Positive pop culture role models from your childhood

[Memory]

When you were growing up, who is someone from pop culture that you look back on as having the most positive impact on you?

For me, it's Uncle Phil (James Avery, The Fresh Price of Bel-Air). Big letters for a big man who helped raise me.

I grew up in the golden age of family sitcoms, but when I look back on them he's the only positive father figure who stands out. Danny Tanner (Bob Saget, Full House) was so bland that he barely existed except to deliver an exasperated face and a moral at the end. Tim Taylor (Tim Allen, Home Improvement) was a man-child and definitely not someone you should emulate. And Carl Winslow (Reginald VelJohnson, Family Matters (who also has the coolest name in the history of the world)) was definitely good hearted but had a huge temper and was out of line more often than not.

Uncle Phil was the GOAT. He could only ever be considered an antagonist in the typical sitcom dad way if you ignored that Will was an antihero. He stood in Will's way a lot, but it was always out of concern for him when he was making a mistake. Watching him mentor Will over the years, trying to steer him toward good choices and being there for him even when he messed up really stuck with me throughout my life. I'm actually giving myself The Feels by writing this.

[cynderthekitsune]

i think the internet raised me more than my own parents did lmao. though to be fair, i did use the internet a lot, to escape from the real world...

though that being said, when i was a kid, i used to be big into Vocaloid/UTAU (and still am!). while a lot of the tracks certainly weren't for kids, a lot of it kinda stuck with me lol.
tho i think, it was more the fanbase than anything.
there was heaps of good tracks, i loved the vibe of some of the communities back then, and honestly i ended up listening to tracks that would only make sense much more recently.

also, maybe some could be attributed to the video games i played too?
i probably wouldn't have been an artist, at least like i am right now, without Minecraft. that game is essentially how i found out about heaps of stuff lol
like food, materials, items, etc.
same with LittleBigPlanet, actually.

and the whole internet and music in general for me?
growing up in a mining town (that only now is being modernised! i love how it is now!) but the most diversity i got was maybe AC/DC, Cold Chisel, and Queen on the radio 24/7 (not that they're bad!), and maybe another dude in a weird ute in the city centre? and the animations were typically that weird big-nosed kinda art style, not much cute stuff, i guess the best example of something similar is the Hampsterdance Song's music video. i love the Hampsterdance Song but i just needed an example lol
nightcore, Vocaloid/UTAU, anime/AMVs, doujin, those video games, etc really felt like a massive explosion of colours compared to those!

instead of those same three artists on the same radio 24/7, and the same weird kids' shows they replayed over and over since the 1970s, it honestly felt soo good to be online back then, even though it was the 2010s lol

i think they definitely helped boost my own creativity to the point it is today, and they really helped me get diverse perspectives! i think when i was a kid, i unironically was okay with any queer folks, but everyone else around me was really hateful. funny that, now i'm a trans girl who's a bi disaster lol, and i kinda embraced that thing :D

now my city is modernising a loootttt more, and it's also pretty multicultural now! decently progressive too, and i've genuinely felt more comfortable being a little bit more open of me being queer. especially since i've been girlmoding out a lot more now and there's been virtually no bad things that have happened! (b*>w<)b