Do you have fear of success?

There is no fear in success, but I just don't want to be point at and be taking pictures from paparazzis without my awareness during my normal life. I don't even want to get the attention of some folks who want to expose me as hard as they can, say the wrong words and they won't leave you even if you apologize.

But what I fear the most is that if my comic becomes successful to get an adaptation series/movies, they might change the skin color of my characters (mostly turning the whites to blacks). Adding modern political agendas, propagandas, and messages that does not fit in the setting of the story, taking out scene that would've been impactful, and developed, terrible executions, breaking established ground rules for the plot to move on, and worst of all is who will take your place in taking care of the content you made. (Poor Stan Lee).

That is what I fear about success.

Just like what happen to current day shows/ movies like Doctor Who, Star wars, Star Trek, Terminator, current Marvel, DC, and The ring of power.

Caring more on modern politics instead of entertainment. Is it so hard for them to know that we want to be away from reality and be entertained by watching series/movies? The answer is yes.

I don't fear of success, instead I want to be more successful

What I fear sometimes is bad reviews of my work
It's like how some popular published authors would never look at their Goodreads' ratings

.....yeah 'cause everyone knows that Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who and ESPECIALLY superhero comics of Marvel and DC had neeeever contained social and/or political commentary in them back when they were originally beginning.....

Anyway, I've actually fully entertained the thought of how my comic would look filmed by Netflix. I think my character line up and such would be right up their alley, for better or for worse

So as a graduate student I do have a (morso than fear maybe) anxiety of success. Neither of my advisors are very statistically or computer oriented, but my project is very statistically and computational in nature.

Meaning I've had to figure out most of my analysis methods by myself by trial and error. My primary advisor now wants me to start consulting and helping the other students in the lab with their analysis given my 'successes'.

I cannot tell you how stressful it is. If I screw up my own stuff cuz I misunderstood some statistical or computational nuisance - cool, no sweat. But if it's someone else's stuff, god I'd die.

Perhaps, bring it back to writing, I have a fear people will think I know what the hell I'm doing 🤣

I had a breakout year last fall with art debut shows. People wanted to "Pick your brain", "do a philosophy podcast", want to know "what's your goals about art". I personally like more spontaneity casual conversation about nothing too deep. Also I couldn't be taken at face value in conversation. To be honest, I did kind of hide a little bit from the public and stopped having conversations about art. Fortunately, I'm not super famous.

Yes, a little bit. More success means more responsibilities, especially if you want to maintain it.
More success means people will place their expectations upon you and your work too. Parasocial relationships are a very common problem these days and also people will find all kinds of ways to judge your character, I think that's what i'm afraid of the most.
Like a lot of people i'm also plenty scared that people will say my work is awful or the writing does not meet expectations... that's something I wish I could face.

Preparation of how to handle all the things that may come with success means all the difference between you and notoriety.

There's a... particular artist I think of when I think of a bad way to handle success. Taking everything with a terrible attitude, treating people like they are just your cash cows, not owning your mistakes and not following through with commitments. I have no fears that I would become this person as I always consider when it's appropriate to be professional or how to interact with strangers, or handle trouble with them. In general this is just a good practice all around.

I think I am somewhat scared of the dark side of fandom. Parasocial relationships, your life gets turned into a tabloid, weirdos hating on you just for clickbait to their fringe YouTube channel. I really applaud creators who can make something popular while still keeping their personal life…personal.

I'm actually looking forward to receiving hate once I'm successful! Is that a bad thing? Maybe I crave drama.
Although I hope the hate doesn't come from my mistake. I try to be a nice and neutral person.
About commitments, even if I become an official author someday, I wouldn't create a lifelong story. I can commit to a semi-long one easily.

Yeah, certainly. Successful people, especially those with stories, get a lot of attention and haters that would be difficult for me to manage.. even constructive criticism is still a bit demeaning sometimes. But, I don't see a big pop like that happening any time in the next few decades, so I'm not that scared, lol

It is not really a fear of success.

It is actually either a fear of change or a fear of not meeting peoples expectations.
When a person becomes successful they become aware to other peoples opinion of them and their work. With so many eyes on them many become stressed that they may not be able to meet their expectations (another example is a fear of making a mistake in social media one day and receiving the hate of millions).

Others, on the other hand, fear change. People are creatures of habits. There are many introverts happy living in the status quo but when said status quo gets broken they become anxious. There are many people who become stressed by having extreme changes in their life. Success is usually a huge change. Another example of change would be getting less privacy (aka reporters).

Basically, people don't fear success but instead they fear what getting success implies.

