#never got far in the game because one part made me recall minor childhood trauma

[shishkili]

I HATE BEING FORCED BY THE NARRRATIVE TO MAKE BAD DECISIONS I HATE BEING FORCED BY THE NARRRATIVE TO MAKE BAD DECISIONS I HATE BEING FORCED BY THE NARRRATIVE TO MAKE BAD DECISIONS

[ingridgovaninsights]

The Charlotte Chapters- Part 4

I think things can get quite complicated when two close friends decide to “get friendly” with one another. But with the current state of my mind, nothing really mattered. The technicalities of things, the minor details, could be figured out some other day. Or never. What mattered was the moment, and as long as it felt good, it was approved by me.

Elliott and I did a bunch of crazy things together. I hastily gave up my apartment and took to living mostly on the road, occasionally crashing at the cute cottage or at random hotels in various cities. They weren’t the nicest of places- sometimes the room hadn’t been cleaned or it reeked of cigarette smoke. But hey, if you’re going to be staying in hotels so often and you don’t have the money… beggars can’t really be choosers.

Many people would probably ask me how did I have the money for all of this? Hotel rooms really add up, and if you’re always buying dinners at restaurants… Well, I sold a bunch of items I had lying around- retro gaming consoles I never used, trading cards from childhood… really sentimental things, but nothing practical. But since I was feeling reckless, I sold it all for money so I could do more reckless things. When I think about it now, I really miss hoarding those useless things- they brought me a lot of good memories. But I was able to sell them and make plenty of money so I didn’t have to work… because it’s so great to have a large gap in your work history.

Elliott, on the other hand, did some odd jobs. He did yard work for people, or fixed their cars. One day, he brought something up to me that I thought could be quite interesting.

“Let’s say, hypothetically, I had a way we could make even more money, on our own schedules,” he said as we were pulling up to a random Motel 6.

I was just finishing off my last Tim Hortons coffee. I needed three or four doses of caffeine to feel even slightly awake, so as odd as it sounds I just started buying a tray of them and drinking them back to back. Ever since Ross and I split, I was not all there. It was a strange feeling- I felt as if I was dreaming half of the time (and to this day some of the memories are still quite foggy). It felt like everyone was speaking to me through a tunnel, and all of my senses were dulled. I believe it’s called disassociation. That is why I needed to do crazy things- only a few things now would make me feel “alive”.

“Well, if it makes us more money I’d love to hear it,” I said.

“Okay. I’m not speaking hypothetically anymore then,” Elliott said. “So a dude from school that I know has connections to a few people that can help us.”

“Help us in what way?” I asked.

Elliott laughed nervously. “Okay… so don’t freak out. But they can get us selling weed.”

I wasn’t freaking out at all. Nothing freaked me out anymore. I mean, I’d never sold any sort of drugs before, but what was the big deal? It was probably going to be legal in a couple of years, anyways. Besides, there were harsher drugs we could be selling.

I shrugged. “Sure. We should meet with them to discuss it.”

“If you’re sure,” Elliott said. “I guess we can meet with them tonight.”

***

Looking back on it now, we were meeting with some really sketchy characters. Elliott and I pulled up into the parking lot of an abandoned building, and we saw four middle aged people on motorcycles. One woman and three men. They looked like a very stereotypical “biker gang”- leather jackets, ripped jeans, black boots, sunglasses. The one woman had stringy grey hair all the way down past her bum. How did she not get it all tangled and in her face when riding that motorcycle? That kind of thing would drive me crazy.

“Hey, fellas!” The woman cried out, and I could tell she was a little slow. We had already gotten out of the car and we weren’t standing far away. It’s like she didn’t know how to control her volume. She waved frantically.

Elliott and I exchanged a glance, then we approached them. It was such a strange experience- to have the complete absence of any real fear. It’s like the whole trauma of the breakup had cured my anxiety. Or maybe I was just numb to the point of being reckless. Before Ross and I were done, I never would have thought about selling weed, driving all around the province or getting drunk on weekdays. I had fleeting thoughts about trying maybe weed, but that was as far as that went. I was the type to stay in on a Friday night, watching movies or reading a book.

“I’m Sidney,” the wild-looking woman said to us. “You can just call me Sid, though.”

