Look, here's the thing. Or here's what I think is the thing. I'm in a really weird place intellectually and emotionally right now, I'm probably less stable than usual.
The cult of the idea that a writer or a craftsperson or an artist becomes successful on the sole merit of the sweat of their brow is utter bullshit. This is like the only thing I've learned in the four or five total years of my life I've spent working on sets and in production offices and editing rooms as an assistant/utility-infielder. And I say this as someone who still clings to the idea that I'm going to figure out how to sustain myself through creative effort.
No matter how much work and frustration, no matter how good or how bad your stuff is, depending on your medium, a lot of people decided to invest themselves into the idea of elevating your work along the way. Editors, executives, critics, the people who paid their money at the festival screening, the people who built the fan sites that made some paper or teevee channel think you were worth covering, your mom's college friend who knew an agent. Producers who put their asses on the line to talk to you instead of making easier money making Transformers 4. All kinds of people in the business and the fan-sphere putting their time and money into you, just because they believe in your stuff that much.
On the internet, with something like Achewood? All the early adopter fans who became true believers of your work and got that fuck*ng word of mouth out. These things don't just happen. Hell, you guys and girls who are the real oldbies around here, you were fuck*ng right there at that early kernel doing that work. Without people like you pushing everyone to look at this brilliant thing, there is no success.
You may be able to argue that Achewood as an idea exists on an island first and foremost in the creator's head but the success of the strip does not.
You don't own your work totally, just because you created it, if you put it out there to be consumed. If you sit on it like fuck*ng shiftless cowards terrified of being told they're not God special little snowflakes... like I do... that's one thing. You can own your own little Schrodinger's ideas that both are and are not when you're a gutless pig like myself.
But when you release your work, you do... you do release it into the world and while the initial effort is all yours, the effort toward whether it is seen or unseen, ignored or hailed as a masterpiece and whether you are successful enough to get the honour of releasing other work to significant other eyes is in the hands of middlemen and paying customers and in the case of an Achewood, tens of thousands of unpaid preachers to the cause.
Ownership in the initial work is yours and an artifact of your hard work. Success... if it is a success, if you are a success... of a work of craft or art ESPECIALLY in this day and age, success is an artifact of not just the creator but also that of dozens of middlemen who could make their money on something easier and thousands of unpaid enthusiasts going out and preaching your book and buying your shit.
It is not as simple as having your ball and going home with it. If you never took that ball out to play a game, sure, it's your fuck*ng ball and mazeltov if you wanna be a selgiraffe fuck about your fuck*ng precious-ass ball. If you've been playing a game in the field with it, with seventeen other players and there's been people selling tickets and buying tickets and running around convincing other people to pay for tickets too...
It is not entirely your ball anymore. And that's weird and counterintuitive and terrifying and fucked-up but it is true. Probably always true and probably never truer than now.
Let me, let me think a bit more about this, I'll be back.
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Topic: HEY CHRIS WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?! WHERE ARE YOU? Finally answe (Read 33981 times)