feeling insecure about your OCs/works?

although i consider myself the kind of person who doesnt really care about what others think of me, i always post my art or edit character descriptions with the fear that people will consider it "cringe." even though i'm only doing this for fun and i'm not bothering anyone with what I do with my own characters i still feel insecure about it....lol

i like having a lot of information on my main oc's profiles because i have a lot of stuff about them written down and in my head, but these insecurities cause me to delete certain portions of their profiles sometimes because i get the underlying feeling people will think its weird or dumb. My main ocs are super important and personal to me: a lot of who i am, what i'm like as a person, and my personal experiences are poured into them and their backstories, so i assume thats why? i am an incredibly private person and i hate sharing anything that could even slightly be considered personal, so being vulnerable is EXTREMELY hard for me. in my mind, putting out so much detail and content of my ocs out there where everyone can see it (even if very few people see it) is a vulnerable act.... and it leaves me pretty uneasy.

i'm kinda trying to work on this though.... it helps me to remember that a ton of other people on toyhouse ALSO pour everything into their ocs and ALSO put them out there where many people can see em. it sounds dumb to me but its comforting knowing i'm not alone in what i do or how i feel.

I also worry about the quality of the art i upload. i often worry about whether it looks really bad to people and they think im a mediocre (or even bad) artist...... but thats a conversation for a different thread

I'm just scared of hurting or offending people and then getting attacked or canceled in return. I don't feel comfortable sharing my characters or my works with people other than close friends which I really miss doing. I loved sharing my work with others but now, I feel like I will get caught doing something that's apparently bad and attacked again. I should start making fandom works again just to fill the void left behind but I just wanna work on my projects. 

I also keep my project stuff to myself and close friends because I feel like if I keep it more of a secret, I'll have better success...but I want to make sure every single one of my characters I create has a voice and won't get lost into the void of lost memories. Maybe I'll make books that tell you a bit about them so people can never forget about them.

I only feel shame over the fact I write about darker topics that I never experienced and the idea of thinking I'm writing them respectfully and then later on realize I'm not.

So, therefore, if I get something wrong, I must be a bad person for it. If I handle something wrong, I'm awful. If I accidentally write a harmful thing, I deserve to die. (This is how I felt after an event I call "the Attack" where this happened. They avoided death threats but I feel like they didn't to make themselves feel justified because they didn't tell me to die. I'm pretty sure this traumatized me) (And before you ask, no, I cannot get help in my current situation. But I'm glad you care about my wellbeing)

Otherwise, I'm really happy with my work. It feels like nothing I've seen before in others and I'm proud of that fact.

All of my characters are hidden from the public, BUT, I may make public versions for my game/project characters once I'm finished with the project associated with them. I will always have my hidden side where I jot down pointless info. My profiles are like large written reference sheets to keep track of things. Many, many things.

Depends. I feel like people just aren’t that interested in my characters and my story so I try not to talk about it. However because it’s basically my only defining trait at this point sometimes I can’t help myself lol. And quite often I am happy with where things are going until I go on YouTube and watch stuff about all these amazing TV shows and books and movies and I start comparing myself to them a LOT despite the fact that I’m a 14 year old child working alone and they’re 20+ year old teams of adults who went to university and stuff. I worry that I’m not original enough. I come up with ideas and then one month later someone does something exactly the same to what I came up with. It makes me feel purposeless when the thing that gives me purpose has been used time and time again without me knowing. I know this isn’t directly related but I just wanted to vent lol.

Also with art, I like my own art, but I know it’s worse than almost everyone else’s ever. I know I have a long way to go, but with enough practice I will get there, and my art is okay right now! I might have this opinion on my art because I haven’t entered a contest for a while and if I don’t win those I bash myself up over it oof. 

Oh and I can’t write, at least not consistently and like a normal person. Whenever I try to write things out it makes absolutely no sense as most of my projects are very visual. That is why I don’t do that very often, paired with the fact that when I write songs while upset I always look back on them and think about how pathetically small the problem was and how much I escalated it. Again not related but why not.