She extended a gloved hand for us to shake. I boldly extended mine and shook firmly. Sid had the grip of a man. She looked at me with a smirk. I could guess what she was thinking- what was a young woman like me doing here with these people? Any reasonable person would wonder that. I looked so “pure”- natural wavy brown hair, falling down just past my shoulders; freckles sprinkled all across my cheeks and nose; no makeup whatsoever; I wore a modest long-sleeved shirt with absolutely no cleavage, unlike many women my age, and regular blue skinny jeans. Whoever she had imagined would show up today, I sure wasn’t that girl.

And I think she wondered the same things about Elliott- he always looked so clean cut, after all. Today he sported a nicely fitted blue dress shirt and black jeans, no rips. It was a trend these days to have jeans with rips, but Elliott never jumped on board with that. So we we likely weren’t their typical acquaintances. So what? We were thirsty for money and excitement. Was that so wrong with that?

“I’m Elliott,” Elliott said gruffly, “and this is my friend, Charlotte.”

Elliott always used the term friend when he brought me up in conversation or introduced me, but to be honest we’d been acting a little less platonically lately. After the night at Elliott’s cottage, things were slightly out of sorts. In my head I told myself I’d amount it to nothing more than a drunken night, but the next day we both weren’t acting the same at all.

I recall we were driving around aimlessly- we never had an exact destination in mind- and Elliott reached for my hand. It made me feel a little odd, but I held on. He swirled his thumb around the top of my hand, and I just… I felt so strange. I was happy, though, which surprised me. We blasted some music through his BlueTooth radio, each sharing various songs that meant something to us or told a good story. We loved songs for their lyrics.

When I played him a song called “Fuzzy Blue Lights” by Owl City, he squeezed my hand and smiled.

If I was standing on the balcony

And you were walking down below

I’d feel rather depressed and out of place

And lonely just to watch you go

If you were swinging from the highway overpass

Within the western hemisphere

I’d feel rather afraid and insincere

If you began to disappear

We always quietly shared songs like that with one another as a way of expressing ourselves. I loved sharing those moments with him, and it was really emotional for me, at least.

“So? Are you ready to hear the details?” Sid jolted me from my daydreaming.

That was when I asked a rather uncalled for question.

“Can I take a ride on your bike?”

***

Sid wasn’t shocked by my question in the slightest, as if she got asked that a lot. She flipped her brittle grey hair over her shoulder and shrugged.

“Yeah sure, why not? Hop on.”

I sat down behind her, and awkwardly didn’t know what to do with my hands. As if Sid read my mind, she said, “put your arms around my waist!”

Sid slid her helmet on, and then she stared at me. Surely she didn’t want to risk getting into trouble because I wasn’t properly equipped for the ride. She turned to her friend, an extremely tall, scrappy looking man probably in his mid-forties. With his “biker gear” on he looked menacing, probably well over six feet. He had a shaved head and a full red beard, tattoos on both his hands and another one poking out of his shirt. They seemed to be the classic “scary looking people”, the kind your mother would hold your hand for when passing by.

The man had just been pacing back and forth. I originally thought he was just impatient to get the business going, but something was really bothering him. His facial expression was really tight and stressed, and he was muttering under his breath.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he said to no one in particular.

Sid didn’t seem surprised by the man’s behaviour. She held out her hand to him. “Hey, Rob, can this young lady borrow your helmet for a quick spin?”

I’m going to borrow his helmet?! I thought in disbelief. That surely won’t fit!

But Rob wasn’t listening. He continued to pace, growing angrier.

“Fuck you!” he suddenly shouted, throwing his fists around in the air.

Sid remained calm. “Rob, could we borrow your helmet, please?”

One of the other men gently tapped Rob’s shoulder. Rob startled as if suddenly awoken from a deep sleep. He looked flustered for a moment, then finally handed Sid the helmet.

Elliott gave me a look as if to say, What the fuck are we even doing right now? And I agreed, but I didn’t care much. I just wanted to ride this goddamn motorcycle.

Before I even had a chance to finish putting on my oversized helmet, we were speeding out of the parking lot. We turned onto the old country road and luckily there were no other vehicles to be seen, because Sid was definitely breaking the speed limit by far.

But it was glorious. Elliott and I had driven pretty fast in his cars before, but something about riding a motorcycle was freeing. Having the wind rushing through your hair and slapping your face was refreshing. And it felt dangerous. We were so exposed. I loved every minute of it.

“I didn’t take you for the adventurous type!” Sid yelled over the wind and the motor. “You don’t even know me; I could take you somewhere to kill ya, or drive us off a cliff for all you know!”

