasy! blah blah Censorship!'  Thinking it's all about him, him, him.  People are offended!  Our souls are hurting!"

I'm just a little concerned about the whole burning of stuff.  Can we not just create more cool, imaginative stuff to please a bigger, more diverse audience?  That seems better to me than taking stuff away from the audience that's already there.  Is a picture of a warrior woman in a bikini really that--

"Sexist!  Disrespectful to woman!  And totally unrealistic.  She's a fighter, not a glamour-puss sex symbol."

Um, isn't unreality sort of the whole point of fantasy, a precious little glimmer of escapism from humdrum lives.  It might not be your fantasy, but the imagination is a really big thing.  When you can create anything, it seems a bit mean to stomp all over someone else's fant--

"It's wank fodder for sad inadequates who don't know how to deal with a real woman!"

That's a little harsh, but so what if it is.  It's their fantasy, their little glimmer of escapism. Can they not--

"Oh shut up!  You're just another spoilt geek.  Go back down to your basement and take your neckbeard and bad hygiene with you!"

Ironically, despite my earlier posts expressing 'silly' concerns about censorship, I was Jim Hines'ing one of many comments like the one above to show how offensive it would look if you gender-flipped the terms, when The Guardian censored me.

Yep, that fluffy bastion of liberalism, The Guardian.  Achievement unlocked: Censored by The Guardian.

They didn't need to shout "Shut up!" at me.  You don't need to tell people to "Shut up!" when you can press a button and, poof, they are shut up.  Funnily enough the original comment is still there.  Yep, a quote of it with "men" switched to "women" was deemed to offensive to exist, but the original is fine.  I guess it's perfectly okay to describe the gaming/sci-fi/fantasy community as having a high number of "unattractive, unhygenic, neckbeard types", with a "complete lack of ability in finding a partner".

Gee whiz, why is there this backlash from the gaming community, I wonder?

I did point out the double standards.  That comment did well.  It nearly lasted a full half hour.

shut up

They don't need to froth and rave, "Shut up!"  They press a button and you are

shut up

But it's not censorship.  It's their paper.  It's their choice over what comments appear in the discussion.  They have that right.  It's fine.  I won't be reading it in future.

This was not a debate or discussion.  It's diktat.  "You will think and say what we think you should think and say, otherwise you can go and stand in the shit with the other bigots and misogynists."

No.  I'll take a third option.  I'm out.  I'm exiting the Holier-Than-Thou wars.  I'm disengaging.  It's that or let the radioactivity build up until one morning I wake up and find I'm standing in the shit with all the other frothing loonies.

Tell the truth, I'm a little concerned I might be standing in it already.

I hope not.  I quite like that whole diversity thing of people of all stripes letting their imaginations spill out without some mean fucker standing in the way and telling them they can't.

Not that what I think matters a damn jot.  After all, I'm

shut up

Well not entirely.  I'm not truly censored.  I can write this and post it to the great dark outerness of the internet.  It might not be lost forever.  It might even bubble up to the heady circles of the twitterati, where the fully evolved elite can point and laugh at another frothing neckbeard ape.  Ooo, if I'm really lucky I might even get to be described as very special.

Then again, it might be best to not hit that post button.  Not good to speak out of line.  Might jeopardize the...actually it's really more of hobby than a career.  Still, there's always the worry of my writing being

shut up

Urp.  Sorry about that.  You know how it is, sometimes you have something you really need to cough up off your chest.  In this case it's black, sludgy and I think those are eyes.  I'll kill it with fire later just to make sure.

Don't worry, I'm not going to make a habit of this.  I'm out.  Weight lifted.  Shits no longer to be given.

Time to get my head down and back to the stories.  That's what it's all about.  Create fantasies...provide escapism...entertain...delight.  Fuck the other shit.

Big Chill in TVTroperLand

'ello, 'ello. What's 'appening 'ere?

TVTropes is an enormous wiki covering common storytelling devices and conventions. It's a fascinating resource for a writer as it's a comprehensive list of just about every plot device, twist, idea ever used in history. As a lover of the weird and exotic, I've also used it in the past to discover new shows, films, games and books I might never have heard of.

Although not anymore by the looks of things.

First I noticed something was wrong was when I tried to access the Monster Girl Quest page and was instead redirected to the Monster Girl Encyclopedia page. These are two similar, but completely different creations. One is a series of artworks and books by Kenkou Cross, the other is a hentai game created by Torotoro Resistance (although it does feature artwork by Kenkou Cross). To make matters worse, the Encyclopedia page now redirects to Daily Life with Monster Girl, a completely different series of work by a completely different artist.

I'm not totally sure what's happening. TVTropes appears to be in the middle of a big purge of anything referencing sexually explicit material. I found a few posts like this and a page with a list of the affected material. If this is true it would be a great shame.

Admittedly the old TVTropes was a bit of a jungle, but that was part of the charm. It was great to go hacking into the darker undergrowth and come out with a gem of a new series, film, book to follow. The internet needs its wild spots and quite frankly, a wiki that aims to be a compehensive handbook of storytelling devices yet omits anything related to sex is totally useless.

Internet. There is damage. Time to reroute.

EDITED TO ADD:

Mveculous tweeted me this link and I'm aghast at the level of stupidity on display:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13365137390A58421200&page=1

Being uneasy on the lolicon aspects is fair enough. Those profiles don't appeal much to me either. However, the follow-up posts on redirections are beyond stupid. Um guys, you do know these are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT creations you're trying to lump together? This is basically the same (and as idiotic) as redirecting Slayer and Meshuggah to the Metallica page.

If you want to cleanse the undesirables from your playpen, fine, but don't be stupid about it.

A Big Erotica Freeze Is A-Coming...

This isn't the best of news.

In a nutshell, the morality police have deployed the banhammers and no one has the slightest idea where the line of acceptability is anymore. I don’t know where this leaves my publisher, eXcessica, or the status of my own titles. Without Paypal (someone—Google, Bitcoin, anyone not Apple—please put these jokers out of business) I’m probably not going to be able to sell directly through the excessica.com store, as it won’t exist unless Selena Kitt can find another payment processor. On top of that there’s the uncertainty of not knowing what the other book retailers will accept.

Bestiality, Necrophilia and Paedophilia have always been big no-no’s for erotica. Incest was heading there, and now it looks like Pseudo-Incest (where the participants are not blood relations) and Rape are about to join them.

Personally, Incest isn’t something that appeals to me. It’s an enormously popular category on Literotica, but I’ve never felt the desire to write about or read it. Doesn’t matter. If other people want to read or write about it, that’s their business and fine by me.

As for Rape, what the hell does that cover? That can range from ugly stuff where dudes fantasize about gang-banging the uppity cheerleader with their homies, to non-consent fantasies written and enjoyed by women about pure and sexually-frustrated maidens being ravished by hunks of studliness. Where does that leave my stories? Does it count if it’s female-on-male? I have no fucking clue. Selena tried to clarify with Paypal on BDSM—a category with sometimes dubious consent—and was told to yank the lot. Last I heard, BDSM is a hefty chunk of erotica and mostly features consenting adults. How do you stay within a line when there is no fucking line?

You might think this doesn’t matter to you, that it’s only the muckiest of mucky stuff that’s affected. It does. Same for all the paranormal erotica writers that let out a sigh of relief when bestiality was clarified to not include werewolves and other shape-shifters. Don’t get too comfortable. They WILL come for you next. It’s what they do.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" – Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often misattributed to Voltaire)

Maybe we should just ban the people that try to ban things.