The Wannabe Webnovelist put their head down on the table with a deep sigh. In all their five years of writing, nobody had ever clicked on their novel. Nobody had read it. There was only one viewer. Themself.
In the beginning they had told theirself it didn't matter. They weren't writing for an audience. Only for their own entertainment. It was ok. Such trivial things such as viewership, reading reader comments and gaining fans were irrelevant. The Wannabe Webnovelist was just writing for fun. Yet you'd think that even after five years, they would at least have had more than one reader. Someone other than theirself.
Other webnovelists with fancy names, such as Novel Pixie, Treasure Chest, Night of the Black and Blue Moon - these contemporary authors were doing well. Their novels had emerged in webnovel shelves around the same time the Wannabe had started uploading chapters of their writing. Those authors had at least thousands of readers and above with Novel Pixie being the best read author and having hundreds of thousands of readers and fans. And the Wannabe? Not even one. (ب_ب)
Was there something wrong with their novel? Was it just because it wasn't a xianxia setting? Was it because there was no transmigration, lost in a computer game or other world, no fancy system that would bring the Main Leading Character to great heights of hero-ness or despicability? Was it because the Wannabe had not made use of the fourth wall, and was so unfamiliar with common culture that they didn't know how to reference any other pop culture icon or other famous books? Was it because the Wannabe found the use of emoticons in the story strange and off putting? ¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯
Why? Why should it matter? The Wannabe spent all their time writing and improving their stories. There was no time to go look at anything else. Their story had romance and fluffiness, comedy and tragedy, action and adventure. In fact it could even be classed as shounen (they thought) or maybe general fiction. Mmm. No. More science fiction. Mmhm. That was it. There was even a tiny bit, just a smidgen of hentai for the readers. Only a bit. Not enough to change the PG ratings and it was well hidden within chapter 10,403. Yep.
All right, so maybe the use of vacuum cleaners as a type of technologically advanced weapon was a bit strange. And maybe nobody cared about the adventures of a study group of college students developing alternatives to developing technology. The truth was, if the Wannabe wasn't the author, even the Wannabe wouldn't read this type of fanciful story. I mean, comparing the different types of teleportation to see which was faster, raising mouse breeds that could live inside various sized vacuum cleaners, and vacuum cleaners that could rip up a carpet and potentially destroy the world - who would want to read about that?
Maybe it was the spelling and grammar? But the Wannabe didn't have major issues with things like 'there, they're and their'. Maybe more so with 'thee, thy and thou', but old King James English was seldom used these days. People struggled hard enough reading Tolkien (which the Wannabe didn't find too bad) and the Bible (which the Wannabe quite enjoyed, except for those pages of genealogies). The use of semicolons and apostrophes sometimes threw curve balls, as did what words were hyphenated in which countries, and which country used things like leant as opposed to leaned or gaol versus jail.
But then the author, Night of the Black and Blue Moon, had awful spelling and grammar, and he/she still had thousands of readers. He/she regularly got beaten up in their webnovel comments by their readers for their terrible spelling and grammar (and there wasn't even a single malapropism - the Wannabe had searched), although at least his/her awful spelling and grammar was relatively consistent. Still, reading things like, "his puking swords was shes' atroshus delyt on the sharpness with witch its cutting powers to him", made this Wannabe not only cringe but feel somewhat queasy. The readers were still discussing what that phrase was trying to imply outside of making a comment on the sharpness of what should have been a singular sword blade. Since they had already concluded that the ML was a hermaphrodite or transgender, due to the frequent swapping of the male and female pronouns relating to the ML, they weren't too fussed about that aspect of the phrase. Even the author had failed to shed any light on the matter when asked in a Q&A. They had no idea what they had been trying to write either. Such a good, helpful author... and so fan speculation continued.
What had the Wannabe even more stumped was that the author had gone through their ten years (including the prep year) of compulsory education (they had quit school during year ten) and grown up in this country. English was their first and only language. Even the author, Treasure Chest, who had learnt English as their fourth language and another lesser known webnovelist, Cat Howls at the Sun, who was dyslexic, wrote better English than Night of the Black and Blue Moon.
There are some mysteries in the world that cannot be solved. That is unless Night of the Black and Blue Moon was writing in awful English on purpose. For kicks. Mm. That must be it. ¯\(°_o)/¯
As it was, Wannabe Webnovelist wished they could become the Flashing Fairy Vest from the god level armour known as the Celestial Fairy Armour within the MMORPG they played religiously every night. At least, that way, people might be interested in the adventures of the armour piece and whose chest the fairy vest had touched during the course of its multiple owners. Considering how many owners it had had and how it was being stolen or fought over every other night, the Wannabe was sure people would be interested to read a story based on that premise. It would be even more amusing if the vest were called Mary Sue.
Finally, getting to the original point that the Wannabe Webnovelist wanted to make in the beginning, but didn't get around to until now and at risk of an overly long and wordy sentence, the Wannabe Webnovelist was uncertain as to whether to stick to the singular or plural when referring to themself, and with the fact that English neutral gender pronouns sounded strange when referring to a person(s), the Wannabe Webnovelist had a discussion.
It was decided.
The Wannabe Webnovelist from henceforth would be known as WW for short (because calling yourself a wannabe all the time was just too self degrading and calling yourself a webnovelist when you've never actually published a webnovel was a lie). The accompanying pronouns for simplicity's sake would be singular and masculine (despite some strong opposition from the feminist camp). In any case the one doing the publishing...
WAIT!
Hold it right there.
Did WW just say he had never published the webnovel after all those years of hard work?
Yes, he did, didn't he? (Btw, isn't this use of singular and masculine pronoun so much simpler and cleaner?)
Flips table (ノ｀Д´)ノ彡┻━┻
Flips table ─=≡Σ(╯°□°)╯︵┻┻
Flips table (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
Before leaving to chase after the culprit who never hit the 'publish' button when he said the next chapter had been uploaded, the 'publish' button for the entire, finished webnovel - every single chapter - was clicked. This took a whole day. And a bit. If he hadn't had something important to do and hadn't left to leave the editing and publishing to someone else, no one would have ever known.
No wonder.
So don't you dare tell him that other unapproved edits and emoticons have been added behind his back. Let him figure it out himself. Bahahaha. WW had a rule. Once things were published, nobody was allowed to change even a single apostrophe, even if it turned into a catastrophe.
Five years! Five years! He wasted five years of our lives! Yaaaargh! Where is he? Where is the bastard? He needs to be taught a lesson.
(Sound of sleeves being pulled up)
>─=≡(╯°□°)╯
─=≡(ノ｀Д´)ノ
─=≡(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ
... ... ... ...～Σ☆(つˆДˆ)つ