Throughout 2018, I produced 10 pages that tell a secret. Something that Marina did that was absolutely questionable from an ethical perspective. I won't say much because the story speaks for itself. I think that Marina invested in a beauty and everyone benefited from it. Honestly, I think that even Molly's mother deserved more attention, but who knows, maybe in the future we'll have something to tell about this?!
Although Molly-Mcalister is not an OC of mine, her creator authorized me to expose it here for all of you, in fact, she herself is one of the subscribers. Thank you, Molly! - Consequently, I cannot consider this story to be something official from the Jiloverse, although it does not violate any principle of this universe, so, we can think that in an ideal world it is part of the biography of our Black Mare.

Jiló and the Chinese Zodiac

The Chinese people used to believe that their history was related to the heavens. They called their land “The Middle Realm”, which represented the celestial “Middle Realm”, where the stars never went down. The emperor, or the “Son of Heavens”, as it was called, was a mediator between Heaven and Earth. He knew, thanks to his imperial astrologer, the seasons change days and he could foresee and interpret all the celestial signs. It was believed that if the emperor made any mistakes in his forecast, he would lose all the powers that nature had given to him. Therefore, it was really important that his counselors observed and calculated as accurate as possible every movement of the sky. Every mistake was punished with decapitation.

The influence of astrology in ancient China was so strong that even the palaces were built to adapt to the astrological symbolism. There was one palace for each season and they were the Earthly representation of the palaces or sectors of the Celestial Realm. The doors of the summer palaces were faced south; the spring ones were faced east; the fall ones, west and the winter ones, north. During the Shang dynasty, for example, the emperor was forced to not only live in the palaces according to the season, but also face south during his speeches. The south represented the center of his realm, the Lodestar.

According to an old Chinese tale, Buddha invited all the animals of creation to a New Year’s party, promising a great surprise for each one. Only twelve animals showed up and they won a year, according to the order of arrival: the Rat or Mouse; the Ox or Buffalo (Cow, in Thailand); the Tiger (Panther, in Mongolia); the Cat (Rabbit, in Mongolia); the Dragon (Crocodile, in Persia), the Snake or Serpent (Little Dragon, in Thailand); the Horse; the Goat or Ram; the Rooster or Chicken; the Monkey; the Dog; the Pig or Boar. The Fire Horse governs every sixty years.

As the old Buddhist text says, when the animals finish their meritorious tasks, they make a solemn oath before the Buddhas that one of them will be always, for a day and a night, around the world, preaching and converting, while the other eleven keep doing good in silence. The Rat begins his journey on the first day of the seventh Moon; he tries to persuade the natives of his zodiac to practice good deeds and to correct the faults of their temper. The other animals do the same, successively, and the Rat restarts his work on the 13º day. That way, thanks to the constant work of the animals, the Buddha ensure a certain order in the universe.
 (Source: Guia prático de astrologia chinesa; Melanie Claire)

This is the basis of this book. Twelve stories inspired by those sacred animals, but in modern situations, really far from the sacrament. In all of them I tried to implement very peculiar elements of each Sign, from small things like a color or favorite perfume to more specific trails of the personality or even the profession. Some of the characters are already “family” members of the snake Jiló*, like the cat Lili, the pig Priscila and the dog Samara, whose name isn’t even said in the story “Dog”, but she’s recognizable in the illustrations; the others were created exclusively for this work, like the tiger Helmut Marvin, the mare Lina Summers, the two little mice fashion students, and so on. The book you’re reading is my first composition of the Yiff genre, which is a genre that I devote myself to and I’ve been recognized for fourteen years in as an artist and animator, and also hope to be successful in the writing field.

Happy reading!

(*)Maybe you still don’t know Jiló, or even the author of this work. There’s a small biography of both of them at the end of this book.

 

Jiló and the Author

My name is Ronaldo Santana da Silva, Brazilian from São Gonçalo – Rio de Janeiro; I was born in 1981, I am the sign of the Rooster. I’ve been married for seven years and my son Leonardo was born in the year this book was published.

When I was 14 I decided to be a comic artist and animator. I began studying both areas and was interning at an animation studio where I met Elton Portilho, a really talented young man with a slapstick and infamous sense of humor; owner of a really refined artistic technique. Such qualities made me get closer to hi, wanting to learn those beautiful, sensual, and incredibly expressive animal like characters. Cats, cows, foxes and many other animals were represented gracefully through his pretty line works. And so I was introduced to the Furry world.

There’s another really talented Brazilian artist who used to work illustrating a column in a local newspaper called Cruz; it was a computer section called CAT. He always drew a little cat rubbing himself against seminude, voluptuous girls, abusing forced angles. The “CAT” had a tail really phallic. I wanted to do something like it, but without being a plagiarist. I thought of a character that could be small and funny, phallic, and that could always be chasing pretty girls. It was then the idea of creating a snake that came to my mind, but snakes aren’t like cute pretty kitties. They repulse the majority of people, which, to me, sounded like a great idea. He always tried to get closer to girls, who invariably were afraid or disgusted by him. That gave me a large range of interesting jokes, even his name had something with it. Jiló, in Portuguese, is a scarlet eggplant, a green fruit with a really bitter taste, rejected by most people.

The first Furry illustrations were published on a website also called Jiló, but nowadays everybody can check my work on my Fur Affinity profile: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/jilo/