'I'm Not Dead!' And other lies · 8:20pm Apr 19th, 2017
Welp got the chapter up, had to put it off for a few days due to editing concerns hence why it was so late and also why it, horror of horrors, was uploaded on a Monday for once.
Now I just need to upload another 30 chapters in rapid fire succession in order to meet parity with my supposed upload schedule. The horrifying fact is I actually legitimately have enough ideas to fit another 30 chapters. The sad thing is, they probably won't be the 10k+ leviathans you have come to expect from me from this point on.
Suffice it to say, Bad Mondays chapters have a kind of theme to them: I think of an idea, spend two weeks writing it, and bamboozle my audience with a chapter somewhere in the region of 12,000 words posted on a quasi regular basis.
This is, believe it or not, excessively lazy on my part. Allow me to explain.
Most people look at my absurd wordcount and judge me based on raw quantity of words produced and judge me as a good author because of it. Which is actually counter intuitive when you think about it, college students spend their time writing word salads and not producing anything of substance, newspaper columns and magazines are filled with pointless shit and I am sure even if you don't personally use blogs you know of friends who could rattle you off anywhere between ten-twenty unique individuals, some of whom with multiple blogs, who spend their times spewing words like a fountain. Or, put it another way, just think of any one of the infamous fanfiction writers around the internet who spend years pumping out multiple stories in the millions of words range with the quality setting set to non-existent. Some people are just _like_ that, and upon self reflection I am one of them. You can either be like that naturally, or you can, like myself, train yourself to increase your endurance to accustom yourself to that output. Its doable. It just consists of you sitting yourself on your ass and consistently, at least for a week or more, _make_ yourself write that first draft. Its an awful lot harder than it sounds especially when your enthusiasm is curbed or your in a bad mood that day. Its genuine work sometimes, even when its basically free labour.
Now, how does that translate into me being lazy? Well I'm getting to that.
Over the course of writing Bad Mondays, my chapters started doing something strange, they started getting longer, but not neccessarily better. I managed to compensate for this as I became used to making myself accustomed to production quantity without sacrificing quality too much. But it mostly occured because as I went on, my popularity with my commenters, something I had tried not to let get to my head, got to my head anyway. I became unwilling to cut things in half so I let my ideas run on and on. This resulted in some of the best and the worst of Bad Mondays chapters. Because of it, I was able to produce what some consider the best chapter in the entire story, Ghost and Ghouls, where Handy pretends to be a summoned monster to scare the shit out of some kids on Nightmare Night. And its one I am personally fond of and enjoyed writing immensely. But it also resulted in some monstrously overly-drawn out stories such as A Short Story, which was a reader chosen optional chapter which I managed to create after nearly another three month break in uploads (this hasn't been the first) regarding the backstory of one, Felicia Shortbeak, a darkhorse character if ever there was one in Bad Mondays.
That story almost killed the entire story. I was going through a rough patch at the time couple with the stress of this seemingly endless chapter that was basically my fault to begin with, and whose end product just seemed to drag on and on and on and on for some readers.
Nonetheless, while I scaled it back somewhat, I persisted stubbornly in this vein of producing high volume chapters on a quasi regular basis and tried not to sacrifice quality (and was not always successful) and I was deaf to the cries of my editors who begged me to split up my bigger chapters to make them more manageable. I was too lazy to take the effort to step back, be patient, impose self discipline and change and rework the chapters to be better produced as smaller, higher quality content. The irony was, if I had of listened to my editors, the story would probably be finished by now, and have another couple hundred thousand words to the overall wordcount to boot. (Yes I do have an ending in mind for the story) Funny thing is, I was actually half decent at doing this when I started Bad Mondays as writing practice. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 where initially one chapter, one in which I was enjoying writing so much I almost wrote the whole lot of it in one sitting but in order to make the wordcounts roughly equivalent with the Prologue, which was my bar at the time, I split them up and it worked, really really well. Later on I just got arrogant.
So as you can imagine the inevitable happened when shit hit the fan. 2016 was a bad year for most people it seems, but it was an especially bad year for me. Suffice it to say, I was all but out of commission for more than a year and it is fortunate I uploaded _anything_ at all. This is not uncommon with a lot of writers, artists and other content creators I find, especially if they have a decent following. And its a lot to do with how some of your favourite stories tend to die on the vine (other than the author just losing interest).
