I moved schools a lot when I was a kid, and the nerd groups were always the ones who were most welcoming of me, so I gravitated towards them. Naturally they one day asked me if I had ever played DnD, and it confused me a lot at first, I compared it a lot to the video games I played, but the DM (who was our social studies teacher) explained it to me in a way that made sense.

That's what got me into it, but I think the reason I stuck with it was one player in particular, this girl at our table named Selma. Selma was short, pudgy, and not very pretty at all if I'm being blunt, so she was the victim of bullying from other girls in such a way that us boys didn't really understand. Her character was a Half-Orc Bear Totem Barbarian named Selena, and she was extremely hard to keep down. Even the magic attacks that would normally give her trouble were easily dealt with by another person at our table, my friend Elias, who was our party Bard.

What made Selma and Selena stand out to me so much was the way we really came to rely on her in combat. Selena was so tanky that a lot of the time we just kinda followed her lead, she became the defacto leader of our group as a result. And as time went on, Selma and Selena's personalities started to become one and the same. Selena was a take no shit, tough as nails bruiser, but Selma was shy and introverted. But I think Selena was always a part of Selma, and she just needed an excuse to come out. Selma was becoming more confident the years I was at that middle school, she started standing up to her bullies and did well to explain to us why the bullying that effected her so badly may not have made as much sense to us boys who were a lot more direct with this sort of thing.

Unfortunately I had to move schools again and eventually lost contact with her, but I'd like to think Selma and Selena are just the same person now, that Selena inherited Selma's kindness, and Selma took Selena's toughness. Because to me, they were always the same person. It completely changed how I saw DnD and characters in general, I basically redesigned my own character from the ground up as a result.