Hi all!

As the title suggests, I've decided to go on semi-hiatus. What does that mean?

Pretty much, I'm going to be relaxing on my standards for releasing stuff. If you were subscribed to the main 3 stories I'm working on right now, 'The Decree of the Divine', 'Soiling Mr. Innocent', and 'The Pet of Kim Taeyeon', then you would've noticed how I either updated one of the three every week or skipped a week and apologized in the (late) chapter in the footnotes. NOTE: I WILL STILL BE WRITING, but it's just that I won't be pushing myself as hard to release stuff every week. How often will I post updates? I have absolutely no idea is my answer. Whenever I can get a chapter that meets my standards of quality out. Which leads me into the question posed in the title of this blog post: why am I going on this semi-hiatus?

There's a few parts to this one, so let's break it down. Briefly, it's because of an always-on-mentality and declining views (to be clear, this isn't YOUR/the reader's fault, more below); TL;DR at the bottom of this post.

FIRST, the always-on-mentality.

I'm not sure how much you all watch YouTube/Twitch/streams and whatnot, but one thing among those communities that has come to light as being a problem with the albeit 'extremely fortunate' occupation that these YouTubers/streamers have is the fact that they have this 'always-on-mentality'. What this means is that they feel like they can ALWAYS be doing something for their videos/streams, crucially, aka ALWAYS WORKING. Because remember, unlike me, these YouTubers and streamers are doing this thing they are 'fortunate to have the chance to make a living off of' as a full-time job. Their livelihoods, their bills, etc. all depend on their ability to make videos/stream. Now, that's not to say that those jobs aren't enviable - even I, who just said all that, would think that kind of job would be amazing to have. However, I just wanted to inject some reality into the rose-tinted glasses us plebs tend to use to see such professions as YouTuber/streamer.

As you can maybe guess, the reason why I brought this up is because this sorta applies to me and my writing. Although I by no means depend on writing to pay my bills and whatnot, what I do have is this sense of duty to my readers to make good on the implicit sorta promise writers have to their readers of updating the stories frequently. And also to those who don't know, I've been publishing stories/content on this website (on and off) since 2013. In the periods of times that I've made it a priority to get frequent updates out (aka times when I haven't pushed aside writing to focus on my studies, which I think was only 1 year around 207-2018 or something), I've found myself sympathizing with these YouTubers/streamers.I, like them, recognize how fortunate I am to be in a position where I have such a large audience to enjoy my content and I too love writing, but the pressure I put on myself to release something 'on time' (to be clear, this pressure to update frequently is 99.999% something I've put ONTO MYSELF. I fortunately have never gotten a reader who like aggressively demanded me to update a story) is something I couldn't really escape.

In my down time, occasionally, when I find myself doing something except for writing and I haven't finished that week's 'writing quotia'/I haven't finished the chapter I'm meant to publish for the week, I'll chastise myself for not writing and, when it comes to Saturday night/Sunday (since my self-imposed deadline for these 'weekly updates' is Sunday night) and I still haven't written enough for that week's chapter, especially if I've already missed a week, I'll push myself to forgo everything else in favor of getting that chapter done. Honestly, I'm not sure how some people have these stories/collections of one-shots/multi-shots manage to update so frequently for so long (the first person that comes to mind is JaimeStardust on this website, but I'm sure there are others; if you like , then make sure to check JaimeStardust out! :D), and I respect them greatly for their consistency, but that isn't me. It sorta has been (I say sorta because I'm known to skip a few weeks from time to time) for the last few months, but I don't think I can sustain it for much longer. To put it in other words, I'm feeling a little burned out. But if this were the only reason for going on a semi-hiatus, then I probably wouldn't. This leads me into my second reason.

SECOND, declining views.

The first thing I want to do when I bring this up is to caveat this by saying that I don't blame you, the reader, in the slightest. I don't blame the general website's reader or anyone else in the slightest. The only person that's to blame is myself; as a writer, it's my job to appeal my story to the reader, and if I'm not getting as many views, that means I've failed in my job. So please, don't feel a type of responsibility or like guilt when reading this section of the blog post. When I talk about this, I'm not really talking about 'Soiling Mr. Innocent' or 'The Pet of Kim Taeyeon': I'm talking about the 'main' story that I'm working on, called 'The Decree of the Divine'.

