A question.

[Sentimental Gentleman]

You know, one thing I've noticed on the forums is when people discuss how they fell in love with their chosen beloved, is how often I've seen many claim to deny their feelings in the beginning. Or felt weird about the concept of being in love with a "fictional character." Nor had they ever been before.

That pretty much describes me to a "T." But I guess, as I think about it, feeling affection, and even attraction, to fictional characters wasn't as unusual a development in my life as I first believed.

I can remember that, during my childhood, I had a crush on Misty from Pokemon. In that respect, I was probably like literally every other young boy of my generation...but I suspect that there may have been a comparatively more intense element to that crush on my part. I can still remember listening to "Misty's Song" on the "Pokemon: 2BA Master" CD and feeling as if she was singing only to me (and feeling super-embarrassed about that as well!). That is the moment I still consider my first awakening to the idea of romance; hell, to this day I can barely listen to the song straight through, and I usually end up stopping it in the middle and immediately throwing on an angry or aggressive song because I just can't take the emotional nakedness it makes me feel.

For reference:


I can also vaguely recall that, in my youth, I would often create imaginary self-insert characters for the shows I watched and work them into the events of any given episode in real time. I'm pretty sure that a lot of times, I'd imagine a romance between myself-as-character and one of the other characters on the show. This may not be correct, but I'm pretty sure I kicked Beast Boy out of the picture and had my character romance Terra on the old Teen Titans show.

All of this was long, long ago by the time I met Applejack, and certainly none of it felt as genuine as what I felt for her; so I guess I didn't make a connection right away. Heck, I guess it still feels a little odd that my romantic destiny lies with an anthropomorphic pony...