The State of the Union - Hocus Pocus

Madies and Gentelgren, the state of the union is…STRONG!!

Though not without its hiccups. Indeed, I wanted this written out a month ago, and now here we are in the thick of June- perhaps that’s as fine an analogy as any for how things have progressed since the start of 2025.

Enough of the intro though, lets go over the year hence, what was done, what will be done with it, and how things will go in the future! I’ve decided to break this address up into sections to give each area its own considerations and goalposts- I also think it’s handy for those of you who have topics/worlds/projects that you are more interested in than others,

Let us start with the project I have spent the most time on this year so far…Volition!

Volition

So yeah, chapter 2 is going on. So far as the quality of the content goes, I think I’m fairly satisfied with it beyond a few nagging doubts of crowding out pages, but I think when read as a whole the pacing is fine. Probably.

My feelings on its reception though are more blighted. Because DA’s taken down pages of Chapter 1 and Gumroad has basically stopped giving me money for things sold in the store, the whole public experience of trying to read Volition feels like a fractured mess, with no one specific website for people to go to in order to reliably catch updates. Probably due to this and the fortnight+ gulfs of time between public page updates, there’s a little less speculation and interest in Volition than I’d expected when I picked it back up. So it goes with serial content though, and it still does better than the average art upload.

My biggest issue though is the speed of the updates. Judging from current plot-progress, at a rough estimate I’d say we’re looking at a chapter that’s roughly a bit more than double the length of chapter 1 in pagecount. On the one hand, hooray more Volition! On the other hand, I’ve got about 6 chapters in mind for the story, plus whatever extra info I draw for the HD chapter packets and misc. Pin-ups.

So wat do?

After this scene is over (so there’s no abrupt style-clash experience for the reader), I’m going to see what I can do to cut down on the amount of ‘steps’ I take when creating these pages- to my mind the thing to try is thicker linework and pared down shading, but there’s probably more that can be done on the sidelines.

The general drive on this for me is modest to begin with, to get 3 pages out every 2 weeks. I’d say that we’re still a couple months away from this switch-up though, and in the meantime, we can try and stick to 1 a week, which has largely worked other than when other work has overtaken Volition.

…Like this coming week! As we’ll be dedicating ourselves to something in the next section!

Discordant Works

As you will doubtless be aware, I have been working on a few things to run over on discord. My thinking was that as I get to the point where I start plonking out Thrallworks scenes in the public view and Volition continues, people would hop on my discord and it’d be good to have stuff there for ‘em to do and enjoy. Y'know. Community!

So in contradiction to some of my thoughts earlier this year, I decided it would be good to work on something new- a discord bot- Applegreen! A slightly dorky cultivated thrall to serve my community!

The main purpose was for her is to help automate some games, such as an ongoing Bondsbody game where people could give orders to their bondsbodies, and also being able to assign people roles and such.

And the Result?

I’d say she’s about half-cooked. She can assign some roles and I can use her to manually update the bondsbody game, but she needs hosting on a server I think to have true utility for the game as-initially-concieved, and it’d be better for the moment to focus on adding more roles and general server useability to her.

To go into each thing on the discord briefly that I’ve worked on over the last few months-

• Bondsbody

  • A game in the Thrallworks setting where Officers try and guide convicts in Bondsheathes to help them pay off their debt.

  • Produced - A Bondsbody profile image generator, lore writing, and the Applegreen Bot

• The Tribe

  • A game set in the movement universe where people vote on polls to advance a secretive island tribe.

  • Produced - A lot of CG’s, some micro-fiction and worldbuilding

• Gladiator

  • Another TW setting game where 2 players fight as Gladiator thralls and the loser’s thrall is droned.

  • Produced - Sexy thrall gladiators ooo~

• The Thrallgames

  • An unserious game run using the hunger game simulator website where people throw in contests themed around something or other and praying to RNJesus for them to win a Material Index entry.

  • Produced - Material Index entries!

That is a bunch of stuff alright. What’ll You Do With It?

Well, let's be practical shall we? Each has its own merits, but we should push for things that can be displayed outside of just the discord.

So the immediate plan going ahead for this is to do an Index Catch-up Week!

There’s about 8 Material Index entries on the backlog, and rather than slowbleed these out month by month, I’d like to just do them. So for the next week starting this coming Sunday I’ll be doing at least 1 a day until they’re all cleared. Then we can start doing these events again!

Of the other works, best to keep things simple and just work on one until a level of completion is achieved. The Gladiator one’s the easiest to run on discord so we’ll go with that one, and I’ll have the first match of that on the 5th of July to see how it runs. I expect I will be making more polls and suggestion posts to full out other contenders in due course.

After the Index entries are all taken care of, the work in this category is going to fall comfortably into ‘evening work’, where it’s done when there’s time and energy for it. Certainly, Volition and the following section are where the love should shine through!

