>>116924
There are serious elements yes, nobody has a problem with that, they're generally brilliant. Nor does anyone have an issue with worrying about serious consequences, the problem comes up when people seem convinced that the problems and consequences are MUCH darker than makes any sense for the Quest.

During the last thread there seemed to be pushes to make Ceri become depressed over certain choices, or accuse her of some problem or other if she wasn't, it made no sense. It's good to care enough to take such things into consideration but try to also take the general tone and flow of the quest into consideration before such a suggestion is made.
Ceri making a 'bad' choice isn't likely to be 'punished' with horrible, unfixable, lasting consequences. There are likely to be consequences, and it'll be a problem she has to deal with but it is something that can be worked through with some effort and become a source of positive growth. I think most quest authors are generally really good at handling that aspect of quests.

Hi, I got sick for a bit and am still kinda sick but wanted to check in to see what you guys were up t--

o h . . .

I don't feel like responding to all that point by point, but I'll say a bunch of words that are probably related.

I probably said it earlier, but the best I could figure for thread 4's poor numbers (at the time I didn't know 3 also suffered) was that people didn't like it getting too serious. It felt like the people who were in it for the plot left because of the orgy (a scene with its own stresses which is a story for another time) and all that remained were people wanting the Lewds.

With that in mind, thread 5 was intended to be much, much lighter. Ceri's parents were mad at her, but the weight of the scene was greatly reduced to maintain a lighter tone.

The scene with Daatra broke everything. She's not intended to be romanced, and either my warnings were poor or people chose to ignore them. I suddenly had to choose between story and the lighthearted fun I assumed everyone actually wanted.

I think Story won in the end, so DR6 might take things a little more seriously than DR5 tried to. But, I don't intend to invoke Cerebus Syndrome.

And... sorry, but there's no way to explain this without a mild callout. I do not want what happened to Coxwette happening to DR. I don't want paranoia and fear being so strong that Ceri never has sex again. I don't want people arguing over this and that. This is a patreon quest. Sex will always be on the table. Even if I do want to put more focus on the story, there are things that absolutely have to happen because real people pay real money for this quest and the things within. Assuming you remember to be submissive until Ilan returns, it will always be safe for Ceri to have sex with Skif, Gulketi, Siphon, Eezeryh, and eventually a couple newcomers. Everyone else will depend on the situation and who they are. Go after Myra or Sheriim (dad) at your own risk.

The mall adventure was meant to introduce a patreon character, in fact. But the owner pulled out at the last moment. We did get a cameo in the minigame, at least, someone we will see again soon...


Now, back to the heart of the matter.

Yelling at Ceri for Mallventure had 3 possible paths:

The path where I try to placate everyone and have fun (what we saw)

The path where Ceri ignores complainers and mallventures anyway

The path where Ceri agrees with complainers and exits the mall via PORTAL



The first two are easy. one we saw, and one would be what we saw except people are more angry and frustrated and we miss out on some nice Siphon development. It's the third one where actual thought is required. Because it's a quest, I can't say for sure what would have happened, but I will venture this guess:

Ceri portals outside. Likely people would want here to re-enter the mall in Daatra's outfit. Ceri might have still felt guilty about wearing it. She might have turned into something using the last blip of her MP. In whatever form that'd be, she'd go back into the mall, where she'd try to find gulketi. This path would have her see more stores, but overall nothing interesting would happen... unless...

Let's assume people are just as laser-focused on SECRETS in this timeline. Siphon would have likely met her and given her a map in this timeline too (albeit of the mall and not the vent system). Ceri would go there and touch it. That consequence would likely have happened in this timeline too. Since mallventure was canceled, I bet there'd have been a much larger push for her to poke/lick it, since those people who got snuffed would really want to have something happen.

There'd be no minigame, as it was pretty clear we didn't have the time/energy to do the entire mall (as would be required in this timeline). Instead, she'd end up at EYE CREAM. Gulketi would likely be there. Maybe they do a tiny bit together, but I was tired either way so the thread would end very soon after they meet up.


