Benny wasn’t born in some grand flash of inspiration. He came out of a blackout. Literally. The power went out, the iPad was gone, and the kid who lived glued to a glowing screen was forced to pick up a sketchbook. On one of those blank pages, Benny crawled out of the pencil lines, a crooked, diabolical creature that didn’t yet know what he was. At first, his name came as a joke. A half-mash between Benny Gecko from Fallout: New Vegas and a nod to Vlinny from Vinesauce’s Tomodachi Life playthrough, except “Vlinny” was already taken, and this one needed his own skin. “Benny” stuck. No date was marked, so the later one was chosen: April 15, 2015. That’s the day he became real, at least on paper. Ten years later, he’s still around.

Benny evolved in fragments. Always tall, always Brazilian, always wearing a green turtleneck with brown slacks that could never quite decide on a shade. His hair has always been brown, messy waves, the kind of style that made him look untamed even when dressed to the nines in shiny leather shoes. He was eccentric, loud, and bombastic, but underneath all the flair, he was a romantic. He fell in love with Joe, a writer. He loved people, even when he pretended he didn’t. He loved tennis, peanut butter-banana sandwiches, and cinnamon, the one spice that let him actually eat food without wasting away.

Somewhere along the way, he got a backstory: a fallen angel. Too vain for heaven, cursed with IBS on earth. His punishment was eternal discomfort, but his redemption lay in helping others. Except Benny never really cared about winning his way back into paradise. Earth had food, friends, chaos, and fun. Why crawl back to heaven when the party was down here?

Over the years, Benny wore different skins. A lab rat. A detective. An office worker. A guy with twins named Newton and Frida, or sometimes just a dog named Sunshine and a cat named Prada. His lore bent and twisted like the lines he was drawn with, but the core stayed the same: Benny was unpredictable, funny, and strangely human for a made-up man.

Then there was the dream. 2020, maybe 2021. A movie set, a golden protective suit, and a helmet shining like old diver or astronaut’s gear. Benny walked straight up and said, “Hey, thanks for making me.” It was unnerving enough to yank the creator out of sleep, but it also sealed Benny’s place as more than just a doodle. He was something that lived in the corner of the mind, always ready to resurface.

Benny became a test subject for every new tool, new program, new style, and new project. He was written about in classes and redrawn again and again, stretched into experiments that sometimes flopped and sometimes hit. He wasn’t the creator’s reflection, not a self-insert, not a mirror. Just a companion. A vessel for jokes, practice, and wild stories.

Ten years later, Benny is still here. Part fallen angel, part sketchbook memory, part inside joke that got out of hand. A queen in a turtleneck, loud when he wants to be, tender when he has to be, eternal proof that sometimes the best characters are the ones born in a blackout.