Joseph didn’t make Dragonfruit publishing JUST because an assignment wanted him to write a copyright notice on a website. Joseph, as a creative, needs to nestle all of his work under some kind of umbrella. Not only that, Joseph needs a way to protect what is essentially his children, legally. This is where the copyright comes in. Joseph doesn’t have much tolerance for stealing and plagiarism, especially when it comes to smaller creators.
Now, why is Joseph so concerned over archiving? The process by itself is important. It allows us to look at historical pieces of media for both educational and nostalgic purposes. After all, how would we be able to study the history of something, and therefore learn and grow from it, without it even existing? How would people be able to go back to their favorite pieces of media without them being available to the public at all?
This is why Joseph is so interested in the “lost media” phenomenon, pieces of media that have slipped through the hands of the public and aren’t at all available in full. Yes, there’s the unsettling alure of the unknown, but there’s a far more important silver lining: letting people know that these pieces of media, no matter their size or importance, are lost and that nobody can access them. It’s rather sad, seeing so many pieces of media, especially older ones, be lost to the sands of time thanks to how much of a non-issue archiving was seen as many years ago. While attitudes towards archiving have changed, we had to learn this from somewhere, chief examples being old silent films like London After Midnight, which showed everyone that archiving needs to be taken seriously.
Below is a picture of some concept art for a super old comic that Joseph made. Why it was made and when is a complete mystery (it can be assumed to be at least 5 years old), but Joseph was barely able to save the paper from being recycled. It may as well be the first-ever prototype of Pastel Dragon, something that neither Joseph or the comic’s fans would want lost, as it’s an important piece of history.