Probably good to remember that even if you were in the top 10% of popular creators on Tapas, your life probably wouldn't change much. With comic artists and novelists, you really do need to be in the top 1% of the industry to really experience the kind of fame people are talking about here, like widely televised interviews, or really intense discourse on social media that could lead to some people declaring your work "cancelled" kinda thing...

You can be earning a pretty good income from your comics and/or novels, or have been published by some big deal publishers and stuff, and it really won't be like being a Hollywood or TV star. There won't be Paparazzi, nobody will recognise you in the street, your social media following might increase, but it won't explode.

It's really not worth being scared of, or not making for fear of it. Even if the film or TV rights to your work were sold, you probably still wouldn't get recognised in the street. And if you were really scared of that, you can always do a Toby Fox or Hiromu Arakawa and simply have it be one of your quirks that you always appear hidden in some way in publicity photos or as some sort of character. Plus if you were that famous, you wouldn't really need to be on social media all that much, and could hand it off to a manager.

Most comics creators simply don't reach that ridiculous level of popularity though. I regularly chat with people who have a few published books out with good publishers or tens or hundreds of thousands of subs, or who have done work with Marvel or on TV stuff, and they don't get hounded nearly as much as you think. I've done work on Doctor Who stuff myself, and the response is "oh cool" because like... practically every pro comic artist in the UK seems to have done something on some kind of Doctor Who stuff. I've done a lot of interviews with comic blogs and newspapers and it's like... yeah, that's normal, nobody cares. Last Thoughtbubble, I was sat next to a Marvel writer who'd done some pretty high-profile books, and while her table consistently had people at it, it wasn't like Beatle-mania or anything with hordes of screaming fans. When I wandered over to Kit Buss' table, I thought I'd have to fight my way there to chat to my old comics scene friend because....it's Kit Buss, she did the character art and designs on the first season of freakin' Critical Role, but nah, I was able to just swing on over and say hi.
You seriously, literally do need to make a comic or novel with a readership in the million to get the kind of fame where everyone's constantly crowding around you and the paperazzi are remotely interested. It's really not worth worrying about because it's extremely rare. Most artists who are even considered "successful" and have long, successful careers won't experience it.

I don't fear success and if I really put thought to it dealing with people and attitudes isn't something that frightens or upsets me either.

I will say if ever a work of mine got to a place where it got an adaptation of some form I'd have a lot of beef if any of my characters wound up whitewashed (ATLA's live action really fed this concern alongside weird fanart from a lot of different fandoms) but like as long as that's respected I feel like I'd be able to roll with the punches pretty easy

It could be coz I'm young and I've still got a fair amount of fight in me but like I've been online long enough to now how people on the web are and even though I'm not the best at public speaking I'd do my best to "perform". I mean I've managed masking throughout daily life so how different could it be lol~

That's like even with things like burnout or creative blocks, I'm already doing what I can to press through things like that now but I don't think I'd ever come to a place where I hate the one thing I've spent my whole life loving especially knowing how often I came close to quitting just in early childhood.

So yeah not a whole lotta fear. Course I doesn't mean I'm gonna prance about all cocky but I'm always gonna do my best to be ready for whatever life has to throw at me

I think my personal definition of success is more like, i've finally printed it exactly the way I want it and own a copy. After all, that is my ultimate goal and it doesn't matter to me much whether I have five or six fans or just one. Typically more support makes printing costs easier to handle though i'm sure.

I am personally more cautious about response, my insano style brain loves new ideas a little too much. In addition to having to play the role of everyone's perfect pet OnLine. I really just want to draw. I've never had the skills to be the social media manager, businessman, and ultra friendly never having a single disagreeable opinion ever person all in one.

Why is it so hard to be an artist.

I don't know. Maybe? Success for me would just be to have a lot of people enjoy my work but I'm enjoying flying under the radar right now. It's less pressure. I have a job and a life. We could always use the extra money, but I can't see much good coming from going viral or anything else. I wouldn't have time to make the most of it.

Hooray for internet anonymity! I honestly don't fear this stuff, because even if my work gets really popular, that doesn't really mean I have to commit to making more stuff (or a certain quality of stuff) or change the status quo of my life. Except for criticism. Anonymity doesn't shield you from criticism (As for attention, that's basically equivalent to the 'success' I'm aiming for in the first place XD)

I guess I personally aim for the success of each individual story, rather than being successful as a creator. And as far as I know, once a story is finished, its ongoing success/visibility if really out of your hands; most finished works only have a period of fame for like a year or two and possibly get brought up years and decades later as a classic if you're lucky.

That's all I really want; I don't particular care to be someone who consistently puts out successful content to sustain my personal success, so this isn't really a fear of mine either