Welcome to Character Inspirations

After 4 years of producing one blog post a week (give or take a few skips here and there), I've finally hit my 200th post. I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about this week. I've been working on the icon series for a few weeks now, but I wasn't sold on the idea of limiting myself to my personal icons.

Instead I wanted to write about the many characters in books and graphic novels that have inspired me. They aren't in any order and there aren't any ranks.

1) Nancy Drew - she was my first strong female role model in books. For a long time all I would read were Nancy Drew books. I hope she keeps inspiring generations of young girls.

2) Cassie Logan - she was my second biggest female role model in books. I would recommend to anyone to read Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry at least once in their life. 

3) The Golden Trio from the Harry Potter Books (because I just can't pick one)- I was at the perfect age to grow up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. These books shaped my childhood and continue to shape my imagination.

4) Asterix - Asterix was my first comic book hero. He and his good friend Obelix protected their village from the Roman invaders and went on tons of adventures. 

5) Jim Hawkins - I read Treasure Island in my early 20s and I wish I had read it sooner. It was a fun read and a great adventure novel. 

6) Tohru Honda - Fruits Basket was really popular in my middle and high school, which is how I got interested in the series. I loved all the characters, but Tohru really stands out as someone special. She's the most accepting character I've ever come across in literature and she really wants her friends and family to be happy.

7) Sherlock Holmes - I love the mysteries Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. I also like the many new interpretations that have come out. I don't know how much I'd want to be like Sherlock, but he doesn't seem to care what anyone else thinks of him. He's fascinating person and isn't boring in the slightest.

8) Alice of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - I love these books and the Disney animated movie. Alice is a true dreamer in every sense of the word.

9) Yusuke Urameshi - He might not be very smart and be a bit of a delinquent, but deep down he has a good heart and is super loyal to those he cares about. Yu Yu Hakusho was one of the first manga I read and I would recommend it to anyone who likes great characters with interesting stories to tell.

Each of these characters have their strengths and their faults. They're all very different characters and have very different stories to tell. Some people might not like the characters at all. 

What makes a character interesting or inspiring is left up to the reader. Yes, the author has the important job of shaping the character, but the reader is the one interpreting and judging them. I have found that the characters I love and am inspired by most are often very flawed, but are still able to do amazing things while flawed.

If you haven't read any of the books or graphic novels I have listed above, I totally recommend each of them.

What I have learned from each of these characters is to

Be as inquisitive as Nancy

Be as strong as Cassie

Have friends like Harry, Ron, and Hermione

Be as confident as Asterix

Be as adventurous as Jim

Be as accepting as Tohru

Be as fascinating as Sherlock

Be a dreamer like Alice

Be as loyal as Yusuke

And follow my own path to build my own story.

Thanks for sticking with me for 200 blog posts. Until next week...

Welcome to Icons Part 6: Iconic Moments in History

Have you ever wondered what you would have been doing during some of histories biggest events? Would you have marched with the Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights movement? Or picketed the White House with the Women's Suffragettes? Which side of the French Revolution would you have fought on?

History has always fascinated me. From a young age, I'd watch documentaries on anything and everything that was on the History Channel (you know, before it became nothing but pawn shop reality TV and aliens). I especially loved the specials on Halloween and warriors of the ancient world.

I spent many days in history class imaging what it would have been like to be apart of some of the biggest events taught in class. I wished I could have gone to Woodstock and jammed with the rest of hippie culture. I imagined what it would have been like to journey along the Oregon Trail (and hopefully not die of dysentery).

As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that I've lived through some pretty big historical events (at least from an American perspective). At the time, I might not have realized they how big or significant they were going to become or the ways these events would change the course of history. Some events will leave a positive impact on my life and the lives of many other people. I got to witness the election of the United State's first black president and the legalization of gay marriage. Other events have left scars that will likely never fade, like living through 9/11.

Every generation seems to have a few events that they will always think back to and remember with exact detail. I remember asking my family about different events that they lived through. My mom has a couple of memories from the Detroit riots. My dad likes to joke about surviving the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island. I've heard that my grandfather never forgot the day Pearl Harbor was attached. And there were a lot of stories about how my grandparent's families lived through the Great Depression.

Decades seemed to be defined by certain events that happened. When I think of the 1930s, I image the Dust Bowl and extreme poverty. The United States of the 1960s, I imagine a country divided by politics. The Civil Rights Movement was at it's height as were the protests against the Vietnam War. JFK was assassinated and astronauts walked on the moon. The 2000s were a time of rapid progress and prosperity before it all came crashing down in 2008. The start of the decade launched us into an era of fear and ended with a slogan for "Hope".

