Powder

After reaching the ripe age of twenty four, I've come to realize that there have been a lot of characters in media that I've seen versions of myself in. These versions of me can be the one that exists right now, or one that has existed in the past. Either way, it's always been Quite nice to see myself in the characters of things like games or shows. I just kinda want to ramble about that for a moment.

Jinx / Powder (League of Legends & Arcane)

Going to get the obvious out of the way first and address my namesake. I make no secrets about stealing my chosen name from a league character and I have no shame in doing so. To be fair, it's not like she was using it anyway.

Growing up I was a child prone to emotional volatility which usually manifested itself in bursts of angry tears and lots of shouting at nothing in particular. This, combined with the fact that I was constantly compared to my far more traditionally successful older sister led me to seeing a lot of young me in Powder and later Jinx. While I don't blow things up or have a mutated wolf thing for a dad, I can still find a lot of relatability in Jinx's sense of humor and way she carries herself. So thank you Jinx R Cane for your contributions to this she/theys namesake and for giving a platform to younger sisters everywhere that people give bombastic side eye to when they compare them with their older counterparts.

Max Caulfield (Life is Strange)

HOOOOOLY SHIT okay. Let me start by saying that, no, I don't have any interest in photography. However, that does not disqualify Max from being literally me. When I first played LiS back in 2015 I was an awkward teenager who was still finding herself while simultaneously trying to navigate a toxic educational environment in which I felt like a complete outsider no matter what social circle I interacted with. All the while I practically anchored myself to the one extremely close friend I had at the time. Is it any wonder why I saw myself in Max? For the sake of brevity I won't go over every minor detail but it seemed at every twist and turn Max found more and more ways to act as a mirror to myself, or at least the version of me that existed at the time.

The cherry on top of this was when my sister walked passed me replaying episode 3 on my shitty HP laptop while I was waiting for episode 4 to come out and said... "Wow, [DEADNAME], she looks kinda like how you would if you were a girl!"

Thanks for the egg shattering I guess sis.

Swann Holloway (Lost Records: Bloom & Rage)

And just when I thought DontNod couldn't hit me with anymore characters that I related to on such a hard level, they go and prove me wrong! Unlike Max and her photography, I actually think cinematography and film making are cool as hell so Swann and I have some common ground right of the jump.

Growing up fat, I quickly acquainted myself to the concept of other people weight watching me and offering up advice I never fucking asked for or wanted. This is a topic I usually don't see get explored in the media I watch because... well I guess I could get into the concept of beauty standards and the like but that's beyond the scope of this post. Anyways, back to Swann.

There was a point in this game that genuinely made me start crying to myself and it was the moment when you could find the scale Swann's mother had gotten for her. Moments like that made me feel more immersed and seen in a video game than a million unreal engine tech demos or shareholder approved "representatives" ever fucking could.

Swann's relationship with her mom is also where I find a lot of common ground with her. Mainly because it's bad. It's pretty much how I would imagine my relationship with my mom would've been had dear old mumsy not left and later OD'd. Sorry, was that TMI? Eh, fuck it, its my blog nobody is forcing you to read this. Unless they are, which in that case, I hope you're freed from your situation as soon as possible.

A.B.A (Guilty Gear series)

Ha! You thought I'd make it through this entire post without bringing up one of my fighting game mains?! You fool!

In all seriousness though, ABA is a character I see myself in to an uncomfortable degree. As someone who also spent a non-insignificant part of her life in isolation, suffers from crippling social anxiety, and is capable of forming unhealthily dependent attachments to others I gotta tip my hat to ABA.

Of course my feelings aren't as intense as hers, but the point of comparison is still there. I guess I'm missing the whole key aesthetic, but at that point it'd probably feel like a forced association.

We also both like the color blue :)

Alex Chen (Life is Strange: True Colors)

Despite myself, I have been forced to concede that Deck Nine is capable of writing solid characters sometimes.

More sibling-isms in this one, this time of the "looking up to our older sibling as a bastion of who we should try to be like despite knowing we're very different people" variety.

Much like my comparisons to ABA's issues, my negative experiences with the mental health industrial complex isn't exactly one to one with Alex's to say the least but I do see my experiences in some of hers. The feeling of being seen as part of the system or a number on a spreadsheet when you just want to get help is a suffocating one and it sucks.

People also headcanon Alex as autistic and so do I because I am too and that helps me relate to her more.

Jax (The Amazing Digital Circus)

When I finished TADC I felt myself relating super hard to Jax in a way that made me feel extremely uncomfortable, and I mean that in the best way possible.

She spends the whole series building walls around herself and pushing people away to avoid addressing her own feelings. I've done these exact same things.

I've been extremely shitty and mean to people who 100% didn't deserve it and even to those who were actively trying to help me. I mask a lot of my feelings behind sarcasm and humor. I hope that came across well enough in this post, but I just wanted to say it outright just so we were both on the same page.

I've heard plenty of folks call Jax a cautionary tale and yeah I gotta agree, had I not opened up more and let go of my misdirected malice I would've likely died just like Jax did and frankly I kinda like not being dead.

Okay so I had an invasive thought the other day about how Sans in Deltarune and 2026 Chris Jericho are basically the same dude.

Both Sans and Chris Jericho have suffered from overexposure in their respective media. For Sans, while his shtick and gimmick was novel and funny back in 2015 when Undertale originally came out, but fast forward to 2026 and I've grown utterly sick of that damn skeleton. His static nature in regards to how he's written has made me loathe even seeing him, regardless of if his character is even going anywhere beyond chapter 5.

Now, onto Chris Jericho, or just Jericho I guess. Much like Sans, I found his contributions to both New Japan and AEW reasonably enjoyable during the late 2010s and early 2020s. Sadly for him, that appreciation if you will is in extremely short supply come the current day as his character grows staler by the day and his in ring work continues to deteriorate.

Now those facts on their own would be bad enough, it's never enjoyable to see a character become unlikable and unwanted. But, it gets worse, because for characters like Sans and Jericho it's not enough that they be annoying and unlikable, they have to drag other characters down with them as they remain relevant in the narrative.

Sans getting involved with Toriel is the obvious example for him as his connection to her has seen her get previously unthinkable levels of criticism from fans, despite the fact that none of these issues fans have would exist if not for him.

Likewise, Chris Jericho has taken the ever popular and previously well established Tommaso Ciampa and rendered him a complete joke. The psycho killer that dethroned Mark Briscoe for the TNT title in his debut is nowhere to be seen due to having to bring his character work down to Jericho's level to match his mediocrity.

Now, is this to say that both Sans and Jericho are spent forces and irredeemable in the narratives of both Deltarune and All Elite Wrestling? Kinda, yeah, but also no not really. The main issue here is stagnation, to put it bluntly, something has to change with these two. Sans needs to become something beyond the ha ha funny guy mom dater and Papyrus teaser and Jericho needs to stop trying to pull of matches and feuds he frankly isn't capable of doing anymore. The likelihood of this happening for either is, in my opinion, slim to none. Having said that, if neither character is capable to changing as to better serve their narratives, then they need to get the fuck out.