How do you take your work seriously and kill the cringe?

[PapaDom]

You don't get it. You can't escape from being cringe. We were born in it, molded by it. It defined who we are before it was too late.

...yeah dude, just accept the inevitable and try to live with it. I mean everything is cringe if you think about it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe make it your own thing perhaps?

I genuinely want to move forward without fear that I'm gonna be the subject of losers on week long podcasts who nitpick everything to prove that I "Objectively" suck or something.

Just let them talk and be the bigger man in that situation. That will happen to everyone at one point eventually. And besides, if someone would do that they probably are boring to listen too.

[aqua03]

C S Lewis once paraphrased a Biblical quote into this gem:"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

C S Lewis wasn't afraid to be a grown man who writes furry Jesus isekai fic... because he knew he was a grown up and had nothing to prove, and he had confidence that his stories about kids going to a magical land to hang out with lion Jesus were awesome, and he wrote them with absolute sincerity, and treated all the characters like he was writing any story with a less bizarre and fantastical premise.

As a huge Lewis fan, I never thought of it quite that way.... (Maybe because of the amounts his works hold in a lot of circles as well.)

With the Dragoons, being created when I was an edgy teen who just discovered anime, was kind of obsessed with making the Dragoons as "Dramatic" and "Deep" as possible, like "Take the things you like, like Tokusatsu, Bionicle, MLP, MegaMan, etc, but make it series and mature because you're a big boy who don't need kno S&P to hold you down from making "Evangelion/Madoka for Sentai!" basically.

Liike, I just watched Shin Kamen Rider recently, and i realized that even though it was incredibly campy, it was still one of the best films I had ever seen that actually made me feel something in a long time. Mostly because it just kind of ran with it and expected you to get on its level despite things like monsters dissolving into soap suds or Butterfly Armored guy does Sumo moves to beat the stuffing out of the heroes. It knew that it was nuts, and ran with it without breakign character to say "hey, this is nuts!" like every other superhero flick out there seems to do nowadays.

Accepting that will always be trolls and people who don't like your work out there is a fact of life. Does that mean they're bad or I'm bad for it? Not really, there are a lot of good restaurants I like that other family members don't. It's subjective.

The sooner you accept that no matter what we do, our work will not be everyone's cup of tea, the easier it will be to do something.

You can't please everyone because different people may want opposite things, so just focus on what you like.

Anyone pretentious enough to look down on comedy or lighthearted stories is NOT your audience.

And if you are insecure about your writing skills, the best way to practice writing is by making stories. Theory can only take you so far, just like with drawing. A thousand questions can't replace practice and experience, that's how you level up.

So.....JUST DOOOOO IT!!!!!!!!

Yeah.... Everythign feels so "Safe" inside my head where nothing can go wrong, but that's not actually gonna get me anywhere the more I thyink about it.....

This is definitely an anxiety disorder. Completely natural, but if left unchecked for too long will only worsen. Have you been to counseling? Maybe you can discuss these issues with a counselor. Art and Fear is a very good book that approaches some of these topics. You should give it a read:

i have been chatting about it with my counseler and they've helped a lot. Thanks for the book idea as well.

Full honesty, first rule is not to use Reddit/Twitter buzzwords like "cringe". I'm convinced any writer who has that in their vocab is destined for failure (unless you're doing satire, but even then THAT'S difficult to pull-off). Same with people who use "toxic", "woke", "triggered", "soy", etc.

Sees that my vocabulary is half-that type of slanf and half-SAT words... OH NO!!!

I kid, but that is a good thing to think about... Especially since I want to write a story about teamwork and helping others, something Sentai and Giant robots lend themselves to a lot.

I feel I can pull that off well enough with what I have currently at the moment.

(Also I have a lot of friends and family members who sometimes tend to decry things as "Woke" with little to no further explination for the most part and I sometimes worry if they'd think my works came off as "woke" in that way as well, even though I know it probably wouldn't...)

Rick & Morty and Snyder fans do this all the time with their stuff and it's just hnnnngh. "Yeah but the themes" I GOT it.

Ditto here with those two series.

In final words....

I LIKE FLUFFY DRAGON POWER RANGERS WITH ECOLOGICAL THEMES AND 90'S LOGOS AND I AM PRODU OF IT!!!!

[darthmongoose]

I LIKE FLUFFY DRAGON POWER RANGERS WITH ECOLOGICAL THEMES AND 90'S LOGOS AND I AM PRODU OF IT!!!!

HELL YEAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

Follow your dreams! Make the thing you want to exist!

[TheLemmaLlama]

Echoing the message that 'taking your work seriously' is not 'super gritty realistic adult story with no fun allowed', but rather commitment: taking your ideas and running with them without flinching away, no matter how 'ridiculous' or 'cringe' you fear they may be.

I always seem to live in fear of being seen as "Foolish" and "immature" or "Cringe/Objectively bad" for my work and be shunned for it, which isa terrible way to live constantly, but I'm really not sure how to fully break out of it and learn to trust myself and "Embrace the cringe" because I genuinely want to move forward without fear that I'm gonna be the subject of losers on week long podcasts who nitpick everything to prove that I "Objectively" suck or something.

I'm kind of the opposite wrt how this fear presents in me; I'm afraid of being seen as cringe because I take myself too seriously Rather than being afraid of being called 'foolish' or 'immature', I'm afraid of people saying I'm 'edgy', 'pretentious', 'r/im14andthisisdeep' or 'trying too hard'.

I generally feel like people are more likely to mock you if they feel like you'll actually be offended; if you act super chill all the time and generally give off the impression of someone who can laugh off all attempts to poke fun at you, you can get away with writing literally anything of literally any degree of 'ridiculousness'. Which is why it's hard to resist the urge to do this:

weasel out of being laughed at by then saying "haha...ha, oh yeah, it's actually a parody. It's meant to be bad...on purpose..." and having all the characters quip, "Psh, this situation we're in is like a bad comic book lol."