Art and motives

Over the years, I have spent a lot of time and a lot of my own money creating and commissioning artwork for the ASFR community.  To me, the most significant expenditures in time and money have been to create the stories, animations (and most of all) comics that I have released.  I spent hours upon hours writing what became a novel-length work of fiction, and I worked my ass off – and literally to exhaustion at my job twice – so that I could afford to commission those comics.

The Technosexual community is very bad at expressing appreciation for the new art and content that comes its way, but that isn’t what this post is about.

No, this is about my motives for spending so much of my own time and my own money on these things in the first place.  You will notice that I have never once charged any money for anything that I have created and released on my own.  I have released everything for free so that all of my fellow Technosexuals can likewise enjoy it completely free too.

I create these things simply so that they will exist.  That is my only motive.  I do not spend time writing stories and scripts so that I can later get some money or leverage with someone out of it.  I don’t look to make back my investment, I don’t look to make a profit.  Even with projects like the comics that have cost me thousands of dollars, I knew going into them that I would never see any of that money again.  I create and commission these things simply so that they will be there for myself and others to enjoy.

That’s it.

So for people to accuse me – explicitly or implicitly – that I must have some other motive for creating the art I make and working on the art I do is extremely insulting to me.  This has actually happened to me before.  On more than one occasion, I have found myself having to defend my art and state my reasons for making it.  I have had to deny that I have some ulterior motive for producing it.

I can not understand the thought process that leads to such a conclusion.  What kind of sick world do people live in where the only purpose art can serve is to be monetized and sold?  Where the only reason for making it is to make a buck, and any reason given other than that must be a lie?

But I must try not to let my immediate reaction of anger get the best of me, for it is actually pity that such people deserve.  They inhabit a dreary world where art exists not for its own sake, but merely as a tool.  That is sad indeed.