In the scope of this thread, mallventure didn't hurt anything that wasn't already hurt by a plainly wrong decision with Daatra, and a choice I believe would have been made either way. Not to imply portal touch was inevitable, but from what I know of suggester trends, it seems equally likely in this timeline.

In the grand scheme, it did affect some things, since the whole nudity parade happened at the end. But even if that ends up being a negative, it's a negative that will deepen the story and help flesh out the world. Even consequences have their upsides.


And I was not intending to threaten people. Ceri chose to start ignoring dissenting comments because had she not, I'd still be doing thread 5 right now as she'd have taken time out of every single update to argue with herself. If you weren't going "ok fiiine" after Siphon literally made it easy mode, it was only going to hurt the story to try and continue like that.

>The scene with Daatra broke everything. She's not intended to be romanced, and either my warnings were poor or people chose to ignore them.

I think the scene with Daatra was really the source of all these issues. Reading this quest from the beginning, I've never once gotten the impression that Daatra isn't supposed to be a romance option. She's teased Ceri and been teased, she's been presented as potentially in the running as an option, and her romance with her boyfriend doesn't stand strongly as an obstacle considering that polyamory has been presented as relatively common among the sample size of couple we have. I wouldn't have voted/suggested that Ceri make a move on Daatra behind her boyfriend's back (and I didn't), but the assumption that, for example, we could have romanced her if we hadn't chosen to set her up with someone else, seems an entirely reasonable one.

In quests, what the characters say or think is often not the biggest consideration when the suggesters try to interpret what they're "allowed" to do or what's a good idea, because they're unreliable: I like Ceri a lot but, she's not been presented as always having good judgement. She's made misunderstandings and has demonstrated herself as capable of both hesitation and impetuousness. Carrot and stick is a much bigger influence: if the suggesters choose to do something and the consequence is something they perceive as a reward, they'll do that thing more in the future, and if they choose something and get something they perceive as a punishment, they'll avoid doing that in the future. The fact that we got that egg-laying scene, as well as the general sense of tension and teasing, probably indicated to most readers that lewds with Daatra were being presented as a legitimate option. Then, when they happened and the result was Daatra and Ceri's distress, the message that got received was "lewd actions can have bad consequences", and a lot of people were put on guard for the rest of the quest.

As a quest author, how you choose to reward or punish is a powerful tool in guiding the suggesters, and you have to be aware of it even if you aren't intending its use. When something punishing happens, you have to be very clear on what exactly was being punished so that people don't get the wrong idea about what they're "allowed" to do, and you have to watch out for when something might seem like a reward or punishment but isn't.

You also have to be willing to take the reigns sometimes. A lot of quest authors worry about how much choice they provide, and feel like if enough people want something they have to allow it (this might be worse in a patreon quest, where some people are paying). That's not always wise, though, and sometimes you should bend things to block off certain options. Both Daatra and Ceri are established characters with their own personalities and wills and could have put their foot down and forbade what happened between them, or some random event could have interrupted and put them back to their senses, et cetera.

Now, that said! I personally didn't have any problem with the thread.

I thought it was all entirely believable! I put in a long post (>>/questarch/831447) about why she and Daatra ended up in the situation they got in and why Ceri was acting the way she was. tl;dr Daatra had her reasons and Ceri had her reasons and they weren't rational reasons but they were powerful emotionally, and then Ceri's reaction and mood for the rest of the quest (going and trying to have a fun adventure to distract herself while being haunted by uncomfortable thoughts and worries that she had to keep trying to put away because there was nothing she could do to resolve them at that time) seemed totally appropriate to a young woman of her established personality type.

Seemed like pretty compelling stuff, to me!

>>116927
A big reason I don't like talking directly about the 'meta' is that a lot of the meta stuff gets turned into story stuff and it breaks the 'magic' a bit to peer behind the curtain.

The hints for Daatra weren't great, because for a big chunk of thread 5 I was dealing with the Adderall Crisis. From egg-laying to Ketza-sucking, my brain was, at best, 50% of what it is on the medicine. After being on medication, going without felt like my wings were clipped and I was wading through mental molasses.

