Patreon Thoughts

Last year wasn't the best for me writing-wise, so I've been looking and thinking of ways to change things up this year.

Starting up a Patreon is something I've ummed and ahhed over for some time.

On the one hand, it's been around for a couple of years now and is pretty much proven as a good funding tool for creators.

On the other hand there's always that faint whiff of e-begging to it, of people seeking handouts rather than trying to produce work people want to buy.

I think the latter probably says more about my own stupid pride and upbringing, rather than being an accurate reflection on reality.  A lot of authors (and other creator-types) use Patreon nowadays and there isn't anything wrong with that.

(Although I do get a spot of the side-eye when I see an award-winning author announce their work is being made into a TV series one minute, while begging for rent money on Patreon the next.  But, to be fair, I don't know other people's circumstances, and if their fans are happy to hand over money, maximum power to all concerned.)

Anyway, this is what would I'd be looking to use Patreon funding for.

1) Smooth out my income.

I'm fortunate in that I made some good decisions in the past and got into the habit of living very frugally.  I don't make a lot of money from royalties, but between that, the occasional bit of supplementary income, and living damn frugally, I'm just about able to cover most of my living expenses.  That said, the income is not exactly consistent and varies from month to month (well, quarter to quarter).  Having an alternate revenue stream to fill in the gaps for those months when sales are low wouldn't be a bad thing.

2) Get payment for things that are otherwise difficult to monetize.

I'm talking about stories/series posted to Literotica* and other places, the H-space monster girl bestiary shorts, and - to a lesser extent - the humorous walkthroughs of monster girl hentai games** like I'm doing at the moment with Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2].  Having a Patreon for this type of stuff frees me from fretting over whether I should be doing work that pays bills/puts food on the table instead.

I notice a few regular writers on Literotica have their own Patreon accounts.  It doesn't seem a bad idea to be honest.  If I'd started up writing later, I probably would have had less reticence and got on Patreon earlier.

*As some have noticed, I haven't been as active on Literotica recently.  I'd like to fix that this year.

**This is more a sort of hobby, but I'm not going to turn it down if people enjoy the series enough to throw a couple of dollars my way.

3) A psychological trick to make me think I have a boss(es) and get that writing productivity back up again.

Because I know I'm my own boss, I have a bad habit of being a little too flexible on the hours I work.  It happens.  I'm writing.  The current section I'm on is proving tricky, so I think I'll take a breather, go play Playstation or something for an hour, then come back to it afterwards (SPOILER: Did not come back to it after an hour).

It's a little thing, but knowing people are giving me money every month to create new sexy succubus smut might trick my lazy ass into thinking I should stay at my desk and treat this as a proper job rather than a glorified hobby.  A more productive me means more hot succubus smut for people to enjoy.

4) A fund for commissioning art and other things.

Now this is where I'm most likely to use any Patreon money.  I've enjoyed seeing my characters brought to life by VezoniaArtz, RaidouZERO and others, and it's given me ideas to take projects further.  I'd like to push my succubi/monster girls and worlds to get the same kind of attention as KC's Monster Girl Encyclopedia, Okayado's Monster Musume or Toro Toro Resistance's Monster Girl Quest.  The thing is, the internet is primarily a visual medium.  Pictures get far more attention than plain text.

I'd like to commission artwork of the various succubi/monster girls in the H-space bestiary (and my other stories).  The internet always needs more sexy succubus/monster girl artwork as far as I'm concerned.

I'd like to reorganise my website so the H-space stories, H-game walkthroughs, etc are easily navigable rather than being buried in my blog post history.

These things require money (artists are creators and like to be paid too).  A Patreon fund might help out a lot here.  Also, it would make me feel like I was using the money to create something people would want rather than "Can uze pay my rent, plz".

* * *

That's what I'd get out of it, the more important question is what you people out there think about it.  Which is why I'm putting this out here first.

Do you think the stories I write and this blog are entertaining enough that you'd be willing to chuck a spare quid/buck my way every month, so I'd have the financial security to continue doing it?  (Or in this case fund a war chest I can use to flood the internet with more perverted monster girl artwork, hyuk hyuk.)

This would likely be the baseline Patreon reward band - $1/month for me to keep the blog running and post regular stories/chapters to the internet (here, Literotica, etc).

