so, once upon a time, I wrote a certain brand of smut.
I don't feel like elaborating-it's behind me, and I don't need folks tracking it down. Some things are still up and I try to avoid the connection to old usernames. Not necessarily because I'm ashamed of the content-it ventured into kink, sure. No; I just don't think I wrote that good in those days. Honestly, though, what it was isn't super important here: just know that I have done pornographic writing, and some weird kinks. This is all we need to establish for the scene.
Well, in that era, I hung out in chatrooms and forums dedicated to the craft: writers, ERP, porn game devs, etc. One night, I was kicking around in one such chatroom. Not doin' much-the night was still young, and people hadn't started logging in en masse yet. A few quiet lurkers.
One of them sent me a whisper.
"Hey, I've seen you around a few times. Do you take writing commissions?" I didn't, and I said so, and I thanked them for their interest. I didn't take comms! I didn't hold my writings in high enough regard to ask for money of 'em, but still, a compliment's a compliment. It did not deter them.
"I have this idea I've been trying to get written for years. I'll pay a good amount!" I wished them the best of luck, but again: I didn't take comms. And then they said the price.
TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS
so I, of course, said again, not taking comms:
"well, I think I have one slot for commissions left this month, actually, what story did you want written?"
I ain't proud. This was in the early 2010s. 20K would buy me close to two years' worth of rent of a decent apartment in my town ('bout half that lately), or the majority of a new car. I will write you porn if you buy me a car.
They send me the prompt, and immediately it is clear why they have been trying for years. It's a decent premise, it covers a lot of fetish ground. It'd probably have been fun to write! But it was a lot. Like, you'd have to be the damn Kink Avatar, the one born once every one hundred years to master every fetish on deviantart. The honest fact is, I'd have earned that twenty grand. There would've been a lot of honest-to-goodness research involved. I wrote some stuff, but I didn't write blueberry and vore and hypno and several other things. There are approaches and details to make things actually hot and appeal to those audiences. This would've been fifty pages minimum to cover everything. That price was, ultimately, reasonable.
But, I said no, in the long run. It was not a thing I felt confident I could do successfully. I couldn't take that money for a thing that either would've taken a long, long time or that I couldn't do sexily. They were cool about it, I wished them luck on finding someone, and we went off, our separate ways, two ships crossing in a horny ocean.
Fast forward a few weeks. It's later at night, it's a bit more active. I see my potential client in a chat channel list, talking to another people. I shrug, figuring I'll check in. Maybe they found someone to tell their tale.
I enter that channel. The first thing out of his mouth. Within a minute of my entering the channel.
"look just because I own a SS uniform and wear it sometimes doesn't necessarily mean I'm a Nazi, there's a whole thing on my Flist about this"
I have never felt a dodged bullet so hard in my life. Time slowed down and I heard that figurative bullet whoosh past me. Suddenly a lot of questions arose: would I have been paid? would the revisions have been horrifying once I was on the hook? was there something troubling in the prompt I overlooked?
it's been about twelve years. I've never seen anything resembling the original prompt surface anywhere. I don't know if that dude is still trying.
the moral of the story: vet your clients!
some details omitted/changed to protect the identities of the horny
-that time an ABDL enthusiast was on my case for an hour after I'd said I hadn't played a particular CRPG only for me to find out they hadn't played it either (apologies to every other ABDL person I've ever met the rest of you are honestly a genuine delight to interact with)
-that time I had a really rad interview at a sex shop full of queer progressive types who had more theory then porn on their shelves, got the job, and showed up a few days later to find half the people I'd interacted with on interview day had quit because of what the manager described as "something called 'constant microagressions'" who explained my strong AMAB body would be better used building shelves in the back away from the eyes of the customer (my tenure at this store lasted <15 minutes)
-that time someone attempted to get me to ERP with them through reverse psychology. "I'm not RPing with you dude, sorry" "okay but if you DID what character would you RP as" "if you DID how would you start our scene"
-that time I had to to log in to Second Life because someone was caught in a lewd animation loop and they'd given me a safety thing to unlock their avatar
-that time, also in Second Life, where we tried visiting a Horny Sorority space off a years-old billboard, and it was still there...but abandoned....then someone else set it up as a haunted house...and then it was abandoned again
-that time I managed to help someone get through some serious darkness, only for them to disappear for three years, no contact, we assumed the worst, only for them to re-emerge suddenly and ask me to do unpaid editing on a story they were writing
-that time someone made a fetish RPG Maker game but they used some borrowed assets and upon reaching one of the endings I immediately had the Sega Rally GAME OVER YEEEEAAAHH clip knock me on my ass
-that time I was discussing RP and hypnotic triggers with someone and years later they sent me a message to go "hey you might not remember this conversation but I realized I was plural from that"
-that time someone I know who draws smut occasionally go "yeah I'm getting into more fetish stuff" and I assumed they were about to drop some sort of TF or vore thing on me, but no, they meant, like, bondage, and I had to accept we were just on two different internets
-that time my mom was around and asked what my plush of Margaret from Mice Tea was and I had to frantically make up something because she has a Steam account and can figure out game names if I gave her too much info (okay this was like a week ago, not in the Before Times)
-that time I provided some minor feedback on a kinky VN, which eventually made it to Steam, and like a year later I was talking to someone IRL and they mentioned it and I immediately entered the dance of "are you cool enough for me to mention this connection"