Are you ever ashamed of your ideas?

[kalmia]

Oh yes, all the time. I’m very sensitive to embarrassment and quote unquote “cringe” stuff, so whenever my ideas have like a drop of awkwardness or cliches in them, I get very embarrassed and ashamed. I grew up in an extremely country and conservative town where basically any hobbies other than hunting, fishing, sports, and camping were considered weird. I’ve kind of carried that over to my adult life and so I barely speak about my interests in comics, art, and storytelling. I’m lucky enough to have my mom be very supportive of my interests and a few close friends, but because of that I get very embarrassed and ashamed whenever someone brings up the fact that I enjoy these things.

[AmysGames]

I've been spending a long time slowly getting out of the mindset that my magical girl comic (which debatably isn't even that much about magical girls) is cringe, lol. Nowadays I embrace the cringe.

[Lensing]

I feel that, I come from a small, conservative town and grew up with religion and
high moral standards

[julias_art_universe]

he's a lad I thought he was like 30!!

[abigaillmartin]

Ernest is 27 years old. So close enough. He was a lad once though.

[cherrystark]

Yes. 100%. I've found ways to work around my embarrassment of writing spicier content but I still have to power through the discomfort.

But in general, the only time I've felt "shame" toward my creative ideas is when I'm forcing myself to do something that I didn't want to do, per se. I've written a couple of tropey romances and frankly, I've hated writing them. I felt ashamed to write them, though I did "want" to write them. Eventually, I felt better rewriting them the way I wanted instead of the way that made me ashamed

[julias_art_universe]

so I was close lol. I'm surprised typically my guesses are wayyy off. Everyone is either 16 or 30 NO INBETWEEN

[Nugtown]

Just know, you don't have to admit to what no one has sought to point out! Just don't be heavy handed about most things and you'll be fine, haha

[abigaillmartin]

I wanted to write a spicy for their time scene for Elsie and Roy. I decided to not add it in there because it slowed down the story like by a billion times. I might add one in a future episode possibly.

And what I mean by spicy for their time is Roy in his union suit or long underwear and Elsie in her chemise and drawers.

One thing is clear sure, I am not ashamed of this artwork of Roy! He looks great!

But yeah there was also the motive of me feeling discomforted by the scene. I may do it when all the gang is in Paris or something.

However, with this scene.

I had second thoughts. It’s kinda strange. I put a warning at the beginning of the episode that said “Fair warning: Roy’s butt”

I mean I don’t know it bothers me. I might delete the warning but I’m not sure.

[morganicfoods]

Oh hey those are the ages of my comic's main characters lmao

[sleepykuya]

There's a few times where I have been like...maybe this is too far, in regards to what I make my characters go through. They're not so tragic right now, but I really made the worst (most upsetting) backstories I possibly could for them. Call it projecting a bit, but I was feeling pretty hopeless a year or two ago when the idea came into my head.

Hey, at least it will be worth it in the end, right? For everyone to get what they want

[morganicfoods]

I have very little shame about my work now lol
My mom's decided to make it her mission to promote my comic to every single relative she meets because "the art's so amazing!" (it's not). It's really sweet tho, and at this point I'm no longer embarrassed.

Before starting Light Rising, I had a bunch of ideas for it but didn't think they were legit because it was just a "drama" and mostly pandered to my own interest of girl-groups and made-up politics. It wasn't like any of my other Fantasy Adventure Epic story ideas with like 12 major plot twists or something. I thought no one would want to read it.
This was because the only genre I ever really read/watched was Adventure-Fantasy. Once I branched out just a little bit, I realized how stupid I was being and that I do have an interesting story to tell. And such, Light Rising was born.

[abigaillmartin]

My mom's decided to make it her mission to promote my comic to every single relative she meets because "the art's so amazing!" (it's not).

Cuddos to your mother! that’s so sweet of her.

I wish I had the same.

[VersusVII]

I remember feeling embarrassed for what I chose as an excuse to get Noah into the church. Many people complained that "just for a silly joke Noah is chased by bullies?? Why he said that if he knew it could happen??"
Noah basically tells a girl she is not as flat as he thought. She tells this to his boyfriend offscreen and with his friends he waits for Noah to avenge the insult. They chase Noah, who hides in the local church.

