Fictional Friends

It's strange how we can attach ourselves to those that don't exist. A piece of media can be an emotional journey and like any sort of journey, we feel a good relationship with those involved, for maybe just resonating with a couple of personality traits, aspire to be like them or love what they do or stand for. Today, I felt like gushing about fictional characters I adore for a myriad of different reasons.

Lucio (Overwatch, 2016) 

"My New Year's resolution? Hm, new skates for all the kids in the neighborhood."

I managed to jump in the open beta of Overwatch before the game came out and was set on maining Mei. Of course, like any competitive team game, I couldn't do such a thing because I was always stuck playing healer. Cue Lucio, a freedom fighter and musician from Brazil. I liked the fact he looked straight out of Jet Set Radio which is why I went over to him and he happened to be the most fun to play for me, currently sitting on almost 50 hours playtime with him. Not only that but he is such a good character to aspire to be. Lucio grew up in a poor background so to lift people's spirits, he used his music, going from playing music on street corners to the successful musician he is today with his debut album "Synaethsia Auditiva". Between this, Vishkar Industries (Symmetra's company) took over his hometown to try and "improve the lives of the people" but instead did the complete opposite, using their tech to keep people down. Lucio stole their equipment and transformed it into his signiture getup that he uses to motivate the people and help his fight for freedom.

Lucio absolutely shines in every line he speaks. It's unreal to think people hate him because of how much of a good heart he has. Most of his lines are an attempt at motivation, his most common being "Look at this team. We're gonna do great!" just before a match starts and the flutter in his voice when he sings "Mo-ving with the pay-load". The only reason to hate him is when you're near a ledge and the fucker boops you right down it. God damn it, Lucio... but I still love you. How can I stay mad at you?

Beavis and Butthead (Beavis and Butthead, 1993 -2011)

"A bed shouldn’t have instructions. Except for, like, ‘Sleep."

You ever have those characters that you're kind of ashamed to admit you act like? Beavis and Butthead are those characters for me. Beavis and Butthead is an animated series created by Mike Judge which was intended to make fun of the MTV crowd of the time; dopey teenagers making sex jokes and listening to rock and roll. What happened instead was these pair of apathetic morons weirdly resonated with that crowd and became a huge hit for the station... I am one of those people that resonated with these guys. Around when I was 17, I reflected back on the kind of person I was before; loud, overly-expressive, obnoxious, "le su nerdi xd" and didn't really think about what I said. When I reflected, I sort of became the opposite as sort of defense mechanism and basked in my own apathy. My humour became ridiculously dry and it's why Beavis and Butthead just hits that spot so well for me. Crude humour is hard to work with but I think it works very well with B&B because of the way they express it and how socially unaware they are. Even them walking out in the middle of class with no-one saying a single thing to them makes me laugh. Beavis and Butthead are also strangely clever in a post-modern sort of way; the anti-intelligent intelligent. They make very witty observations about the things around them or the cutaway segments where they watch a music video (or reality TV in the newer episodes). It's just that monotone apathy that tickles my fancy. It's why the movie, "Beavis and Butthead Do America", is my favourite movie of all time. That's no sarcasm. The movie does not fail to make me laugh every time.

Melia Antiqua, Xenoblade Chronicles (2010)

"G-gotcha...friendio! Leave it to us...m-mate! Is that correct, Sharla?"

It's no secret to everyone that I bloody love Xenoblade Chronicles. The music, the sprawling world to explore, the story and - of course - the characters. It is so hard to pick a favourite because almost all of the main party are just great but I have to point to Melia for this.

Melia is daughter to the emperor of her people, the High Entia. When we first meet her, she's reserved and quite stuck up (yeah, cliche, I know) but she warms to the rest of the party as the game goes on. She develops a crush on Shulk, the main character, but she learns to reserve her feelings to make Shulk happy in his relationship later in the game. She also doesn't wear the title of princess lightly and actually does stuff in the name of her kingdom which is why she joins the party permanently later on. There are many other reasons why I love Melia but that goes into spoiler territory and I'd love people to give Xenoblade a try for themselves.

Robert (Bob) Richards, Tekken 6 (2007)"Speed...and...weight."

I haven't played a huge amount of Tekken. The only one I really sat down with was Tag 2 and I played a chunk of SFxT if that counts. In Tag 2, my team consisted of Alisa, a robot girl with chainsaws in her arms and has a detatchable head, and Bob, a freestyle karate practicer from the US.

I love Bob for his character. Bob was a martial arts expert at a very young age but the problem he had with himself was his body wasn't enough to take down larger opponents so he focused on a training regime where he was able to continue to be agile with his new larger structure.

Bob represents struggle. It might be comedic to see the silly fat man jump around but it shows you can do anything with hard work. Bob trained for years to be able to maintain the same physical skill with his new larger body. It's something to aspire to be. You can do anything if you put your mind to it and it's why I love Bob so much. He's also really fun to play.

I sat on this post for too long. I showed my friends half of it like 2 months ago but I'm glad it's finally done. I have some uni related gubbins to do but I hope to be more active on the blog in the near future. At most, July.

Cheers.