My ShyeMUSH Form, Kohn Spatath Yes, I was a Turtle, once upon a time...

How I Became A Reptile Well, it's quite a long story. *grin* To begin off with, once upon a school day I was forced to write a creative story. My younger self had never written such a thing and I tried it. I was a large fan of Science Fiction, loved to read and watch it on my family's first VCR (kinda dating, isn't it?). Anyway, I wrote this little piece not about anything dealing with science fiction or the other blood-letting story everyone else was working on (had to be a Halloween Topic), but a story about a person discovering he was a reptile-morph and some of the awkward things that happened to him. I reflected on this story later, mostly written because I had to turn *something* in, and I thought it was the strangest thing I have ever written. As time went on, I learned how to write stories and some of them really *horrible*, and some of them good. I managed to write a 20 page Sci-Fi short story before going on to high school (but no reptiles, I know, slip of the mind. *grin*) but that original story came back to mind from time to time. I eventually decided to make a race of the reptillian-turtle type and called them the Tum'kai. This evolved to a few chapters of a story called "The Tears Of A Fallen Empire" which was set in a Star Trek universe, 100 years after "The Next Generation". I designed Starships, sets, everything, and had a ugly orange folder to contain it all. I only had one setback. I couldn't draw *Living Things* or *things with living curves* in them. Then I took a year-long course in Modern Biology which had a semester in Living Structures. We had to study the behavior and reactions of anolies (small little reptiles) we had set up in a tank. One of our tasks was to draw them in their natural habitat. I spent about four hours in front of the anolie bowl and drew one of them. After I was done with it, I had a perfectly drawn anolie. After getting it back, I used it to draw my Reptile-Turtle character for the story. No other characters got drawn up but him. I may post it on the web, provided I can find it. I then took a art class, to try to improve my techniques, but they didn't seem to cover much of the art of living creatures, still more of the same topics that I usually had, but I got over some of my initial fears and most of my really basic mistakes got corrected. It is something that I will never regret. Over the time of years, I would do a occasional sketch or two whenever the mood would strike me. Also, yes, I was blackmailed encouraged to participate in a Sears event in which I played a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Raphael) at a local store. You could say this was the first time I was a reptile amphibian. It was about this time that I got introduced to the Internet. *grin* I am still not sure if this was a good thing or not, but without it, I wouldn't have met my dear SO, Qel, on something called PernMUSH. I slowly grew tired of PernMUSH and decided to start something on my own. My instincts for science fiction grew and I tried to code in MUSH a tiny little starship called the Maria. It was a complete flop, but it taught me some of the basics about coding. This was the start of the ShyeMUSH concept. Others came over from PernMUSH to try the section that I started, and one of them (Ghenre, Dysira, you know who you are *toothy grin*) brought over a race called the Akyrians with a powerful and interesting background. I fell in love with them instantly. Then it is then that I started to notice that perhaps I *was* a reptile. My mother has always claimed she was a frog (well, mostly as a play on words as that's what they call people here with any French in them) so why couldn't I claim to be a reptile? (Other than no one had slang up here for one being a reptile, but whatcha gonna do?) Needless to say, the Akyrians grew to the concept quite well. I was very pleased and started to grow into it. And as I grew into it, the more ... reptillian I felt. The more I could understand about them, as if I had some kind of empathy for them, which is the major reason why I think I am a reptile. Like they say, if shoe fits, wear it. And reptiles feel "comfortable" to me from dragons to anolies. I started creating things Reptillian and came up with the Ryzentyls with the help of my SO. They are a powerful creature in the AD&D world, but we decided to use them, after all, we had a Silver Dragon as a PC. *grin*. Well, that's me in a very basic nutshell. I am starting to sketch again, and Reptiles keep popping up in my head. Feel free to come here to my site to look at my art as often as you'd like. Comment away, send me Email, gunk up my ICQ... If I am around, I'll respond. Hisssss. Now I have to go and hunt some fresh dinner. Go BACK to The Lair.