The Collab

It’s been months.

Months of pouring myself into these projects —
lines of code, pieces of dialogue, hidden meanings only I understood.
I wrapped them in noise, faked the signals,
did whatever I had to just to be seen.

Now they’re everywhere.
Front page. Trending.
Top of the platform rankings.

People are quoting my lines.
There’s fan art.
Someone called my characters “the most relatable they’ve ever read.”

I smiled.
Typed “thank you!!” with emojis.
Tried to sound excited.

But inside?

All I felt was quiet.
Not peace.
Just… empty quiet.
Like standing in the middle of a storm that suddenly stops,
but you know it’s not done.

Everyone sees success.
But I see the shortcuts.
The lies I told myself.
The system I bent.
The pieces of myself I gave up just to make something that people would care about.

And the question that won’t leave my head is this:

Would you still love it if you knew how it got here?

If you knew how many corners I cut —
how much of me I buried just to make it palatable, clickable, shareable?

Would you still say it’s brilliant
if you saw the tricks behind the curtain —
the manipulated metadata, the bots, the way I whispered keywords like a spell?

Or would you look at me the way I look at myself now —
not with pride, but with a kind of dull ache?

Because I wanted this so badly.
But now that it’s here, I don’t know if I earned it…
or if I just outplayed the system long enough to fake it.

And honestly?

I’m not sure which one feels worse.

Would you still call it talent,
if you knew how much of it was strategy?

Would the words still move you
if you saw the draft folder full of things I erased to make it more “digestible”?

Would the characters still feel real
if you knew I rewrote them to fit what’s popular?

Would the numbers mean anything
if you saw how I pushed them there —
not with luck, not with timing, but with calculated noise?

Would you still call it art
if you knew I treated it like survival?

Would you still call me a creator
if I told you I don’t even know what I believe in anymore —
just what gets clicks?

Would you call me smart
or just desperate?

Would you say I made it
or that I fooled everyone —
including myself?

And if one day it all fades,
if the numbers fall, the fans disappear,
and the silence returns…

Would I know who I am without it?

Would I still be worth anything
if I stopped performing?

Or is this all I am now?

A result,
not a person.

…But then I think —

Maybe I do know it’s wrong.
Maybe I’ve always known.

That cutting corners,
bending truth,
feeding the machine just what it wants —
it isn’t what I dreamed of when I started.

But sometimes…
you’re not chasing dreams anymore.
You’re just trying to stay in the room.

And in moments like that,
do the rules still matter?

Is it still wrong
if breaking them is the only way to keep breathing?

I didn’t do it because it was noble.
I did it because I was tired.
Tired of being overlooked.
Tired of pouring myself into things no one would ever see.

So I made noise.
Not pure, not perfect —
but loud enough to finally be heard.

And maybe that’s not the kind of story people write in books.
Maybe it’s not the version you tell out loud.

But it’s the truth.

And sometimes,
that has to be enough.

Because if making a mistake
can still lead to something that matters —
something that reaches people —
then maybe it’s not just a failure.

Maybe it’s a step.
A crack that let something real slip through.

If the path isn’t clean,
but the feeling is honest —
then maybe we shouldn’t hesitate.

Maybe being wrong
is part of finding what’s right for us.

Maybe bending the rules
was the only way I could learn to stand up at all.

So no — I’m not proud of everything I did.
But I’m here.
This version of me — flawed, tired, still trying —
made something that mattered.

And if that’s what it takes sometimes —
to make noise,
to be seen,
to survive…

Then maybe the mistake was worth it.
And maybe I was, too.

Then I let it go —

not the dream,
but the guilt tied to how I got here.

Maybe not forever.
But just enough to breathe.

And right when I stopped looking for a sign —
one morning, it came.

The message.

An email with no subject line, just a name I recognized.
A studio. A real one.
They wanted to talk.

They wanted to sign me.

I accepted.

Honestly, I felt a rush — relief, excitement, and a nervous flutter all at once.
This was real. After all the noise, all the waiting, someone finally saw me.

A few days later, I found myself sitting in a meeting room with the studio team —
real people, with real faces and real voices.
It was almost surreal.

As they spoke, I felt a strange mix of hope and vulnerability.
They weren’t just interested in the numbers or the buzz.
They asked about my vision, my process — even the parts I usually kept hidden.

For the first time, I didn’t have to pretend.
I didn’t have to hide the messy parts of my story.

And that made me feel… lighter.
Like maybe this was more than just business.
Maybe this was a chance to finally be heard for who I really was.

I caught myself smiling without thinking.
The kind of smile that sneaks up on you when you least expect it —
quiet, but full of possibility.

No one expected it to go like this.
Not the officials.
Not me.

But somehow, it did.

