Muhaymin

My boyfriend and I were at his parents' house and had just completed watching a show on deadly animals when he began to annoy me as usual. The show and his behavior kind of encouraged me to wonder what kind of animal representation could I give him.

He has a very strong predatory look in his eyes at times that can actually be kind of chilling, so that's what got me thinking. A feline? Nah...he just has way more energy than a cat. A canine? Nah...dogs can be pretty ditsy and clumsy and he's neither. I wanted to peg him as some kind of quadrupedal predatory mammal to compliment my sphinx self, but I still wanted it to make sense in my mind.

The next morning, after we woke up, he started to annoy me again as per one of his morning activities. He gave me that generally focused gaze and gave me a smile when it immediately hit me.

Manticore, definitely.

Manticores are mythological creatures with the body and legs of a red colored lion, the head of a man, a tail with spurs on the end or that of a scorpion, and three rows of teeth like a shark. Sometimes they are shown with wings or horns. The creature was created in Persia and is suspected to be an interpretation of tigers in India. Their names are the derivative of the name given to them in Farsi meaning "man-eater."

While they aren't really given any other personality feature than "vicious" their entire physical representation can give them interpretative characteristics. They sport large grins to show off their many teeth, giving them a mischievousness to their deadly nature.

Now my boyfriend is by no means an evil wretched person, but he can have a pretty cruel mind. I'll just say that if he had a cold heart, he'd be anyone's worst nightmare.

I actually was considering putting a manticore in Badawia's story and his character was very similar to that of my boyfriend. Sneaky, clever, playful, intelligent, and just an overall troublemaker. That's a manticore in my mind which is what made it click so quickly.

I tried to figure out a good name for him and it is subject to change, but I think he will like this one. His last name is of European decent, but it can also mean "consume" or "dominate" in a separate language. So "Muhaymin" means "dominant" in Arabic.

I'm kind of glad that I found an animal character for him. I love my boyfriend and just like a teenager that doodles their partner's name in their notebook over and over, I'd like to draw him as a weird little creature like I do for myself. It's also going to be very fun to draw out our real life interactions.

I hope this doesn't weird him out.