I got to the point where I actively tell friends not to read my TH profiles.. which they respect and I'm glad for that but also then they know fuck all about the characters and we can't have any chat about that topic.. ;;; I don't mind sharing art, I post every shit ass 10 min drawing I've ever done but the writing and stories themselves are what I'm extremely insecure about

I'm trying to post on some of those "show me X" threads trying to kill this stupid mindset but I still yell internally when oc with writing on profile gets faved orz

Eh... for the most part it depends on my mood.

Like there's times where I'm completely don't care what other people think about what I put out. Usually when I'm at a high-point & feeling 'unstoppable'. But, there's times where I feel the complete opposite & start hyper-focusing on all the plot-holes, inconsistencies, and mistakes In everything. Can't say it's always when I'm at a low-point because sometimes I feel that way when everything's going fine & I just wanna fine-tweak everything.

Outside of that it's also getting wrapped up in how people will view it. Like, I have a project & set of characters I'm working on but I'm extremely hesitant to post much about it because I don't want people taking it the wrong way. Blacking this out just in case but it's because it involves transformation & I really don't want it taken as a kink/fetish TF (though, if I wanna go further with this idea/publish it... that's unavoidable). Plus a lot of close friends are uncomfortable with the TF trope.  I'm keeping stuff vauge & not posting much on the characters outside of doodles I really like.

There's also the fact I've rarely finished anything. Like I have tons of flopped long-form stories & fanfics that never made it past 3 chapters and it bothers me to hell and back that I can't stay consistent & finish one project before getting tired or distracted. Off the top of my head the only completed things I have are one-shots. So, yeah... I guess being insecure about not having finished OC content counts

absolutely! but only on other sites and even with friends. when i'm on toyhou.se, i don't worry as much because there's such low traffic to my page (it's hard to find new creators, especially if they don't share their toyhouses on other sites or post in forums) so i don't really have a problem posting stuff here! but even still, i keep a lot of my ocs to myself and only post them when they're fully presentable since i'm worried people might judge me if they don't have the full picture of what my oc is dfhdfghjdfhdfh

when it comes to twitter, i worry a lot more and tend to keep a lot of oc stuff to myself y_y i post in batches instead of single pieces bc i feel like it helps me worry less abt what someone may think abt a particular piece lmfao. i also get stressed telling my friends abt my ocs cuz my thoughts are sooooo jumbled and i tend to be the type that likes to vaguely allude to my oc's themes, but my friends can literally just come out and ask about them GFHDFGDFG. i also worry that since i have so many thoughts abt them, only that they're stored away, that my friends may get annoyed when i just. ramble on abt them y___y i still haven't rly gotten over being able to share my ocs, so i've just stuck to what i've known and just post art abt them n think abt them in my heart....... 

i'm always SO insecure about my characters!! like others have said, there's a real vulnerability to putting your creations out there. they always have pieces of you in them, and it's hard to bare that to the world.

one thing that makes this hard is that a lot of people here have said they make things just for themselves, but that's just not true for me!! what makes art meaningful for me is how i can interact with it. so when i make things, i want others to feel comforted or inspired or just, yknow, feel SOMETHING. even contempt is better than nothing! so i want people to feel something when they read my bios, and whether they remember in a months' time isn't a big deal as long as they got something out of it in the moment, yknow?

so that's why i actually really wanna post in forum games! but BECAUSE of my desire to make people feel stuff and also things, i can't just make a "good enough" character profile. i want people to be able to meaningfully engage with it in some way. so it gives me a lot of anxiety!

feeling more comfortable with posting stuff, for me, is usually when i post something new and i have that rush of WOO NOBODY'S SEEN THIS BEFORE!! and then as the writing or art ages, i get more and more uncomfortable with it because of how quickly my writing or art seems to change. what brings me a lot of comfort is stuff like this thread, actually - i intuitively know that other people are feeling shy or anxious about their work, but people are really hesitant to actually talk about this stuff. it feels shameful for some people, almost... but it's just kind of a part of making art!

jury's still out on whether or not people are tired of seeing my ocs in the forum games though.... OTL