Thrallworks

Oh thrally thrallworks. It’s been giving me a lot of dev headaches for what feels like a year now. But I’m even more tired of that getting in the way of a good time! We gotta draw draws and write writes.

So come July we’ll be bringing back the fortnightly Thrallworks Updates, with the first of those on the 14th of July, which I’m hoping will be enough time to do a reset/update on the game as it currently stands to return it at least to the state it was in before some Unity/Naninovel updates borked up the UI and various other scripts in the game.

After that point, every 2 weeks I’ll be sure to have something new in it, even if it’s just a Background character, a new Thrallopedia entry, new writing down a path, etc.

As for where TW is right now, I’m currently animating bits for the opening! It’s going good and I’m hoping to add it into said 1st TW Update on the 14th- or certainly an art update before that point.

As things get added to the game and as scenes become ‘complete’, I will be putting them up piecemeal in the public sphere (as I planned at the start of the year), but the priority is now more on function over form. We’ll work out the progress and the particulars as the updates flow.

Anything else TW Related?

Yes! As though the Material Index entries and etc. are ‘content’, they aren’t exactly gripping content in that there’s no ongoing narrative or w/e, just lore and a neat picture. So in the interest of having something more exciting in the public sphere, we’ll be continuing on with Aubertin’s Aside. Like the discord stuff this is down as ‘evening work’ for me but it should be a regular in the art updates- though likely with shading a little more like Hypno6 rather than a Thrallworks CG level.

Speaking of TW Content…

Commissions & Requests

I’ve set 1 day aside a week for commission work. It has occurred to me looking through the commissions I’ve been working on there’s a consistent sticking point in adding them to the TW game due to the TW Game being broken, so hopefully fixing things for the Updates will do something to un-gum the works a little.

Tentatively, we’ll have the next Domine entry done early July, and then we’ll see about getting 1 out a month just as a starter.

For the Commission days I also want to take requests, and do some requests from you $10 peeps. Just got to decide on a day for it. Funday Sunday? Maybe Mindless Mondays? :D

The Movement

In this instance specifically Window Dressing. I was wondering if it would be better to continue this, or continue working on the Tribe game in discord, and of the two, I think adding more to Window Dressing seems wiser- particularly as there’s a whole scene already written up for it.

Again, this is down as ‘evening work’...the evenings are getting pretty crowded huh! But that’s just me wanting to put the appropriate amount of time into Volition and TW.

Misc.

There’s a grip of other things I want to get a hold of over this Indexing week coming.

• Subscriber Tiers

  • Just cleaning up what one can expect for each tier; something I want to do every 6 months anyway as general maintenance

• Archived Art

  • There’s a lot of stuff in the ancient past of my Patreon- and in general- that could use some kind of compiling or sorting. Probably worth going back and making collections of things such as the Thrallworks update

• Gumroad/Itch.io collections

  • Basically sorting Gumroad issues and transferring comics and other stuff over to itch.io to sell, as well as come up with discounted/other versions for subscribers

Anything else of note for the year ahead?

The only definite thing is Hypnovember. I’ve decided that when it comes to some kind of one-off game, that’s what Hypnovember’s going to be for, so for the month of November we’ll be pausing on the regular content and developing a self-contained game for y’all to enjoy!

I’ve a few ideas with one being a front-runner. We'll see how we feel about it as the months go on though. :)

Tl;dr

LAZY. >:[

...Fine. :)

Volition

• Reduce time spent on pages after current scene concludes

• Aim for 3 pages every 2 weeks

Discord Games

• Complete all outstanding Material Index entries to open up the Thrallgames again

• Continue the Gladiator game for testing and eventually another tournament

• Stop other games until Gladiator game is ‘complete’ and easily ran.

Thrallworks

• Complete opening animation work

• Repair state of the game for July

• Bring back fortnightly $5 TW Update posts on the 14th

• Continue Aubertin Story

The Movement

• Add a scene to Window Dressing

Commissions

• Goal of doing 1 a Month

Misc.

• Organize Tiers, the Archives and Gumroad/Itch collections

• Prep for Hypnovember

Anything else you guys want to know, feel free to ask as a comment below, or you can come swing by my picarto while I’m arting. I stream most weekdays around 7-9am GMT and talk nonsense. I'd link it here but I think maybe public patreon posts aren't cool with linking to places with mature content? Hm.

And How is TDL?

Please refer to the above youtube video. :) 

I know at a glance all the above to-do’s seems like a lot and will lead to burn-out, but burn-out is all about the feeling you get when you put a lot of work into something and don’t feel the value or the point. So long as I feel and can see the progress and positivity from what I’m working on and giving to you folks, then that’s enough!

Probably. I hope.

Anyway, leave comments and questions below, I’ll do my best to respond to what I can, and thank you all for the support you’ve given me over the last year. I'm just about clinging on to being able to survive just on doing this, at least for a half-year longer, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the year and the sights I have to show you!

Enjoy!