What is this rude drawing doing on the homepage?

Well, allow me to explain.

In my freshman year of high school, back when handheld game systems had only one screen and people listened to second generation iPods, I had been given an assignment in an art class I was failing to draw a cartoon character and have it interact with something in a real life photograph.

Being a kid who could barely draw Pac-Man, I had to find a way to draw an acceptable original cartoon character to use for the project.

I began off intending to draw a lion or a cat or something. I started off with the tail, but I could immediately sense that there was no way I was going to be able to draw something that complex, so in a fit of frustration I closed off the tail into an oblong ovaly shape, gave it a crude face, and endowed it with a thought balloon that said “I suck at drawing! :D”

Ironically, I was so amused by what I created in place of what I actually intended to draw that I gave my creature some segments, called it a worm, and used it in the project.

As fate would have it, a week or two later, I was given a Biology assignment where I had to make up a mutualistic symbiotic relationship between two species of my own creation, write an essay about how each member benefited, and then DRAW A PICTURE OF THEM.

I asked the teacher if I could draw just one of the creatures if the other was too complicated for me to draw, and since the teacher knew I was dysgraphic and needed a laptop just to keep up with in-class note taking, she agreed.

So, I knew if I prayed really hard and made a goat sacrifice or two, I could probably manage to draw another of those sketchy cartoon worms with my limited artistic talent, so all I had to do was create the other symbiotic partner.

At the time I was on a huge Commander Keen binge, and in the first three games the main enemies you face are the Vorticons, who are these blaster toting, bipedal space dogs that wear brightly colored jumpsuits.

As huge a pain as these guys were in the game, something about the goofy smiling dog-men hopping around wielding futuristic firearms amused the heck out of me, though it always perplexed me as to why these dog aliens didn't have tails.

Since my worm was originally just supposed to be a tail anyway, I that maybe the worm could serve as some other creature’s tail and they would sort of be like a single entity.

This train of thought lead me to the creation of something that in my mind appeared as a disturbing chimera of a Vorticon and a Flareon with a kangarooish tail which the worm would wrap itself around and ride upon.

The symbiotic benefits were that the host would feed the worm and in return the worm opens and closes doors for the host, thusly freeing up the host to play Gameboy while walking through doorways. It was like the host having his own personal doorman...or doorworm.

Not only did my submission fulfill my fantasies of being able to play Gameboy and operate doorknobs at the same time, but it also satisfied all the criteria of the assignment. Except one.

“Very creative. Where do your creatures come from?” My Biology teacher asked after I read my paper to the class and embarrassed myself by showing off my poorly crayoned Doorworm picture.

“Huh?”

“You were supposed to discuss what region your species come from.”

I cursed myself internally for forgetting that part of the assignment, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which was that they came from the moon.

And that is the story of how Doorworms and Lunarians were created, and the moon dwellers quickly ended up being clumped into the increasingly odd universe in which much of my fiction takes place. I forced my internet hero Icarus to draw an awesome picture of a couple of my characters in 2006.

Today, Doorworms are still the only recognizable things thing I can draw freehand, but that totally doesn't bother me at all because Doorworms are freaking awesome.



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