Everything that has already happened is history. Some things have been forgotten and lost to time, such as the origins of the Nazca Lines. There are events that are only remembered through folklore and legend. Remember when archaeologists found the city of Troy? Most historians had thought the story was just a myth before physical evidence suggested otherwise.

History is written by the people who survive events and make an effort to pass down knowledge. The event that happened can't change, but how it is recorded and remembered can. History can be used to inspire nationalism and extreme pride in a country's people, almost to the point of blind devotion in extreme cases. It can be written in a way that hides or brushes over "uncomfortable" truths that modern societies would rather forget than acknowledge. It's never rewritten, but occasionally needs to be revised.

There are major events going on all the time. I can't just dream about what I would have done, but what I can do in the present. Protests and counter protests have been all over my news feed and social media. The threat of a nuclear attack is at the highest that I can remember (I wasn't exactly around for the Cold War).

What will the 2010s be remembered for?

What impact will I have on these events? Only time will tell.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week!

Welcome to Icons Part 5: Moments in Pictures

"A picture is worth a thousand words" or so the saying goes. In the past two hundred years, the invention of the camera has changed how we are able to view our world. What was once limited to special occasions and those with cash to spare, taking pictures has become accessible to everyone (mostly of food, cats, and dogs being shamed).

Now if we want to record a moment of our lives we just need to pull out our phone or digital camera and start snapping away or recording a video. We're bombarded with images everywhere. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and many other social media platforms have made it easy for us to share these moments. Images travel fast when everything is just a couple of clicks away.

My world is filled with images or people, places, and events. Some pictures inspire wanderlust and envy. Others repulse us and make us cringe away in disgust. There are some photos that mysterious and make us question reality. And then there are the ones that document an important moment in time.

Marilyn Monroe's iconic photo of her blowing a kiss into the camera has long been the face of old Hollywood glamour. The photo of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out has become iconic over the years (though I'm not sure the famous scientist would be happy about that). The photo below show a struggling mother with her two children that my mind always jumps to when I think of America's struggle during the Great Depression.

Historical events in particular seem to have a lot of iconic photos. When I think of the end of World War II, I immediately think of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. Images from the Civil Rights movement would include Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the photo of Ruby Bridges going to school surrounded by protesters carrying hate filled signs. I don't think I'll ever forget the image of the Twin Towers on fire the day 9/11 happened.

This past weekend, I was inundated with images from my home state of Virginia. I wish I could say that they were beautiful photos of the mountains in the summer, but they weren't. Instead I saw image after image of angry white fascists carrying tiki touches. It will be hard to disassociate these pictures from bigotry and hate anytime soon.

But for every photo of hate that was posted, there was another photo showing the people counter-protesting them. Now my Twitter feed is filled with photos from vigils being held all over the country for Charlottesville and the photo of Heather Heyer, who died yesterday counter-protesting.

Before the age of the Internet, the iconic photos that were distributed were typically limited to what newspapers and other media outlets would publish. If they didn't like the photo that was taken or if they didn't want to report on an event, they wouldn't print the photo and it might be lost to the sands of time. Now, anyone can determine which photos become iconic. We're not limited to what's published in print. If someone takes a photo and posts it online, it can go viral in hours.

It's not just reporters who are reporting on historical events. It's everyone with a cell phone and a social media account.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off), please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to Icons Part 4: Emoji

Last week, we were gifted with one of the worst movies of the year. With 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Emoji movie is clearly not one of the must see movies of the summer (though 44% of people seem to like it).

I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on exactly why it's bad (though I'm sure I could find out if I really wanted to). Hopefully it'll quickly disappear into the void of forgotten bad media and we'll have better animated movies to talk about.

So why even bring up a terrible movie when I'm writing about icons? Clearly this won't be considered an iconic movie anytime soon.

It's because emoji are icons.

He's a cool smiley face!

No, I'm not joking. Emoji are images that symbolize different things, which is one of the definitions of icons. Most emoji have one very specific meaning, but some have gained multiple meanings as people use them more and more. There can be a lot of nuance in their context, similar to how we use other images and language.

Most emoji meanings are fairly straight forward. If someone sends a heart emoji, the first reaction isn't that the sender wants a heart. It means that they are expressing their love for something or someone. The majority of people are going to know that when they are sent a happy emoji.

