Need to get this off my chest because otherwise I’ll be stewing until morning and it’s already almost 1AM.
So, I’m in this Discord server with some friends and recently, this specific close friend circle joined up to start working on a cool comic AU(keeping that vague in case anyone I know finds this page out, hopefully it doesn’t trickle out if I answer in comments lol) with an especially close friend of mine. I loved this and I loved how excited he was. What I wasn’t excited on was the pushback sometimes.
He treats the characters I wanna work on like they’re problems, actively goes out of his way to push back against things and doesn’t offer anything that isn’t just tropey trash if he even offers anything at all. There have been other times, and if people want the details, I’ll be happy to share, but the straw that broke the camel’s back is what I want to discuss.
We were talking about a story beat he really likes and I was down with it, I had my notes here and there to not make things as cookiecutter as they were gonna be(I didn’t want a dead mom trope for example), and it was all going great, until we were talking about how he had umbrage with a specific character I liked being able to break the 4th wall/be really OP.
This annoyed me because he was actively singling this character out, because there were two more 4th wall breakers, and it got into this whole fight with him calling me out for being a hypocrite and not even being able to say why. Grace be given, English isn’t his first language but it still pissed me OFF. He continued to downplay the characters I liked to a point where he straight up went "yeah my character is him so he should totally be on top" and it was it for me. He even went on to admit that he was ragebaiting me when I got irritated at him refusing to listen and I just decided to leave the project.
He sent a gif of himself facepalming and saying he was going to bed, which is pissing me off even further so I muted our chat, but the anxiety’s coming in strong now. AITA for leaving this project because I felt like I was minimized my likes and opinions?
The only person who loses by you leaving is you.
NAH. Everyone keeps going… except you’re no longer working on your passion project.
Should clarify, this isn’t really a passion project, that’s kinda charged and whether or not I leave I’ll still do stuff I like(already had a similar AU in the works haha), but this nitpick aside thank you!
NAH. You’re not a team. Both of you have too much of your egos involved in this work. Break off and do your own thing.
This 💯
NTA he was intentionally leaving out your character and minimizing you at every point. It is a shame that you are invested in this passion project, however, as long as he is involved, you will not achieve your goals. He has admitted he is just ragebaiting you. Guys like this live to make other people miserable. Don’t let him know your frustration. Forget about his facepalm gif and just quietly leave the project. Start your own, or start a project without him. If anyone asks why you left the project, just be honest and tell them he admitted ragebaiting you and not allowing your character so there was no point in you continuing with the project.