Five Characters who have changed my life
I have been pondering a lot lately on the top characters who have changed my life. So it’s not like just a list of favorite characters or characters I like. It goes much deeper than that. One’s life truly can be deeply affected by amazing characters. I wanted to list the ones I felt have been most influential for me and why.
(Also, WTH, Tumblr, I forgot that if I make a numbered list, it turns everything into ones! And it won't let me edit that!)
Yugi Muto, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
Now, this is actually a bit of a curious choice because I wouldn’t say it’s Yugi himself I have seriously gravitated towards, but it’s his whole franchise in general. Yugi was the original protagonist along with Atem, and therefore, because YGO DM has changed my life more than any other franchise, I decided to give Yugi a position on the list even though there are other characters on the show who have intrigued me more. Seto was the first one I seriously fell hard for, but I ended up having a lot of issues with him by Battle City. Marik was perhaps the YGO character who was most important to me as a character alone, but he hasn’t influenced or fueled all or even most of my YGO works. YGO DM is Yugi’s show overall, and this show has inspired and shaped me like no other. Because of YGO, I learned how to seriously improve both my drawing and my writing. I could not draw a decent human before I discovered anime! And I have found so many friends because of my fanworks. Some of these people only stayed for a time. Others are still around now. I role-played, talked, shared so many things with these friends and their affect on my life can never be overstated. YGO DM was the gateway to so many wonderful things for me that as a sheltered home-schooled person I didn’t have a lot of access to before that. I think Kazuki Takahashi would be happy about that.
Radley, Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds
While Radley was not the first who interested me in 5Ds, no one else has seriously captured my imagination as he has. I love characters I can flesh out and characters I feel are or could be good, and he qualifies for all of that. But it’s not just a matter of loving to write about him. He, and Kalin, have helped me through some very serious rough places in my life. I first became interested in writing about Radley right before I learned that my friend of 20 years had died of cancer. I had so many wonderful ideas for stories about Radley, and focusing on those was really a balm for that grief. Later that same year, it was the love of Radley and his love of motorcycling that finally helped me conquer a fear of driving I’d had for almost ten years after nearly getting in a horrible wreck on the freeway. I wanted to have fun driving like Radley did. That longing was finally greater than my fear. Nothing else had gotten through. Because I was finally able to drive again, I’ve been able to do many things to help my family as we have been going through challenges the last several years. I believe God brought Radley to me at a time when I desperately needed him and that I would be remiss to not give Him the credit.
Sephiroth, Final Fantasy VII/Kingdom Hearts
I remember when I first watched Advent Children, I loved it but wasn’t impressed by Sephiroth’s limited screentime. I can’t even exactly remember how or why he finally captured my imagination and my heart. Maybe it was spending hours reading the entire game script since I had no access to the game and could not play it even though I desperately longed to do so. I definitely remember seeing in the flashbacks that he was a good person. I fell in love with that person. I know when Crisis Core came out and there was suddenly much more sane Sephiroth content, my heart was absolutely enraptured. I loved him, I loved Zack, I loved the beautiful friendship they could have together. But I know I already loved that before Crisis Core, most likely from reading some intriguing fics. I was disappointed that Crisis Core didn’t have them as close as the fics made them and that Sephiroth hadn’t been the one to train Zack, but there was so much to love anyway and I found ways to make their friendship work even with things being somewhat different in Crisis Core than fans had thought.
Because I loved Sephiroth so much, and also Zack and Cloud and their complex interactions with him, my imagination soared again as it had with YGO. I’m not sure I’ve loved any characters as much as them save for YGO ones. I wrote many fics for both FF7 and KH verses, I drew for them, and I made more friends. It was the YGO experience all over again. It was magical. I also used Sephiroth as my email address, with a name based on KH Sephiroth. That is still my main account today.
Now, finally able to play the game at long last due to having a Switch Lite and it being available for that, my imagination is soaring again. My muse has woke up. I’ve been doing new things with the characters in both verses, including finally investigating KH’s Birth By Sleep and starting a timeline that uses its vital information on the KH Sephiroth—information that fits with what I wanted to think about him all along. I’m playing KH Sephiroth in role-plays. I’m also playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a game I honestly hadn’t ever planned to buy, because seriously, even though I don’t like fighting games, I can PLAY as Sephiroth! I don’t think any other game to date allows that.
Eevee, Pokemon
No one can deny the immense influence Eevee has been on my life (and my wallet!) over the last years. I always loved Eevee, but Radley turned that love into something life-changing. When I decided to play Radley in a Pokemon RP online, I chose Eevee as his starter. I quickly fell in love with the little darling, as did Radley, and he and I both soon wanted more and more of them. My room is an Eevee colony! But it’s not just a matter of loving collecting Eevees. I love it because of their sweetness and innocence. I am not exaggerating when I say that looking at their adorable faces has actually helped my emotional well-being more than once. Things have been very difficult in real-life for the last several years and I’ve clung to Eevees as something bright and beautiful when things have been falling apart around me and not making sense anymore. Last year I had an absolute meltdown in June. It was seeing my sweet Eevees looking at me with their innocent, happy smiles that calmed me down and helped me start to heal. I don’t think I’ve gotten that bad again since then. I believe God has allowed me to collect so many Eevees because He knew they were actually important medicine for me.
Tony Ferano, The Monkees.
Now most people will probably look at this and go “… What? Who?” Tony was a supporting character in episode 25 of The Monkees, Alias Micky Dolenz. He was absolutely hilarious, mostly because of his expressive reactions to all the nonsense going on around him. I just couldn’t get enough of him, to the point that I started following his actor Jimmy Murphy from role to role. It wasn’t the first time I’d done that, but no other excursion has led to so much. Because of Jimmy, I followed him to Kolchak: The Night Stalker and got interested in Darren McGavin and Simon Oakland. Then I followed Simon to Perry Mason, a show I’d loved before. I got obsessively interested in it and some of the actors, including William Talman. Because of William and wanting a Hamilton Burger plush, I started making my own plushies using plushie bases from Joann’s. I’m still doing that now. Then I followed William to The Wild Wild West and fell in love with that show and it became one of my most favorite classic TV shows of all time. Mom and I shared so many happy hours watching it, and most of these other shows. Those are memories I will cherish forever. I liked Christopher Cary in his WWW episode and his character Snakes Tolliver has been hugely inspirational to me. He had less than ten minutes of screentime, but I worked with that, fleshed him out, and developed him over many fics, both for WWW and for other series I crossed over with. I’m still using Snakes today, in RP as well as fics. I just posted something with him a couple of days ago. And Christopher was also hugely influential when I followed him to The Rockford Files and ended up fascinated by Ginger Townsend and Lou Trevino and their relationship. And so on and so on. I’ve written fics, tried drawing non-anime people again (albeit they do have anime influence in the style), even made a webcomic.
All because of Jimmy Murphy and his character Tony Ferano.