I wanted the chase to begin for a silly reason that ended up in something over the top, like what happens in some mangas or comedies from the 90s. People my age find that situation funny, they understand my intentions... Teens however reject it for beeing "too much nonsense" or something that excalates quickly

[thepenmonster]

Not sure if it counts but I put my rock band 4koma back in the oven because it became nothing but an anti-man-o-sphere screed.

As much as I despise those limp dicks that wasn't the sort of comic I wanted to make.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

I am rather ashamed that probably my skill cannot bring the best in the ideas.
Another case is when I have an idea regarding a field I only have a surface-level or no knowledge of (e.g. swordfighting). Even worse when I have very little ways to confirm it, combined with the dread of being ridiculed by "experts".

[ButterflyEmpress]

I always worry that my ideas are too weird and niche. Like, I show my parents or co-workers what I'm working on and they don't get it or thinks it's stupid (behind my back). I even had my mom compare my art to a middle schooler just starting out. I know my art isn't top tier, but I didn't think it was that bad. My ideas so far are about magical girls and made up deities. The only slice of life story I have stars kemonomimi. No particular reason why. I just like kemonomimi.

Also most of my OCs are black girls, and I'm a black girl, so anyone who knows me IRL is guaranteed to ask the same annoying, teeth grinding, hair pulling question: "Is that supposed to be you?"

[vapidink]

Not really, but I don't think my stuff's out there enough to even approach the territory of "shame". My writing's not the best, but not the worst and I like to think I'm learning everyday, so no shame there. I don't show my fam any of it though, but that's mostly because I don't think they'd genuinely care/enjoy it, and I'd rather they not feel forced to take a look at it or give me fake compliments.

[Lensing]

Thank you for all the answers, it was really interesting to read

[TheLemmaLlama]

Ohh definitely There are a number of things I've been terrified of getting cancelled over when they eventually show up in my stuff, and I never thought I'd talk about them beforehand, but since someone who is 100% not my sockpuppet asked this question, I guess here's my chance

So I have this character who can't just accept things without truly understanding them - including the wrongness of bigoted ideas such as

(cw: bigotry obviously)

'race realism', how defining gender by identity (rather than biology or even presentation) doesn't seem to make sense bc it seems tautological, how there seems to be no way for men to express sexual interest without being accuse of creepiness,

and so this character is kind of torn between:

• 'as long as I don't act on it and actually hurt people, it's okay to just question this stuff in a closed environment that people can avoid if they'll be hurt by seeing me think about bigoted ideas, right?', and
• 'how can I not understand this already? maybe I actually do understand why it's wrong but am just pretending to "just be asking questions" as an excuse so I don't have to acknowledge that I'm a terrible person'

And (not just because of this; there are other reason too) this character sometimes gets in a really bad place mentally; like they do some pretty extreme self-harm. And there's also this sexual bent to the self harm (I guess the best way to describe it is: what's the worst thing you can imagine to happen to a person? What if someone really, really hated themself a lot; then it follows they could legit wanted this thing to happen to themself, right?)

So yeah, this is a plot that's super embarrassing to talk about for a number of reasons

• I feel like I'm centering the perspective of privileged people, and making oppression of minorities all about them
• I feel like I'm guilt-tripping people for speaking out about social justice issues, and getting impatient about explaining it over and over again to privileged people. Like I am legitimately a bit frustrated with people who go 'it's not my job to educate you' in a way that makes you feel guilty for having legit questions, but I do realise the 'just asking questions' crowd is a real problem. And I know that the vast majority of people talking about bigotry legit just want people to stop doing it, not for them to throw themselves at their feet for forgiveness or be so overwhelmed with guilt as to hurt or kill themselves
• I feel like

(cw: sexual abuse)

I might be fetishizing mental illness, and also undermining the idea that 'people with rape fantasies don't actually want to be raped' by having a character who does actually want to be raped, because they feel like they deserve to be hurt that bad.

Anyways, I hope that wasn't too much for this forum