Burnout, depression and exterior stress can wreck havoc on a writer's will to create and by the time they have those extraneous factors under control and are willing (not a question of able) to force themselves to get back to work, the enthusiasm _will_ be gone. This is non-negotiable, the joy of writing, _will_ disappear and the fun they had in writing their favourite ideas _will_ not be enough for them. Its like a Junkie or an Alcoholic going for a fix and finding themselves numbed to the usual excessive quantities, they can't write for the fun of it anymore because for one reason or another it will _cease_ to be fun. They have no choice but to continue forcing themselves to write or create _in spite_ of the fact that the muse has left them, they have no spirit or find no joy in it if they want it to be finished at all and become satisfied. Its the point where the act of creation becomes less of a fun hobby and more of a second job no one is paying you to do, and you are faced with the choice of persisting out of love for the craft or quitting and moving to greeners pastures.
Breaking it down like that, its no wonder a lot of your favourite creators, at a certain point, stop what they are doing and go on to something else, even if they have no necessarily lost interest. And I should know, I'm currently at that point myself and have been at it multiple times over the past few months.
STOP RIGHT NOW BEFORE YOU GO TO THE COMMENTS. READ THIS PART.
Look, guys, I love you, and I love how you want to support the story however you can to keep it going and how much you all celebrate the fact its 'not dead' every time I come back from a disappearance to post a new entry into this leviathan of a story. But you do not help me by just mindlessly praising me and my work all the time, especially not when I am writing the occasional 'srs bsns' post like this one.
I appreciate you guys posting how much you like the story each chapter, its great to read and its validating, and I have been personally contacted by an _awful_ lot of readers thanking me for writing the story, (as weird as it sounds), including at least one guy who left the fandom but who dropped a letter in my inbox before he left. Its strange, heartening and weird and I like that, but it isn't necessarily what keeps me going. It certainly fucking helps, I won't deny, but it doesn't help me in the way you are probably hoping.
I am a weird sort in the sense that I do not take praise very well, I am awkward and unsure of how to react to it and tend to unconsciously suspect the person offering the praise, for whatever I am doing, has neither judged me, nor my work properly. I don't think that says anything good about me, but there we have it. I honestly respond to trolling a lot better, I can understand it better, even though I don't typically engage in it. Typically, some authors are the opposite, they write their shit specifically for the endless praise and stop as soon as that praise dries up or turns to criticism. I actually rather the criticism at times in moderation (obviously if its nonstop it just seems like henpecking), even the questions people ask, because it genuinely keeps me on my toes regarding keeping the story together and justifying myself and what I am doing.
However, whenever a creator comes back from a bout of stress induced absence, he or she is faced with the dilemma based above and, more than likely, has no idea who they even are in their work or what the fuck they are even attempting to achieve. This is made worse as, more than likely, the thing they had specialised in doing was one of the things bringing joy to their lives, which is a too often repeated story on the internet that gets retold again and again and again. I've seen its aftermath too often for my tastes. They are often terrible at judging their own work, likely more self critical then ever, less receptive to praise and good points, (assuming they are a creator who wasn't in this just for the praise and ego stroking on its own. Its worth noting everybody is in this for the ego stroking to some extent and its worth noting that there is nothing wrong with that in itself, ambition can be a good thing. But on the other hand, bigheaded bastards can go fuck themselves.), and, quite likely, more likely to take criticism from others of their work more harshly than they historically would, more of an emotional condemnation of their personal character, which is trait most often associated with creators of low integrity (you know the sorts) which they normally wouldn't contemplate emulating.
Its basically a state were every positive incentive is stripped from them and the negative incentives multiply. It isn't fair, it isn't rational, and its more often than not unavoidable. Its the real reason I've contemplated just letting the story die and my ambitions of becoming a writer die with it. And its only by overcoming it, does someone prove to themselves that they love what they do and can once again love it as they once did.
And don't you dare pity me. That doesn't help and all you achieve is to insult me by doing so. All this is just something I've been hemming and hawing about subconsciously for a while and I felt the need to hash it out, ironically, in writing. As if by doing so it could feel more real to me somehow. That and I did promise to post blogs more often to continue interacting with you guys, might as well post something relevant to Writing and Writing theory as pertains to self destructive writer psychology.