For those who don't know, this story is a sequel to probably one of my most popular stories on this website to date, 'The Garden of Hesperides'. I'm going to selflessly plug that story there, feel free to check it out if you haven't read it already :P

For starters, I can understand why people were/are a bit turned off by this sequel story. It, in many ways, is dissimilar to the first; whereas 'The Garden of Hesperides' got right into the action, 'The Decree of the Divine' is a bit of a slow burn. Whereas GoH (I'm abbreviating for brevity :D) shows the MC, Kevin, as a calculated badass, DotD reveals Kevin's more emotional side (almost in stark contrast to this 'badass' side of him in GoH). Where GoD showed Kevin as this uber-competent person who could do anything, DotD revels a bit more in Kevin's failures, him stumbling a lot, and him getting outmaneuvered and bested. Also there's much less in this sequel :P (I can see the chapter statistics, I can see that Chapter 16, the second chapter of the story, has like 3x the views of the others c; LOL - don't worry though, I don't blame anyone nor am I salty/bitter/anything in the slightest, as the reason I put a chapter there was for you, the reader, understanding that this would happen). I knew to expect this sequel to not hit the amount of average chapter views the last one got, but the numbers were much less than I expected.

I normally don't really get many comments; not really sure why, maybe because I don't really ask for them, maybe because the stuff I write isn't really comment-worthy, but I haven't ever really minded this. However, what I do mind is giving my readers what they want, and am extremely thankful for one person who commented on my story with his/her (sorry, I forgot your username and what gender you were :c) gripes with this newer story, which is why I redid the first few chapters of the story. It seemed to not be good enough, which again I want to emphasize is ON ME. I'm getting about 25% of the average views-per-chapter in DotD than what I got on GoH, and honestly, this is making me question my writing ability. Because, the thing is, I can IDENTIFY (I think...?) the reasons why this story isn't as good as the previous one, even if my writing is a bit more refined (I'd say), but does this just mean that I should start from scratch again and redo all chapters? I'm sorta relunctant to do that, but please don't be mistaken, I plan on seeing that story all the way to the end. I've already planned out the entire thing, it's pretty much just a matter of writing it (which is a bit of an understatement :P).

But also, the secondary effect of this is that I've lost the kind of motivation I had writing the other stories that I've published that received viewership(readership?) that I either expected or that exceeded my expectations. Maybe this story, 'The Decree of the Divine', was never going to perform to my expectations (which, to be clear, was about 50% of the views-by-chapter compared to its predecessor). Admittedly, part of the reason why I started writing 'Soiling Mr. Innocent' and 'The Pet of Kim Taeyeon' was a bit because I felt a little starved for views like the egocentric douchebag that I am xD The other reason was because of this subreddit that was introduced to me that focuses on kpop fanfiction (go check it out if you haven't already!) that sorta remotivated me into writing again.

So this declining viewership/readership thing doesn't really apply to the other two stories, but the leftover like sadness failing in capturing enough people's attention with 'The Decree of the Divine' is bleeding into a little bit of the burnout for writing these other two stories as well. Also, people who have read my stuff for a long time will know that I am sorta slow when it comes to writing , and the initial burst of inspiration when writing these first few chapters for both of the stories have sorta died down. HOWEVER, for those who want to request female idols to appear in 'The Pet of Kim Taeyeon', I'll make sure to put your requests as a top priority :D and if I take too long on your request, I'll manually give you access to read your requested chapter when it comes out so you don't have to pay for another month that you normally wouldn't have to.

HOWEVER, I still will be writing. I love writing, and am not at a point (yet) where I'm burned out enough of it to not enjoy it. I will still be writing whenever I find the time and motivation, but my updates will just not be as frequent. So fear not, for once every like few weeks, I will update one of those three stories I have going on atm :D I think I'll try to get out that last part of Chapter 6 for 'Soiling Mr. Innocent' out ASAP, but after that is the like 'official' start of my semi-hiatus ^^

LASTLY, how long am I going to be on this semi-hiatus? I don't know. A few months for sure, minimum one month. However, it'll probably last longer. Two months? Three months? Six? I don't know, but I'll let you all know when I decide to come out of this semi-hiatus. This whole thing was sorta stream-of-consciousness, so there might've been stuff I left out or some things that make sense to me but not to you; if there are, please feel free to ask and I'll clarify.

Thanks for reading this long- blog post!

TL;DR: the always-on-mentality: I feel a little burned out because I never really give myself a break from writing, and always try to push myself to write in my free time even when I'm doing other things. Declining viewership(readership?): 'The Decree of the Divine' having less views than I thought sorta tanked my motivation to write a little, BUT TO BE CLEAR, I am not blaming anyone but myself for this, so there's no need to feel guilty or anything for not reading it - if you've tried and haven't found yourself enjoying it, then you don't have to read it. Also, the initial spark of inspiration for writing sorta faded, which is why this semi-hiatus extends to those stories as well. The semi-hiatus is going to 'officially' start after I get out Chapter 6-3 of 'Soiling Mr. Innocent', and I'm unsure how long this semi-hiatus will last.