Hacker News Reader

Comment by WA | Hacker News Reader

The funny thing is that most creators experience this, if they put their work out there: What they think is their greatest piece often isn't really perceived as such and some random thing of theirs might struck a nerve in others. This applies to a lot of things: blog posts, Tweets, videos, music, paintings, and obviously games.

View on HN

I've heard that Stephen King considers the Dark Tower series his greatest work[1][2], but almost none of his fans do[3][4]. The intent of a work can be far divorced from the public reception of it.

[1] https://darktower.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_Series [2] https://stephenking.com/darktower/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/02...? [4] https://stephenking.com/xf/index.php?threads/which-king-book...

Reminds me of Archy on Shakespeare [1]:

  here i am ben says bill
  nothing but a lousy playwright
  and with anything like luck
  in the breaks i might have been
  a fairly decent sonnet writer
  i might have been a poet
  if i had kept away from the theatre

  ...

  well says i pete
  bill s plays are highly
  esteemed to this day
  is that so says pete
  poor mutt little he would
  care what poor bill wanted
  was to be a poet

[1] http://ianchadwick.com/blog/three-archy-poems-by-don-marquis...

Well, the first 4 books are some of his best writing, I think... The final 3 suck terribly, and were a great disappointment (to me, of course, maybe some people actually liked them)

Overall I agree, but I actually quite like the ending of the series. I've read lots of folks online who absolutely hated what ultimately happens to Roland - I thought it was a cool ending which was very much in keeping with the sort of "cosmic cycles" theme of the books. That said, there is a _lot_ of junk in those final three books, and the seventh one in particular drops the ball in several disappointing ways before it ends.

It was the best ending possible. The first line of the first book was what hooked me on this universe, so I loved reading the last line years later.

This is painfully true. I put my art on Twitter/IG and the most popular things overall are nowhere close to my favorite. I genuinely can’t even comprehend why they are. I’m not sure I could even attempt to “pander” by making more of the same subject matter, because I’m not convinced I’d replicate the correct thing lol

Maybe ask people, but not sure if it's the same thing. Or put more stuff out there at random.

Apex Twin (the electronic music producer) put hours and hours of unreleased work[1] out for free a few years ago. One striking thing about the release is the number of true gems in there that outshine published work.

1: https://archive.org/details/AphexTwinAllUser18081971Soundclo...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com