Huh, you actually made it this far, have some ponies for your dilligence.
Instead of praising you for your work, I shall now begin condemning it.
More chapters or the condemnations will stop!
Spit spot old chap!
...So when's the next chapter coming out?
No truer words were ever spoken.
Is this why in the time it took Frodo to toss the ring in the volcano and fuck off with the elves, Handy still hasn't kidnapped the princess?
Also you're welcome for the screencap, schmuck.
I love your story so much I'll suck your cock for another chapter just lemme buy a plane ticket.
On a serious note, however, you receive praise because many find a likable asshole in Handyman. He isn't the typical HiE, and there is a depth to this world that seems to go on and on. I am a huge fan of world-building and political intrigue, and this story has it in spades. I enjoy the international crises and grandstanding that takes place, the ballsy gambits and shady deals. These things help bring together a world that feels more alive than most other stories on this site, and it's something quite a few people appreciate. The long waits don't bother me in the slightest, since I know that life happens and that this site is a hobby. No worries.
Now, on to some shit.
WHY THE FUCK ISN'T HANDY HOOKIN' UP WITH SHORTBEAK LIKE BRUH JUST GET SHITFACED AND GO FOR IT ALSO WE HAVEN'T SEEN JOACHIM IN A WHILE I WANNA KNOW WASSUP WITH MY BIRDIE FURTHERMORE EMBER BETTER GET PUNCHED IN HER FUCKING ANGSTY FACE REAL HARD NEXT OFF WHIRLWIND BETTER GET THROWN AT A MOTHERFUCKER FOR BEING SO GODDAMN CHEERY ABOUT HIS SITUATION OH AND I WANT TO SEE CELESTIA'S FACE WHEN HANDY DOWNS THAT ALICORN BLOOD BRUH AND YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD GET AWAY WITH NOT HAVING ANY OF THE MISTRESS' MINIONS SHOW UP AND GET US DISTRACTED WITH THIS DRAGONTALES BULLSHIT
Oh, and that Arc with Handy running around being homeless lasted far too long for my tastes. In the future I'd love to see more of Handy interacting with powerful political figures, and it would be fun to see Joachim let him off the chain more often. Just a few thoughts.
Basically didn't read anything.
Anywho, I had no idea necromancy was real... Or magic in general.
4502246 ... I am not a wizard.
4502247 well someone pulled you up from the grave.
Huh, you actually made it this far, have some ponies for your dilligence.
Ain't nothin compared to the magically massive "missive" ya spout every month er so.
You should have made a TLDR or split this blogpost in two.
But if you want the truth, I can tell you that nopony unironically reads Bad Mondays
I prefer longer chapters and stories that run on a slower burn because it gives the fast parts a sense of contrast. Fast and tense moments don't then have to struggle to stand out against the general pace of the story. And in the case of Bad Mondays it (on top of the instances where he gets side tracked by wandering plot points) all makes me feel like i'm actually experiencing some guys personal journey as it happens in a place that's strange and alien to him rather than being fed the bullet points of it like seems to be the norm on this site. But that's a matter of personal taste.
Bad Mondays is... long and uh... too mainstream? My only serious complaint is that it continues to elude my ability to find something negative to say about it. I normally, habitually even, nitpick every single error, from misplaced commas, to spelling mistakes, to clunky dialogue to the dreaded Americanisms but Bad Mondays always confounds me when I attempt to. Normally, if I spot even a simple misspelling (its instead of it's for example) it can pull me out of the story, leading me to keep a notepad app running in the background, but when I read Bad Mondays this notepad more often than not stays shockingly empty; this isn't to say that the story is entirely free of errors, or even that it has a particularly small amount for something of its length, simply that when I read the story itself is enough to distract me from such errors, to such an extent that even if I do find a substantial number of errors they can be forgotten about as I rush to read another chapter.
What I'm trying to say is: regardless of how you feel about praise or how you think the quantity of words reduces the quality of writing, it was (and still is after 4 re-reads) more than good enough to keep me engrossed to the point I forget about things I have always been distracted by in even my most favourite of stories before and there are only a handful of stories that I can claim have had a similar effect on me before.
