I just realized tonight all those years as a kid coming home from school to play Warcraft3 and, in it, Jaina Proudmoore being the relateable girl a little older than me had profound effect on me. I hadn’t even really thought about it until accidentally generating an image of her tonight, realizing i’m really attached to her, looking at my childhood realizing 90% of my free energy was in warcraft3 with jaina the one relateable character, and refreshing myself on her history a bit to realize there are parallels between her story and mine in all sorts of areas and that i turned out highly magical with a tendency to leadership just like her. lots of me tonight being like ‘omg im basically jaina’
anyway, i realized tonight jaina was my main childhood rolemodel. who was yours? do you see their effect on you like i do with jaina?
More than I can remember, probably.
- Mr. Rogers
- Big Bird
- Gale Gibbons (author)
- Superman
- LeVar Burton (Star Trek & Reading Rainbow)
- Bob Ross
- Julia Child
- Jim Henson
The list would get longer, the more I thought about it.
(It’s a shame that all Blizzard can do now is turn their nuanced characters into one-note villains. I missed when Warcraft had good writing.)
Well, I was never really thinking about this. But when I look back now, I’d say my dad. I feel like there won’t be many like this here on fediverse, because whenever I stumble upon family related topic it looks like nearly everyone here comes from dysfunctional families. I’m really glad I have parents that were caring, but also firm when needed, that shaped me to become normal (I hope so) functioning person.
Same, my parents were basically my only role models growing up.
Glad to hear I’m not the only “weirdo” here.
Kinda crazy that no one had a real role model and just famous people they didn’t know.
Yeah it speaks volumes for the world we live in unfortunately.
The best gift I ever was given (so far) was a project my 11 year old daughter did in school on “the person I admire most”. She worked so hard on it. I nearly cried going through it. Apparently only one other person in the class didn’t pick a famous person and they did it on both their parents.
I work so, so, so hard to be a good dad and it was such a deeply touching affirmation.
Op kinda steered the conversation by giving their example as a fictional character.
well my parents were terrible. similar to what you said, my parents showed me how to not be when i grew up. so im thankful i had fictional characters
Not my parents. Both of them are negative examples. One is a garbage fire. The other tried, and I love them for that, but didn’t do great.
MacGyver. Geordi LaForge. I’ve wanted to be an engineer since I was tiny. I love taking things apart and building things. Additionally, they’re both very caring, supportive characters who take care of others.
My grandma, who never let anyone tell her how to live and was happiest alone in her cottage, who would yell at us to get out and dig for potatoes when she felt crowded and then hose us down and give us a lollipop before letting us back in.
An aunt, who rode a gigant bike and let me sit on the warm tank as it cooled, who’d be gone for months then reappear just as quick and would swing me around for fun, taught me to make a handstand and always let me stand on her shoulders to pick cherries.
My mom, who was busy all the time putting food on the table but would still read to each of us every night.
Fictional: Matilda, who had a need to read that was strong enough to turn magical; Belle, who was secure in herself even though it made her lonely and whispered about (also books as escape!); Ariel, who stood up to her father and ran away rather than accept being threatened for being herself.
I don’t think I had a good male role model. It did fuck me up for a long time, but I guess the bad ones did that damage more than the absence of good ones.
Jaina’s pretty fucking cool as a role model, lol. I don’t think I had any as a child per se, but Nietzsche, Thales of Miletus and Diogenes were very influential in my early teenage years! If I wasn’t a little bit afraid of e-weirdos, I’d share this YT vid of me cosplaying Thales for a school project, walking around town, proselytising in flip-flops. 😅
I only wish I had some concrete role models when I was young. It took me until I was nearly 40 before I had anyone in my life who fit that description. Fictional characters, celebrities, and media personalities never felt like role models to me or inspired me.
*role model
omg yes thank you
Errol Flynn as Robin Hood and maybe Gary Cooper in Beau Geste, but really I was smitten by that whole story there rather than one character. Both stories are about gallant men and nasty villains.
In high school, I switched to idolizing Kurt Vonnegut and thought maybe I should be a writer, but I don’t have much talent for it. I never lost the general sense I got from all three: one must stand up for the poor and helpless in a world where the powerful will treat them with cruelty.
As an adult, I understand that the movies are both flawed on that message in that Robin Hood turns out to be the very sort of noble doing the oppressing (but he’s one of the good ones, right? Right?) and all of Beau Geste is about excusing an upper class Lady’s crime and fighting natives who don’t ‘appreciate’ colonization. I still love Vonnegut as an author, but have some criticisms of him, too.
John Cena, he’s really jacked and didn’t play dirty
Oh, role model.
thank you :)