I did think of using the other Patreon option of $1/story or chapter, but it doesn't really fit with one of the central aims of keeping this blog going.  Also, it would require some thought on what constitutes a proper story/chapter, whereas I'd rather have them be the length that feels right for the respective story/chapter.

1$ a month (or more, if you're feeling generous.  I'm not about to say no!) should make it a more predictable outgoing.  It should also keep me honest.  If you feel I'm slacking off, just withdraw your funding.  I'll figure out quick enough. :D

Looking at other Patreons, I notice they also offer other bands/tiers of rewards.  This is where I'd welcome some input from you all out there.  What can I offer that would be of interest?

Some thoughts:

1) Exclusivity.

I don't want to lock any of my work off behind paywalls so only a very narrow audience can access it.  That will impose restrictions on where I can use the stories in the future and will probably end up biting me in the ass.  What I can do, is timed exclusives - maybe make the new stories/chapters available to Patreons a few days before they're due to go live on the rest of the internet.

Also, I usually hold back some stories as exclusives for my ebook collections.  In future I can make some of those available to Patreons.

2) Behind the scenes stuff.

Thoughts on how a story came together.  Ideas in the pipeline.  Early versions.  I'm not sure what might be of interest here, so let me know in the comments.

3) Polls.

I'm normally so scattershot this might help me.  These would be of the type - "Here are three ideas, what should I write this week?"

(That would certainly be one way to force me to get back to Phil's adventures... :) )

As I'm also planning to use a lot of the cash to fund art commissions, this is certainly poll-able.  Which H-space monster girl would we like drawn next and by who?  That might be fun.

4) Tuckerizations.

Get yourself inserted into one of my stories so you too can be killed off in a horribly gruesome sexy manner by your favourite succubus/monster girl.

This seems a decent possibility for a high-tier reward.

There will be some caveats for my own sanity.  I won't be inserting people into the story.  It'll likely just be names and descriptions hung over another character.  This gives me some flexibility if the story calls for the character to be an asshole or die in a particularly unpleasant fashion.

Those are some ideas anyway.

If you have any other suggestions for things you'd be interested in as Patreon rewards, please let me know below.

This also includes if you think this is a terrible idea and I'm being greedy arse.  That's probably worth finding out now rather than being traumatized six months later when my Patreon is only bringing in $6 a month! :D

At the moment I'm throwing it out there to test the waters.  If people are fine with it and would like to fund my various perverted endeavors, I'll see if I can get an account set up next week.

Let me know what you think.

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 36: Succubus Village 2

Beginning

<- Previous: Succubus Village (Dungeon)

We’re in the succubus village, which appears to be in the middle of a civil war.  Or mass orgy.  It is succubi after all.

The source of all this is the nope-uccubus Natasha.  She’s after a man and appears to have found him in the basement of the mayor’s mansion.

So I guess we’re playing mediator again.

The mayor is downstairs trying to protect a man from Natasha’s wrath.  And now we get the reasoning behind it.  The man is from Luddite Village.  Hmm, I thought Morrigan dried-fish all of those assholes.  Natasha is also from Luddite Village.  She wasn’t always a succubus.  She only ended up that way after Lilith and friends killed all the men and turned all the women into succubi.  Before then she was a girl... who was horribly abused by the man now being sheltered by the village.  Now she wants to take revenge for all the abuse she received.

Oh.

..

..

Ah.

..

..

This is a bit... um... heavier than I was expecting.

If I was a games journalist, I might be too traumatized to carry on.  Thankfully, I’m just a pervy shit who blogs about succubus smut, so I can continue to... okay, how the fuck are we going to resolve this one?

My natural inclination would be to stand by and watch while Natasha sucks his entrails out through his cock, but I think the game wants us to be better than that.  Luka is sort of a pint-sized Doctor Who in this universe, which means taking higher path even if Luddite oik deserves to see his small intestines come spooling out of his bell-end.

This is basically just an excuse to show her temptation scene.  No need to be alarmed, no entrails were pulled out of orifices they shouldn't be pulled out of.

So, the “correct” choice is to side with the mayor against Natasha.

Well...