It's honestly a small miracle we got this far, considering the insane handicaps DR has had to deal with at various times.

Can we please not do that again.. That was a common theme of the Coxwette fight in that the people failed the quest author.

That's not something that happens, choices happen and that doesn't mean you failed at anything. Events happen in quests, good events and bad events.

Thinking that you failed because of some arbitrary choice is just.. self-flagellating.

>>116932

You're right, I shouldn't be so down on myself for such events like that.
um, i'll just remove my old post so I don't accidentally start more things, i'm deeply sorry

The nature of questing is one in which sometimes the author just won't be able to salvage a bunch of weird choices, and the quest will have to go through a weird awkward phase. It can be minimized, you can keep something in reserve to break it up, and you should always try to make something out of what you've got, but sometimes things just get kind of off for a while.

>>116934

This sounds reasonable, and again, thread 5 did well with everything.
I again apologize for anybody that saw my old post, I feel better about myself now hearing good points
We'll make the best out of everything that happened!

>>116932
I didn't mean to imply anything about it, just that I really don't want it to happen to DR if possible.

>>116934
In the past I had a pretty good grasp of what the suggestors generally would go for, but DR has a larger audience and that might also be throwing me off a bit.

In that way, SQ might be a breath of fresh air :X

Anyway, we should probably not waste any more time worrying about thread 5. There's way cooler things waiting for us in the future.

>>116943
My apologies it wasn't actually referring to your post in question, but a now deleted post that basically was "I failed this quest".

>>116943
Yes! on the horizon, a great speeping can be heard.

>>116881
I agree, the emotional moments are very nice. The whole quest benefits a lot from how well we get to know the characters. The sex scenes are great too, partially for the same reason (and partially for more obvious reasons); we've always gotten a good look at Ceridwen's own feelings about them, which does a great job of making them feel authentic. The first scene between Ceri and Skif with them discovering their sexuality for the first time together was wonderful.

It was disappointing that the current thread ended before Ceri got together with Skif again. She's been looking forward to it for quite a while and it would have been the first wholly positive sexual experience she's had all day. It's entirely understandable why the author wanted to end the thread when he did, but when Dragon Romance comes back I hope we get to go through that scene (Thread 5.5?) rather than skipping over it.

On the subject of potential reluctance around sexual things in the future, it's true that it's a central part of the quest that isn't supposed to be a "trap option", and I personally hope it doesn't go away. However, for people to feel safe with sexual choices, the choices have to be safe. Whenever it causes problems, it was because it was offered at the expense of something very important to Ceri. It's understandable for there to be some concern with the ways Ceri's own libido has hurt her or the number of otherwise important things she's disregarded for sex. If the in-story logic doesn't imply there will be any danger (i.e. not just meta knowledge that apparent dangers aren't "really" there) then this won't be a problem, but a broken promise of safety will just put people on edge again.

Basically, Ceridwen's sexuality won't be a problem if it doesn't come at the expense of something else important. It's a central part of the quest, so it should work with her rather than against her. That will help people feel comfortable with it.

I know we're currently in the middle of putting Dragon Romance "on hold" to shift to another quest, but I felt that this was worth saying. There's a dozen other things I could say about a dozen other things about the quest, but it's not the time for that.

I have an idea that could really help:

Decide on a tone for the quest and stick with that tone. If an action would cause enough drama or negative consequences to depart from the tone of the quest and you can't think of an alternative set of consequences, then don't include that action as an option. Ceri should be smart enough to know when doing something would turn out badly, even while super horny. That was kindof the point of having a cap on her tilde bar anyway!

>>117123

You can't have just a single tone for a story, that's like one of the basics of writing! You need up moments, down moments, tension and release from tension, and a bunch of other things all woven together. Writers thinking they need to stick with one tone has been the source of a lot of bad fiction.

>>117129
Counterargument: Cerberus Syndrome.

>>117131
That's not a counter argument, that's an example of what can go wrong when a specific tone starts to dominate a work at the expense of everything else.

