Dang. I'm in the middle of a Marxist argument about creativity and labour.

I did not want be here. I wanted be in a place where people with editorial skills were not relegated the rank of "labor". I wanted to be in a place where we are all of us creators and consumers are humans, whole and entire.

You know, Gus, when I worked in magazines my big epiphany was simply, "Wow, distribution is a tiny bottleneck." And then people found new ways to distribute - like the mail trees of zines, and then the internet.

So, to me, things look wayyyyy better as far as distribution goes compared to what it was just a couple decades ago. Somebody can post their flash animation or homemade video and have instant viewers right now. Before your best bet was an animation festival or film fest.

I wanted to be in a place where we are all of us creators and consumers are humans, whole and entire.

It wasn't that long ago when most folks were very adept craftsman of one sort or another. I think we're riding the tail end of an historical blip called "industrialization" where that's been devalued.

Joss and Tim are majillionaires. So the creative people responsible for the stuff are making money they much deserve. It's not like FOX got fat while Tim and Joss were eating Top Ramen and begging for spare change.

It's as it should be.

Gus - so the issue of how a creator gets paid for her work is trivial? It is Marxist to notice that writing a book or painting a picture is work? It is Marxist to note that if people are not paid for that work they won't do much of it? It is Marxist to note that if they are paid for it someone has to do the paying and thus must forgo other things they could have paid for and thus must be offered a way to determine that it is worth paying for?

Please make a proposal whole human being to whole human beings. But please remember that it takes whole human beings time to create art, and they need you know to eat and pay rent and stuff. Please remember that composition is not the final step in creating art and that other whole human beings taking additional steps need to eat. Finally remember that art is also about connecting with other human beings; and that if the artist is to have time to create that art, someone else must do the job of connecting that art to an audience, and that this someone also has to eat.

Please make a concrete proposal - one that does not include "then a miracle occurs" as one of the steps. To make it easy make it for one type of creative work - novels, short stories, music .. whatever. Explain how we can have a better system for getting those produce - better for the artist and better for the audience. And this is not snark. I'm quite convinced we can - something that does not involve WindSparrow's fear. But I'm curious to see what you have in mind. Or if all you have is intution I'll be disappointed, but understanding. It is just that from the certainty with which you spoke I was convinced you had a concrete plant; I've been a little impatient cause I thought you had this great idea and were teasing us rather than reveal it. If you were just sharing an intuition then the amount of detail I've put into these posts was rather overkill.

Any talk about the Firefly comic LS set during the series with Joss co-writing?

[link]

There you go, CaBil.

I still wish there was some way the Brust book could be approved by Mutant Enemy. Can't they just say "give us x percent of the gross and make sure it says AU on the cover".

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more people than just Mutant Enemy that would have to sign off on it. Pocket Books and Universal, at least, I would think.

Ah, well. Fiction wants to be free.

I wouldn't be surprised if, once he's convinced it's unsellable, it shows up somewhere somehow.

t optimistic

He won't be the first or the last professional novelist who wrote fanfic for the love of it.

Shh. Don't let Lee Goldberg know.