Max’s choice of last words.

The other morning I walked into my kitchen and immediately knew something was wrong. I should explain that my morning yoga is a sacred time for me, and I let nothing interrupt it. I’m only ready to start the day once I feel grounded and settled.

I usually follow my morning yoga with some tea, and a piece of toast, so I was surprised to find a deputation of some of my team waiting for me as I entered the kitchen.

Max, Katia and Mistress Meg fell silent as I entered. I glanced at them, and walked over to the kettle and put it on. To say the atmosphere was tense was an understatement.

“Well,” I said. “What are you all looking so worried about? Has someone died?”

Max, who was backed up against the wall looking a little scared, was the first to speak.

“Meg wants to hang me up by my…” he faltered.

Then Mistress Meg cut in, “I want to hang him by his wrists and have Stacy give him a damned good strapping.”

Katia just looked angry.

“What on earth’s going on,” I asked. “Max, tell me what’s the matter.”

Now, perhaps you remember that Max is my neighbour’s twenty year old son, and looks after much of the technology side of the work I do. There’s a surprising amount of work running the blog. He also manages my Patreon and a few other things, including entering Auntie Kittie’s content. He’s our tame techie.

“It’s Patreon,” he said and everyone fell silent.

“Oh yes. They recently named me as one of their top adult writing creators, didn’t they?”

“Yes, they’ve done very well from your Patrons. You’d think they…”

“Tell her what they’ve done, Max. Stop blabbering,” said Meg.

Max, who by now was close to tears, turned to Mistress Meg and said, “You’re not the boss of me! I’m just doing my best. You can’t tell me what to do!”

Mistress Meg picked up a breadknife, rubbed her thumb against the blade and then said menacingly, “Odd choice of last words, Max.”

“I think perhaps we should all calm down,” I said gently. “Now, Max let’s sit in my study and see what’s the matter.”

I took Max through to my study, usually my sanctuary away from others, and sat him down on the couch. His eyes were brimming over, and a tear ran down his cheek.

“It’s ok, Max. Just tell me what the trouble is.”

“We’ve been kicked off Patreon. They say our content is too adult.”

“What? Make up tips and hypnosis?” I said looking a little shocked. “Or was it that joke you said I should take out?”

“You mean the one about stuttering?”

“Yes, where I said that jokes about speech impediments were a big big ‘no no’?”

“No,” he replied. “I pulled that out before we posted that piece.  It’s more Mistress Meg and Katia’s content. They say it’s too adult and they don’t want it on their servers. But that’s not the worst of it.”

“Really? What else is there?”

“We have hundreds of members there. And they’re not going to be happy. And Mistress Meg and Katia depend on the revenue from there,” he said clearly upset. “I’ve let them down. And I think Mistress Meg might want to do something horrible to me.”

“Mistress Meg does horrible tings to people all the time. It’s sort of her thing,” I said softly. “I won’t let her do anything to you, don’t you worry. She just want’s to look after the Seahorses.”

“I didn’t mean to get us kicked. Really. I thought we were ok, but they’ve just clamped down.”

“Don’t worry, Max,” I said soothingly. “We’ll take care of Patreon. If we have to be off it then I’m sure our members will understand. We got along just fine without Patreon before, remember? We’ll just have to accommodate the members on the website.”

I thought about it for a moment and then said to Max, “Mistress Meg is just concerned because her writing is more edgy. She probably thinks it really her fault.  None of this is anyone’s fault. Patreon are just trying to be careful.”

Max looked a little awkward for a moment and then added, “Well, there’s more to it than that. I was thinking of saying we should get off it anyway.  Some people feel it’s a bit of a scam. You should see the review of it.”

“Well, if that’s the case then we should get off it anyway. They’ve done us a favor. I want the best for my members,” I said.

Max stared into he distance and then said, “I can build a membership system on the site. We can ask Patrons to switch over. That way you can chat to them when they visit the site, using that chat window you use some evenings.”

“I love chatting with them,” I said. “Now, I’d better go and calm down Meg and Katia. Don’t you worry about a thing. It’s not your fault.”

And with that I left and went out to the kitchen. It didn’t take long to calm down Meg and Katia.

“We’re just going to build a membership system on the blog instead,” I told them. “Besides that way we can service them much better. Patreon has never been that great. I know people can’t find half the content you write, because their navigation is so outdated.”

Katia cut in, “You’re right. Someone wrote to me the other day saying they couldn’t navigate properly in their app. Half the time it doesn’t work properly.”

“Now, let’s not be unkind to Max. He’s going to have our website updated in a few days with a bunch more content for our members and we’ll let everyone know exactly how to switch over to our website,” I said. “Besides, it gives us an opportunity to do more on the website itself, rather than someone else’s platform. We can do even more cool things for our members.”

And that’s why I’m writing to you today. This has given us the great opportunity to improve the way we serve up content. It’s also a heads up that Clothes Maketh The Man is soon going to be served entirely free. You probably know that the first 24 episodes are currently free, but that subsequent episodes have only been available on Patreon. Well, I’ll be making them freely available on FionaDobson.com in the next couple of days.

Now, if you’re a Patron you’ll need to subscribe to one of the services here to continue your membership – and I want you to know how very much I appreciate each of you that does so. And if you’d just like to support the work my little team and I do then you can simply join for $1 a month in my Good Gurls membership here. You know how very much I appreciate each and every one of my members, and over the years we’ve overcome hurdles like this plenty of times.

If you’d like to tell Patreon what you think of their decision to throw us off their platform, don’t let me stop you. You can email them here: platform-support+id1217903@patreon.zendesk.com – It won’t change their decision but it might remind them that they’re a bunch of homophobic self righteous dicks.

Don’t worry. This isn’t going to stop us delivering the very best crossdressing content, just as I always have. Now, I have to hide the cooking sherry. I can see Auntie Kittie coming up the drive, and if I don’t she’ll be here all night.

Have a lovely week.

😊

Fiona

• http://FionaDobson.com