I hope your mental health gets improved. See a therapist or something.

My mental health is great at the moment, thank you for your worries!

Stay safe, we need you to be healthy.

Thank you so much! I'm already feeling a lot better having this off my chest. :)

As hard as it is... I think at least 90% of the people here on FA are here for porn..

Thats always sad for Comic artist who to be fair often do an awesome job and create interessting and deep stories... but support mostly gos to who ever shows more boobs and hardcore stuff.

I for example also stoped reading Two of a kind years ago and mostly stayed because of your Druid stuff. Not beause the story would be bad or anything... it´s a pretty good comic! But for me Comics are something I buy as a whole and then read.... or at least read in bigger portions... not 1 page all 2-4 weeks... (where I after whaiting often have totally forgotten what happend before since gabs are so big) and the few ones I do... all are NSFW and have boobs and hot stuff between the deep story parts.

Sorry don´t want to disencurage you or anything But as a long time watcher I just wanted to be honest with you and what I have learned in many years ot FA and in the fandom..

I very much appreciate the honesty Kovu!
And I'm not mad or discouraged at all.

The funny part is that Two of a kind will feature a lot of NSFW, but we're not getting there because we're so slow with uploads.
Artists who upload on a weekly basis are usually those who already have good financial backing through supporters or who have a job and only do this as a hobby. I uploaded weekly for a long time before, but it didn't make people support more.
I went through all the 'carrot' type ways to make people want to support more and... after seven years of doing all the things I'm just at this point where I need to get out the stick.

Realizing that it only needs so few people, as in, I'm not asking for a lot and even this is too much for the people following me to give. That really hit a nerve.
And it showed me that the main problem I've been having was that I did too much.
Constantly trying to make everybody happy while ignoring my own mental and physical health is an issue I was having - and still have - in many areas of my life. I’m getting better and I’m already seeing how much it improves my life overall. And this here is just another part of it.
Putting my foot down and no longer accepting having to work so much for so little.

From now on I’ll cater much more to those followers who help me. And this help is not limited to the financial part. Commenting on my work, faving, reposting, sharing. All these things are also helping me a lot and I am very thankful for it.
All of these people will be the ones I draw for.
And in my eyes, you’re one of them! How could you not, I’ve been happily reading your comments for years now. ;D

Adding my voice to this post, because it hits the nail on the head. This reads like a lecture, like we're supposed to feel bad for not giving you money. Ultimatums are never a good idea. GIving an ultimatum to the people you literally want to support you financially? That could make or break you.

Exactly. Very entitled.

A little bit harsh and blunt but i guess understandable with all the work and sadly little support. Personaly i would not mind if the Two of a kind comic gets shortened because i prefere your druid and worgen comics and Character much more. Hope you reach your goal. I will join your patreon next month.

Thank you so much for understanding. When I wrote this my headvoice was far more pleading than harsh but I get that the interpretation of a text is very subjective. So thanks again for not taking offense or feeling attacked because it 100% wasn't meant to be written that way.
And I'm glad to hear that. The comic wasn't originally meant to be that long anyway, so it's refreshing to read that this won't be a problem for everybody if it comes to it.
I'm looking forward to having you join! There are a lot more Tauren-Worgen comics to be made! :D

Definitely want to add my 2 cents since I do not agree with the above comments.
This is my personal interpretation and I think it's perfectly reasonable.

Living costs money, so that has to be earned. Being self-employed means the cold, hard truth is (as often in life) time = money.
Being able to freely follow your passion with free or often just personal art is a privilege that one has to have the funding for.
So creating something that is not a paid for project (commissions etc.) means having to stick a price tag on that piece as the time that is used for this can't be used for a paid project.
Of course that also means having to maybe drop or deprioritize projects that seem to not garner enough attention to pay for themselves.

I think Nao is basically just releasing pages as they get funded over time, which is totally reasonable in my opinion and also nothing new. This was pretty much done the same when "3 Tauren and 1 Worgen" got funded, just in a more direct way.

Some people just seem very entitled to want everything for free. It's no surprise that a lot of fulltime artists even went to completely paywall their stuff. I'm no fan of this, but I can see the logic from an economical point of view.

Those "blackmail" accusations are a perfect example of that. No one is entitled to demand everything for free. Yes, economy sure isn't the best (and that ALSO goes for artists, not just you), but that doesn't give you a claim to free luxuries (which art is basically). Try demanding a free theater ticket every week. Good luck with that.
As for the wording of things I can't say much. This is pretty much a communication studies question as a senders meaning does not have to be what the receiver understands, let alone if there are multiple receivers. This is purely subjective. I myself didn't feel attacked.

At this point I'm trying to understand... what is the goal of this comic from an artistic point of view?
Is it to tell a character and plot-driven story where there will be some NSFW scenes to progress the plot?
Or will it be a porn comic where the story is just the introduction and more of an accessory?

Both are valid and can be done well, but require very different set-ups and pacing.
Both attract different reader bases.

