The Friends

**The Friends** was an offline series about a group of animal friends in their teenage years. It parodied many movies and TV-shows, but also had its own collection of original stories.

Said stories were summarized in notebooks for the purpose of "realizing them during playtime" with whatever stuffed animal was listed to be needed; since the characters were reimaginings of stuffed animals in possession of the artist.

Some were also supposed to be an existing character. For instance, the character Spyro is Spyro the dragon from the video games, yet portrayed by a Charizard plushie.

The group kept growing bigger the first couple of years, as the amount of stuffed animals owned did. The "first generation"-section lists the original cast the series started off with.

While the characters are described to be friends, they are just as often each other's enemy and usually cause each other more trouble than outsiders do.

The series was created in 1998, but their first online appearance wasn't before 2004.

## First generation characters

### Hunter

Hunter is based off of the Spyro the Dragon series. He is a stuffed animal produced by WWF.

Hunter is a cheetah around the age of 15. He's described to be extremely fast and the most handsome boy in the group, and often chased by other girls, though he already has a girlfriend.

Ironically, Hunter is an almost unpleasantly stubborn and aromatic character, and the sensible Bianca finds it hard to deal with him at times.

Hunter has spotted, yellow-orange fur, dark eyes, white rimmed ears, a white muzzle with black stripes going down at the sides, and a short tail.

### Bianca

Bianca is based off of the Spyro the Dragon series. She is represented by a stuffed McDonald's toy of Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh.

Bianca is a rabbit around the age of 15. She is a sorceress in training, but is hardly seen using her magic or out training.

She always tries to motivate her boyfriend, Hunter, to do something with her, but her suggestions seem to bore him. She likes going to museums and parks, Hunter likes to play games and watch movies. Having that said, she's one of the more mature characters in the group.

She has yellow fur, a pink nose, white fluffy tail, wears her ears like a ponytail, a collar with a pink stone, and sometimes a white cape with red spots.

### Spyro

Spyro is based off of the Spyro the Dragon series. He is represented by a Charizard plushie.

Spyro is a dragon around the age of 15. He is the most intelligent and least annoying of the cast.

As Hunter and Bianca are more or less the main characters, Spyro often finds him in the middle of their quarrel, but chooses never to be part of it.

### Weasel

Weasel is a weasel around the age of 17. The origin of the stuffed animal is unknown, but it's guessed he's supposed to be Weasel from The Animals of Farthing Wood.

He is an inventor and likes to describe himself as the "smartest scientist in the world". His creations are always a success, while Weasel seems a bit of a dolt sometimes.

He's had a short romance with Stephany, but what made them break up has never been discussed.

### Lara

Lara is a dog around the age of 14. Her name, though nothing else, is borrowed from the video game character Lara Croft.

She is a typical teenage valley girl with a rotten attitude, and seen as a bother by the other characters.

She has a crush on Hunter and claims to hate everyone else. Stephany is considered to be her only friend, who she doesn't always treat nicely.

The others have tried to match her up with Beethoven, who she only uses as an attempt to make Hunter jealous, which never worked.

### Stephany

Stephany is a female fox around the age of 16.

While the character started out lacking any personality and existed to be Lara's loyal henchman, she grew up having a nice and calm personality; being one of the few characters in the group to possess some common sense.

She's had a short romance with Weasel, but what made them break up has never been discussed.

### Beethoven

Beethoven is a dog around the age of 15. The name is inspired by the fictional dog and 90s movie of the same name, as the stuffed animal is also a St. Bernard.

He received a drastic personality change throughout the series; and wasn't all that interesting at the beginning, but Beethoven was soon written to be overly paranoid and scared of everything. His catchphrase is screaming the sentence *"IT'S A CURSE!"* in a high-pitched voice whenever something isn't going well.

On occasion, a romance between him and Lara is entertained, but she's never serious about it and Beethoven doesn't contribute much to the relationship either. Though she's "the popular girl" and he a "loser", she doesn't impress him much.

### Wade

Wade is a large, wingless dragon. He's represented by a Charmander. He is supposedly many years old.

He is Spyro's older brother and described to be mean and violent. Even so, he's only had a few appearances in the series and hasn't been implemented much as a villain.

## Second generation characters

### Jade

Jade is a large and skinny cheetah in her adult years. Her name, though nothing else, is borrowed from the Mortal Kombat character Jade. The character itself is inspired by Zira from The Lion King 2.

She is the mother of Hunter, Kiara, and Kurt, of whom the fathers are unknown and undiscussed. She attempted to train Hunter to become a ruthless killer, living up to his name, but he ignored her teachings and left when he met Bianca the rabbit.

