This will be a long one. My life is horrible right now. I have no one to talk to. I need to get this out. I hope this is the right sub. A lot of this might belong in writing, but the thing behind it is my anxiety disorder.

I’ve felt invalid since I was very young. I’ve been anxious since I was pre-verbal. I live entirely in my head in beautiful stories. This world is too boring and horrible to live in. Writing is luckily something I’m good at, when I’m not suffering from poison oak and on 4 hours of sleep like I am right now.

Years ago, I began working on the greatest story idea I’ve ever had. Little by little, I chip away at worldbuilding. Some of the characters came to me quickly. But the main protagonist was elusive.

Halfway between then and now, I watched the first and only anime that ever appealed to me. I will not name it because I want people to weigh in as objectively as possible. I didn’t actually like the show that much, but one of the supporting characters… It was like a eureka moment. This is the character that has lived inside me the whole time, that I’ve always wanted to write. The character fit almost perfectly into the setting of my story, so I made some tweaks, and have been moving full steam ahead with a complete cast.

So… I didn’t tweak that much. The hair color and style, skin color, occupation, social status, titles, weapons, abilities, and personality are so similar that eyebrows will raise if it’s published. The arc is even similar, but the actions and details are obviously different. The cultural setting is also different - European, not Japanese. So the clothes are slightly different but the color scheme is nearly the same. I would be publishing this as a written novel with the intention of allowing it to be made into a live action film on the infinitesimal chance it got popular. The similar character is obviously animated. So at least that’s extremely different.

I have no intention of changing it. It’s my world, my life, and my everything. Just looking for validation, since I don’t get any in my personal life, and maybe for some copyright law experts to weigh in and hopefully appease my awful feeling a little.