| abstract | - There you are, riding high on all your success. The critics adore you. Your fans worship you. The Hollywood Hype Machine has put maximum force behind your career. The money is coming in, and nobody dares speak ill of you. You made that work that inspired the hearts of millions. It seems like everything you touch turns to pure, brilliant art. Just the announcement of your name brings anticipation to whatever you're doing next. There's just nothing you could ever do wrong. Then it happens. You do something wrong -- and it's very wrong. Your first flop. Suddenly, things don't look so rosy. You just can't recover from that flop. Everything after this flop starts to define you instead, and you can't recapture or recreate the success of the works that made you famous in the first place. Your positive reviews shrink; your aura of invincibility is forever punctured. Your fanbase is fractured and shrinking. The Hype Machine pushing you forward has now moved on to others. In the most extreme cases, just hearing your name attached to a work, even one connected to those beloved pieces you created in the past, makes people cringe where they once cheered. You are now a Fallen Creator. The life of an artist is full of ups and downs. Unfortunately, some creators, after achieving great commercial and critical success, lose their momentum; their prestige falls far below their previous stature. Not everyone goes from the very top to the very bottom. Those old franchises still make a lot of money. There's usually just enough people willing to watch your new stuff that you can still be considered commercially successful, even if they're also treating it as Snark Bait. But the love is gone, and your flaws are now constantly on display. The acclaim and hyper-success has dropped, and a once solid and large fanbase is now far less likely to be happy with you. The true defining trait of the Fallen Creator is the large drop in prestige, even after factoring out the usual Fan Dumb that chases creators wherever they go. It is not necessarily permanent; even if it is, there could still be a partial comeback. Artistic taste can be fickle. This can sometimes be caused by a combination of Mis Blamed and hubris. The original good productions were a team effort, but one guy took all the credit and was recognized as the sole genius behind the work. When the team breaks up and the sole spotlight hog sets out on his own, people quickly realize he's nothing without his team when he suddenly gets a string of failures. See also Protection From Editors. An artist developing a Small Name, Big Ego can also trigger this; no matter how talented the creator is, people are only going to tolerate a certain amount of ill-advised egocentric vanity projects and diva-ish tantrums before they start giving up. Same can happen to companies who have bad public relations for one reason or another. Compare Never Live It Down, in which a creator is only identified with the worst thing they ever did; they may have done successful work before and since, but they never had the prestige and adoration that makes a Fallen Creator. Can also overlap with Deader Than Disco. Sort of the opposite of He Really Can Act, when someone despised proves they can do well. Contrast Auteur License, Prima Donna Director, Scapegoat Creator. See also Career Resurrection for when the disgraced manage to get acclaimed again.
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