There's a fine line pretentious self-indulgence that drags on and bad writing in one's work and giving the work depth and lifelike appearance. A line too frequently crossed by a lot of people. I'm not singling anyone out since I've never really read any writing by anyone here outside of the RPGs, and I don't want to cause a fight by doing so to the particular individuals, but suffice to say I get a feeling I'm not the only one who's annoyed by this.

I don't want to discourage anyone, because I hate the misanthropic, everything-sucks critics and writers and all that that seem to be all the rage over the interblag nowadays. I'm trying to offer this as constructive criticism, but I hate when things cross this line so very very much, I can't help but come off as harsh.

But please, before you publish or post or otherwise put anything original out there, either hand it off to friends you trust to be honest with you so you do well instead of sparing your feelings because they're afraid of losing a friend to read through it and tell you what sucks so it can be fixed and where it drags on so it can be trimmed and all that, or in the case most of us are in where we can't do that, spend a day or two getting disconnected from it, then read it as a reader instead of an author; you don't have any connection to these characters, you don't instantly get the jokes or where the plot is going, you aren't automatically sold on this thing. Read it critically, and if it drags on or this aspect of this character is annoying or any other issue, please, fix it.

And I know I'm probably prone to this from time-to-time, and if I do it to you, I apologize. I also want to say again I'm not referring to anyone on here in particular, because I don't have enough time to read user-generated content anywhere near as much as I'd like, so please unless you know I've read the story you wrote, assume I haven't, and assume this isn't about you, because this is about three very specific individuals that it was so bad it made me write all this, and most people, if you have it at all, it's only very minor, it's probably still enjoyable, but as I probably haven't read, I don't know. That means about seven billion of you aren't who I'm referring to, so the odds of you not needing to take this as a criticism of you or an attack outweigh the odds of you needing to by billions.