Handuo's story; my revision:

It was late 2020. I had just finished my master's thesis and had become a new graduate—I’m sure you know how job hunting during the pandemic turned out. Countless application letters piling up; two months away from becoming a true starving artist; the world not looking any brighter, I decided to write my thesis as a short science-fiction story.

A friend of mine once said, "History buries more creative minds than it recognizes."

It’s true; it’s a cloud that hangs over every creative. Still, there are some silver linings, some success stories that we mark as a North Star. A couple months later, three writer friends read my short story and generously invited me—a non-native English speaker, who had never written a long-form project before—to join them. We expanded the short story into an animated series.

Over the next four months, I had the opportunity to be part of a "writers' room." Each of us looked at the story and saw different characters, different heartbreaks, different moments of joy—yet we always returned to finding a collective vision for the story. We bounced ideas off each other, we created equally, we created together. Although the writers' room didn’t help me financially, the creative time every weekday night and 3-4 hours of online role-playing, as if this world was real (which it was becoming, for each of us), every weekend, gave me something I am forever grateful for.

The world we once knew was at least six feet away. Still, I had found my silver lining—a new group of friends; a group that kept me moving, that I felt close to, even at a distance. Because of them, I had found a new way of creating. 

The creative environment worked because of a basic principle: everyone constantly inspired each other.

By mid-2021, we finished our "series bible" (the design document for a series) and began pitching it to studios. That’s when our creative utopia ended, and the harsh reality hit us in the face.

In the film industry, people say that only 5% of the scripts are made into films. We were emerging writers without big names attached—it was no surprise that none of the more than 100 studios we reached out to picked our series. We definitely didn’t want our story to end this way, but by late 2021, we had spent nearly as much time reaching out to studios as we had spent writing, and it was wearing us out.

A Web3 friend recommended that I turn the story into a Web3 project, suggesting that we might attract studio attention by first building a community. I applied the Chinese philosophy of “treating a dead horse as if it’s alive (and maybe a miracle will happen)" and designed a collaborative fiction campaign with two visual artist friends, inviting people to expand the short story with their stories.

Fortunately, the campaign took off in late 2022, quickly attracting more than 15,000 online participants. This helped us prove the value of our story and eventually drew the attention of a reputable studio in early 2023. This was it. Our series was finally going to be made! I thought this too.

Sadly, the reality is that the studio still needs to pitch it to streaming platforms, and it won’t be made until they get a green light from them. One and a half years later, it still hasn’t happened, and it's already out of our hands.

How can this be right? I can’t help but wonder how many other creative minds and projects are being buried by these artificial hierarchies. 

Furthermore, many who participated in our collaborative fiction wrote great stories, yet they don’t consider themselves "creative." Since when has creativity—a basic human trait—become a privilege? If the existing system is making things so difficult, why don't we create a better one?

As my writer friends moved on, I kept working on this problem and eventually teamed up with some great people who shared the same thoughts. We've been working on a solution for the past year and a half, which now includes the product this article is published on and the concept that this article aims to deliver.

But before we get to the solution, let’s explore the root of the problem first.

*Tip: Follow the "Top" branch if you'd like to follow the narrative(s) of my choice.