Thousands of years ago, people were forced to live much more primitive lives than we currently know today. Without the luxury of modern pens and computers, when a person was in need of an illustrator, there was little that could be done about it. Being an illustrator was much more dangerous in those ancient days, and the ramifications of any drawing were frequently much more serious. During those early days, there was a sage young man that learned the value of digital designing, and other types of drawing and writing. This boy was actually very wise when it came to his knowledge of Photoshop. Many people received aid and were helped by the homemade drawings made by this wise young man. But one day a prince, enraged that this young man did not fall for his romantically gay advances and also upon learning the young man was in fact not gay, had the royal Warlock place a curse on him. From then on, the young man would never ever die, and never ever tan, both not even fucking once by accident. Thus this astute young man forged on throughout the years. Skilled in the art of natural doodling, he also sometimes functioned as a sketch consultant and assisted in the delivery of babies, using various gradient tools and Gaussian Blur filters to ease the pain and suffering experienced during childbirth.
Now, four years later, I say that I am that young man, now wearing modern clothing, and still living in Puerto Rico against my wishes. It is my hope that one day I'll make enough money to get out of this tiny dump, and maybe one day, find a cure for this curse. I have a new name to go with this new world. I am Antonio. This is my tale. So I have spoken.
WHO AM I??
By 1691 after years of searching and hiding from Salem-like events, the young man had finally found the cave of a legendary emerald stone said to grant the beholder any wish desired. At last he could rid himself of the curse that being a creative type became, as well as bring back his ability to tan. After passive-aggressively slaying the three-headed dragon guardian and then bitching about him behind his back to a friend on his iphone (the most powerful attack style of a creative type), he finally entered the treasure room. There, amidst piles of gold and silver, lay the legend he so sought. He reached out to grab his prize and finally make his wish for a better career inclination, like being a scientist, or a lawyer, or a witch, when suddenly from behind he heard the cocking of a gun. He looked back to see the Pope and his chronies coming out of the shadows from whence he came. They too were looking for the stone, and had been tipped off by a spy that the young man was off to get it, so they secretly followed him. But just as the Pope reached out for the stone, the dragon appeared. Enraged that the Pope had snuck in without also singing him a song on his ukulele, it breathed swift Hell into the room. The impact of the fireball violently slammed the stone out of the Pontiff's hand and onto a rocky wall. The young man dodged the flames as he grabbed the stone and loudly proclaimed his wish. But unbeknownst to him, the impact had cracked the stone. It's powers now corrupted, the stone instead sucked the boy in, and sealed him inside, never to be seen again. The charred bodies of the Pope and his chronies were never found either, and eventually all disappeared to time..
Little was understood about drawing and writing in those ancient days, and as Christianity spread across Europe, many clergy from the church felt very upset by the existence of creative types who were healing others with iMac drawings and crayola clay sculptures. As far as the church was concerned, all illustration should be done strictly through men in the church. There were many who felt that if a book had no pictures at all that it was God’s punishment for some sin committed and the suffering that came from it was just something that must be dealt with by the afflicted reader. Over time, illustrators began to be associated with and accused of various things including heresy, being anti-Christian and eventually even devil worship. Certainly once considered wise and a knowledgeable resource during trying times, the young man and other creatives were now heavily persecuted and considered to be something to be absolutely feared and avoided. The current church viewed writing and drawing as evil sorcery and pagan worship as well as something akin to black magic, and so he was accused of very bad things, most specifically that of doing the devil’s evil bidding and being in cahoots with him in some orchestrated plan to destroy mankind.
Centuries passed, and the tales of the creative types and the sacred stone vanished into obscure children's tales. Then one day in the summer of 2009, an archeologist digging in a site near Jordan unknowingly found the emerald stone. Thinking it was just a regular exotic stone of not much worth, he sent it to his niece in Puerto Rico as a birthday present.
The girl loved the stone. She cleaned it up and held it on a pedestal next to her bed, gazing upon it every night, marveling at its mystical beauty. She began talking to it before going to bed, confiding in it more as the months passed. One night, while talking to it, she casually wished a boy at her class would ask her to the movies. Thats when suddenly the stone shook, and through the crack a portal opened, and the young man was finally freed.
This scared the living shit out of the little girl. Her shriek was louder than a tornado siren. The young man, dazed and panicked, grabbed the stone, and jumped out her window just before the family dog could bite his leg.
Illustrators and writers being burned for allegedly spreading demonry in the late 1600s.
(Photo, A.P)
By the late 1400’s the young man was hiding out deep underground and in remote villages, narrowly escaping many a capture. Meanwhile, religious sources were planting fear as well as hysteria into the minds of the European world. Hundreds of thousands accused of practicing any form of creativity were tried quickly and then were executed publicly as punishment, in very hideous and gruesome ways, for all in a village to see.
(Photo and some paragraphs borrowed from http://www.halloweenexpress.com/history-of-witches-and-witchcraft.php).