>>24446
Keeping my skills fresh, huh… even when I started something and finished it, namely the Safe Bet story, I look at the result and feel like I've totally unlearned writing… But that can't be true, seeing again the Flaming Heart I wrote not so long ago? Although somehow it feels like forever ago and it was a totally different me, a motivated and passionate person that the current me is not. I tried rereading it and on one hand it looked so masterfully crafted, if I may say so myself, but on the other my brain just wasn't absorbing it properly, it was reading the words but not engaging with the meaning and most importantly feelings behind them. And the reason can't lie in the text, because when I was rereading it shortly after I've written it, it was engaging alright. So if it's not the text, then it must be something in my brain that isn't functioning properly.

Maybe having external motivation like the contest I've written Flaming Heart for is indeed what I'm lacking. But now I'm banned on lolicit, so no more contests like that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But just having this conversation also gives me an impulse to do something about it. Maybe that's why I started this whole whine in the first place. Talking to people about my passion for guro helps me to invigorate it. I used to have a constant email dialogue with TheVisitorBlack, it started when we traded stories, but then I just kept pouring my thoughts and ideas, and he would give his thoughts and opinions (and sometimes he would share his ideas and ask for my opinion, but that was less productive with my lack of passion for cannibalism…), and even though most of those ideas I never realized into actual stories, just having the dialogue going filled my life with meaning. There was always something (the next email) to look forward to. This continued for some years, until after another trade he didn't properly finish the story he owed me, so now he's avoiding me not to get reminded about it, I guess. Or maybe he just got tired with me. Because, I admit, it was pretty one sided. But that was what was keeping me going. Then Eterya was an editor for my stories for a while, so again I had someone to talk to. And eventually I had a similar evergoing conversation with Edward Hyde. Until he was apparently so tired of me that he deleted his email account entirely and disappeared from gurochan… Ugh… Does that make me an energy vampire?.. It's not that I was tiring all the people out because I wanted to piss them off… I just needed it to sustain myself…

So with this whole rant I'm pretty much doing the same thing that used to help me, keeping the conversation going to know there's a reply to look forward to. Being able to do so is the thing gurochan has that AO3 doesn't. But I'm also not sure if it's okay to go all the way. After all, the conversations I had with TheVisitorBlack and Edward Hyde were private, and this is public. So firstly it means I don't feel just as free talking about just anything that comes to my mind, maybe posting unfinished drafts and snippets of stories that I may or may not someday finish. And secondly addressing nobody in particular means nobody might reply, so the feeling of looking forward to a reply is not as certain, and if nobody does reply, then I just set myself up for a disappointment.

Maybe it's simply the human interaction that I'm lacking in life. Just this night I had a dream where I was a schoolkid again, and there was a big room, I don't recall what exactly was going on, but me and my classmates were sitting along the wall on a row of chairs. There were mostly girls in the sits next to me. And I remember I was just enjoying being close to them and not in a sexual way. And then one of the girls felt hot and undressed to her underwear, which was some white lace underwear by the way, yet again there was nothing sexual in it, instead the casualness of that made me feel warm and cozy. I think that was where the dream ended, or at least I don't remember anything else. But it makes me think how this is just the feeling I'm striving for in my stories, and maybe that is because I'm lacking it in life.