Sid clearly didn’t get it. “That’s what makes it so thrilling,” I said.

***

There’s this phenomenon called “Call of the Void”, or as they call it in French, “L’appel du Vide”. Essentially it is talking about the intense urge to do something self-destructive, the intrusive thoughts you might have. It’s like something dark is calling out to you for some unknown reason to go jump off a cliff or swerve into oncoming traffic.

I remember Elliott sharing this term with me one day; in fact, the first day I tried weed. I think he had this on the brain a lot, because he worried about me. He considered my behaviour to be “self-destructive”. And I suppose it was. At the time, I didn’t give a shit. All I knew was that weed gave me the kind of high I needed to feel okay temporarily, and that was just one of a few things I did to get by- drinking, crazy long road trips, trespassing, speeding on a motorcycle. Hey, if it doesn’t kill you, right?

But “Call of the Void” speaks to me so much. It really did put a name to what was happening. These destructive habits are a temporary fix, and looking back now I’m really glad that I didn’t turn it into a permanent one.

Elliott and I were sitting in a field, halfway across the province, way at the end of a dirt road. It was probably one or two in the morning. We each had a joint between our fingers, Elliott had his arm around me. Elliott had tried weed before- he had done so in high school, and didn’t mind it but he had to be careful because sometimes it made him go a little psychotic. He warned that it could do that to people with a predisposition to mental illness.

I was slightly drunk. I was drinking some sort of fruity cooler, which was lukewarm after sitting in Elliott’s trunk all afternoon. After all, we never did stay in one place for too long. We had made a fair amount of money selling weed, but Elliott was the voice of reason between us. He tried to sway me from the idea.

“Hey, Char,” he said, his voice quiet, relaxed. “I know this business is pretty good money, but we can’t keep doing this forever, you know? Don’t you think at some point we should try to find jobs, earn money in an honest way?”

I looked at him. It had been about fifteen minutes since I first tried the joint, and things seemed to be slowing down. I don’t think Elliott had actually spoken that slowly, but it took me a moment to process it.

“Perhaps,” I said, “but I would like to know something first.”

“What’s that?”

“What is going on… between us.”

Not only was I starting to get high, I was also feeling the effects of my drinking. My head sort of swayed from side to side. I felt really nice, like I could chat about anything and it would just be a lovely time. Like I could be honest, like I had no worries, like nothing at all mattered.

Elliott seemed to think about that. He took another puff. “Charlotte, you know how I feel about you,” he said.

“Tell me,” I said.

“I really really like you,” he said, leaning in to kiss me.

I started to laugh. “Really? Why? I don’t really understand it, you know? Like I’m so weird, and I’m so messed up. Everything in my life has gone to shit.”

“I think I just have a thing for damaged goods,” he told me, and we kissed.

***

Things never stayed the same. After all, humans are always changing, whether we like it or not. And some things have to change more urgently than others. Did I really expect to be living on the road, drunk and high, for the rest of my sad life?

One random night, Ross sent me a text. It was fairly to the point-

Hey. I’m not sure if you still have my number, or if you even want to talk to me, but it’s Ross. I think we need to talk. Can you let me know a time that works for you?

I felt my stomach do a back flip. What did it mean? Was he just there to chew me out some more about things I never did because he was bored? Or was he trying to get me back?

We were at a hotel at the time. Elliott had just stepped out of the shower. He saw me sitting, frozen, at the end of the bed.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

I couldn’t speak, so I just showed him the message. Elliott was silent then, too. I’m sure he had a lot to think about, as did I.

My friends and family would have told me there was nothing to think about. It’s over, it’s been over for months now- it had been three long months- and he was a jerk. I shouldn’t go running back, they’d say. I’ll regret it, they’d say.

But Elliott knew this was something I would consider, because he knew me quite well. He probably knew me better than anyone.

So we sat in silence for probably half an hour, the only noise being the distant whir of cars passing by outside. I finally stood up, paced back and forth a couple times, then started to type a response-

Let’s meet tomorrow afternoon.

When I showed Elliott I sent the text, he looked slightly shocked, and not a lot of things shock him. What did he expect? I was weak and fragile, and easily manipulated.

“Guess I’m driving you home,” he mumbled.

[elddansurin]

there’s a pretty good character development questionnaire going around my dash right now, so i took the liberties of filling the entire thing out on my own time, because buddy, you gotta make your own destiny.

