Wednesday, August 15th, was my friend Fab’s 40th birthday (I created Big Oonch last year for Fab’s birthday). His girlfriend orchestrated a surprise party for him yesterday. Now Fab is a pretty clever guy and hard to pull things over on, so we had to be sneaky. Sneaky involved holding a fake party for him the Sunday before. The fake party had to be just big enough to make him think it was all we had planned for him without being complicated. It worked as he never saw the real party coming. So Sunday I was one of (I’m told) 80 guests who came down to celebrate my friend’s birthday. He was very moved.
I was wearing my Animus Funnies cast t-shirt at the party and Fab and his girlfriend (whom I created Zoë for) mentioned the site to some of their friends and family pointing to “their” characters. I said that Todrick was my goofy side and Cyran was my insecure side. I’ve been thinking since then of the parts of me that I imbue into each character.
Even though he’s not the most-featured, I consider Cyran to be the central character in Animus Funnies. The heart, if you will. He loves tinkering even if he isn’t very good at it (a metaphor for me and this site perhaps?) and even his friends doubt his abilities (my friends are not cruel as Cyran’s sometimes are).
Todrick is exciteable and silly, as I find myself to be. He’s energetic as I’d like to be. He likes to have adventures even if they usually backfire on him. I’d like to be as brave as he is and not be afraid to fail.
Nektara is my voice of reason. Like me, she sometimes gets exasperated with the craziness that surrounds her. I try to be very careful that she never appears too mean when she’s being honest. I’ve sometimes given lines that I’d originally written for her to other characters for that reason.
Sass’ blind passion for Shinies represents my materialistic side. I collect stuff. A lot of stuff. I can get really excited when something new comes out that I find cool and have a “it must be mine” attitude, much like Sass does when she sees a new Shiny.
Red Rich is great fun to write because he’s charmingly full of himself. At least, I hope it comes off as charming. He clearly loves himself. I can be a little narcissistic myself as I love to share when I do or create something I’m proud of (like this site). Because I don’t think I’m nearly as charming as Red Rich, I always worry that people will get tired of me talking about my projects all the time.
Deema is warmth and sunshine. She just loves everybody. I wish I could be as open with my emotions as she is.
Barnaby is slow. Everybody feels slow sometimes, but nobody likes it when others call them slow. I know I don’t. I just don’t hit people when they do. 😉
What was the point of all this? I guess there isn’t really a point. Just looking at myself through the characters I created. How Red Rich of me!