And for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to believe —
maybe this is where things begin to change.

You Know what, they started by asking about my work —
not just the finished pieces, but the story behind them.
Why I chose the characters I did, what I wanted people to feel,
the late nights and doubts that shaped every line.

I felt myself open up,
sharing things I hadn’t said out loud before.
It was strange — freeing and terrifying at the same time.

Then they talked about their vision for the future.
How they wanted to help me grow,
not just as a creator, but as a storyteller.
How they believed in giving space to voices that might otherwise get lost.

Listening to them, I felt a spark.
A sense that maybe this wasn’t just a deal.
Maybe it was a partnership.

They weren’t just signing me —
they were inviting me to be part of something bigger.

The whole time, I kept thinking:
This is what I’ve been fighting for, all along.
Not just the spotlight,
but the chance to be seen — truly seen.

When the meeting ended, I left with a new kind of hope.
Not naive or flashy — just steady, like the quiet before dawn.

No one expected this moment —
how much it would mean to me.

But maybe it was exactly what I needed.

But no one expected what came next.
Not even me.

Because signing that contract didn’t mean the end of the struggle.
It wasn’t the grand victory I’d imagined.

Instead, it was the beginning of something else —
something bigger, darker, and more complicated.

The pressure wasn’t just about making noise anymore.
It was about keeping up —
about playing by rules I hadn’t agreed to.

Expectations piled up like walls,
and every step forward felt like walking a tightrope —
one misstep could erase everything.

The spotlight was brighter than I ever wanted.
The mistakes?
They no longer belonged just to me.

And then came the ugly truth about the business side —
the side no one tells you about.
The contracts filled with fine print, the endless meetings about numbers,
the marketing strategies that sometimes felt like manipulation,
and decisions made not for the art, but for the bottom line.

Not every studio works like this,
but some do.
And the ones that don’t often get swallowed by the ones that do.

It wasn’t just about creating anymore.
It was about surviving the corporate machine —
a machine that doesn’t always care about the creator,
only the product.

And as the world watched,
I realized the fight wasn’t over —
it had only just changed.

I started to see it not long after the contract was signed.

At first, it was small — little things.
Deadlines moving closer without notice.
Sudden edits that stripped meaning from scenes.
My input slowly shifting from “essential” to “optional.”

They said it was “just part of the process.”
But it felt like pieces of me were being shaved off
to fit a mold I never agreed to.

Then came the contracts.
The kind that looked fair on the surface,
but were quietly written to own everything.
Not just the project.
But me.
My characters, my world — the voice I built from the ground up —
they no longer belonged to me.

I had signed it away.

Fame followed, sure.
Features, interviews, attention.
But the version of me being celebrated?
It wasn’t real.

They cleaned me up.
Filtered out the mess.
Smoothed over the story so it fit their brand.
So it looked like I was a perfect product of their system.

And when the spotlight hit,
I realized something gutting:

The fame didn’t belong to me either.
It belonged to the system that packaged me.
I was just the label they printed it on.

They told me to “be myself online,”
but only if that version fit the image they could sell.
Authenticity was welcome —
as long as it performed well.

The worst part?
It worked.
The numbers climbed.
The reach grew.
People loved it.

But it wasn’t mine anymore.
Not the story.
Not the character.
Not the credit.
Not even the failure, if it came.

Because if things went wrong,
they’d step back and say,
“Well, that was the creator’s choice.”
But if it went right,
they’d step forward and say,
“Look what we built.”

I know not every studio is like this.
Some actually care.
Some fight for the voice of the creator.
But the ones that don’t?
They’re louder.
Faster.
Richer.
And they chew through people like me
before breakfast.

This wasn’t the dream.
This was the cost.

And by the time I realized what I had traded,
it was already theirs.

If someone else gets pulled into this trap,
I won’t lie — it’s hard to get out.

It looks good on the outside.
Shiny.
Loud.
Successful.

But once you’re in,
you start to feel it —
the quiet pull to stop caring,
to just go along with whatever they say.

And the worst part?
It’s easier that way.

It’s easier to stop fighting.
Easier to silence your voice
and let them reshape you into something marketable.

Because resisting costs energy.
Integrity costs time.
And dreaming, in this business,
sometimes feels like the most expensive thing of all.

I get why people give up.
Not just on projects —
but on the dream itself.
On writing with honesty.
On creating something that means something.

Because when every door seems to demand that you trade your voice for visibility,
eventually, even the loudest part of you starts to whisper:
“Maybe it’s not worth it.”

And for some,
that’s where it ends.

Not with failure,
but with quiet surrender.

Not because they weren’t good enough —
but because the system made them feel like their dream didn’t fit.

And that’s the real tragedy.