"Yeah, fuck this."

Arthur had joined the King's Path writing challenge a few days ago and it was going well enough, truth be told. In the span of three days he brainstormed enough content for a three book series, figured out the main plot points and secondary characters that would help develop the MC, and even used some fancy ai software to generate a temporary, but still very cool, book cover.

A few long taxi rides had even put him in the zone long enough to chicken-scratch down a decent few draft chapters. So what was the issue? The issue was that it wasn’t a good planning contest, it was a writing challenge and he wasn't writing.

"Why does just typing out the words online cause my brain to fart? Is it anxiety? I feel like this is anxiety. Can it be social anxiety if no one knows I exist yet?"

Yea. This wasn't working. Shera: The New Dawn, which had NOTHING TO DO WITH TWILIGHT, thank you very much, seemed like it was on its way to being another draft hidden in the drafty, online attic of his google docs, subjected to a small current of air the few times he'd go revisit it in the future. A small current of air being commonly known as a draft. Not to break the fourth wall but are you getting the point here? Draft times three? Draft, draft, draft?

Writing is hard, is the point.

Arthur sighed for the fifth time, staring at the words on his laptop screen before once again saying, "Yeah, fuck this."

He moved the mouse on the screen to tap on his notification. Despite clicking it earlier the blue circle would still pop up a few times, reminding him about this achievements or letting him know yet another writing challenge was available. That's all well and dandy, but what's the use of another reminder about the challenge when clearly he was stuck on page one!

None of the notifications were actually useful either. Sometimes he wondered why the notifications didn't remind him about the forums existing. It took him two years on the site before he even realized they had a forum.

He figured a few notifications sprinkled here and there would have been a nice way to let people know about the feature but hey, he was just one author of thousands, submitting a draft chapter that would barely be read by the staff of the King's Path website. It's not like they would see his complaints or anything.

Plus, maybe it was just him? Maybe he just wasn't utilizing the features of a well designed and easily configured website because he was so busy clicking new books that popped up on the first page that he ignored everything else?

….Sounds false.

"I wonder if there's a complaints button hidden somewhere."

Arthur closed the notification tab and looked through the previously hidden options available. Previously hidden by him, because he never actually cared to look before.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"Read. Write. Forums. Members. Sport. Premium," he mumbled to himself. "Wait no, that said support, not sport. Wait, support? Maybe they do have a complaints box."

He clicked the tab open.

"Knowledge base. Suggestions...actually might be interesting?"

He gave in to the intrusive thought, clicked the link open in a new tab and then said, "Oh wow."

It was a huge list of user ideas on how the website should operate. He had no idea that so many of the cool features on King's Path were actually user suggestions. Being able to highlight mistakes in a chapter, following different authors, even the mobile app he never used were all user suggestions.

Most of the completed suggestions were from three years ago though. All of them definitely changed the website as a whole. Must have taken them a while to get it just right. Either that or they stopped taking suggestions since then.

"Shoutout to the devs for actually implementing all of these."

He scrolled through the rest of the suggestions but nothing really caught his eye so he went back to the top of the page and reopened the support tab.

"Aha! I knew it had to be here somewhere," he exclaimed mainly to himself. "Should have called it complaints box though."

Two tabs under suggestions was an option for a support ticket. Which was just a fancy way of saying complaints box in his opinion. He clicked it open, then clicked another box that said to open a support ticket. The new page asked for a subject line and had a message box, almost like an email.

He was honestly a little tired of clicking so many things open at this point, but after putting in almost ten minutes of hard work and dedicated detective work he was going to follow through to the end. The King's Path admins really must not have wanted him to find this, but he prevailed!

As he tapped on his keyboard he muttered to himself, "Subject line.. ‘Useless Notifications!’"

He bet they'd feel how serious he was with that exclamation point. Honestly, he probably could make this a post in the suggestions section. No one that posted less than three years ago got anything approved though, so he felt that would amount to nothing. At least with this he knew someone would have to read it. Probably.

He continued typing, saying that the devs needed to notify the users about more than just achievements and the writing challenge, and that they should use it to call attention to different features on the website. Oh and that there should be more features for author's struggling to write consistently, like himself.

Maybe they could even use the notifications tab to call attention to such a feature if it existed! Oh and maybe have an option for the notification tab to make a little sound. All fair opinions in his opinion.

"Aaand submit."

Yea, he thought, stretching in his chair. He'd say that went well. He reached with his mouse to close the tab and open YouTube but as he went to click the x, a new notification popped up.

"Lol," he said, saying the acronym out loud like the cringey fuck he was, "Wouldn't it be funny if the devs responded immediately? I bet it's just the same writing challenge notification though."

Despite himself, he went and moved the mouse to the notification tab anyway and clicked it open. A message popped up, covering the screen.

Hey Arthur! We here at the Dev team heard you loud and clear! We definitely haven't been using the notification tab enough. We actually have a new feature we're about to implement that solves all your problems and comes in one, perfect package. Would you be willing to Beta test it?

- Head Developer, Earl Min

YES NO