More on Sunner and Me

Nearly two and a half years ago, I wrote about my Pokémon presence on online forums, in reminiscing about how in the old days of the Internet, most (if not a good amount of) communication was done through them. The post was also made to commemorate the birthday of one such user, whose screen name was "Sunner" or a variant of it. Some developments have occurred since that time, so it's well worth to write about them, not the least in part because Pokémon is involved.

Three months ago, when I was making my post on personal branding, I searched for my own name on the Internet. What came up was not only the things that I described in that post, but also a page on a web site called FurAffinity that contains the very artwork I described in the "forum persona" post as above. Checking out his profile on the same site revealed that he has alternative contacts, one of which is his Steam account. Since I have Steam, I proceeded to add him as a friend there; he eventually accepted, though it did take a bit of time. But when that happened, we finally reconnected, after having grown apart for a few years, which makes me appreciate the moment.

As for that artwork, it too is worth discussing here. Sunner depicts me as Ash, while he depicts himself as Louis the swan from an animated feature titled The Trumpet of the Swan. Our nutty relationship, and the reason for the "chase" metaphor, is because on the forum we used to post in, we often cross-posted (posted within a short time of each other) and kept bringing up the matter, shadowing each other all the while. The respective characters also happened to be our profile pictures ("avatars") at the time most of these occurrences happened, aside from being things we like in general.

The original...

Now, that artwork was formally conceived on January 2007, which means by now it's pretty much 13 years old. A lot has happened since then, including my meeting with people from all walks of life, including a certain girl fan who is as big a Pokémon fan as I am, plus a great illustrator to boot. I showed her the artwork and asked if she could redraw it; she gladly took on the challenge, and we think she did a great job.

...and the new version.

Her drawing is imbued with her own illustrative style, which is rather unique and anime-styled, as Sunner puts it. But that's not the only thing unique about this particular one; she made a "sequel" to the drawing, which in a way represents and commemorates my reconnection with Sunner. We both also like how this was executed.

The sequel. (The Japanese writing means "Long time no see, Louis.")

Even with this, my reconnection with Sunner underscores an important point. Sunner is a "furry", someone who likes animal characters that exhibit human traits, and specifically those that have fur, hence the name. He also admits as such when I showed him the drawings. Further, within the "furry fandom", he has another screen name, Folgrimeo, as indicated in the profile above as well on WikiFur, an apparent wiki for furries. I'd like to discuss the "furry fandom" in light of Pokémon, but that's better reserved for a different post.

After all these years, the connection is still impressive. We barely deal with Internet forums nowadays, but we can still communicate in other ways through the Internet. We like what we like, but it seems almost magical that they can and did cross over. That said, I'm sure we've developed some appreciation of what the other likes through our strange connection. Whether it's Pokémon for me or furry for him, we have great things that we like. The same is true for our strange connection, which ought to remain for as long as possible.

One year ago: Wallpaper: 20th Movie - Remember and Continue
Two years ago: The First: Episode 001 - "Pokémon - I Choose You!"