>>117133
No, it's an example of when an established lighthearted/comedy work turns super dramatic and serious.

Do you really think "tone" only refers to individual scenes? Every work of fiction has an overall tone.

An epiphany.

Boiling all the words said in this thread the past few weeks down to a single sentence...

DR5... no, DR in general has struggled because I've been too scared to tell the story I wanted to tell.

I'm too scared of this damned "Cerberus syndrome", as if a story getting more serious as it approaches its climax is some cardinal sin that ruins every story ever told.

No more. I'm done with all that.

DR is going to tell its story, a story we craft together, and if that story goes down a darker path for a while, so be it. This stopped being just about porn the moment you voted to see Ceri through her childhood.

I'm tired of beating myself up because of Venji's biggest 'what if?' question (what if I went with the plot I had, instead of making something else up when someone told me it was dumb?).

If you hate the story DR ends up telling, then it means I simply wasn't good enough.

But I'm telling that story now. I'm done being afraid. This goes for Slissa Quest, too. Better to be accused of Cerebus Syndrome than to let everything I put so much work into fall apart because I had to 'keep things light'.

If you want literally nothing but jokes, read whatever Venji's up to. Read everything I've had to do for the past 8 goddamn years.

For the rest, strap in. Because we're about to find out something important: If my plans are as fantastic as I feel they will be, or if I'm not cut out to be anything more than some half-rate comedy quest author.

While I am hoping the story to do well.. I can't say I agree with it potentially taking a darker turn. A light hearted story doesn't need to involve nothing but jokes or the lolrandom nature of some quests.

I believe my main fear is that once the syndrome starts to hit, as it showed thanks to Daatra is that the other posters will start pushing for it harder, that some posters will attempt guilt trips in order to push their way that will "help" the situation as they see fit or will attempt to make all situations darker even if it's meant to be good natured.

>>117145
Um. I'm sorry you felt that way. I hope I've never done anything to promote that anxiety. I'm sure whatever story you tell will be exciting and interesting.

>>117155
DR's tone wasn't meant to be 100% 'light and happy'. It's meant to have some serious and darker moments. This has been true ever since the quest was expanded in thread one. All my previous post is saying, really, is we're going back to what I intended, not what I started doing out of fear. That and I hope to be more consistent now that I'm sticking to this.

That said, DR is meant to have a consistent theme of optimism and hope. Even with Daatra, things can be mended. When things get bad, they can always get better.

As for your concerns about the suggestors... well, we've peered behind the curtain long enough, so I will offer this final piece of advice before leaving you guys to your own devices.

Hold on to that optimism. Never let Ceri lose sight of it. During the darkest times, it may be the greatest asset.

Don't let paranoia and fear take it away.

>darkest times
You shouldn't have said that. Now everyone's gonna expect something dark to happen. In other words, everyone's gonna become paranoid hehe.

Slinko 2017/10/26(Thu)05:16 No. 117161 ID: 395c02
File 150902019494.gif - (42.49KB , 800x600 , ohno1.gif )

>>117160

>>117145
No, you got it right the first time, it's Cerebus syndrome.

Slinko 2017/10/26(Thu)05:50 No. 117165 ID: 395c02
File 150902220641.png - (82.21KB , 197x255 , Capture242.png )

>>117163

I know Cerebus Syndrome is often considered a bad thing, but lots of stories have benefited from it. When it does go bad, it's usually not the fact that things went serious in and of themselves, but that the seriousness ends up being bad quality, usually due to the author's lack of self-awareness. They might overestimate their art style's capacity for depicting serious moments or otherwise go beyond what them or their story can handle (loss.png), they might leave elements of the funny/silly times to intrude on serious scenes, they might make things too overwhelmingly serious all the time until it becomes tiresome and ridiculous, and they might... overemphasize certain things (Yes Dave Sim, creator of the titular Cerebus the Aardvark, you've had bad experiences with women, we get it).

