yay855:

cannibalcoalition:

I think that there’s some kind of mindset in a lot of creative communities (authors, artists, musicians) that your work needs to be groundbreaking and thought-provoking for it to matter. That in order for it to be considered worthy of its medium, it must have a greater purpose. 

And if you ask me, its bullshit. 

God, it puts so much stress on a creator to have to be important to someone else. I have seen so many people give up because their work isn’t making a statement, that it’s ‘fluff but no substance.’ As though there’s only room for so many people in a community of creators that only people with a point can get in. 

If it made someone laugh, it’s important. 

If it made someone smile, it’s important. 

If someone looks back on it fondly, even for a moment, it’s important. 

If you enjoyed making it, even if you never shared it, it’s important. 

Sing songs about your cat, draw pictures of lizards eating popsicles, and write a series of novels about time-traveling alpaca. 

The world is already full of super-important stuff. Write fluff. 

Ninja Sex Party is proof of that. One of their best songs is about dinosaurs fighting with lasers, and people love them. Half their songs are about masturbation, and people love them.

Or Doctor Seuss. His books are all about using made-up words and colorful pictures to drive home kid-friendly stories about how a cat with a hat tries to entertain two kids, to give one example.

Or Harry Potter, which was just a bog-standard fantasy story set in a private school whose main villains were a Nazi-like terrorist group, and which didn’t bother to really do anything amazing other than having the characters deal with regular concerns kids normally have.

The value of a story isn’t about how it’s new or different, it’s about how it makes people feel emotions. It’s about expressing yourself, most of all. So write what you want, even if someone else has done it before.