Absurdity

• Animorphs
• Concerned Children's Advertisers
• Bucky O' Hare
• Samurai Pizza Cats
• Hypernaughts
• The Bots Master
• Reboot
• Babylon 5
• Perfect Dark
• Lexx
• Mighty Max
• Leisure Suit Larry
• Super Mario RPG Legend Of The 7 Stars
• Warcraft 2
• Starcraft
• Diablo 2
• Netropolis
• Runescape

Media I feel has a huge impact on our outlook on life. It presents new ideas, helps shape morals and thoughts for the future. I think it used to help bind us together as a culture, especially in the 90's and early 2000s as we didn't have the giant variety they do now. Between the streaming platforms, YouTube, Twitch, video games, Roblox, there is more media made in a day than someone can consume in a lifetime. It gave us a bit of a shared history though, talking to people roughly my age we all watched a lot of the same shows, read the same books, played the same games. There was lots of variation of course, but it was something we could bond over, talking about Doctor Who or X-Men, Gargoyles. I wonder if our children will still have the same connection, just the amount of media out there now they are less likely to watch or consume the same things. It is also a lot more worldwide, where before we'd watch YTV, CBC, PBS, there was a strong regional flavour to our media, now with the internet everything just feels global and we consume what we consume. My children consume a lot less Canadian content than I did, we have Netflix and Disney Plus, but no CBC app, there's no mandated Canadian content on what they stream.

Television

Concerned children's advertisers (or related commercials) were a lot of positive affirmations and cautions that I think affected my life in a positive way. At the time sure I thought they were silly and annoying when trying to watch my show, like any other ad, but at least they weren't actually advertisements. They were breaks from the show to actually teach us things and help us when we mature. That is the thing with video media nowadays, with streaming and everything, there is no break for these commercials to teach us, it's just one thing to another.

Hypernaughts and other shows like it (in terms of never finishing, The Bots Master) always live in my head because after season 1 ends I keep thinking of what could be, where will it go, there is no end, and we'd get it on repeat and I would keep playing out different scenarios in my head. Took me years to even find this show as it didn't get a lot of fanfare and aired before the internet was a big thing.

Red Dwarf was a great show that really helped develop my sense of humour, that dry wit that I would enjoy, smart comedy. Really helped cement my love of British humour growing up, as well as Are You Being Served, and Keeping Up Appearances. At the time there would often be nothing else to watch and I thought of it as halfway decent, but I really grew to appreciate the sarcastic humour and the intelligence of it all.

Fawlty Towers isn't something I got into until I was older, but I really enjoyed that series as well.

I remember shows like The Maxx & The Head which were weirder animated adultesque shows, seems to come out at perfect time as I was growing up.

Lexx was another big one growing up for me. The weirdness of it all, different concepts, a coward as the protagonist, just the plot and back story, fell in love with sci-fi shows and books. Would watch a lot at Baba's as I didn't have the space channel at home with my mom.

Books

Animorphs helped teach me the horrors of war and set my future moral framework. While Lord of the Rings kind of made epic battles seem cool, Animorphs brought forth the horror and reality of modern warfare.

Everworld was great as well, anything by KA Applegate I'd consume. I think it helped nurture some femdom kinks in me too, that part where April teases David and I think Chris about fighting naked so she can watch.

Anything by Bruce Coville. I especially loved how his mini-series seemed to come together.

1313 Wicked way, a anthology series I read again and again, I loved how the house seemed to get stronger to the point it was too powerful to do anything about.

Movies

Transformers The Movie (1986) was my favourite movie for years. I was obsessed with Transformers and this just sealed the deal. We didn't get later seasons of Transformers that I remember on TV, so always took this as a kind of end to the series. Didn't care much for the music back then (didn't like music much until high school really), but wow do I love all the songs now.

Odin: Starlight Mutiny was one of the movies I just found, and found again by remembering how I found it (list of animated movies on the sci-fi (space) channel. I just loved the late night movies I'd watch at Baba's there, lots of weird anime and more adult movies I'd try to sneak late at night and watch quietly.

Videogames

Super Mario RPG was one of my favourite games when I was younger, playing it with my brother a lot. I remember we rented it a lot from the video store, Take 5 Video, and always tried to get one with the right save file. Playing it again and again, trying to learn all the secrets in 1 weekend before we had to return in.

NWO/WCW Revenge was my favourite wrestling game. Customizing characters and matches, learning special moves, tricks to play. I'd make brackets and just have the computer fight, sometimes taking over in a guest role, or being 1 character in the bracket.

Diddy Kong Racing was another big one I'd play with Jason a lot. We'd even do tricks like having me stay behind while we races and I hit the other racers with missiles to slow the computer down. We unlocked so much in that game.

NHL '94 was another big game on the Super Nintendo, I remember we figured out a trick where if you went around the net a certain way the goalie wouldn't keep up leading to lots of easy scores.