1. Who’s the oldest character of yours that you still use? I had to give this one some thought bc my gut reaction was to say Tuo, but it turns out the answer is Falshavo, because I can explicitly remember drawing him in the hazy, far gone year of early 2006 when I was taking a drivers ed course. He started out as either some bastard of a Silent Hill fanchar, or a heavily SH-"inspired" character, and I think he could have at best been called a demon? I was like 16 when I made him, cut me some slack. In any case, Fal has changed very much over the years, most recently into an original species that can best be described as something visually between a satyr and a manticore, but is actually neither of those things. For quite a while he was based out of my one world, Undecim, but recently I decided he and his ilk would be better suited to my OTHER world, Aphelion. As far as motivations go, he's swapped from evil/crazy/malevolent to a much more nap-based personality. Two things that haven't changed since I've made him, though, are that he's blind in one eye and doesn't talk very much. So there's that.

2. Who’s the oldest character of yours, defunct or not? That honor goes to Jonathan, who was definitely and absolutely a FF7 fan character back when that game was new and I was still in my larval stage. He morphed into a mental illness coping mechanism as my childhood went on and he's just had a whole lot of interesting/embarrassing iterations, but I guess that's to be expected of a character I made in fucking 1997. That said, I retired him a few years ago. Tried briefly to bring him back, but I just wasn't feeling 2.0, so I didn't force it.

3. Has creating a character ever made you realize something about yourself? I was GONNA say no, but then it just dawned on me how much time I spent creating gay male characters in my early teen years before THAT realization caught up with the rest of me. I'm not going to say the characters themselves were involved in the inevitable personal revelation (they weren't), but more than anything I just think it's proof that pieces of my brain do not always work as a cohesive whole. I knew before I knew, so to speak, and it showed up in my characters.

4. Any minor characters that have either taken over or branched off into their own stories? UHHHH Your Boy Kolja was initially a primary antagonist in Mikhail's storyline, back before I decided to fundamentally retool a lot of things about Mik's whole deal. But I'm nothing if not predictable, and I'm a guy who loves a good villain, so I ended up making Kolja FAR more fleshed out and engaging than the actual protagonist of the story. Same thing kind of happened with Anzo, who was initially kind of an offshoot wildcard character in the horrible and confusing political landscape of that entire bed of storylines. But uhhh, that didn't last.

5. Do you prefer to make human, animal, monster, or _____ characters? Why? My characters are all unambiguously human/humanoid. Even the monsters are going to have recognizably human faces because I have a hard time getting emotionally invested in a character otherwise. I'm really not sure the reasons for this. There's a few exceptions, ofc, but not many. Peeling off for a sec, in regards to making characters in TES settings, I definitely am biased toward the elven races because if I wanted to make a human character, I'd do so in own properties. Also the human races in the elder scrolls are kind of... underwhelming...

6. When creating a character, do you come up with the visual concept or the written concept first? Written concept, almost every time. The rare exception is usually with minor and/or lore-based characters, like gods or monsters, since I rarely explore those characters as deeply as I do the regular types. But if I'm making Just Some Dude, I'm probably going to have a full written concept drafted out months to years before I ever get a concrete idea (much less an actual depiction) of what he looks like.

7. Do you have characters that you know you’ll never use, but can’t bear to get rid of/recycle? I'm going to have to go ahead and call back on Jon for this one, largely based in both his history and his significance to me and my own development. He was my primary, go-to character for such a long time, I don't think it'd do him justice to ever properly put him out to pasture or recycle (and I'm a chronic recycler, so that's saying something). He kind of exists in a creative limbo, and that's where he's gonna stay.

8. Is there a character that embodies your good traits, or traits you wish you had? Good traits? In all seriousness, probably. Nothing I am consciously aware of, so cop-out answer on this one. I'm also not really one for wish-fulfillment characters, so that's a no on "person I wish I was" aspect, sorry.

9. Is there a character that embodies your bad traits? Several characters? Which ones and what traits? HAHAHA hoo boy. Gavriil is the embodiment of my general shiftlessness and crippling self doubt, Tuo embodies my crushing depression and self-destructive tendencies, Ludo represents my reoccuring fear that I’m stuck in circumstances so far beyond my control that I ought not bother to try and change, and I'm not even gonna TOUCH on which of my boys were created as blatant outlets for trauma. There's a fun little game for you, try and figure that one out yourself.

