Page updated: 25 May 2025
Or: media that shaped me growing up.
I am Canadian, and I grew up in a small-ish city in central Ontario in the 2000s. I've never had many friends and I don't have any siblings, so a lot of my free time was spent by myself at home, usually playing video games or on the family computer.
This is a list of things I enjoyed the most as a child until 2010-2011ish?
WIP page!
Websites
Neopets
Other virtual pet sites
Video games
Pokemon
Pokemon was also one of my biggest interests growing up, and I was literally OBSESSED with it as a kid. My first game ever was I think Sapphire? Which was rented from fuckin Rogers Video, but the first game I ever owned was FireRed, and followed by that I got Emerald!

In the following years I ended up getting noble pink Nintendo DS, and I was super hype for the release of gen 4 with Diamond and Pearl. I'll never forget the days of Serebii.net before they were an official site or whatever they are now -- I used to check the site daily for leaks and rumours, something they'd never post nowadays lol
As far as DPP goes, I originally rented Diamond, but later got Pearl and Platinum for myself. Platinum is honestly still one of my favourite Pokemon games to date, and I actually replayed a good chunk of it in 2024? Which was really fun!
Later, HeartGold and SoulSilver also dropped as part of gen 4, and I vividly remember being excited beyond belief when I saw this specific trailer where they had the cool ass 3D models at the beginning. I still have my copy of HeartGold (with Pokewalker!) and it's also still one of my favs -- I think I'm just a sucker for gen 4.
My interest in Pokemon started to wane with Black and White though -- I had White bc I thought Zekrom was cooler. I ended up not liking the more story-focused approach, and the switch to the animated sprites with the weird camera angles and zooms and stuff -- while cool -- was super jarring to me.
However, gen 5 did also introduce one fuckin asshole... that green-haired weirdo, N. I was obsessed with him, and he was the first Pokemon character that I had a HUUUUUUUGE crush on.
I don't really have any particular feelings for N these days, but looking at him makes me feel like I'm staring at a weird ex somehow.
Anyway, here are the games that I ended up owning as a kid -- I ended up getting more than I talked about here bc 1) the games weren't always 200$ a copy, and 2) my obsession was literally unending:
- Red and Blue versions
- Yellow version
- Gold and Silver versions
- Crystal version
- Ruby and Sapphire* versions
- Firered* version
- Emerald* version
- Pearl* version
- Platinum* version
- HeartGold* and SoulSilver* versions
- White* version
- Colosseum
- XD: Gale of Darkness*
- Ranger: Shadows of Almia*
- Ranger: Guardian Signs*
- Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team
- Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness*
- Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky
* was played to completion
I did end up later playing Y and a few other games since, but since I was a teenager or older when I did I won't count them here.
Honestly, as somewhat without an interest in an abundance of merch or their card game, Game Freak did not keep the series interesting for me as I grew older. The games are super dumbed down now, and I honestly feel like they're much more boring in general -- there's too many cutscenes, and the stories they try to do are extremely shallow and/or bland imo.
I do still have a passive interest in Pokemon games, but I mostly just play the older games now bc they're what interest me and are also the most accessible via emulators. Never mind that new AAA games are 100$ or more after tax here now...
Digimon
I surprisingly did not have exclusive brand loyalty to Pokemon, and I enjoyed Digimon a lot as well (probably bc it had cool dragons).

I wrote more about Digimon here, but the games I had and played were:
- Digimon World (PS1)
- Digimon World DS
- Digimon World Dusk
I would like to revisit Digimon World as an adult at some point, bc I was terrible at that game as a child and could not raise anything but a Numemon or Sukamon for the life of me. Despite that though, the sounds and design of that game are burned into my mind, and I played it a lot despite never managing to actually get anywhere LOL
On the other hand, I did play through Digimon World DS in 2024, and... I do not recommend it. I enjoyed it a lot as a kid, but as an adult it kinda sucks, with bad writing and an odd, very limited selection of Digimon available. On the flip side, Dusk/Dawn are way better improved versions of DS, and I would definitely recommend giving those a try if you have any interest in the DS games at all.
Spyro
God, I still love the original 3 games for PS1 to date. I literally played those endlessly, and I still could play them endlessly.
There were a bunch of flops in the series later on, but these are the ones I played:
- Spyro the Dragon (PS1)
- Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage (PS1)
- Spyro: Year of the Dragon (PS1)
- Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly (PS2)
- The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning (Gamecube)
- The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon (Wii)
Other Nintendo franchises
Other
Movies and TV shows
Cybersix
Storm Hawks
Bakugan Battle Brawlers
The Lion King
My Neighbour Totoro
Introduction to anime
Books
I never read anymore, but I used to be obsessed with reading as a kid, and in turn that influenced me to want to write as well. I was mostly into books featuring animal protagonists, dragons, and sometime between like, 11-13 I started reading a lot of books with transgender characters once I realised I was probably trans myself (and it wasn't as widespread on the internet at the time).
I honestly learned most of my writing skills from reading a shit ton of books, and I would kinda "study" the layouts and styles to learn how to write for myself. And I guess it kinda worked out?
Warriors (Erin Hunter)
If you were into Warriors also, you know.
Age of Fire (E. E. Knight)
I originally picked up the second book of this series, Dragon Avenger, from some random bookstore while on a day trip once -- I was drawn in my the cover (it features it a big green dragon on it), and the premise that it was not a kids or YA novel about dragon characters, but instead intended as general fiction for adults. So I had to read it!
(For the record, I was always at a much higher reading level than my peers in school, and in general I enjoyed much more "mature" books even when I was like... 10.)
The first three books in this series actually all feature their own protagonists, with their stories running parallel and overlapping, so it actually wasn't an issue that I started with the first one.
To be honest I couldn't tell you much about the books anymore, but the second protagonist's name, Wistala, was my Elder Scroll character name for a long ass time, and in general this very much influenced my dragon-loving self for the longest time. I'd like to give this series a re-read at some point... who knows when.
Other
Other random series that I don't have much to say about, but were probably influential in some way or another.
To be quite honest I don't really remember a lot about most of these, but I had them listed on my ancient Goodreads account and they stood out to me as books I remember drawing influence from, even if it was just inspiring me to write my own stories (often fanfic, though I used to write a lot of original stuff as well) and develop charactes.
- Eragon (Christopher Paolini)
- Silverwing (Kenneth Oppel)
- Guardians of Ga'Hoole (Kathryn Lasky)
- The Sight (David Clement-Davies)
- Fire Bringer (David Clement-Davies)
- Exodus (Julie Bertagna)
And yes, most of these aside from Eragon and Exodus feature animal protagonists LOL. That was pretty much the number 1 to lure me into reading anything.