Why do they progressively suck?

So, I’ve been checking back on some people who I used to idolize when I was younger and still had yet to go to college. People I knew from my old fandoms, back from livejournal, and deviantart, and tumblr, and all kinds of other places and defunct social media sites. They used to be really great artists and writers back when they were around their middle to late twenties, and seemed to have lots and lots of potential to improve in their craft and become great artists.

But they have gotten worse.

I’m not saying that they never got any better as artists or writers. It’s that they actively devolved in their art. Their stories are worse. Their art is worse. Like, much worse than it was back when I first ran into them and saw them start to blossom as young artists.

And it honestly has nothing to do with their skills. Their skills got better, like much better. Their capacity as artists and writers increased, but it is their taste that worsened. It’s like they can make ugly things better. It’s like they can write bad stories better. They have improved but the thing that is wrong in their art is not something that can be fixed such as their skill. It is something inside them that is wrong. Something is wrong with their taste and appreciation. It’s like their capacity to appreciate and understand beauty.

Something’s broken inside them.

Now, this is just my first impression, but the effect has been the same on so many of these people that it’s kind of eerie to think of it. I wonder if this is an effect of aging, or if it is something that happened to them. Something specific to this generation.

I mean, it’s hard to think that it is an effect of aging, since it’s not a matter of skill. As I’ve mentioned previously, they have become much better in technique. They have devolved as artists. They have devolved as people.

I think I’m gonna expand some more on this topic later on, because there are some things that I want to talk about in reference to this. Such as some feelings I had during the last months of my time writing fanfics. The thoughts of being trapped as an artist. The feelings of not being able to do more, to create something greater. The boredom with using characters created by someone else, with a background and lore of their own to which I kept having to adapt. It felt so stifling.

It also makes me realize how freeing and exciting my writing has been ever since I took the plunge and started writing original stuff. How amazing and fulfilling, and how much better I have become even after only a little over a year of active writing.

The other day I got a like on a fic that I had completely forgotten about, so I went to read it. Oh, I remember now. It was “Jealousy” for APH, which at the time was one of my favorite fanfics. One of my funniest and most interesting ones.

But when I went back to read it, I saw how bad it was. How rushed it all felt, how unfunny most of the jokes were, how there was so much that was left untold because it was simply commonly known lore. Honestly, while the overall idea still seemed good to me (and perhaps I’ll try using it later for something), the fanfic by itself was very bad.

I wonder if that is what happened to all of those people that I used to look up to back then. I wonder if they ran up against those same feelings and just…stayed within fandom. They never grew beyond that, and instead started rotting from within, so that no matter how good their skills get, the thing inside them that created beauty and awe is dead and gone.

I’m also reminded a bit of the band Malice Mizer. It’s one of my absolute favorites, and I’ve been listening to a lot of their songs again. I ran into a reddit page where people were asking for bands that were similar to Malice Mizer and while a few proposals were given, it was overal agreed that there is simply nothing even similar to what Malice Mizer used to be.

It seemed strange to me in a way that I’m having difficulty articulating, but I have a few minutes to rest before I get back to writing Blood Song, so I’ll try.

To be honest, Malice Mizer, while it may probably be my favorite band of all time, is not something super amazing that nobody else could have done. It doesn’t feel like something that is impossible to replicate to me, no matter how much I love it.

I mean, it’s a goth/visual kei band that mixes goth rock with classical orchestral music and choruses. How difficult can it be to do something like that? For God’s sake, the guys used the keyboard presets from back in the 80s to make a song that still holds up well now, forty years later (I’m bad with names, but I think it’s Je Te Veaux). If we are talking technical stuff, it can be done. It’s not magical.

But it simply cannot be replicated because it was created by Gackt within the confines of what Malice Mizer was. This means that it was Gackt with his classical music education at a time in his life when he wanted to experiment the most, and he was made to do so within the goth rock genre and the aesthetic that Malice Mizer wanted to project. It was Gackt’s vision and spirit at the time that created Malice Mizer as it used to be. Because when he joined the band, he created songs that told the peak goth story that we know as the golden era of Malice Mizer.

And yeah, the great mayority of MM fans will disagree, but I would challenge them to tell me if this is not true, why is it that Malice Mizer could never become anything like what it used to be. Not even Moi Dix Mois could replicate it. Moi Dix Mois was the thing that got closest, but it was in essence a completely different beast. One only has to watch a couple videos to see that the essence is different. Malice Mizer brought you to a whimsical world of magic and beauty in the french baroque style. Moi Dix Mois was a violent and dark horror goth band. And most of all, you could notice the lack of a classical music training in the members.

The heart was gone. In the same way that I think the heart in all of those people I used to look up to is gone.

The thing that led them to beauty and to things that awe the human spirit is gone.

You know what? It was definitely not aging.