TIFU By Excitedly Gushing About Someone’s Original Characters, To…The Wrong Person.

I (29f) am gearing up for Artfight, which takes place in July every year, very fun if you love making original characters (oc for short) and trading art. Big ol’ nerdy stuff. One custom for Artfight are making hit lists – artists who specifically want people to come to them, fill out a form, and maybe get art. I love doing these because I can find all sorts of characters this way before the event begins, and show them mine for consideration.

So there I am. I’ve got three forms open. That was my first mistake. I’m scrolling through the page of one artist, I see they have two ocs I’m obsessed with. Two gay guys, pretty standard, I haven’t drawn boys kissing before. I’m thinking yeah, that’s cute. I like their cat. I think I would enjoy drawing these two. I read their profiles. I gush. I really want this artist to know that I’m absolutely going to draw them regardless if I get art back, I need some good ol’ radiating positivity!

I’m feeling so great about myself! I just gushed, every artist’s dream! Everyone wants to hear how cool their ocs are! I know I do! I hit submit, I close out, I feel very good. I click on the next one, and head to their Artfight page and…oh no.

Oh no.

Oh no please, anything but this. Anything but this.

I open the page of the person I just rambled about loving the ocs of. I did not just send this person a love letter to their ocs. I filled out a completely different person’s form because I accidentally clicked back to the wrong form. Their art styles were so similar that I didn’t even realize I was looking at two different artists. Safe to say, I went from feeling great about myself to feeling like both a jerk for mistaking their art styles for each others but now anticipate, with sheer dread, a DM coming in going, “Hey, Star, did you mean to send this to me? These are not my characters. Are you really that careless not to double check before hitting send?”

For which I will, regrettably, admit, “Why yes, random stranger I just asked for free art from. I am that kind of idiot.”

Tl;dr: In the spirit of spreading good will, I filled out a form for an art trade. Did not realize I had gushed about a completely different person’s characters on some random stranger’s form. I can’t undo my submission. They know now, and the embarrassment will haunt me forever.