The ways we communicate is constantly evolving. Texting and social media have led to fewer face-to-face interactions, which can cause miscommunication when an emotion can't be detected. Sarcasm in particular has been hard to convey just through text. The use of emoji helps us to communicate emotions when we can't see each other. It is an expression of our feelings. Facebook has changed it's "like" button into several emotional choices for people to react with.

Some companies have embraced this change in communication. The pizza delivery industry has been running a bunch of promotions about how you can order your favorite pizza by texting the pizza emoji. All so that we can get our pizza even faster.

There are some less obvious ones that have taken on completely different meaning from the original image, like how the eggplant is being used by hookup culture. It's similar to how slag forms. The younger generation develops it, mass media embraces it, all while the older generation looks on in confusion. As the new meaning of an emoji evolves and changes, it becomes the new accepted definition. Which is kind of what happened with the original definition of icon. Few people will automatically associate religious imagery with icons in this day and age.

But that doesn't mean we needed an entire movie dedicated to the smiley face.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. Until next week.

Welcome to Icons Part 3: When an Icon Fades

This past week we lost a major icon in the music industry, Chester Bennington. Linkin Park was one of my favorite bands in the 2000s. I loved singing along whenever one of their songs popped up on the radio station (DC 101.1 was all I listened to back then). His music spoke the angsty teenager that I was. Hearing about his death was tough and I might have played nothing but Linkin Park for the past few days.

Within minutes of people hearing about Chester Bennington's death, people were posting on social media how his music changed their lives. Some people posted about how Linkin Park's music helped them get through the worst parts of their lives. Others mentioned how his work inspired them at a time when their lives felt directionless.

We've recently lost a lot of iconic people. Not just musicians, but also actors, models, authors, and political activists. Some lived long full lives, while others passed away after a long battle with illness, and a few lost their lives in tragic accidents. When someone who is iconic dies, people will stop whatever they are doing and type out a message on social media, telling everyone what this person meant to their lives, even though many times they've never actually met.

Iconic people are able to touch so many lives with their work. They can seem so much larger than life, that when we loose them, we fell like we are loosing a part of ourselves. I know people who still mourn the death of Robin Williams and will post tributes to him on his birthday (heck I've been known to cry while watching his older movies).

The first major iconic death that I was aware of was when Princess Diana died. At the time, I had no idea who she was, what she stood for, or why so many people loved her. I only knew about her death because my mom started crying when she heard the news. Back then, I didn't understand why my mom would cry because someone she had never met died. Clearly she meant something to my mom, but it wasn't like they were friends. I'm older now and, hopefully, a wise enough to understand that just because you don't know someone personally doesn't mean they can't touch your lives in a positive way.

Princess Diana meant a lot to many people, as did Prince, and Alan Rickman, Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, and David Bowie. I could name hundreds of iconic people whom we have lost in the past ten years. Each one helping to shape and influence people they might never have met.

Icons mean something and can represent anything. They can appear out of no where and occasionally fade just as quickly. They inspire us. They influence us. They can change our lives. When an iconic person dies, we mourn them and celebrate their lives. We remember the amazing things they have done and why we had such strong emotions for them.

Death is tragic, even if it is inevitable. When a person dies, they don't just fade away from our collective conscious. We remember them and tell their stories to the next generation.

Thank you for reading. Until next week.

Welcome to the Iconic Part 2: The Cartoon Icons of my Childhood

When I asked on Twitter what people found to be "iconic", the one response I got was about classic cartoons. I then did a Google search for "iconic cartoons" and every image that popped up I recognized. From Homer Simpson and SpongeBob SquarePants to Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Scooby Doo, there was a wide variety of cartoon characters that seemed to fit Google's definition of iconic.

My childhood afternoons in a nut shell...

But I guess that's what it means for something to be "iconic". It's an image that represents something and I can easily picture an image of Scooby or Bugs representing some of my favorite cartoons as a kid. In fact, I bet if you showed any child in the United States a picture of Scooby, Mickey, or Bugs, they'd be able to identify them. These characters seem timeless and appeal to a wide variety of people.

Heck, every few years there seems to be a new incarnation of these iconic characters. I think I've seen at least 6 different versions of Scooby Doo (including A Pup Named Scooby Doo and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo) and Disney has been making new shorts with Mickey for a few years now.