She kept trying to convince or force Hunter to pick up where they had left off, until she gave birth to Kiara, and later Kurt, who then became her focus.

### Kiara

Kiara is a small cheetah and Hunter's younger half-sister. She was claimed to be around 10 years old, but born in a period where Hunter was already a teenager, making her 3 years old at most. She's represented by a McDonald's release of Sabor from Tarzan, while the name refers to Kiara from The Lion King 2.

Just like her brother, she was born for the sole purpose of becoming a strong hunter. While she did grow up wild and skilled, the main characters managed to convince her to leave her controlling mother and join them as their friend. Nothing is left of her old personality, and now she's defined by her kindness.

### Kurt

Kurt, actual name Kurting, is a tiny cheetah and Hunter's youngest half-brother. Like Kiara, his age is not exact, as he is portrayed to be around the age of 7, yet born after Kiara abandoned her mother and Hunter was still 15.

Unlike his two siblings, Kurt isn't bouncy, silly, or strong. He often ponders about the meaning of his life.

Kurt was once cursed and turned into a bear (Brother Bear parody), and kept his bear girlfriend from during that period. He's also able to transform back into this form.

### Kovu

*(See also: Cayn)*

Kovu is a black primitive panther around the age of 10. He's represented by a small Siepie plushie from Jip and Janneke with a black cat tail keychain tied to his back, while the name and his outcast status refers to Kovu from The Lion King 2.

Nothing much is known about him and he is a minor character in the series. The others accepted him as their friend upon meeting him, but Kovu doesn't show up or cares to hang out with them all that often and mainly visits Kiara, who is his girlfriend.

### Ramidi

Ramidi is an adult lion.

He is one of the few adults that fit in well with the other characters, who are a whole lot younger. Even so, Ramidi isn't described as an obnoxious or overly silly character.
His thing is that he claims to be king, but nobody knows of who or what, as Ramidi never specifies.

### Fritz

Fritz is a lion cub around the age of 8.

He is Ramidi's younger brother, and a whole lot more noisy than he is. He is fixated over becoming king and believes that everyone has to respect him and do whatever he wants.

While he is still a cub, he already has manes.

### Frankje

Frankje is a giant, dark rattle snake. He is a stuffed animal originally bought from Ikea. His age is unknown.

While very kind and helpful in general, he has trouble controlling himself whenever Bianca's around, and often wants to eat her. He's only had a few appearances in the stories and qualifies as a minor character.

## Third generation characters

### Vaporeon

Vaporeon is a rare kind of dragon that resembles a sea horse. She is a stuffed animal originally bought from The Efteling .

She becomes Spyro's girlfriend, but is a minor character that's maybe appeared twice in the series, thus isn't as developed as most of the other cast.

While her name is the same as that of the Pokémon, she has no affiliation with it or the series.

### Angus

Angus is a half-blood primitive panther and Kovu's father (*See also: Cayn*). He is represented by a small Bagheera plushie.

He's an Outlander and a neglectful father who left behind his son when he couldn't prove himself to be a ruthless hunter. He's had many partners and children in his life, but it's unknown what happened to them and Angus keeps starting anew. It's implied their absence has something to do with their differing views and the cubs failing to "be useful" to him.

His intentions with his children were never brought up and he's a very reserved and secretive man in that sense; always wearing a mask.

His plan was to assemble a group of warriors, consisting out of his own offspring, to take over the Pride Lands with.

He acted like a caring and playful father the first few months of Kovu's life, but when he was deemed old enough, tried to snowball him into the practise of hunting. He wished for him to attack weak animals, a request that bothered Kovu. When he was asked to attack a pregnant mouse one day, he rebelled over the pointlessness of it.

Angus' patience had ran dry at that moment and he abandoned his son without saying a word. He was never seen again and Kovu had to fend for himself.

Angus is a mix between a primitive panther and presumably a lion. He only has a tuft of black hair on his head and at the end of his tail. He has a lighter muzzle and toes, and relatively small, pointy ears, and green eyes.

He made his first online appearance at Lionking Fanart.org on August 13, 2005, though slightly redesigned to better mimic the art style of The Lion King.

## Gallery

Photo of the stuffed animal representing Hunter (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Hunter (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Bianca (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Bianca (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Spyro (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Spyro (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Weasel (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Weasel (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Stephany (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Stephany (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Beethoven (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Beethoven (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Lara (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Lara (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Kiara(2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Kiara(2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Kovu/Cayn (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Kovu/Cayn (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Ramidi (2007).Photo of the stuffed animal representing Ramidi (2007).