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Cuanta Vida. I turn to it first because it was always so profound for me. It was late July, I think, but it only had 61 pages when I found it. Page 61 is a minor cliffhanger, which definitely helped, but I was also dreading my senior year of high school, so it was another little perfect storm circumstance. Regardless, I cared about what happened to these people, if they would escape, so I committed to the story, soaking up every page. This would, by extension, lead me to gain a loyalty to Kytri comics as a whole. When she started TWIYEH!, I hopped right in.

I got into Mortal Kombat rather randomly, but I still remember how it happened. I just looked up the fatalities one summer afternoon, and once I went through them all, I realized that I kept mixing up some of the characters, so I started looking into them to clarify things. Their stories drew me in. I think the fact that so many of their stories are so interwoven really got me into thinking about personal emotional depth. I began to realize how important characters were to the overall story. Even if I fade in and out of the fandom, it’s still a very important franchise to me.

Then there’s The Protomen. When I went into the night’s venue last November, I just knew there was no way I was walking out without becoming a full-blown fan. Three moments stand out: Funeral For A Son, The Will Of One, and after the show.

During Funeral For A Son, K.I.L.R.O.Y. took Protoman’s helmet and gun through the crowd. This walk was in two parts: about halfway through the audience, he paused, turned to the backstage passage, and started parting the crowd there.

When he stopped, he stopped right. In. Front of me. With helm and gun in hand. So I was the first to step aside. My reaction was slightly delayed due to awe, so I ended up brushing him. But either way, it was incredible. It’s something I haven’t forgotten and can’t forget. I can’t help but wonder if something about it also draws me to Protoman himself…

The Will of One was simply awesome. When they started playing, I started crying. It was the only song of theirs I really knew at the time, but Panther was wearing the Mega Man helmet and it was all so loud and powerful and my voice wavered as I sang along and I’d never shouted that loudly and oh my god I feel it all now.

After the show, I had the opportunity to speak face-to-face with a couple of them, which really solidifed the entire experience. Murphy and I chatted a bit over Scott Pilgrim (I wore that shirt to the show because it was the only cool shirt I had that I was sure everyone would recognize), I bought my CDs from The Gambler (“I need both CDs, please!”), and K.I.L.R.O.Y. called me over personally to ask if one of my drunk friends was all right (he was. He would later tweet that he miraculously did not have a hangover). K.I.L.R.O.Y. even hugged me.

I’ve never consciously thought of this before. I’ve been mulling over this for a few hours now, but I’m struggling with examples and I’m still not quite sure how to answer this. All I can do is try.

I think a lot of it lies in the execution of the story and the opinion of the reader or viewer. For the sake of my answer I’m assuming that “good” means interesting (the definition of which varies from person to person) and well-executed (which is less ambiguous, but can still vary).

Assuming the story is executed at a level I find palatable, hero/villain dynamics are so widely varied that I can’t find many common themes over the dynamics that I’ve paid closest attention to. This is because the motivations of heroes and villains vary widely, too.

Link and Mega Man are fighting Ganon and Dr. Wily to stop them from taking over their respective worlds. Mario fights Bowser to save Princess Peach and the Mushroom Kingdom by extension, but clearly there’s more to their dynamic than that if they’re cool with going go-karting or even occasionally saving the world together. Hell, in Super Smash Brothers Brawl’s Subspace Emissary, Link and Zelda free Ganondorf so that they can all fight their common enemy Tabuu together, implying that this is a thing that could happen under the right circumstances.

Then there are heroes on smaller scales and even protagonists who probably wouldn’t self-identify as heroes by virtue of what their lives are normally like. I turn specifically to Kytri’s comics again for this paragraph. In Cuanta Vida, Bleu just wants to get out of 2Fort, but the inherent nature of the setting is the biggest antagonist — the character who would be considered the main villain isn’t introduced until page 73 out of 159, but when he is, there is suddenly a more concrete hero/villain dynamic, and it the entire comic is turned on its head. In TWIYEH!, the protagonist is a young woman who’s trying to live a normal life, and she ends up dating the villain of the first chapter because no one ever expected a villain to show up in their lives. I actually kind of liked the guy at first because I was fairly oblivious to the foreshadowing of his true colors until someone pointed them out to me.

There’s much more to discuss than this, of course. These were just the thoughts I know how to articulate on the subject. This is a pretty big question.

This one took some time to think about. It took almost as long to write up.

I’ll start with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. There are so many unique background ponies and one-shot characters that it’s hard to not fall for a handful. I like Derpy, but as a brony, that pretty much goes without saying. I also like Sapphire Shores, who appeared in A Dog and Pony Show, because she’s SEEEEEEEEEEENSATIONAL! OW! I also have a fondness for the musical background ponies Vinyl Scratch, who had literally a few seconds of screentime during Suited for Success and Octavia, who appeared in The Best Night Ever and Sweet and Elite. Do I think Octavia is Pinkie Pie’s sister? I don’t know. I flip-flop. It’s a tempting thought, but as a gamernerd, I also really like the potential for Pac-Man Theme Naming amongst her family (for those that don’t know: Her sisters are Blinkie and Inkie. She is Pinkie. Her father is Clyde and her mother is Sue). I also like Fancypants and Fleur de Lis, who appeared in Sweet and Elite. They’re really nice ponies, despite being part of Canterlot high society, where snobbishness is a norm. Also, Fleur’s really, really pretty.

Also, Scott McNeil does play a few one-shot characters throughout the show. :D My favorite role there is Chief Thunderhooves in Over A Barrel. He’s also the lead Diamond Dog in A Dog and Pony Show and Flam in The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000. This guy’s vocal variety blows my mind, you guys.

Ahem. Yes. In Mega Man, I really like Kalinka. It’s just too bad that she only appeared in like three games, and only one (Mega Man 4) was part of the main Classic series. I also really like Tango. Because he’s a robot cat. I think my fondness of these two may stem from their typical association with Proto Man. I’m not actually sure how the association with Tango came about. Was it around before Mega Man 10? If it wasn’t, then I can see it. If not, all I can offer is a shrug. Proto Man is typically shipped with Kalinka, and I do have a fondness for the pairing.

The easiest big fandom to answer this question for would be Mortal Kombat. I love Sareena. Love, love, love her, but she’s made so few appearances that I’ve actually encountered fellow fans who didn’t know or remember who she was. D: It’s even worse because she was set to appear in Deadly Alliance and Deception, but got cut both times. Also, I ship her with the older Sub-Zero. She had me at “Take me with you.” Even if the line could have been delivered better.

In a previous post, I mentioned Kytri and Cuanta Vida, but I very stupidly forgot to mention her other comics: This is the Worst Idea You’ve Ever Had! (commonly referred to as TWIYEH!) and Sin Pararse. Both can be found at http://www.skycrapersoup.com. Anyway, they share a continuity, so I’ll lump them together for this. I’ve grown really fond (and protective) of Rei over the course of the past couple months, but I’ve liked Carmilla from the start (to the point where I chose her to be drawn in my Artists’ Edition of the first TWIYEH! book) and warmed up to Dawn as Chapter 1 of TWIYEH! continued. Milosh also totally rules and he reminds me of Wallace Wells from Scott Pilgrim. I’m still not entirely sure why, but hey. No skin off my back. I also like Jordi and Jeremy, but since they were the two leads in Cuanta Vida (CV and the TWIYEH!-verse share characters, but not continuities — that can never be stressed enough), I think they only half-count as “minor”. There are so many characters in these comics, so it’s kind of like picking favorite ponies. Only a little more obscure. Because I’m an Internet hipster geek.