Which leads me to a new question. How do we know when a character from our childhood becomes iconic?

Is it when we start seeing reboots being made (such as the new Ducktales or Powerpuff Girls)? Is it when they jump from the small screen and get their own movie made (like the three Rugrats or Transformer movies)? Is it just because they still have a huge fan base that won't go away even after nearly a decade being off the air (the original Teen Titans show - I don't know what this "Go!" nonsense is). Or is it when the children who grew up with these characters have become adults with children themselves and want to share their happy memories with their kids?

It's probably a combination of all these things. I know I wouldn't have any idea who Rocky and Bullwinkle are if my mom hadn't loved the show so much. I wouldn't have found a love of mysteries without my dad introducing me to Scooby Doo.

We're starting to see a resurgence of cartoons from the 1980s and 1990s being remade or having a reboot. A lot of people my age are really excited to see these characters come back and some of the new shows are really good, maybe even better than the original (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is so much better than the 80s version and it doesn't feel like they are just trying to sell toys). Though not all of the reboots have been successful, it's still so much fun to see fans react to hearing that their favorite shows might get a modern update.

I wonder what cartoons will be considered iconic in the future. Will we see a Phineas and Ferb or Gravity Falls reboot in 20 years? Will we ever get a live action Steven Universe movie?

Iconic cartoons often fill us with nostalgia. They bring back fond memories of happy, carefree times. And we want to share those happy feelings with those we are closest to.

What are some of your iconic childhood cartoon characters? Let me know in the comments or on my Facebook.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to the Iconic Part 1: A Religious History

If I'm going to be doing a series on icons, I might as well take a quick peek at the history of icons. Apparently when you look up the word "icon" on the Internet, the first definition that pops up indicates that the origin is religious. Google defines the term as "a painting of Jesus Christ or another holy figure, typically in a traditional style on wood, venerated and used as an aid to devotion in the Byzantine and other Eastern Churches."

An icon of St. Alexandra (or at least I think that's what this is).

Though the religious icon is traditionally a part of the Eastern Church, that's not to say that icons and iconic images didn't influence the western church's art. After all the English word icon comes from the Greek word "εἰκών" (pronounced as: eikōn) meaning an image or a likeness that represents something else. This doesn't necessarily mean a religious image, but it can be hard to separate the term from the traditional artistic style.

I feel I shouldn't be all that surprised that religion plays a role in defining what an icon is. For a good chunk of western civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church held nearly all the wealth and power. One of the easiest ways to display their power was through art. Many art history scholars can tell you all about how the image of The Holy Mother Mary's image was constantly changing depending on the fashion and ideal beauty standards of the time. The Byzantine Mary from the 9th century looks very different from the much later portraits Rafael would paint.

This isn't the first time I've noticed how religion has influenced our society. Do any of you guys remember the Parable of Talents from the Bible? It's okay if you don't. I remember as a child thinking it was funny how the word English word for talent sounded similar to an ancient currency. The Sunday School teachers would explain to us that this parable was teaching us to spread our talents (as in our natural aptitude or skill set) and that we would prosper because of it. And though I'm not entirely sure what the origin of the English word for talent is, it can't be that much of a coincidence that the story and the modern definition work well together.

(Side Note: I recently reread the Parable of Talents out of curiosity and I'm 99% sure that Jesus is talking about the virtues of economic investment, not the investment into a person's natural aptitude or skill set. I'm not sure why I find this interesting, but I do.)

So that brings me to the modern school of thought on icons/iconic images. Today icons are seen as symbols, regardless if the symbol is a person or thing. Icons are typically thought of as images representing something. The fashion industry in particular seems to be full of icons like Tyra Banks, Marilyn Monroe, or Princess Kate (feel free to disagree with me).

But does the modern icon have the same reverence and devotion as the religious iconic images of old?

I'd argue from a cultural stand point that they do. Our society has a slight (possibly unhealthy) obsession with the famous, rich, and powerful. People, places, and objects can all be used to symbolize something, so why not turn them into an icon. There are many images that are hard to disassociate from a certain concept, whether it be the tragic yet glamorous Hollywood lifestyle from Marilyn Monroe, Woodstock from hippy culture, or the Eiffel Tower from Paris.

Icons, like everything else, have evolved over time. What started as images to aid in the worship of the Christian Religion have morphed into images that symbolize what society deems worthy of worshiping (mainly celebrities).

So, join me next week as I continue to discover what it means to be an icon...

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week...