Hello hi! This about a friend, and she's decently close to everyone I've thought about talking to regarding this matter, so I can't talk to them. She's also on just about every social media I'm on, so I can't post anonymously there too lmao- I just need opinions here, because I feel like this might be a shit move to pull, but I'm not sure what else to do about this apart from sucking it up, which I really don't want to do.

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So this friend, let's call her C. C and I have been working on a writing project for about four years. It started off great at first - we were writing like 2k words a day. We've finished draft 1 of the first book, and are currently on chapter 9 of the second! The issue is that from last year till now, we've barely made progress. There's been nothing new written since three months ago, we've barely talked the past two months, and I'm not even sure how close we are any more. Not to mention, there have been a few incidents that put a bit of a strain on our relationship.

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Anyway, I've been wanting to pull my characters out of the story for about half a year now. These characters are my sonas (have been for about eight years), and I don't want to be investing them into something I'm not even sure we'll finish at this point. It was fine at first since we were going strong, and I was happy that my OCs would be in the first ever book I'd write with a friend. But I'm not sure anymore. These OCs are my pride and joy, and it's safe to say I'm very emotionally attached to all of them. Sharing rights over them with someone I barely even know anymore just feels so wrong lmao. I'm also tired of being told what to do with characters that mean so much to me, since the decision-making ultimately falls to her. I'm just a pushover lmao, plus she's far more intelligent than I am. Somehow I always end up agreeing.

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Thing is, we've worked on this for four years. She'd probably be annoyed at best, extremely pissed at worst. And if she's feeling spiteful enough, there's actually nothing stopping her from using my characters anyway, since they're not copyrighted. (I think my fears about this are valid to an extent, since her view on morals and boundaries differs a bit from typical artist values. Plus, she's done a bunch of things out of spite for me before.) I don't want to fight with her on this and I feel like an asshole for throwing this on a four-year project, but I don't want to leave my characters like that either.

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Just to clarify - I won't be taking my characters and ditching the project completely. If I go along with this, I plan to create new characters to replace the original ones. It'll require a bit of work to fit them into the storyline, but we'll be rewriting most of it anyway. I guess my issue here is that (last I checked) both C and I feel pretty sentimental about this story, and I don't want to hurt her.

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If you made it this far, thank you for taking time to read this. I apologize if it's a mess - I'm not sure how to word this properly. Any advice and opinions are greatly appreciated! Feel free to ask questions ^^

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(This sounds like it belongs in r/amitheasshole lmao)