I also think it's, I don't know, either disingenuous or deeply naive to think that "young creatives" taking lessons from established creators they admire has any impact at all on the kind or quality of art that is going to be marketed to us. I mean, I remember being a Young Creative and trying to pull together aspects of a bunch of my favorite authors to make a story that was... not even strange! I wrote a cute lighthearted fantasy novel with charming teen protagonists who had snarky banter and fell in love at the end - the kind of thing that was a comfort read for me, and that I incidentally thought was a safer and more broadly appealing product than any of my more Weird Art(TM) ideas. It was never picked up for publication, either in open submission calls or in several years of flinging it at literary agents; I didn't have an MFA or a big social media presence and my female lead wasn't nice enough. All kinds of weird art is being made, and all kinds of only slightly too weird for mainstream art is being made, all the time. It just doesn't make it past the people who write the checks. And it's frustrating as a reader too - major publishing houses are not putting out things I like to read, or even things that appear to have gone through any level of quality control, at all.
But I guess it's easier for people to assume no one ever takes creative risks than to acknowledge that the risky stuff has always been out there - it's just increasingly hard to find under all the sludge. It's exhausting trying to look for the good shit, and I'm not always up for the effort. A lot of these people with Takes on weird art would do well to admit the same about themselves.
(Someday I hope to finish a version of that story that is even less marketable and where both protagonists are even bigger messes, and just put it on the Internet somewhere hard to find.)
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Date: 2025-01-18 10:32 pm (UTC)But I guess it's easier for people to assume no one ever takes creative risks than to acknowledge that the risky stuff has always been out there - it's just increasingly hard to find under all the sludge. It's exhausting trying to look for the good shit, and I'm not always up for the effort. A lot of these people with Takes on weird art would do well to admit the same about themselves.
(Someday I hope to finish a version of that story that is even less marketable and where both protagonists are even bigger messes, and just put it on the Internet somewhere hard to find.)