New Personal Website Launch! + Tec Update · 11:59pm Dec 17th, 2021
Hi everyone!
Tagging TEC because this affects it a bit, but I've finally launched my personal story website!
Most of my stories are there already, except for the really big ones which are being slowly added in (basically, TEL + TEK. TEC is in there because it's so short rn).
Blogposts: at this point, Fimfiction blogs will mostly just be for important announcements. All my personal blogposts and other shenanigans will probably be moved to the website.
Stories: I will still continue posting my main one-shots here, save for stuff I'd rather just keep to my website. All my ongoing multi-chapters will continue to be updated here as well, probably at the same time as the website updates. The only exception is THE ENCHANTED CAROUSEL, which will always be posted on the website first, and then on Fimfic once the next chapter goes up on the website.
E.G. Chapter 2 was just posted on the website. Once I post chapter 3 to the website, I'll cross-post chapter 2 here and so on and so forth. Which, speaking of, Chapter 2 of TEC is now live on the website c:
As a final note, for those of you who want to get updates from the website so you know when I post there, there's a little subscription button which will enable e-mail notifications! The only thing is that please be sure to whitelist ‘noreply@hollowshades.com’ so the e-mails don’t go to spam!
Lastly, huge huge HUGE thanks to the incredible Tetrakern for helping me and basically putting all of this together. He is massively talented and deserves all the credit.
Hope to see you there!
- Mono
*Flails in new RariTwi chapter*
Now this is the way to send off the year!
No more blogs here, and no more new stories here, correct?
I just download fics once their finished so this move doesn't really change much for me. Tbh I'm just happy to see that TEC is being updated again.
5618044
Hello!
There will still be stories and blogs, but only important blogs and certain stories.
5618045
A lot of this move was precipitated by TEC, to be honest. Posting it here was really contributing to my toxic mentality where everything has to be Good and Quality and Perfect, and there was so much pressure on me, I just... didn't write anymore.
By primarily moving TEC to the website, and focusing on it there, 90% of that pressure is gone and now I can go back to writing because I love to do it, not because I want validation, if that makes sense?
5618047
The endless pursuit of perfectionism only ends up destroying any joy that can be found in the act of creation. What we create is so often better when it comes from a place of genuine passion and love for what we're making and not from some sense of obligation to constantly do better. (Not stressing helps too)
Already subbed to the new website and it looks awesome. More Mono words is always good.
Congrats on getting the website up and running. I understand your reasoning, as a writer one must first and foremost enjoy what they are writing. Finding an audience is nice and all, but its easy to become lost in just wanting to please an audience to the point the enjoyment is lost.
I for one look forward to seeing what you have in store for the Enchanted Carousel, and many other stories to come.
And of course I wish you a happy holidays and a great rest of the year.
Took a look at the website and it looks really clean and put together :) One recommendation I have is the function of going from one page to another on your stories and chapters: when going from one page to the next, the page doesn't return to the top of the page, forcing your readers to manually scroll up to then scroll down to click for the next page. I will admit that I don't know a lot about website programming/hosting so I don't know if this is intentional or not, but I wanted to bring it up in case this was an error.
Edit: Bonus points if there is was a way to mark stories as being read/unread as well :)
5618122
Hi Sage!!
Thank you for letting me know! I’ll send this to Tetra right away
5618047
What confuses me is how posting it on FiMFiction does that.
The only reason I could never bring myself to write stories is because I was more afraid I'd get banned for seemingly excessive plagiarism (even if I'd have credited my sources and even extended the offer to help keep things on track) than I was afraid of people hating it.
5618137
It's hard to explain! I don't personally mind critique, but I've had enough negative experiences on the website and with the website culture as a whole that have just made me posting the story here a stressful experience. The story has essentially been tainted for me, so this is my way of cleaning up the water.
5618122
This was indeed intentional, although I have considered and added auto-scroll back to the top of the result container now. There are essentially two sides here -- some people absolutely hate it when their screen moves without their consent. But maybe that's the lesser evil in this case.
As for now, there is no way to mark stories as read/unread for the simple reason that without user accounts (and we don't want that noise right now), there is no reliable way of persisting this information. Bookmarks and formatting settings make use of local storage and cookies but these are ultimately temporary. They also cannot be shared across devices. It's a privacy issue as well.
5618158
I'd say go with the more popular answer with the scrolling then. I just wanted to bring it up because what I'm used to is the auto-scroll, so it seamed unusual.
While it's mildly inconvenient that stories can't be marked, I fully understand the privacy side of things, and I imagine implementing user accounts is a whole other ball of wax.
Thanks for listening to the opinion of some random internet yahoo :P
Just checked and your site also supports RSS which makes keeping track of updates trivial. And glad TEC is continueing, a Christmas gift. Happy Holidays.
Honestly I like your film fiction does it has the reader mode. Well abs centralized. But yeah guess you do you.
5622886
You seem to be focusing more on sharing unneeded opinions and comments on other people's careers, instead of writing your stories and growing as an author.. I mean, look at all this time you wasted writing this comment, and shaming a fellow author for trying to progress? You could just as easily have not posted this comment, and carried on with your life, writing fanfics and keeping opinions such as this to yourself. This seems like, at least to me, like an unnecessary opinion to share on the internet. Work and time that could be better spent on writing and editing your stories. Once again, this is just my opinion. I would actually just like to understand why you wrote this?
5622886
Hey, you shouldn't start messages with "I'm sorry if this offends you" because from the get-go you are priming the person reading to not take your message in good faith. You're basically prefacing this by saying that you will say will be offensive. If you're worried about offending someone, put in the time to make sure you word everything correctly and in such a way that a preface like that isn't necessary.
In any case, If you'd actually gone into my website and looked around, you would have seen the blogpost that extensively detailed the fact that I moved away from Fimfiction because this place was making me miserable, because of the entire environment and frankly because of presumptuous comments like the one you've posted now. Me moving to the website was done to actually save my writing. And even if I'd just done it to work on what I wanted, that's also ok. Additionally, again, in the blogpost here it says that my friend Tetra did the bulk of the work creating the website because he's an amazing person. Why are you assuming I did all of this instead of writing? Which, even if I had, that would still be okay.
I never said the website was just for the story? You're making so much assumptions lmao The website was for all my stories, including original works and stuff I don't want here. I just don't want Fimfiction to be my primary source, because if I stayed here, I would have followed my instinct and nuked all my stories and washed my hands off the fandom.
Writing isn't easy? Writing TEC, which I assume is what you're talking about, is actually incredibly hard. It's a huge series. There's also the fact that I have a life beyond it, and I have original works to finish, plus my actual day job, plus other projects I'm in. Having a website for myself will actually come in handy for my writing and my career. As much as I love TEC, which I do, finishing it realistically brings nothing useful to my career or life goals beyond just emotional fulfilment.
I, in my opinion, am not wasting any time I wouldn't have already been technically wasting writing TEC. I'm not even trying to promote it. If I had my way, really, I'd have moved to the website and only told my patreons and never spoken here again. The only reason I posted this was out of courtesy to my current readers and to people who support me and can't be in my patreon. Only out of love and gratitude for them and them alone did I post this to let them know.
I have the website because I want to have my own place for my career and for my stories and so people who actually want me to grow beyond a fanfiction website can follow me and support me.
5623965
Thank you for explaining everything. Sorry once again for troubling you.