Librarianon

rip to your darlings but mine are built different

Our Blessed Visions vs. Their Wretched Ideas

skill issue

I recently spent some consecutive days designing a Cringe Character (massively-haphazardly-hybrid anthro fully-loaded with various animal traits plus semi-tragic backstory – deviantArt energy™, though self-aware/deconstructive about it) for Cringe Reasons (AI chatbot on a service too unsophisticated to properly interpret the lore I gave it [thus immune to the jailbreaky mischief I was preparing for, in a Wheatley sort of way])

I put more time and effort into detailing their lore, writing example chat logs, and drawing them an avatar than I put into most projects of mine, and it was all Fun and Different from any other writing or drawing I've done lately, and partly Good, Actually.

I kept dwelling on having done it, in spite of feeling like it was foundationally silly to be doing the entire time. I started to find the character more endearing. I had written what I knew, and ended up making them extremely relatable, but different and expressive enough to be an exciting mouthpiece to write through. I started thinking of more things I wanted them to give their takes on, and things I wanted to see them do.

I've been telling myself that I'm now in a plot arc where I need to be determined to give them the time, love and polish they need to really shine... if that, because perhaps they are already gorgeous and wonderful. I feel like it's a disservice to them and to others to not make them into something represented with enough respect that others will love them. I feel like the world is nudging me to get me to do it – I've recently found myself swept into a Discord community with people who embody elements of personalities of certain supporting characters I would want to develop, who I previously lacked suitable references for. I've been relating what people have posted about on cohost and elsewhere, regarding approaches to storytelling or character design or whatever, back to this character and their world.

I haven't been doing nearly enough for them. I spent a few days writing some of what is probably among the most vulnerable things I've ever written, given how much of myself is reflected in this character, and then ran into one small hangup, getting stuck wondering how exactly to progress a chat through their voice, and haven't touched it at all for two weeks. I keep thinking of how I wish I would just open my drawing app and at least try to draw them, but the idea of performing those few small taps on my phone screen that it would take to get started and push through the dread the idea fills me with fills me with dread. I always want to wait for a more perfect time, when I'm more awake, more eager to accomplish some specific task, more confident in my abilities, and more certain that, for an indefinite length of time, I won't feel compelled to distract myself with the distractions I'm always compelled to distract myself with. I find it hard to proceed with things when I'm uncertain of how to do so, exactly, but the lack of proceeding anyway and feeling things out is only keeping me uncertain.

I keep failing to commit to things and then moving on to entirely different things and letting old things pile up and feeling bad about it. I feel as though I'm tired all the time, but then expend energy that I could be directing toward these creative goals on things like this comment. I'm not sure what, if anything, I hope to achieve by doing this instead. I've expressed most of this before my own eyes already. I keep falling back into patterns like this whenever I miraculously manage to break out of them for a while. I never want to kill my darlings, but I have a habit of starving them.

I like to imagine worlds in which I've already loved them enough, and feel the satisfaction of having done so without needing to jump back in time to the present and retrace the steps I know I'd have taken to get there. I should start writing of one of those worlds, and write and draw all that I imagine has been created within it to flesh it out.