Originally, I sided with the mayor and fought and beat Natasha.  Afterwards the mayor will take Natasha under her wing and try to raise her correctly.  She tells Natasha the man will also be punished... correctly (I don’t think I want to know what correctly means here).  But the end result has the mayor staying behind to care for Natasha and neither of them joining the party.

It turns out this is not the optimal choice.  In fact, the correct choice is a little tricky and I think depends on decisions made in MQ:P [part 1].

One quick reload later and this time let’s side with Natasha.  This means the boss fight is against the succubus mayor (who is simply referred to as “Succubus” in the monster library).

Wasn't this supposed to be a fight?  Why is my HP decreasing... oh fuck.

This is a repeat fight as she was also a boss fight in the original series.

Taking this route has a surprise outcome.  We beat the mayor, but it’s Lily of all people that talks Natasha out of tearing the Luddite shlob to shreds.  It’s the standard “Don’t let hate and desire for revenge consume you until you become what you hate” speech, but it was not one I ever expected to hear from Lily given that she’s not exactly the most stable of people.

This is the better outcome as it allows you to recruit Natasha.  Unfortunately, you can’t recruit the mayor as she ends up in bed recuperating from the battle.  I suspect this is another either/or recruit scenario and it’s not possible to add both to the “harem” without NG+ shenanigans (correct me in the comments if I’m wrong).

Who’s Lily again? you might be asking.

Okay, walkthrough hat on, but with the caveat it involves a bit on conjecture on my part as I haven’t played through the other route.

Succubus Mayor and Natasha are mutually exclusive recruits, but whether you get either of them or none depends on who you sided with in the Magistea Village questline in MQ:P [part 1].  If you sided with Lily (ignore the fact I sided with Lucia back then – I lost that save and went with Lily on the subsequent replay), the correct decision is to side with Natasha and fight the mayor.  This unlocks Natasha as a recruit.

I haven’t played through to confirm, but my guess is that if you sided with Lucia, the correct decision is to side with the mayor, fight Natasha, and then you get the mayor as the recruit.

Not 100% on this, so it would be great if someone can confirm this in the comments.

So...

If you have Lily, choose to fight the mayor and then you can recruit Natasha.

If you have Lucia, choose to fight Natasha and then you can recruit the mayor.

So I could have had sexy succubus mayor join the harem, but instead I have to take psycho nope-uccubus because I picked Ms Tentacle Arms over Ms Giant Maggot.  FML.

Natasha does have a few scenes (okay, one scene, and not even her temptation move from her boss battle, surprisingly enough) you can request back at the castle, but given her past history, asking her for sex acts seems a little...

Do you think it's a good idea to ask for sex stuff from the psycho sex demon that was sexually abused as a child?

You monster.

I did warn you.

Totally deserved.

And we could have had the sexy mayor casting her sweet sex magic on us.  At least with this path we get to open up the Worm Summoner advanced race for humans as Lily gives us the unlock item on leaving the mansion.  (Is this true with Lucia as well – can anyone help in the comments?)

With the central conflict resolved, the succubus village quietens down.  There are still angry succubus sprites bouncing off each other (I think they’re fucking really), but we won’t run into any random battles.

But what if we haven’t recruited Mei or Harem yet?

Never fear, the game already takes this into account.  There’s a section of the village – cross the bridge to the north side and follow the river to the left – where succubi like to jump defenceless men and do things to them.  You can fill out the item drops and recruit Mei and Harem here if you haven’t already done so.

Still on the topic of recruitment.  Mincubus, Lencubus and Maccubus can all be picked up now.  Mincubus and Lencubus can be found where you fought them.  Maccubus is in the north of the village, in a house just to the west of the mansion.

There are some other things in the mansion.  Alleria is now available for battlefuck challenges.  She’s a human that downed a succubus with her sensual technique, but you wouldn’t guess this as sadly, like most of the other battlefuckers, she doesn’t have any additional art.

She does at least look like she's skilled in the sensual arts

Down in the basement, the righthand room is filled with various magical paraphernalia.  Ah, the succubus witch.  I knew this section was missing something.

And still is.  The maid informs us she’s out.  Hmm, so I wonder when she’s going to show up.

