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?
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.