So, negative... oh I know! Your long-winded horsewords compel me to write overly-long, far-too-praising comments under your blogs after you explicitly said not to do that!:
...
...
...
Oh well, it had to be said. Please don't stop writing
4502271 This pretty much sums up how I feel about the chapter length.
PS: has anyone asked if we can use the world of Bad Mondays for our own horsewords? I keep having... ideas
PPS: got to post before I delete out of embarrassment, went way overboard here, send a life raft.
Sigh, Handyman's being emo again.
Who wants to go smack him this time? 
More seriously, you need to chill about pacing and chapter length. I'll grant that splitting chapters in half is probably not a bad habit to get into since it will help make the workflow more manageable during the editing process, but the actual writing and pacing...sigh. You know I'll tell you off real quick when you do something stupid so the fact that I'm still generally praising you means your writing is genuinely good, and I know I've told you repeatedly that your pacing is excellent in spite of the long chapters. Far too many people around here think cutting things down is the answer, but all they're really saying is they don't know how to write. What differentiates great authors like Tolkien and Michener from the rest is that they know how to spend time to build things up in interesting ways and let the story flow naturally rather than rushing from explosion to explosion like a Michael Bay movie. You have repeatedly demonstrated that you have the skill and grasp of proper narrative flow to craft a truly excellent story, so stop doubting yourself about it because I can say with absolute certainty that pacing is one of your strengths.
The rest of your complaints are similarly about nothing (I loved the Shortbeak chapter, although I can understand why it was hard to write), and if you're really bothered by the lack of money for your work you should go ahead and set up a patreon account to get some revenue from what is undeniably real work with real value.
4502317
Pretty much all the French in the story is broken.
You can stop reading now.
4502323
Oy vey!
4502332 I can't read French.
4502339
Neither can Handyman
4502349
Tired, sleep now.
Aww, those were my favorite. I do understand the reasoning though, quality over quantity so to speak. This would also possibly have the effect of more frequent chapters resulting in much less wait time, which is good. Keeps everything that happens within the story fresh.
4502247 Nah. You're more of a rather paladin-like bard. Actually, I've been getting into 5e lately, any experiences yourself? I find that making a game refreshes my perspectives somewhat.
Good to see you back, nonetheless. Ctrl + I italicizes highlighted words, by the way. Better than _this_.
Maybe we're all just scared of scaring you off from writing more chapters. :P
Really though, for me, it's more a time thing. I love reading through the comments on all of your stuff, seeing you answering questions I never thought to ask and enjoying the banter. I could come up with good questions and emgage more, I suppose for me, I've just never been real big on trying to figure out what's coming. I'd rather just wait and see.
That said, if you were to start breaking the chapters up more (breaking up, not removing stuff. I love how expansive this story is, so please don't lose that), I would probably be more likely to remember the questions or thoughts that pop up as I'm reading.
I'll start making more of an effort to leave better comments with more questions if you give me something to do it on. ;) But don't assume that the squeaky wheels are the majority either. I loved Short Story because it was a part of the expansiveness that I love about this story. But I get how hard it is to truely accept the compliments on something that all you can see is all the problems. Perfectionism can be both a blessing and a curse.
Oh, and I'm well aware that the ability to spew words does not a great author make. I couldn't right a good story to save my life, yet I can tell you this year I've hit the charater limit for a mms message at least 5 times.
P.s. if you really want a criticism, quit posting side story stuff in blog posts and comments and make an actual side story! The formatting of blog posts makes them a painful way to read stories (stupid lack of dark mode without making the site look stupid), and nearly impossible for people new to the story to find. Put your disclaimers in the description to ease you of your guilt for posting "garbage", and just make a side story with a collection of extra info and stories that don't fit into the main storyline. You can even leave it unlisted and just link it in the description of this one if it'd make you feel better.
I don't know what to really say so I'm going to do what I've always done. Quietly support you no matter what happens till the end of time
I like handy.
He can be just as much of a asshole as I am on a good day.
This is no exception.
*praises mindlessly*
I know that feel, I've attempted writing several times and all have met with failure because I'm overly critical of every word I put down and dislike my own writing style, so it stops being fun. Hope to see you plow through it, if only for selfish reasons. In all seriousness though, Bad Mondays is a very good story in my non-professional opinion.