DR had the setup for some serious stuff all along, so it should be fine. The main things you need to keep in mind are internal consistency (the ways Ceri has been allowed use her magic to facilitate comedy shouldn't disappear when they'd be useful for other things, for example), avoidance of mood whiplash (unless the whiplash effect is deliberately wanted in a specific scene), and perspective (just sitting back sometimes and asking "will my audience really take this the way I intend them to, in context?"), as well as the aforementioned effect things can have on what suggesters will suggest.

Hmm...
Interesting.

I feel like this will be fun, then.

Up to this point DR has felt as if it has had it's training wheels continually on.
It will be neat to see them come off.

But Slinko.
You do understand that if you do this...
We will become as horrible and unruly as we are for Coxwette...

Can... Can we get puppies this time?

Slinko 2017/10/27(Fri)16:28 No. 117206 ID: 395c02
File 150914689586.gif - (48.95KB , 900x600 , 25.gif )

>>117204
I'm not too concerned about that happening.

Maybe you could give Ceri some sort of actual danger sense, so we get some blunt indicator of when it's time to chase lewds and when we have to be on guard. Like, maybe she gets a splinter from the drama tree, and it allows her to feel the presence of drama.

no that is just borning

>>117207
Maybe you could learn to do that on your own

Anonymous 2017/10/27(Fri)17:18 No. 117212 ID: 3abd97
File 150914993611.png - (250.90KB , 894x894 , Annoying drama fairy.png )

>>117207
"Hey! This is a DRAMATIC moment! Be on guard, as DRAMA could occur!"

>>117145
Okay good. Just try not to encourage goofy suggestions too much, people tend to take that as a sign they don't need to take anything seriously.

>>117215
Stop trying to tell other people how to have fun and grow a sense of humor.

Man I'm still waiting for that new boatface adventure to begin

>>117216
Wow, rude. Did I say goofy suggestions weren't funny?

>>117218
The current plan is SQ thread 2 (likely to begin NOV 6), then DR thread 6, and then Retcon thread 2.

Retcon 2 is likely to be Venji's final adventure, and I've exciting things planned for it as well.

>>117215
I've no intention of telling people what to suggest or not suggest. DR is still meant to be full of silly and sexy times, and there will absolutely be times when a silly off-the-wall suggestion is just what we need.

I learned a lot from 5, so in future it should be much easier to grasp when it's time to be serious and when it's time to be as silly/sexy as possible.

>>117145
>>117242
I think that a quest where things can be serious and dramatic sometimes is a good direction to take it. Ceridwen's character development is a big part of what makes it great. With the characters and setting you've established, I definitely support the idea of an overall serious storyline to do them justice.

That said, I don't think that the problems in thread 5 can be boiled down to something simple like trying to be too silly, or on the Daatra scene. To be more specific, one of the problems wasn't that the quest wasn't taking things seriously, but that things were serious and important but the quest was acting like they weren't. Or, to put it another way, the quest was simultaneously too serious to be silly and too silly to be serious; rather than reaching a good balance between serious and comedic elements, each of them was present in a way that undermined the other. It was clearly a dangerous situation where Very Bad Things could easily happen if it went wrong, but it only happened in the first place for the sake of silly fun, and was treated as such without reducing the danger.

But while that was a major source of dissonance in the thread, it's only one of the things that went wrong. There are several others that haven't been elaborated upon or mentioned yet. They're not things that can be simply left behind now that the thread has ended; over or not, it's still something that happened in the world and to the characters, and it will affect how they're perceived in the future. I can see why you wouldn't want to drag this on further, but I don't think that you should rush to end the conversation now. I think that there are still things worth saying, and now's the right time to say them, rather than waiting for weeks or months until they potentially come up in the middle of another thread.

>>117331
If you want to bring up more things you didn't like about the thread, you should do that instead of hinting at their existence.

Otherwise I don't know what you're trying to say.

Slinko 2017/11/01(Wed)04:15 No. 117437 ID: 395c02
File 150953495186.png - (229.20KB , 800x600 , slissa 2point0.png )

I've been thinking, and while I'd hate to shunt SQ yet again, it might behoove me to do DR6 next. Here's my thinking:

I want DR to be in a better place before pausing, with less talks of how much I screwed the pooch, and hopefully more talks of excitement for what will be DR7.

