Quote about fantasy?

[Porthos]

Apart from anything else, even if you're trying to get a message across as your motivation for creating it, if it isn't entertaining, people won't engage with the "message" as well as they otherwise might, and possibly at all.

He addresses this point in another post in that thread.

Which, incidentally, is why I keep hammering away at context context context. Isolating single sentences (or even worse, words) while ignoring everything else I think is an unwise thing to do.

I would also point out that he has said elsewhere (though I can't find the exact quote at the second) that if one has been "entertained" by the comic for the last 300 or 400 hundred strips, then one will (should) continue to be entertained in the future (ETA: the quote was actually about rules discussion, not writing FWIW - still instructive reading to see where Rich is coming from IMO).

IMO, what Rich is really saying is that he doesn't want his work to be Just Another Piece of Disposable Entertainment. That doesn't mean he doesn't want it to be Entertaining. It's just.. he wants it to be MORE than that.

Hardly a criticizable stance, I would have thought. But, even after all the decades I've been online, I still get surprised at what is or is not 'controversial' on the net.

[SouthpawSoldier]

Dean Koontz has a character in the Seize the Night series that makes an interesting, related point; people wanting to "leave a mark" on the world are graffiti artists. Entertainment, teaching a Message, et al. I can see his point, to a degree.

Pursuit of knowledge, or approaching any art for the art's sake, is noble. It's self enrichment, answering one's own questions about the universe, or satisfying a need. Entertaining or stimulating growth in others is a nice byproduct, but should it be the central goal? Isn't the universe already wondrous enough without a t metaphorical "Killroy wuz here"?

Little too tired to go too in depth, especially when battling a tablet autocorrect.

[Lombard]

Rich's views have evolved over the years and will continue to evolve. The archetypal lad craving fun for fun's sake, the young man with his strident pronouncements of philosophical correctness, the middle-aged pragmatist, the greybeard reveling in the miracle of it all. As long as there's talent and motivation we can enjoy the best of each phase.

[factotum]

That's actually a very good point. OotS has been going for ten years now, and it's quite unusual to see any sort of story develop over such a period of time. Even in the case of stories which took that long to write (e.g. The Lord of the Rings is a good example here) all the *reader* sees is the final result, which no doubt has a lot of the inconsistencies of tone edited out in the final draft. In the case of OotS we're seeing it as it's written, thus we tend to notice the changes in style and content moreso than other works.