What you've got going on is... neither honestly. It presents itself as a fully story-based, SFW comic, especially on deviantart. So what you've ended up with is two completely separate fanbases that have absolutely nothing to do with each other:
You have the deviantart fanbase that follows the comic, cares about the story and characters, and had no idea about the nsfw aspect at all. They were probably the biggest part of this comic's monetary support and have now completely withdrawn their support.
Then there's the Furaffinity fanbase, which knows about the nsfw art you do and probably follows you mostly for that. This part of the fanbase as you've probably already noticed, was not following the comic because that's not what they come to fA for. Now, seeing that "if the comic doesn't get support, I'll cut the SFW part short and skip to the sex part" the logical follow up is... "ok I'll just wait for that to happen then, I don't care about the story anyway".

So again we go back to the beginning question: what is this comic for? Because regardless of the answer, with this post you've guaranteed that no one will give you patreon support for it now.
I'm sure you'll still have plenty of monetary support for your other nsfw stuff, but any support you had from your sfw dA supporters has been absolutely murdered.

Popping over from dA
But the problem with this ultimatum is not the asking for money.
It's the tone.

It's the threats. "If you really enjoy my comics, you’ll find ways to help out.
Because if you don’t, you’ll never know how any of the stories will end, simply because at the current speed I won’t live long enough to finish them for you.
And that would be very sad considering the number of supporting people needed is so low."

"You are robbing yourself of so much more content you could have gotten already"

"I want you guys to really let that sink in."

These are not pleas, these are words that have a very aggressive connotation.

"We need to talk" is also like. Really fucking bad tonally. In English, it has connotations and an implicit meaning of "You are fucking up and you had better stop and/or explain yourself right now immediately." It's scolding.
I understand English isn't your first language, so you may not have known that, but it sets the tone for the entire post and makes you come across far more harshly than you intended. It makes you come across as a very angry wife who just found out her husband is cheating on her. That's the emotional tone "We need to talk" carries.

So instead of looking like you were saying "I'm sorry, at current levels of support I cannot afford to continue these comics" it looks like you're saying "Well fuck you guys for not supporting me. I'm taking my toys and going home." That is why people are calling it blackmail. This is especially hurting you over on dA because dA's userbase is primarily minors who do not have any means to support you and will not support you now that they've learned this story is going to be NSFW, because they feel they were tricked into reading porn.

I really hope you listen to the backlash and try to understand where it's coming from.

Asking for support is fine. That's not what this post reads like.

Don’t waste your time. They only respond to people that always support their view. They don’t care about anything that doesn’t make them in the right lol.

I know. She's refusing to respond to anyone on dA or people being critical here.
But it's still useful to explain what went wrong ere for others reading this!

As an artist, I understand being frustrated and stressed when your art is not reaching your financial goals and perhaps you have to dedicate lesser time to it than desired... but this ultimatum towards your audience and attitude is just wrong in my point of view, and incredibly disappointing

You sound like a kid demanding an Xbox for Christmas or you wont eat your vegetables. Its not a professional attitude and its surely not going to attract anyone, new or old to support you further.
When people can and want to support your work, be it commissions, a comic or flat out patreon, they will. If they don't, it either means you are appealing to the wrong audience, therer isnt a market for what you are trying to sell or, taking in consideration the state of the world and the impeding financial crash in many countries thats fastly approaching, your audience is struggling too and its choosing to support themselves over your art.

Art is a luxury and over the years, as an artist who was trying to do full time until a few months ago, I've seen a lot of ups and downs in my income and projects I can work on. Right now we are at a low. People are struggling and its not just you, just look around at your audience and fellow artists, even inperson sales at conventions are mostly lower than the years before by comparison.

I myself, put 2 long form comics to the side to work on my down time

That said if this ultimatum is 100% driven by financial needs, which to me sounds like it, then accept that you might need to put the comic as a project on the side and invest on something else to stay afloat until you gather enough to finish it or the financial support to follow it through comes. This is a personal decision that does not fall on your audience and should definitely not be used as a weapon against them for "failing you" or to emotionally manipulating them into giving you money.

You could have handled this, and perhaps have had some success if you had phrase it as "Im sorry everyone but due to financial and personal problems, my comic work will be in a hiatus until the end of the year. Thank you all for the support, I will still be active on other things until then." and if the situation doesnt get better until the end of the year you could announce that sadly you would have to cut content from your comic for the mean time since you have other priorities.

Cutting public uploads all together will shorten the amount of possible views and interaction your comic will get, making your possible "buyers" list even smaller. Accusing your audience of not having your back is flat out emotional manipulation when if they are your watchers and interact with your content, then they are already supporting you in the way they can, not everyone can open their wallets. Asking for free advertising has the same energy as Youtubers or Streamers that want free fanart to put on their merchandise, no one should ask for free work, be it a small or big creator... Done working 10hours a day for people that dont value it just sounds like you are not enjoying your work and need to find a new job, if you dont love what you do, your audience is not obligated to love it either and they will probably feel that part of your work is lacking in some way

Do better for your audience