10. Is there a character that explores your interests or fetishes (orrrr is that just all of you characters)? Uh, flat no on the "fetishes" part, but yeah, most of my characters tap on my significant interests in some way or another. Most concrete example I think is Desoto, who I designed (or, well, redesigned if we're getting technical) when my interest in astronomy was at its peak, back before I realized physics is something I'm terrible at and makes me cry/change my major in college. I still love astronomy and astrophysics on a conceptual level, but the second you break out equations, I'm gone. My Boy Desoto, though, I have designed to be significantly more likely than me to do math, so good for him. Funny enough? I've never made a character who's into geology. You know, my actual field. Go figure.

11. If you have characters that embody certain traits of yours—good or bad—has writing them changed how you view those traits? Has it affected you in any way? Not really, at least I don't think so. I might wake up in the middle of the night with a better answer screaming to my forebrain, but my gut reaction is a no. I tend to go into writing something with fixed views, and I can't recall an instance of me suddenly deciding "hey, actually this thing is good/bad and I never thought of it this way." I've definitely started viewing the characters themselves differently after starting a project, but never really the traits they personify.

12.   Do you fantasize about being any of your characters, or are you more detached? Definitely the latter. I'm not shy about putting pieces of myself into the characters I make, but at the same time, I really do not see myself in them, nor do I wish to. There's a firm level of detachment in that these are my creations, and rarely do I mold the sort of character where I can in good conscience think "yeah, that's who I want to be." A big part of this is that my character creation/world building habits are and always have been rooted in maladaptive daydreaming (and I have only recently figured out the terminology for a phenomenon I was otherwise well aware of, funny how that works), and that has always been based in me trying to distance myself from who I was (and at times, am). I don't want to put myself into new shoes, I want to focus on someone who isn't me, but has weird, tenuous connections to me. If that doesn't make any sense, pretend that it does.

13. Do you create playlists for your characters? No, and that's based mostly in the sad reality that I stopped seeking out new music years ago. That, and I've never been much of an audiophile, so there'd just be so much overlap in any playlists I created that honestly, why bother. That said, I will occasionally listen to something and think "holy shit, this is ___". First example that comes to mind is Motorhead's Dust and Glass, which is very much the anthem for Ludo. Do me a favor and listen to that song, and you will know everything you need to know about Ludo. Also, I’ve got a handful of songs that make me think very much of Gav, but most recently, I decided that Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street is a good song for him. Like, also for me? But mostly Gavriil. It can be both.

14. When writing for specific characters, is there anything you have to do to get into the right mindset? I've gotta be in the right mood, and that's all it comes down to. I'm still trying to figure out the secret to writing something that's counterintuitive to my mood, but I'm not there yet. I know the answer is "just fucking do it," but here's an idea: shut up? I dunno. I'm a very flaky content creator.

15. Which character is your guilty pleasure? Right now, it is absolutely Gavriil. For a long time I had such an issue with allowing myself to have characters based out of properties that weren't my own, so I started out feeling very self-conscious about putting so much time and thought into Gav. I have since made like eight or nine more TES-based characters in his wake, but some residual sentiment still lingers! See also: I still am too self-conscious to publically share the story I've been writing with him. I'm not sure if that's rooted in me playing in somebody else's sandbox, or if the story itself is coming out of a place of extreme personal vulnerability (I wrote the bulk of it during my recent Complete Mental Breakdown™). Or maybe I'm just self-conscious about my writing in general. Who knows! But at the end of the day I absolutely love Gav and I'm having so much fun working with him. Before him was Kolja for many years, and Tuo before that. Don't get me wrong, I still adore the both of those guys, I just have a new focus for the time being.

16. Is there a character of yours who’s a real struggle to write/draw? Why do you think that is? Right now, definitely Anzo. He started out very different from what he's become, and at the end of the day, I'm still not sure what exactly I'm trying to do with him. I was/am trying to write him in a story, but it's been proving very difficult because I'm just not sure what I'm trying to accomplish with him. Initially, his core concept was based very deeply in a revenge fantasy that had gotten out of control (I mean, it was a justified revenge fantasy, but that still doesn't make it healthy, my dude, my guy). but then I started thinking a bit more about the major events in his life, and if I was making him react believably enough to what he'd endured. That, and by this time I was in some genuine, bonified darkness in my own life, and that started leaking out into the character and story very much. Now I'm stepping back and wondering, is this where I want it to go? If the answer is no, then where SHOULD it be going? I don't have an answer to that yet. So he's a hard character to write, at least for now.

