image: https://41.media.tumblr.com/abcde23dea129b0911040f270f35a124/tumblr_inline_nn13jcDe2g1swjubr_500.jpg

This is Gio. Gio has been my persona since 2011, but with many name changes. Gio was a character I made up, representing me, in a story, that I made episodically, in a site’s forums. His name then was Doro, which was a shortened version of my username in that site, and he had almost identical physical traits as seen above. The mental image of Doro has stuck with me forever.
But this wasn’t the original Gio. Gio originated even before the story, named as Kenko, from a role-play thread I made about vampires and werewolves (2011 me was quite the creative one); he was just a vampire, but the mental image back then was sort of a strong and burly Kenko. Progressing through the 400-paged role-play thread, Kenko was almost killed by werewolves, but somehow survived. He found himself trapped in an experimentation facility, his DNA being messed about. Eventually he escaped, and then could transform at will as some kind of werepyre creature.
Kenko’s hair color was midnight blue, for some reason (like I said, 2011 me was creative). But then, the story died out, and I moved out to entertain myself in some way in the forums of the site. I sought out a group of people in some story thread, and then I was inspired. If these people can create an episodic story, so can I! And I did so. So I grouped up some close online friends, and threw them all in, including myself, in my story. My character’s name was Doro, and had a personality that assimilated me, since he was supposed to represent me in the story, and all characters respective to the people. I had to make Doro a more casual version of Kenko (less brawny, more sensible, whatever), and added more blue into the mix (the blue jacket, blue eyes). Since it was an unusual website with an unusual set of people, then why not give him some fur legs, assimilating Kenko’s werepyre form? (2011 me, just saying.)
I eventually finished the story after like a year or two of starting it, and… the character design just stuck to me. Throughout the internet, I’ve kept the mental image of Doro, and then just made a little childlike drawing my profile picture in all the online places possible. I’ve contemplated rewriting the story, renaming my character to Gio (the name which is now my alias, GioAndVanni, in almost every medium online), and seeing fit to change some other characters’ names, but I’ve decided to not do so, due to not having the stable place and hype that followed me back then. I resorted then, since Doro represented me, to say that the mental image I have of the now-named Gio will now represent me, that Gio will be my persona. As to the return of the story, who knows? My dreams of becoming a videogame designer might have a possible return of Gio and company.
If whoever-you-might-be actually cared to read through all of this, then… I hope you satisfied your curiosity. Thank you for heaving read my random and probably-not-correctly-formulated paragraphs.