SQ was meant to be a break, since I was super worn out by DR5. But, not updating for a few weeks has actually been all the rest I needed!

DR5 didn't introduce patreon characters as intended. It feels like bad form to delay the quest while people continue to wait for their introductions. I want them in before pausing!

While I'm toning down SQ's overall scope, I still want it to have a very deep and fleshed out world. There's a lot of stuff I set up years ago that sorely need updating... and to do this, I need more time. DR6 would buy me that time.

SQ is going to be drawn in Clip Paint Studio, instead of SAI. I need time to get used to how wrongly differently it does stuff. The main reason to use it is that it has a good texture-pen tool, which lets SQ keep some of the same 'feel' as its predecessor. You can see this in action on the image!

The image is a concept for what SQ2 might look like (although it will be in color). A somewhat simpler, cuter, and more unique (for me) style instead of my normal style pushed to the absolute max. Easier to draw, stands out more, and makes Kliss more huggable??

Another reason to do DR6 next is to buy time for me to get this style looking just how I want it, with practice.


I'm very likely to go with this plan unless you guys have a compelling argument for doing SQ2 next instead. DR6 might begin on NOV 5, but might be pushed forward if I'm not as caught up on obligations as I'd like. I'll keep you posted!

>>117437
That's a nice style. Makes her look like she has volume instead of being a flat pic. Even while being just lineart!

>>117437
I am surprised that you've managed to change your art style so much for SQ, it's almost unrecognizable for your style, which is crazy. Considering it looks a little more detailed, I'm surprised that it's somehow faster for you. The textures look nice too!

>>117437

Ooooh neat! The textures on the image remind me of storybooks, which is a really nice feel. Pairs really well with SQ.

I think it's a reasonable plan. Slissa Quest will have a fabulous return when you flesh out your ideas further!

The new Slissa design is adorable. Such big claws!

>>117437
Just out of curiosity, why is SAI the standard?
To the uninitiated, it appears utterly ordinary.

>>117520
I'm not Slinko, I'm here with my opinions anyway.

Sai has exceptional lineart smoothing options. It has better competition on this front these days (when SAI first came out, its smoothing was phenomenal by comparison to other software I'm aware of), but its smoothing is still a favorite, and also has more smoothing options than a single numerical scale like basically anything else.

It's also lightweight and has snappy responses compared to most other (often bloated) programs. It does lack a lot of nifty tools, but the tools it does have work well. Some people don't care for fancier tools anyway, or at least don't mind the additional step(s) to emulate fancy tools with basic functions.

In short, it is ordinary, but its ordinary elements are optimized and well designed.

>>117520
>>117521
Even without the smoother, Sai's pen is just plain better than other programs I have tried. For a long while it also seemed to be the only program with the lovely 'luminosity' layer setting (which makes things SUPER SHINY), but I've discovered that clip paint studio can actually mimic this effect pretty well.

But Sai just 'feels good' to draw with in a way that no other program I tried does. It has the pen pressure affect line width and slightly affect line opacity in a way that looks and feels great. Most other programs don't vary the width enough (or at all PHOTOSHOP), or don't do the slight opacity variation that leads to softer-looking lines.

Sai is simple, but for drawing it is simply perfect. It was a real chore drawing the Kliss's seen above, because even with a third party program getting really close to the sai smoother settings I use, the lines felt really tedius to draw.

It's unlikely any program will do linework as well as SAI does, which is why I'm slow to abandon it. That, and I actually paid for it.

Also I got sick again, so things are delayed until the 13. I need to be caught up, and I want DR6 to have as much preparation as possible.

>>117524
>Also I got sick again
Oh no! D8

>so things are delayed until the 13.
As long as you're not secretly a fat orange cat that loves eating lasagna, then I'm pretty sure nothing bad will happen to you on Monday the 13th! XD

But seriously, I hope you'll start feeling better.

so, a case of only doing one thing but doing it well, rather than trying to do everything?