4502219 Argh, grr!
4502223 See, this guy gets it!
4502232 Life's a bitch like that.
4502233 Look, kidnapping princesses is hard! He's got a busy schedule, he'll get around to it.
He still needs to get a dozen superfluous castles and defend them with armies of mushroom men and vicious turtle monsters first.
4502240 I get the politics appeals to a lot of my readers, and I don't mean to mitigate that, but reading wise, Handy has been doing nothing but politicking for the past half dozen chapters, he needs to get back to doing adventuring, at least narratively. I didn't particularly _want_ to go to the Dragonlands just yet with the story, but a combination of promises, reader expectation and my long set up subplot for Spike (half the reason why I set the story to begin a few years after the end of season three was to give myself some breathing room to work with and to justify Spike being older specifically FOR this storyline, as I went with the canon interpretation that one season meant one year had past, and given we can assume Twilight was 5-8 when she got her mark and got carted off to Celestia's school and probably spent ten years as her protogé at least, the Twilight we saw in Season one may be anything from 8-20, with spike being slightly younger) meant I kind of had to. Its a good excuse for a bit of adventuring even if the scale is stacked so high against Handy we can't have the usually expected Handy-level catastrophes one might expect from an adventuring arc. Kinda hard to fight _all the dragons._
Also, ahem:
>Your Waifu is platinum shit.
4502262
GRAVE WHAT GRAVE4502263 Still, ponies.
4502266 >does not unironically reads Bad Mondays
>uses word nopony unironically
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
4502271 I will admit I do both enjoy and fear writing the slower paced chapters, simply because I am afraid of going full 'Moby Dick' and miss the forest for the trees by describing everything down to the motes of dust on the tavern tables, or dragging out things that ought not to be dragged out. Hence why I am starting to try to cut back on my excessive chapter lengths. Condense things down to what is necessary and pack as much as I can into what I have to work with and expand when necessary, not by default. Perhaps thats the wrong approach.
4502317 Heh, Americanisms. I remember growing up kids made fun of this one pretentious girl in our school for sounding 'too American' in her speech. Which made sense given I live in a society where accents can denote belonging and where you're from and your loyalties, someone who was 'one of us' but who sounded foreign without having the perfectly justifiable excuse of actually being foreign was going to catch flak over that. Its gotten worse since then, my nieces call their mother 'mom' with a noticeably American inflection and irritates the shit out of the entire family.
I actively try to avoid Americanism and I have an excellent excuse in my writing of Bad Mondays. My biggest criticism from some people is that Handy is a self insert, which is weird, because Handy didn't looked like a six armed, one eyed, jellyfish alien last time I checked. But the name aside (and the fact that my actual self insert is CLEARLY the Expensive Brick, philistines) the main reason people consider Handy a self insert is because, get this, he's an Irish character, and I am an Irish author. Which is retarded, but given the majority of my readers are American, and have grown up reading and watching media where the main characters are always American, and foreign characters always fit expected tropes or assumptions they have, or else subvert them in specific and expected ways (and there is nothing wrong with that), they assume a character which is foreign but doesn't fit those types must be a self insert by the author to explain the idiosyncrasies. Now, granted, there is always a little bit of the author in every character they make, that's unavoidable, but one thing Handy does share with me as an author is having a history speaking often with foreigners in social and business situations in his backstory (which most people only have hints at).
When you see Handy speak in the story, notice how its in 'normal' English, (his phase trying to speak archaic English aside) very few if any colloqualisms, reduced linguistic shortcuts in word choices and while this is impossible to come across in writing, he is speaking in a much slower verbal cant than he is used to naturally. Any human hearing him speak would automatically peg him as an Irishman upon first listen (or a Scot if they for some reason cant tell the difference) but what they would not pick up on, is how clear they can hear him. Irish people speak at a very fast paced compared to most English speakers in the world, and this is something I have personally experience with having to consciously try to slow my pace of speech down, suppress Irishisms, and to clarify my Brogue when speaking to everyone from various Americans, Canadians, Brits and Europeans whose first language was not English, both in some aspects of my previous work places and socially online. As a result I have developed a kind of chameleon accent, where I can't hide the fact that I am Irish, but nobody who didn't know me could accurately pin down where in Ireland I am from. Handy has been doing the same since he came to this world to help the Equestrian English speakers to understand him better as he encounters a wild variety of accents and dialects of English he is not used to and where his Irish brogue would act as a considerable hindrance. Even with this effort people occasionally note he is distinctive due to his odd sounding (to them) accent which is basically unique in this world, which is one of the reasons he is not so keen on 'hiding in plain sight' all the time as his Glamour ability would allow him to do so, if visuals wouldn't betray him, the sound of his voice would. So it makes sense he would actively avoid Americanisms given he is trying to actively avoid his own native Irishisms and is perpetually flummaxed by the occasional 'Americanisms' he encounters other characters speaking. (although that is rare and will make sense later).
