A common fantasy among authors is getting picked up for a movie or TV deal. They often see it as a ticket to stardom, to their work gaining the recognition and influence they feel it deserves. However, such a phenomenon is not only highly unlikely, it is downright impossible if you do not subscribe to a particular extreme progressive worldview.
In that spirit, I made the following tweet yesterday:
Indie authors: your work will never become a Pop Cultist's object of veneration. If that is the fantasy in your head, remove it at once. (cc @BrianNiemeier @MrBCWalker @thebencheah @TheBrometheus @wastelandJD @rnewquist @cirsova)
— Rawle Nyanzi (@RawleNyanziFTL) October 8, 2020
If you are an indie author especially, your work will never reach the point where superfans will darn-near worship it, even on a small scale. You won’t become some neat reference, you won’t become some “super-cool thing that all the kids are sharing around,” and you won’t be able to make pronouncements about culture from On High that the mainstream press has to genuflect to (if they pay any attention at all, it will be to attack you in a manner in which you won’t benefit.)
However, I got surprising responses to the tweet, most of them disdaining the very idea of reaching this sort of cultural saturation, mostly because it would make them highly public figures whose every utterance would be scrutinized by superfans with serious emotional issues.
That being said, a couple of the respondents stated that they didn’t mind selling their work off — one of them simply writes for fun, not some great moral purpose, and another of them places providing for his family above the purity of any one IP. Neither is bad; in fact, both are quite sensible and practical, since neither is chasing fame.
That prompted Brian Niemeier to cap things off thusly.
This thread is an object lesson in exactly why we lose.
— Brian Niemeier (@BrianNiemeier) October 9, 2020
He elaborates on his own Twitter:
I've said this before, but it bears repeating:
Tor could offer me Scalzi's contract, & I'd tear it up.
Netflix could back a dump truck of $$ onto my lawn, & I'd burn it.
Jesus Christ is my God, & by His grace, I will never sell out to the Cult. pic.twitter.com/xPSUOezBKH— Brian Niemeier (@BrianNiemeier) October 9, 2020
It’s a sentiment I can get behind. Selling off even my meager IPs would leave it in the hands of people who fundamentally hate it. They’ll turn it into a vehicle for their own extreme ideology, and nothing I say would change that as the corrupted version becomes the definitive version.
The important thing to remember is that this is how an IP becomes a Pop Cultist’s object of veneration. Big media corporations control massive advertising networks, and virtually every IP you’ve heard of and are a superfan of was put there on purpose; it didn’t grow organically. You will not become a “big franchise that everyone’s heard of” on your own because unless you sell out, your IP will not be let into a network that forces things into the public eye with casual ease.
That’s why chasing Pop Cult fame is a fantasy. And that’s why your IP will remain outside the pop-cultural orbit for its entire existence. Treasure your intellectual property and let it grow into something you can be proud of — and something you would gladly pass on to your children to care for.
Maybe then it will gain the right kind of attention.
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a Raygun Romance. Its first volume needs one more editing pass, and the second volume’s draft is over halfway done. The lady at the center of it will be someone worth fighting mutants for, while her boyfriend will be a square-jawed heroic man of action. Despite having a female protag, this will be a male fantasy through and through; the girl is an absolute beauty with a sharp mind, and she loves her hero boyfriend to pieces.
If you think I’m going to let some slimy fools get ahold of this and twist it into crap, you’re out of your mind.
This is work to stand by.
I wouldn’t say that I write for fun. I think that art is important–far too important to be used as a political billboard. I object to the weaponization of art for the same reason–and with the same fervor–that I object to the use of child soldiers.
Art, like childhood, is what we are fighting to protect. It should not be what we are fighting with. To those who would seek to use their art in service of their culture war I would say, don’t bother–you have already lost anything worth fighting for.
That’s a sensible perspective to have. I wouldn’t go so far as to say “all art is political”; instead, I’ll say that all art expresses a worldview.
I actually share your concern; art should allow people to explore unconventional worldviews. I hate the idea of strait-jacketing it in service of some self-styled Party, but the Party is organized, and the most organized always wins. Thus those of us who don’t want to follow Party dictates have some responsibility to band together and push back.
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— Rawle Nyanzi
Rawle,
I echo your sentiment 100 percent. If a studio that wasn’t a Hollywood hellhole wanted to work WITH me—and this is all totally hypothetical, obviously—I’d consider it. But the big pop cult stuff? Never.
A reasonable sentiment. No telling what would happen to your work.