>>117523
I hope you feel better soon, and I'm excited for the continuation of Dragon Romance!

k0bold 2017/11/09(Thu)14:31 No. 117690 ID: e0f785
File 151026667338.gif - (122.21KB , 900x600 , kharadra-boobllette.gif )

slinko asked for help determining Kharadra boob size so I helped

What do you think about everyone voting for The Creator movie, Slinko?

>>117983
Kinda surprising!

I thought for sure Byond Lunch was going to win. Maybe some of the people voting for Maker don't know what BL refers to.

>>117996
It's pretty old.

Anyway, I do the updates mon-wed-fri, but because they still take all day, in practice you guys might be better off assuming DR updates tues-thurs-sat :X

Slinko 2017/11/21(Tue)20:09 No. 118038 ID: 395c02
File 151132376456.png - (911.24KB , 2496x1300 , Ceri 2point0.png )

After two weeks working on this on-and-off, there's now an official reference for Ceridwen (specifically, Ceri 2.0)!

>>118038
She looks better than ever.

Which makes me wonder.. what does her butt look like?

>>118043
It looks like a butt. Duh!

>>118045
How do you know this?! That's like saying her butt looks like a Pikachu!

Wrong her butt looks like Chewbacca

>>118045
Wrong again. It's two Jigglypuffs, viewed from above!

So some probably noticed I've been 'sick' a lot lately.

'Sick' in the traditional sense isn't quite right. I'm not fighting off some virus or relying on cold medicine. It's possible an infection is to blame, but the actual problems are physical in nature.

What's actually wrong is not something I can really talk about without going into TMI territory, but stuff is broken. I've been in a lot of pain, and my Doctor didn't seem to take it very seriously so it'll be december 14 before I see a specialist.

It is something that might need surgery, or might not. The cause could be something simple, or something much less simple. There's no way to know until the 14th. Google doesn't actually know what my exact symptoms mean.

It relapsed (kinda) for a while, which let me resume productivity, but it's gotten worse again. Last time, it made me more or less bed-ridden. This isn't as true this time, but I'm definitely in no shape to update Dragon Romance consistently.

I will make updates when I feel capable of it, but I need to abandon 3x a week for now. I don't want to repeat past mistakes by updating with an addled mind.

Please be patient. I'll keep you posted.

>>118217
Hope you get better and everything turns out well!

>>118217
take care of yourself, updates can wait

>>118217
Yeah, a situation like this needs priority over us first.
Rest well and get better! We'd rather wait on your well being over updates first!

>>118217
Slinko did you break your penis

>>118225
Nope

>>118237
Did you break your butt?
Or did the string on your fake beak snap?

The votes for the current update need to be considered carefully, I think. You could end up with numbers so that, for example, "become male" gets the most votes, and "soft and chubby" gets the second most, but in which none or very few of the become-male voters wanted soft and chubby and all the soft and chubby voters assumed Ceri would be female. If you just counted the votes straight, you could end up with a soft and chubby male Ceri that (while no doubt some people would like) doesn't actually fit what people intended to vote for.

Yeah. I also think that "soft and chubby" and "tuff and thiq" are incompatible.

>>118290
And then this is exactly what happened.

I don't get why everyone voting for male Ceri didn't vote for buff male Ceri. Why don't they want a Ceri that Skif can order to pick him up, among other things she could possibly do with such strength? Were the voting options not clear?

Also, Slinko, are you going to do a run-off vote? Because the option with the most votes probably won't be more than the total of all the votes for other options, and that would leave the majority of the voters dissatisfied to varying degrees.

personally I woul recommend aginst a run off vote cause lets be honest its just going to wind up as a mini vent argument the more you dwell on a suggestion point the more likely it is that people will start going coxdis on it. also it would just take an update to find what we already would know.

>>118354

Well, personally, if we're going to have male Ceri, I want a less-beefy male Ceri. Of the options presented, it's the one I like the most.

