hi! I saw your Jim Hawkins fanart and i could you maybe tell how this chracter change your life? send you big love
Hi!
First of all, thank you for asking this question! As far as I know, you’ve sent it a while ago, and I feel like now it’s the right time to answer it.
In order to give a coherent and more or less fulfilling answer as to why Disney’s Treasure Planet and its protagonist Jim Hawkins in particular are so important and literally life-changing to me, I have to start the story “from the beginning” which was approximately ten years ago. One day I was going through the list of Disney movies I wanted to download and watch (I’ve always been a huge movies&cartoons lover, so that’s always been a frequent pastime activity of mine), and I noticed this extremely cool pirate-and-space animated movie poster and sure enough!! I decided to include it in the list of movies to watch. I was really excited and couldn’t wait to put it on, and yet, when I clicked play, it turned out that I accidentally downloaded it in English. I am Russian and the Russian language is my mother tongue. I was around 12-13 at the time and I used to watch movies which were translated into my native language, that’s why I’ve got no idea how this could’ve happened. Even though I’ve been interested in languages, the level of my language proficiency was rather low and I couldn’t understand a thing. So, I watched it for a couple of minutes and shelved it. Outwardly the decision to just find the dubbed version of the movie and watch it instead might seem obvious and rather reasonable, right? But I haven’t even thought of it, because I fell in love with English that day.
Two or three years later I found the file on my computer and watched it. It was indescribably touching, relatable and homelike. It was cosmical. I saw myself in Jim, I felt like it was so similar to what I was going through and it was something I never expected to experience from it. I’ll try to explain what I mean, not sure if I’m really able to. Let’s say, I was a capable child, but I kept skipping classes (even those payed by my parents), I’d prefer riding my bike or roller-skating instead of school and homework, I was interested in completely different things. To be fair, there were lots of children who ditched school far more often and weren’t even trying to be good at their studies, thus the fact that I still managed to get good grades made me a nerd in their eyes, which continued up to the very last day of high school. In any case, my ‘potential’ was kinda thrown away and evidently all that could not but worry and upset my mom, who has always believed in me and seen that I could do better. Of course it made me feel awful and just as if I were a failure and a huge disappointment, and the story of Jim going on an adventure, finding and accepting himself felt so inspiring and encouraging, it filled me with emotions and hope, it was everything I wanted and everything I really needed. I still cry like crazy during the song and the night scene where Silver delivers his soulful monologue. That’s just what every human-being needs to hear in their hardest moments, right? (although that happened later) To know that someone is there for you, believes in you and accepts you no matter how messed up and broken you seem to be at the time. And since I felt this connection with this character mentally and emotionally, it had a really big impact on me.
Further on, I figured out that many amazing artists post TP fanart and Ocs online, and I wanted to be a part of it. And once I had this really breathtaking dream of ‘Treasure Planet II’ – true story – which was very detailed and visual, so I started working on it. In January 2012 I discovered DeviantArt and posted my first ever digital drawing there as well as the story written in English. I guess that’s when I started to take language learning and art more seriously, they became a part of me. As for drawing, it is my biggest hobby which I strive to turn into something more one day, and when it comes to languages, that’s my occupation. Three days ago I graduated, I’m a linguistics major (English and French).
Writing this answer made me go back and find another post from several years ago when I spoke about the same topic, and I wrote this: ‘Then there was a period in my life, sort of an adventure. I was finishing school, and to get into the University I had to pass very difficult exams, so I did and I finished school with a golden medal, which means that I’m an A student in all subjects. I felt like Jim did in the end of the movie. And now I’ve got one more aim, which is connected with my studies (there’re more of them, which are connected with art and animation). I really want to graduate from my University with ‘the red diploma’, being an A student again, but I do doubt that, 'coz it’s really SO hard to study here, some of the subjects and professors make me an angry vampire, they make me suffer.’ I did it, despite everything that had happened to me during this period, I did graduate with honors and I had no idea I wrote about it in 2015. And… I really felt like Jim both during the high school graduation ceremony and the graduation at university. In keeping with the tradition, I’d like to say that I really want to get a master’s degree XD and ‘the red diploma’ one more time lol
So, James Hawkins made me who I am today. I’m an art enthusiast, I’m a linguist, and I’m not 100% sure I would’ve been those if Treasure Planet hadn’t been accidentally downloaded and hadn’t rushed into my life at the right time. I wish I could expand the answer even more since there are a lot of things I would actually love to talk about hoping it might help someone, but it would be toooooo long (as if it is not already) and probably boring. So, yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
P.S. I’m so sorry I’ve been putting this off for so long, I wanted to draw a little illustration or something and give a nice answer. I’m really grateful you asked it, thank you!