Hmm, what else is there to do here?  (Besides the obvious)

Comically, if you visit the inn, you’ll find out that a lot of the obvious is taking place, as the rooms are filled with succubi vigorously bonking the brains out of various NPC guests.

I don't think anyone is getting any rest here...

Ah, there is another side quest that can be completed here.  If you remember back in Yamatai Village, there were four young men that went out into the world to get fucked by sexy monster girls for adventure.  Three of those locations were already visited.  The fourth was the Succubus Village, which we’ve now reached.

You can find the fourth young man in the pub here:

Maccubus a little too much for you, huh.

It appears Maccubus was a little too much for him to handle.

The other three can be found:

In the inn in the Harpy Village:

Lovey-dovey life with harpy

In the grassy area near Meia’s house in Port Natalia:

Lovey-dovey life with mermaid

In the Forest of Spirits (Sylph’s forest) to the left of the first bridge:

Lovey-dovey life with Elf

Now why should you care about these pervs?  Once you’ve spoken to all four, go back to the headman at Yamatai Village.  As a reward he’ll give you Fairy Nectar.  To be honest, I didn’t have a clue what this does and had to look it up.  It enables you to recruit Queen Ant.  Give it to her in the warehouse that functions as the temporary HQ for Grangold and she’ll be so in love with the sweetness of it, she’ll join the party.

And that’s that for the Succubus Village.  It’s time to move on and see what ails the Lady Village... after a night in the Succubus Inn.

Or three.

Can we just stay here rather than going to Cassandra’s home and getting our dick melted off?

Goddamn it!

-> Next: Lady Village

Let's Play Monmusu Quest: Paradox [part 2] - 35: Succubus Village (Dungeon)

Beginning

<- Previous: Ghost Ship

Side quest done in Gold Port, it’s time to get back to the main quests set by the king of Grangold.  We need to investigate the succubus village and the ladies’ village for the causes of their unrest.

Both villages are to the southwest of Gold Port.  The terrain changes back to green plains and forests, but it’s still the same wandering monsters as the rest of Grangold.  Succubus Village can be found here:

Beware: Succubi live here

We don’t have to look very hard to find the unrest.  On entering the village proper we’re greeted with scenes of chaos.  There are fights breaking out all over the place and – unusually – it appears to be succubus on succubus.

The game represents the fighting as angry RPG sprites crashing into each other over and over.  This doesn’t seem very succubus-y to me.  Surely, if they’re succubi, they’d fight in a certain... ahem... “style” – i.e. trying to screw each other into submission.  Which means we’ve probably just walked into an epic angry orgy.

(Now that would make for a hot story!)

One side is trying to drain every man they see into submission.  Judging by the poor slobs spread out all over the place, they seem to have taken out most of the village.  The other side are trying to stop them, or at least prevent all the menfolk being reduced to dried-fish status.

So, who’s behind all this?  It can’t be Eva this time.

Ah, so this is the culprit.

A... succubus?

The nope-uccubus calls herself Natasha.  She’s got everyone riled up because the village refuses to hand over a man to her.  It’s not even an important man, but him being alive pains Natasha greatly.

Yowza, what he’d do to piss her off?  Hell hath no fury like a nope-uccubus ignored.

We don’t fight Natasha just yet.  It looks like we’ll have to pick our way through the mass orgy brawl first.

As Succubus Village is a returning location from the original series, I was expecting it to be populated with monster girls from the original series.  So, I was surprised to run into this bunch of lovely ladies.

Welcome to the succubus village

There’s too many of them.  We need to get out of here.  You run.  I’ll... ahem... hold them back.

The quartet’s temptation move is to go right for our weak spot.

Brings a whole new meaning to attack his weak point...

Yeah, I guess that would be effective.

The Bad End is suitably erotic as our gorgeous succubus harem smothers us in sensual delights.

A lot of people "lose" in the Succubus Village

It will come as no surprise to hear I rather enjoyed this Bad End scene.  The only disappointment is that the Bad End heavily implies all four are going to take their turn riding us to sexual ecstasy, but in the art we only get to see the green-haired succubus have sex with us.  This is the same for their request move back at the castle after they’ve been recruited (like the Nefertiti lamias and UN_DO slime girls, they’re recruited as a quartet).  While it feels a little harsh to criticise a game with as much H-content as MQ:P, I would have loved to have seen all four get their fair “share”.

