A message to all current subscribers: "I love you lots and think about you often. You are a kind soul who enriches my life with your presence. I hope everything turns out as you wish and that sickness, conflict and disappointment never find you."
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This is a really annoying post to write because I don't actually mind negative feedback all that much. Feedback of all kinds simply expresses a sentiment, which is valid. I am providing content, and this content has a quality that is sometimes above the standard and sometimes below the standard. Human creativity fluctuates, this is normal.
However, today was a particularly bothersome day for me because not only did I not have to refund a member and remove them, but I had to do it twice.
I write stories that attempt mixing serious moments with occasional humor because it is somewhat draining for me to write a story in an overly serious tone through its entirety. It gives me writer's block. I guess in the end this is a matter of personal taste, so even though I admit that my comedy doesn't always land, I can't not do it since then I would encounter writer's block due to not actually enjoying the process of creating.
Going back to the topic of which members I removed; both were tending towards the extreme end of bringing negativity to the community.
One of them did so on discord, calling another member an insult, starting a low-brow argument that lasted several paragraphs. This is not something I will ever put up with, since by doing so you are not only ruining my day, but also the day of another person who did not consent to being insulted for having a rather normal opinion. The disagreement was of course about whether Harry's animagus form being a lobster is interesting, alright, or lame. Something that I never in my life thought would spark an argument I would have to moderate.
The second member I had to remove made themselves remarkable by vocally disliking every single chapter I've put out since their joining. Disliking while providing constructive feedback is obviously not a crime, the issue was rather that every comment was simply an variation of, "I hate this so much;" "You are a bad writer;" "You stole my money."
My removal of this member did not come without thought, but it was today that I realized I didn't have much of a choice. I woke up and I wanted to write, because on my schedule, I have two chapters to write today. Then, immediately, I had to deal with the argument on discord and somehow lost the capacity to write. I went outside, drank a coffee, came back, then immediately had to deal with the other incident. Suffice it to say it is now 21pm and I still haven't written today due to a serious case of writer's block. This means I will have to write into the weekend, which I do often enough considering how many ongoing stories I have, but which I didn't want to do this weekend since I am already sick anyway.
The negativity was impacting my ability to actually serve the subscribers who are enjoying the experience.
I will state now here some positions of mine in concise form to try and get my opinions across:
1: If you don't like a chapter, feel free to express it constructively, or even non-constructively. I don't mind if you say this is veering into crack territory, that the Animagus form or the communist jokes seem non-sensical, that the plot is veering off course. Obviously I always get a bit disappointed when I see something didn't land, but it's good to know what's working and what isn't. I draw the line however at calling me a scammer and feeling the need to publicly announce to the world that I'm a joke, that your money was wasted and that you're not coming back. There's no reason to express this things in anything but a private DM asking for a refund.
2: Talking about refunds and subscriptions. If you don't like where the stories are going and you think like you subscribed for nothing... Please just message me. This has actually happened in the past. Someone told me (Paraphrase: "Hey, I'm sort of disappointed in the story development and your membership was overpriced. I noticed I really didn't want to keep reading. Could I maybe get a refund?")
My response to that: "I'm sorry to hear that, sure!"
3: I would like to ask if people could maybe try being a bit more respectful in the future. The situations today didn't only impact my writing, but also impacted other members. It also, quite frankly, hurt my feelings. I'm sorry if the story is not developing the direction you were hoping, but the issue is that I currently have enough readers that my experience has been that whatever I do, it won't fit someone's taste.
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Summary: Please be more respectful to me and other readers in the future. I'm sorry for having to output such a message, I also wish I didn't. If you want to make my writing easier, constructive negative feedback will get you farther than non-constructive since I know better what to address. If anyone ever wants a refund, just message me directly. Calling me a scammer without asking for a refund is obviously just an attempt to vent your emotions with me as a target instead of a valid form of engaging in discourse.
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A message to all current subscribers: "I love you lots and think about you often. You are a kind soul who enriches my life with your presence. I hope everything turns out as you wish and that sickness, conflict and disappointment never find you."