Marooned on Earth: My life stranded with monkeys

It's a new Catnesday, and time for all of you to meet Soul, one out of two cute cat portraits I've drawn for @inowutimaboutsun

It was really fun to try to capture this kitty's playful and energetic vibe- the portrait of this fluffy baby's sibling will be coming soon!

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Artwork © @skekla

American biscuits:

These are layered quick breads. They are almost always baked in a round shape, and when they're not, they're baked square; you will pretty much never see a triangular American biscuit. They’re usually made with buttermilk, which gives them a nice slightly tangy flavor. They’re not at all sweet on their own, but they’re also not particularly savory, and as a result, they’re a bit of a blank slate: they pair well with butter and jam, but alternatively, they pair equally well with a savory sausage gravy. There are recipes that are firmly on the savory side by virtue of adding cheddar cheese to the dough, but in those cases, people will usually specify “cheese biscuits” or “cheddar biscuits”. American biscuits can be a breakfast food, or a lunch food, or a dinner food, all about equally.

British scones:

These are very similar to American biscuits, but a little bit lighter, and noticeably sweeter. You can have these with butter and jam (or, more likely, clotted cream and jam), but unlike American biscuits, I’d never dream of serving them with anything savory like a sausage gravy. You will sometimes see bits of dried fruit, like currants or dried blueberries, baked into them, but this isn't all that common, and it's basically the extent of weird baked-in flavorings. You will sometimes see these baked into a triangle shape, but more commonly, they are round. They’re great as a breakfast food, but they’re better with an afternoon tea; you’d probably never see them as the accompaniment to a hearty, savory dinner.

American scones:

American scones are denser, sweeter, and significantly more buttery than British scones, without the more clearly defined layers that British scones have. They are almost always baked in a triangle shape, and only very rarely baked round. American scones come in a variety of flavorings – it's not uncommon to find pumpkin spice scones, double chocolate scones, lemon strawberry scones, blueberry scones with fresh blueberries baked right in, etc. It's also not uncommon to find them glazed, like a doughnut (but usually slightly less so). You do not typically top these with butter or jam, or indeed, with anything – they are eaten as-is, as an accompaniment to coffee or tea. They are mostly a breakfast food, though they may occasional feature at an afternoon tea, if someone even has one of those, which in the States, people mostly don't.

American cookies:

American cookies are exclusively a sweet dessert. They are often baked soft, and best eaten warm, although they're perfectly fine to eat cooled, and you can certainly find shelf-stable cookies in stores (which are usually hard, rather than soft, see eg. Chips Ahoy). Oatmeal raisin cookies come the closest to the place that American scones leave off, and it isn't very close. All sorts of flavorings and mixed in bits are common, although chocolate and nuts are more popular mix-in additions than dried fruit. Glazes are fairly uncommon, but not unheard of. The archetypal accompaniment for American cookies is a glass of milk, although they're perfectly nice to enjoy with tea or coffee. They are not, however, a breakfast food. Americans do consider shortbread and gingerbread to both be types of cookies, but if you refer to "cookies" in the abstract, those aren't what people typically think of.

British biscuits:

British biscuits are like American cookies, but pretty much always hard and served at room temperature. I've even heard the opinion that a British biscuit should always be "crisp", with softness as a sign that a biscuit isn't fresh. Americans are familiar with this style of treat, and generally think of British biscuits as "the type of cookies that you get in a tin" – they're very much a thing in America, but they're considered a smaller and much less popular subset of the broader "cookie" category. Like American cookies, these are often eaten as a dessert, but they are much more commonly seen as an accompaniment to tea than the American cookie is.

Kenz apparently missed the parts about "quarantine" where everyone's rights were infringed for the sake of public health. The parts where the world collectively fell into a police state with mob insanity. Kenz thinks life is supposed to look like prison.

all of this. heavy on “the fastest way to discourage fandom writers is by rating/assigning numerical value to fanfics”. also the “but don’t you want to get better?” argument is so exhausting to me. because if us fanfic writers want to “get better” at our hobbies, the things we do out of love, and if we want constructive criticism, we will either directly ask for it (so if we didn’t ask, keep your opinion to yourself) or we will go to our trusted friends, whose opinions we actually value, for their feedbacks.

because more often than not, the unsolicited constructive criticism random strangers give us isn’t even constructive criticism but what these people personally want to read. so here’s the thing, us fanfic writers write for ourselves first and foremost. we appreciate people who read our works and show us support, but we’re writing and sharing our works for free — it’s our hobby and passion, our source of comfort, something we do as a form of self care, it’s not a job we are paid to do — so we’re not writing to please anybody but ourselves.

you don’t go up to a stranger you see in public, tell them what you dislike about their clothes and how they can “dress better” then defend your actions by claiming you “have the rights to criticize their clothing because they are in public”.

If you can't take criticism, you're in the wrong line of work.

You're writing is vulnerable. Publicly publishing means to present your work to the world. For good or bad that people may think of it, once it's out there it's open season. People may like it. People may not.

Getting mad at readers is a great and certain way to kill your relationship with them. Take the criticism with a grain of salt, but for your freedom to present your tale, they, too, have freedom to critique it. If you're unable to accept that, then you probably need to reevaluate what you're doing. It's up to you whether you accept or ignore the criticism and grow your skills to appeal to a wider audience; but the criticism will always come.