Nowhere is this made more plainly evident than in the prologue itself. Just compare and contrast how Handy speaks in the first half to Princess Luna, when he drops all pretense and reverts back to his natural brogue, cant and word usage, and how he speaks to Zecora and Joachim int he second half of the prologue when he has encountered something that can understand him but probably doesn't fully comprehend his accent.
Anyway, I got sidetracked again on minutae, I think you for your diligence and don't worry, I appreciate every bit of nitpicking commenters do for grammatical mistakes. More ammunition to rub in my editors' faces. WHOSE ILLITERATE NOW, JBL, HUH!?
As for this:
I can't remember where I said it, but I am fine with this. I only request you don't do porn of Bad Mondays.
4502323 I suppose this is fair, you have never been shy in the past for calling me out on something you thought was bullshit, and I have always appreciated that a lot.
I have always been reluctant to set up a Patreon account. I don't think I produce nearly enough content to justify it, or rather, enough variety of content to justify it, it would also require linking my other projects to it into a single account and I have always been wary of that. Handyman is not my usual internet moniker and my pony stuff has always been separate from the rest of my online activities. And there are enough skeevy assholes who set it up like an automatic collection tin who abuse it to make me suspect having my name associated with it might not be the best for me. I don't know, I'm not even sure what my motivations are for avoiding it and whether or not they are even any good, and its just as well I haven't made one up to this point. My readers would have been ripped off rightly over the past year with getting very little returns for their hard earned money if I had.
4502332 Hey, you're welcome to sign on as a French translator whenever I need to get Frogspeak to make sense.
4502391 Its what I am hoping to achieve at any rate.
4502503 Currently in a 5e game as a paladin, literally the only definitely Good Guy character in the party set in a crapsack world. So of course the GM slapped me with a prophecy and an evil stick of evil determine to make me into a lich and continue the destruction of the world which has since turned me into a skeleton after I took a deathslide off of a mile high tower (long story). So now I am a Skeledin, whereas in life I was a Palaboar having been infected with the wereboar curse I just learned to control.
In truth I like the 5e Paladin system in that it allows the kind of moral ambiguity that isn't morally nihilistic in morally mixed parties, and I can justify my LG Paladin tolerating the CE bandit in the party because he was our CE bandit damnit, and this world was crap enough as it is.
4502596 Thank you, thats really useful actually, I was too used to italicising things in skype lately.
4502640 Now there is an idea I can actually use. To be fair I have recently decided to make an index of things that may be too much difficulty trying to keep track of in my mind's eye alone (like Handy's powers and the arcane rules and shit he has to deal with when trying to utilise them) but I suppose fitting things like side stories into unlisted chapters and linking them as bonuses would be a good way to reward avid readers with additional lore. I am normally against making side stories to BM since that would take away from the main story and be guache considering it isnt even done yet. Although I am working on one BM related story that will be posted soon. I may put it up if I ever do that Patreon thing and write more parts of it in return for one off donations per chapter or something
4502760 Thank you, that is much appreciated.
4502807 Well that's one of the reasons my readers like the story is the protagonist likeability despite his dickishness. Others read just so they can feel vindication when he justifiably suffers for his own bullshit. Both are equally valid and proper reactions to the kind of man Handy is.
4503002 Thanks and I appreciate the sentiment. My only advice to you is the same that I am struggling to accept myself: You can only progress if you bullishly plow through your own brick wall thats stopping you from writing. No amount of working on the engine will get you anywhere if the wheels aren't working as they say. Get the actual writing done and to hell with the quality of the first draft
Then wonder how you did it.