They aren’t the only new encounter.  There’s even a new maid succubus as well:

Maid succubi.  So... many... fetishes...

She also has a crazy amount of request scenes in the pocket castle.  Five (technically 6), to be precise, which is very generous considering she’s your basic wandering mob.  She “likes” vacuuming Luka’s dick with a vacuum cleaner…

Don't try this at home unless you fancy a trip to your local A & E

…or her tail:

Now for the "real" vacuum suck...

She also has a handjob-with-panties scene, a paizuri scene and two separate sex scenes.  Mei is a very talented maid even if most of the time she gives off the impression she can’t be doing with Luka’s shit right now.

I can’t remember the artist’s name, but I think they have a similar succubus as one of the bonus encounters in Succubus Prison.  As with most Bad Ends in that game, the scene has some animation, so you get to see her tail pump out the contents of the protagonist’s balls and gulp it down, rather than just read about it in text.  It’s well worth checking out.

(As anon points out in the comments, the artist is Cool Kyoushinsha.  Yes, they do have scenes in Succubus Prison.  But you might know them more for Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, especially considering it's a moderately well-known anime series...

Yeah, I probably should have known that.

Ironically, this is also the series that spawned the "Don't lewd the dragon loli!" meme.

Japan.  Always weird.  Always awesome.

If you want more of Mei, Cool Kyoushinsha has more pictures of her on their pixiv account.)

While we’re back in the pocket castle, it’s worth having Eva in the party while talking to the succubus harem (they’re even given the name “harem”) to pick up some extra snippets of background information.  Apparently poor Eva is very accident-prone (likely due to her Jack-of-all-Trades, Master-of-None nature).  It sounds like she was banned from the Succubus Village for burning the mayor’s house down and other calamitous acts of clumsiness.

While the presence of two brand new encounters in an old location is a pleasant surprise, it does make sense.  The succubi in the original series were all NPC characters rather than generic monster girls, so it would be a bit weird to fight them over and over as random encounters.

The original Mincubus, Lencubus and Maccubus are present as one-off fixed battles taking place around the village.  They’re sort of pseudo-boss fights, but obviously not as difficult.  There are similar “fixed” fights (as opposed to the usual JRPG random encounters) with the new succubi as well.

Mincubus can be fought in the petting zoo type enclosure to the left of the entrance.  After beating her, she’ll run off to her house where you’ll need to fight her with her sister, Lencubus.  As with the original series, the prostitute Maccubus can be found in the pub, where she’s pretty much bukkake-d the entire bar to unconsciousness.

Not 100% sure, but I think they got new battle sprites for this game.

Mincubus and Lencubus

Maccubus

The village is split in half by a river.  The mayor’s house, and I believe our destination, is found on the north shore.  There’s another fixed battle with various harem members to clear the bridge, and then we can move onto the mayor’s mansion.

The mansion is right at the top of the map.  Inside and upstairs an elegantly attired woman can be found upstairs in one of the bedrooms.  Surprisingly, she’s human.  The succubus lying at her feet is bemoaning the fact she lost a sex battle to a mere human.  So I guess she’s the battlefucker, but we’ll need to take care of whatever has the village in such a state of upheaval first.

To do that we need to go downstairs and find out what the hell is up between the succubus mayor and nope-uccubus Natasha.  But as I’ve just passed a thousand words for this post, it will have to wait until next time.

(which sort of makes sense – I normally split posts between town and dungeon, and they’re sort of combined here.)

Sowwy.

Here’s a sexy pic of Maccubus to compensate (because posting a pic of Mincubus would likely get me arrested...)

More new artwork?  She was mostly covered in semen in the original series, if I remember correctly

-> Next: Succubus Village (normal?)

Welcome to 2018!

Yay!  I hope your hangovers weren't too savage this morning.

The original post(s) was longer, but it also involved a lot of whining and mewling about last year not being the best when it came to my writing.

It wasn't.  Stuff was tried.  it didn't pan out.  Shit happens.

It's in the past now.  Fresh year, fresh (re)start.

I have so many ideas for sexy succubus and monster girl stories.  Time to stop pissing about and get them down on paper.

May your 2018 be awesome!