There's little more satisfying to me in a story or character than incorporating themes and bringing them out in a character.
Raphael Allard from Spear was a difficult one to get right. He was very ill and desperate to earn enough money to get the treatment he needed to stay alive. His heart illness made it a delicate balance between staying safe and pushing himself on his journey to make it to the top, the place he felt he needed to be in order to survive. The themes of death, time, apathy and hope were ones that stuck with him for the entirety of the story and like others have mentioned they were balanced with the levity of his pokémon, each of which represented a different issue he had to face bar one. His Magikarp Carmen represented his struggle against feelings of inadequacy and being born disadvantaged, his Litwick the looming struggle against death and how lonely that felt, his Eevee an intense determination to fight tooth and nail and becoming unapproachable to some as a result. The only difference came in Vito, his starter pokémon, an adorable little Spheal. Vito is arguably more popular with readers and other writers than Raphael himself is. Yes Vito is adorable, energetic and silly which people love, but he's also Raphael's foil. In a world where everyone has their problems and Raphael more than most, Vito is optimism and the embodiment of that theme of hope. By loving Raph unconditionally and always pushing himself to be the best he can purely for the sake of that love, Vito figuratively (and literally sometimes) drove Raphael to chase him towards a better future. It's because of that hope that Raphael really came to trust other characters in the RP and it helped balance the depressive reality of his situation, allowing me to write a convincing portrayal of a serious matter in a way that maintained a belief that everything would be okay. I'm proud of Raphael for that reason, but in a weird way, I think writing Vito was a greater success.
Now my most recent character, Carson O'Connor is here... and to say he's very different is a bit of an understatement. The themes surrounding him are far apart from Raphael's and interestingly to me are less directly related to his character. Mystery, truth, comedy and crime are words I use, as a prodigious but bumbling and somewhat childish detective Carson is very talented at his job but is held back by his inability to take things too seriously and his excitable antics. He nerfs his own talents by being too eager to reach a satisfying conclusion, he really longs for that moment of truth and revelation to the point where he can slip up and make mistakes. Carson hasn't had the development Raph has yet, but he's definitely going to hit a different vibe as a character that's a little more fun and a little less dramatic to read. Even still, I'm sure as time progresses and he develops so will the themes related to him. My main plan is for him to start eschewing the somewhat selfish desire for the satisfaction of a revelation and come to understand the value and importance of what he does for the people around him... but it's still all up in the air right now so I'm excited to see where his story takes him.