4503354 derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/11/26/1303818__safe_solo_twilight+sparkle_screencap_princess+twilight_meme_edit_exploitable+meme_edited+screencap_faic.png
nigga my waifu is Shub-Niggurath
come prepared, you won't be spared
4503354
But then I would need to get through 827k words of your high quality writing in your really great fic to fix everything.
You know what, send me your number, so I'll make the call that saved Bad Mondays.
I'll need a quick rundown on what you were trying to mean in some of the dialogues.
4503395 Oh no no, I'm not dumping the entire thing on you for a French translation, that'd be madness. I was going to ask you to help translate some fo the dialogue for characters like Jacques.
4503409 I was talking only about Jacques dialogues of course, I don't want to drown in spaghettis.
But there's no point in only fixing future dialogues. Better to fix everything.
4503413 Alright fair enough, might take me a bit to compile but I'll send you a list of dialogue that has been put in so far in French.
4503504 Let's make Bad Mondays great again
4503354 I’d say they key is having the sower moments serve a purpose. For me, the longer chapters in Bad Mondays don't feel like a chore to read because they offer something that's so rare on this site, a chance to simply watch the characters breath and be actual people, which in turn enhances the moments when shit hits the fan because the people involved feel like people rather than pieces of cardboard being hit together for the sake of it.
In contrast the latest chapter felt short, but not in a bad way. The pace of the chapter reflected Handy's unease at his current situation and desire to get this whole arch over with as quickly as possible, just like how the wandering pace of the deer arch reflected the fact he was literally lost in the woods.
4503354 I'm very glad you appreciate those comments. I've run into quite a few idiots who don't take well to being told their baby has a wart on it and treat my feedback as a personal attack rather than the helpful feedback and advice it is, so it's always nice to deal with someone like you who has the maturity to see it for what it is.
As for Patreon, I'm not terribly familiar with how it works, but you might be able to set up two separate profiles to deal with your very understandable concerns. Barring that, you could still set it up for one of the two to get at least some extra income, although I can't help you with making that decision.
Also, the next time you feel the urge to go "full Moby Dick" on a scene, do it. It'll give everyone the opportunity to see how it comes out, and you might find out it works far better than you expect. Moby Dick is famous for a reason after all, and one of my favorite authors, James A. Michener, is famous for being able to write a huge paragraph describing something as simple as the color of the sky and keep the audience enthralled the entire time. I've yet to see you do anything on his level, but you have demonstrated the sense of pacing required to set it up and a general mastery of the English language so you might be able to at least get close if you put your mind to it. Remember, part of the reason you started writing Bad Mondays in the first place was to get better at writing, so go ahead and experiment a bit because you'll never get better if you don't take some risks.
4503354 The only other paladin I've been in contact with so far : i.imgur.com/aUbk9ha.gif?noredirect
The Wizard : His name is Shmeckledorf. He drinks his ass off, tries to steal everything in sight, and then throws his pet familiar, (It happens to be a spider most of the time) at his enemies. He additionally has an odd taste for roasted kobold, because it reminded him of his home, abandoned as an urchin.
The Fighter : A dwarf, but built like a barbarian. Started out with an AC of 21. Is a woodworker, and a bit of an idiot.
The Cleric : ...A tiefling. A fucking tiefling.
The sorcerer : Storm-archetype Deep Gnome.
The Barbarian : A half-orc crybaby.
These are the fuckers I deal with.
Bro.
Bro.
I like your story.
Bro.
You don't want praise?
Cool. Then I won't give you praise.
I'll post memes.
I've got reaction images for DAYS!
i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/004/662/f5e.jpg
This is going to be difficult with Fimfiction not letting you upload images off your computer.
Anyway,
Here's my only pony meme.
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4503409
Y'all did this to yourselves.
i.imgur.com/UP3phvt.png
Mess with the best, sipped tea like the rest.
img15.deviantart.net/94d0/i/2013/052/8/1/americanism_by_shark_bomb-d5vsf61.jpg
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-americanism-is-a-question-of-principle-of-idealism-of-character-it-is-not-a-matter-of-theodore-roosevelt-37-78-95.jpg
Better start learning now. Here's a documentary about George Washington. You unwashed masses.