Being Filipino-American has always had a huge influence on myself and my purpose in life. I am a person who has always leaned more towards the creative side. One of my main creative outputs is through storytelling. I love to delve into all kinds of fiction throughout different types of media, and being able to create a world of my own has always been incredibly fun. Storytelling has also given me a means to write what I believe has been underrepresented in a lot of media. There aren't a lot of Filipino stories out there when it comes to American (or generally Western) media. The amount of pinoy characters I've seen can probably all be counted on one hand, like Ned from the new Spider-Man trilogy. Other times, the Filipino identity is wiped away completely in order to pass off as another ethnicity. We have actors like Dante Basco, who is very evidently Filipino if you look at him. However, he's much better known for voice acting as more Eastern-Asian characters like Jake Long and Prince Zuko. Lalaine Vergara-Paras and Vanessa Hudgens, both of who are of Filipina descent, ended up playing Hispanic characters in "Lizzie McGuire" and "High School Musical." I believe it's this exact lack of representation that has made me so proud of my heritage. I'm biracial, Filipino on my mom's side and Mexican on my dad's. While I'm not ashamed of either side, I have always realized that comparatively, it's the pinoy that get the short end of the representation stick. That is a major reason why I love including them in my own stories. I have two major projects in the works, one a podcast and the other a webcomic, that have Filipinos as the main characters. They get to be the focus of the narrative and share off their culture in a multitude of ways at the same time. In a way, I feel like it's an obligation to give them a bigger voice. I wish to show that there are plenty of us here, we just haven't gotten much of an opportunity to speak out.