17. Which character is the easiest to draw/write? I wanted to say Kolja, based in how enthusiastic I was for him for such a long time. I could tell you his story from birth to death, and there's only a few small threads that are still unclear in my mind. Unfortunately, this level of enthusiasm has left me with the understandably daunting task of, you know, actually writing it down. There's SO MUCH to sift through, and it's like scaling a damn mountain. It's all there, I can see the whole thing, but fuck me if I'm not in for a climb. I started in on it late last year before retreating to work on something on a bit... smaller of a scale. Gotta work my way up to that. That said, the actual easiest character to write right now is, again, Gavriil. Part of it is that enthusiasm I have for him right now, and another part of it is that his story is based on the main quest of Skyrim which, lets be honest, is an underwhelming plot on the whole. So the plot has already been written out by someone else; I don't have to worry about that. Neither do I have to worry about actually depicting the entirity of said plot, because it's not actually an interesting one. And honestly why are you reading a story of a character from Bad Game Skyrim if you don't at least have some cursory knowledge of how that game's plot goes? The interesting part- to me, at least- is the effect it has on my character. That's what I've been focusing on, and it's been fun.

18. Is there anything you really wish you could do, character-design-wise, that you feel is outside your current skillset? A concept that you wish you could pull off but are uncertain about? Visually? A lot. There's a lot that's outside my skillset, because I don't know how to fucking draw. That's why I shy away from drawing characters who, say, I imagine to have unnecessarily complex tattoo designs. Not only do I not feel like putting in the time to actually depict that, but I also lack the talent to properly do so. It also kind of neuters what I can pull off for some of my more outlandish designs, namely gods and monsters. Kjelchaikhan is the only one of the gods I've drawn so far, and not coincidentally, he also has the easiest design to deal with. I started in on trying to draw Tsenmaer before I realized holy shit, the way I picture her in my head is so far beyond what I'm capable of actually doing. I'm not even going to fucking touch on Archaeos, because that design is going to be... even harder!! Conceptually, not so much. It sometimes happens on a small scale, such as how I've designed Ludo to be a boxer when I know little about boxing and I don't honestly care to learn. But at the same time? His story is based far, far more heavily in the shitty circumstances of his life and how he's trying to worm his way out of that than in the actual "punching dudes in the head for money" thing. That was more a tool to tie him in with the questionable, shady shit that I needed him to be shackled to. "Underground boxing circuit" just sounded like as good of an idea as any, so I figured why not. That aside, most anything I want to write about ends up being something I'm either familiar with based on personal experience, or at the very least am interested in researching for story purposes.

19. What’s more important to you: visual design, unique personality, a trendy character aesthetic, etc? If you’re not sure, then what’s the first thing you usually nail down in a character? Definitely the personality and basic concept. I very much enjoy crafting characters that are fleshed out and generally believable, and I am very much terrible at designing them on a visual scale. Do all my characters end up looking the same? Yes. Does this bother me? No. If it did, I'd fucking do something about it. What's important to me is who a character is when you boil away all the set dressing. Who is he on a conceptual level? What are his motivations? His basic structure? My character creation process is me sitting down and saying "I want to make a character who embodies these basic traits, and is based on this core concept," then building from there. Visual design is always, always an afterthought.

20. Do you ever plan to do anything (comic, animation, etc) with your characters? Or are you just happy to have them? For the most part: Nope! My characters exist primarily to make me happy and give me something to think about when I'm tired of thinking about myself and my life. There's a few that I'm working very much to translate into stories, but even then I hem and haw over whether or not to actually share the content I produce. Part of it is I'm much more self-conscious about my writing than my art. Used to very much be the other way around, up until I stopped considering myself an artist. Now I just kind of shit drawings out from time to time, and if people think they're terrible, that's because they are and I put no effort into what I do. It's the other way around with writing. I very much put effort, care and detail into my stories. More than bad reception, I fear no reception, which is to say that I'd put so much effort into something, put it out there, and go completely ignored. I have no issues with "you suck/your work sucks," but absolute indifference cuts me pretty deep on matters like this. So yeah, that's a significant obstacle between me and content sharing. That, and assuming I did find any degree of an audience, putting my work out for someone else's scrutiny makes it SIGNIFICANTLY harder to go back and retcon. And boy oh boy, I am a notorious an unrelenting retconner.