Let's make a cockroach racing anime!

gentlemanorcus

^ Agreed. 

All Nines

^ Agreed.

[Deleted User]

…

Myrmidon

The angst thread wouldn't work because people occasionally come in their with real problems like relatives with cancer or seizures or attempted rapes and that kind of takes the fun out of mocking someone bitching about high school.

Miijhal

Fuck, Glow, have I told you lately that I love you?

Myrmidon

This anime does not have nearly enough characters with gender-changing abilities. And they are also dragons.

Evergreen

This is brilliant. And also makes me feel terrible about a Troper Works page I made a while ago (in TV Tropes time) and basically haven't been to in a year or more.

It's stuff like this, all over the place, that sometimes has me scared to share any ideas with more than just a select few people. I find the best cure for this fear is to stop considering myself "a writer". Seeing as I haven't written anything in months, I think this is actually an accurate description.

(Also, the character "pictures" are why I, having absolutely no artistic talent, am very careful about who I get to draw my characters for me...)

captainbrass

Evergreen - Well, the fact that there are a lot of bad writers doesn't necessarily mean you are one of them. However, before the internet it would have been absolutely normal to only share your writing with a few people (and I think that's probably still the case for most published authors).

The problem is that online there's either a tendency to be just brutal for the sake of it or to be hugboxy and over-positive and reinforce bad ideas. I haven't written any fiction for years now, but I'd rather show it to an IRL friend or at least someone/some people I knew fairly well than just some  random "writing forum".

Evergreen

When I talk about sharing my ideas, I indeed mean with trusted IRL friends.

The other troubling thing about making fun of these sorts of people: the fear that you might know one (or several!) IRL and that they're not bad people on the whole so you feel bad about making fun of them. And you know how they must feel, how much their own work means to them, and you know how much your own work means to you...but it just so happens that they're terrible writers and so are some of their friends and that's really quite undeniable. Being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes sucks sometimes.

And what's really scary is being pretty certain that your own work has at times nearly been as ridiculous as the idea of a post-apocalyptic cockroach-racing anime! I frequently find myself thinking "This idea is ridiculous but surely some people would like it?" Whether more people answer this question with yes or no is the difference between a cult hit and something everyone ridicules.

Finally, Glowsquid: I don't really know you, in much the same way that I don't know a lot of people here. Let me just confess this: When I was reading the OP, I didn't realize this was all a joke. Between the fact that I generally give things the benefit of the doubt, the fact that I don't know you, and the fact that "tropers" in general are known for coming up with some pretty weird stuff, I took this seriously. The "drawings" were the only thing that seemed a bit odd. I kind of skimmed it too, that certainly didn't help. But it wasn't until I saw the subsequent posts and people's reactions that I realized what was up. All this has me a bit worried...

Icalasari

I still want to see a giant roach racing anime