>>118354
We're literally already doing a run-off vote, though!

https://tgchan.org/kusaba/quest/res/844848.html#848954
Water Dragons would make lots of liquids~ "OH GOD IT'S GULKETI ALL OVER AGAIN!" - Skif 2017

For anyone who thought of male Ceri giving Skif anal, remember that Ceri would have to use a condom in their current situation and location. That means the extra lubricant she'd produce because she's in aquatic form will be a detriment, making keeping the condom on much tougher.

>>118366
...why would she need to use a condom?

>>118367
...Because she'll be putting her dick in Skif's rear and she's not gonna do that without a condom for reasons of cleanliness and hygiene. That's why Skif wore a condom when giving anal to Ceri before. With proper prep Ceri could do without the condom, but they're all the way out on a mountain where they presumably don't have the means.

>>118367

Hygiene. Ability to clean up afterwards. The messy little realities, the inconveniences and chores that are common but that porn generally doesn't cover. You know?

However! With the ongoing requirement for Skif to be the dominant one, Ceri's dislike of receiving butt stuff, and Slinko's own general lack of enthusiasm for such things, I imagine that a male on male encounter will be more orally focused.

And for all we know Skif won't even want to do anything in particular (he still needs to rest and recharge, after all!) and will only take this opportunity simply to see what a male Ceri would look like, without going any further than a little touching.

>>118369
Or it could be manual, as in a handjob. ...But since Skif is rather spent, Ceri could be the one who gets release from him. It'll just be on Skif's terms, how and when he wants. Perhaps some teasing, some edging Ceri along. Make her squirm for a bit.

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/6649245/
Skif has no butt

>And then this is exactly what happened.
Snarky! Fun fact: unless things drastically change by tomorrow-ish, the exact same option will have won twice (even if you consider what each person wanted specifically).

If it won two flawed votes, then so be it. This isn't a major plot point, it's a segment that's going to last a few updates and then be done. It's not worth arguing over, nor is it worth bringing the pacing to a screeching halt trying to 'fix'.

And let's be real, this might be the only time in the entire quest we throw a bone (heh) to those desiring boys kissing boys. Let them have this.


>>118366
I hate anal sex, so it's unlikely you will have to worry about this.

Something far, far more important: http://www.strawpoll.me/14521243

let's decide once and for all.

I think the Whiskers are actually pretty cute. I know people don't like em too much but they make the facial region stand out and makes a bit more of a difference between the forms.

Anti whisker sentiment is literally only because of a few crybabies screaming louder than everyone else

Speaking of which clothes are terrible and should be abolished from the quest entirely

>>118379
>crybabies
>screaming

Where are you getting this?

Guys, you don't have to tell Ceri to save one for Eezee. That's literally included in every option.

>>118785
They're conflicted.

Do they save one for Eezeryh, Eezee, or The Eez??!?!?!???!?!?!?

Only THE Eez could raise Arlo to be the coolest dragon they can be.

>>118807
you notice that when she said 'arlo' the name was not capitalized. You know what that means? There are more letters in the name, so what name immediately comes to mind when you know it includes 'arlo'?

That's right, Carlo, or Carlos, as the more popular name nowadays. That's right, 'the Eez' may have influenced us more than I thought.

So!

The next update is going to be a big one, going up tomorrow or the 20th.

After that, I'm going to pause DR for the year and take my yearly break. Since DR is nowhere near done with thread 6, the update is going to be larger to accommodate what should still be a nice place to pause on.

It will resume Jan 1st.

>>118964
That's not much of a break!

>>118968
I don't need a super long break !

In general 2 weeks is enough to go from 'kinda tired of doing this' to 'PUT ME IN COACH'

While this is the only major planned break in the year, I do also take breaks between threads, so I tend to get plenty of time to recharge. Worry not!

What's with Gulketi's tilde bar? Is the brown segment indicating it went down from all the sex he had?

>>119024
That or he transformed back into an amtsvane off-screen.

Am I saying amtsvane are less lewd than ketzas?



maybe

>>119039
Wouldn't a smaller bar fill faster than a large bar! That's even more lewd!

slinko i'm sorry but

i read "congratulations you had sex" in the announcer's voice from mario party 3

https://youtu.be/05qF0gtbXrE?t=4