[WA]

The funny thing is that most creators experience this, if they put their work out there: What they think is their greatest piece often isn't really perceived as such and some random thing of theirs might struck a nerve in others. This applies to a lot of things: blog posts, Tweets, videos, music, paintings, and obviously games.

[TRcontrarian]

I've heard that Stephen King considers the Dark Tower series his greatest work[1][2], but almost none of his fans do[3][4]. The intent of a work can be far divorced from the public reception of it.

[1] https://darktower.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_Series [2] https://stephenking.com/darktower/ [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/02...? [4] https://stephenking.com/xf/index.php?threads/which-king-book...

[dash2]

Reminds me of Archy on Shakespeare [1]:

  here i am ben says bill
  nothing but a lousy playwright
  and with anything like luck
  in the breaks i might have been
  a fairly decent sonnet writer
  i might have been a poet
  if i had kept away from the theatre

  ...

  well says i pete
  bill s plays are highly
  esteemed to this day
  is that so says pete
  poor mutt little he would
  care what poor bill wanted
  was to be a poet

[1] http://ianchadwick.com/blog/three-archy-poems-by-don-marquis...

[tincholio]

Well, the first 4 books are some of his best writing, I think... The final 3 suck terribly, and were a great disappointment (to me, of course, maybe some people actually liked them)

[agentwiggles]

Overall I agree, but I actually quite like the ending of the series. I've read lots of folks online who absolutely hated what ultimately happens to Roland - I thought it was a cool ending which was very much in keeping with the sort of "cosmic cycles" theme of the books. That said, there is a _lot_ of junk in those final three books, and the seventh one in particular drops the ball in several disappointing ways before it ends.

[arkh]

It was the best ending possible. The first line of the first book was what hooked me on this universe, so I loved reading the last line years later.

[pram]

This is painfully true. I put my art on Twitter/IG and the most popular things overall are nowhere close to my favorite. I genuinely can’t even comprehend why they are. I’m not sure I could even attempt to “pander” by making more of the same subject matter, because I’m not convinced I’d replicate the correct thing lol

[WA]

Maybe ask people, but not sure if it's the same thing. Or put more stuff out there at random.

[EamonnMR]

Apex Twin (the electronic music producer) put hours and hours of unreleased work[1] out for free a few years ago. One striking thing about the release is the number of true gems in there that outshine published work.

1: https://archive.org/details/AphexTwinAllUser18081971Soundclo...