The Author’s Suffering — Before Writing *The Last Noetik*

Earlier today, while I was in the bathroom and casually jotting down ideas for The Last Noetik, I suddenly found myself understanding why mindless power‑fantasy fiction dominates the mainstream market.

Most readers love heroes, yet despise the suffering that makes a hero.

What they truly want is to slip into the hero’s place—

to ease, even slightly, the frustration they carry in real life.

And so they avert their eyes from hardship, avoiding it as if by instinct.

Reality is painful enough; in fiction, at the very least, they want to be omnipotent,

to stand above everything.

But is that really the origin of writing?

Power‑fantasy stories do make money, and they make it quickly.

But what remains in the end?

A “bestselling author” label?

Hardly.

Most bestselling authors’ names do not survive a decade.

The works that endure for a century are almost always those that speak of suffering.

Only suffering can push human nature to its limits,

and only that can give rise to a classic that outlives its author.

From a commercial standpoint, fulfilling every reader fantasy is the shortcut—

the market remembers only sales and profit.

From a literary standpoint, depth almost always comes from pain rather than happiness;

what readers remember is the kind of depth that reaches the soul.

Most authors eventually compromise between these two poles.

Those who choose to pursue the extreme are exceedingly rare.

And of course, this depends on the author’s own life.

The more one understands the world, the more it hurts—

and the more one understands suffering.

To understand suffering is not to reconcile with it.

It is to extract the most resilient and precious part of human nature,

and to shape it into a literary persona capable of becoming a classic.

Even if that persona is not understood until long after the author is gone.

I believe that is the true meaning of writing.

Well—assuming one does not starve in the process.

By VON(壹叔瘋神)