Talk:Skiltaire
Columbia River Sand Squink[edit]
Henry Harrington Tryon's Fearsome Critters book about the cryptozoids of lumberjack tall tales mentions the "Columbia River Sand Squink", a creature that resembles a skiltaire about as accurately as any of the medieval bestiaries resembled the animals they were describing. Of course, it could also be a Pikachu. --Sebkha 09:05, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
2024 Major Revision[edit]
Back in the mid 2000's Mark and I spent a significant amount of time poring over his old stories, logs of roleplays he'd had and technical documents he had written to develop the skiltaire lore for integration into a novel I was working on. While the novel project was never completed, I collected a large store of technical specifics that Mark provided about skiltaire lore including their culture, physiology, history and life cycles. We spent a lot of time roleplaying. I remember the first roleplay pose: He, as Sy Sable, his aquatic skiltaire, walked up to me and touched antennae with me, as Skiltek, my arby. In that instant, I became something. At the same time I became a part of something. Others started appearing around me and they were something too.
The two of us drifted apart and we lost communication. Mark always had so much going on that he had to choose where he applied himself. He gave me opportunities through creative writing to keep his attention but I ignored them. During one of our last conversations, he told me he planned to come here some day and update this article with the shared knowledge we had curated. I was eager to see the changes, but I waited. Now that he is gone, providing this information falls to me to cobble together in the best way I can. I hung onto the notes and used them, along with what I remembered from our conversations, to make this update to the article. I realize that some of these new bits of information can be particularly dark, especially the part about how skiltaire evolve and the one about twins sharing their life expectancy. But as Mark once put it, real imagination is not always sunshine and roses. The scary parts of the story are just as important as the fun ones. Mark wanted this information to be shared with everyone who loved skiltaire and especially those who had skiltaire characters. In our last conversation a few months back, Mark said that he missed roleplaying with all the people who had skiltaire characters back in the day, but that he realized that people's lives become other things and they move on with them. I wanted to tell him that I missed it too, desperately, and that since those days, I had always been a little bit lost, a little bit searching and a little bit empty. For days after that, I thought, I should have said more; I should have tried. I could have found some of the people who had gone and brought them back for him.
I think we have this expectation that the people we admire are supposed to just go on living forever, because they're such important parts of us. I miss Mark and his unmatched imagination. I miss the long nights we spent writing stories together, and I know I'm not the only one. But I also know that what I'm missing the most is a past I can't go back to. These little pieces I've strewn together are just echos of something far greater that none of us can hope to ever fully describe. How do you begin to describe a whole world, much less a universe that existed only in the imaginations of the fortunate few who were there for a flash of light that faded? It was long, it was slinky and it had these big bright eyes, and sometimes, a smile that could knock your socks off.
I know the formatting is terrible and it needs a lot of work. I'm not good at wikitext and I've grown soft editing Wikipedia articles with their graphical editor. I hope some of you will help me clean it up and add more information you've collected to this haggard ball of miscellanea I've stitched together. ~~—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Skiltek (talk • contribs) .
- Was all of this vetted by Mark Merlino's partner, Rod O'Reily?. He probably has the legal final say on changes on anything related to Merlino's IPs and properties. - Spirou (talk) 19:28, 13 April 2024 (EDT)