Tangerine was made (in May/June of 2025) as an experimental design! Orginally meant to be an adopt (hence the gimmicky design), I ended up liking them so I kept them and put them up on my Artfight. I did a major rehaul of my Artfight in the few weeks before july where I refined the descriptions of all my WOF Ocs, so I was forced to sit down and decide on a personality and story for Tangerine.
I ended up making them a pretty self-inserty character? At the time I was thinking a lot about my Autism and Social anxiety, because I was scheduled for an appointment where I would have to talk about that in a clinical setting (which went pretty well!). So I just sort of wanted a character who was like me that I could take comfort in or something? I can't trace my decision making perfectly but it was likely along those lines. Sometimes I use them as a Sona (and it should be noted that I change their pronouns when I do that because I'm not comfortable with she/they for a representation of me) so they've become pretty important to me!
This paragraph is made on 29/12/25-- I'm saying the date to distinguish between the previous paragraphs, because my views on the character have changed, but I still like to have the old information, for personal reflection purposes. My views on being autistic and having social anxiety have changed a bit? I still don't have a diagnosis (probably never will, it's expensive and not really worth it) but I find myself more frustrated and angry about the situations that puts me in than I used to be? I've had a hard time expressing anger for quite a few years now, as soon as I become able to consciously manipulate my own emotions I've been avoiding being angry because I've never been any good at expressing that anger without hurting myself or others (I was a decently violent kid) which is something I really don't want to do anymore. Tangerine represented the part of my life in which I wanted to pretend that having AuDHD and social anxiety was like, I'm not sure how to say it? Quirky? It was something that didn't really effect them in any meaningfull way, part of that is that I've always wanted to escape to a world were I can communicate in ways that feel natural to me, and fictional characters can often do that! I have an abundance of characters that just immediately understand characters who communicate like I do.
There's nothing wrong with a fantasy like that, In fact I really do love Tangerine for that. But that's not really what I want out of a character that represents me in all of my AuDHD social anxiety glory anymore, nowadays I want Tangerine to get angry and frustrated too, to represent the lows, and not just be a perputual sunshine.
