2007-2011

The early years...

Before I found the furry community, I was part of a small sect of the Legend of Zelda fandom obsessed with Zoras. I even had my own Zora OC, seen here on the right, drawn by a DeviantArt mutual named Akhrrana.

This was the time I started making music. Originally I recorded "comedy" music, which I put in quotes because it wasn't particularly funny. Using a copy of Garageband and a Logitech microphone, I recorded myself singing and playing acoustic guitar, and would layer all sorts of different sounds on top to punctuate my joke songs.

Many of my friends in this small Zora community were furries on the side, which helped introduce me to the fandom. When 2008 rolled around, I joined FurAffinity and created my own fox fursona at the urging of a friend. I think I started as a red fox, then a grey fox, but by 2009 I was reading Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth and became obsessed with the story of the domestication of Russian silver foxes. That became my fursona.

Around this time as well, I stopped making "comedy" music and began making "serious" music. It took a while to come up with a name. At one point it was Fox Affinity, and then ShivaHusky (even though I was never a husky), and I eventually settled on Rhetorius. I uploaded these albums and many others to FurAffinity, finding community in the FurryMusicians and FurrySingers groups. Even though the music I made wasn't particularly good, it was an uplifting community that inspired me to work harder and keep improving.

I experimented with art a lot at this time, creating video skits on YouTube, doing traditional pencil and ink drawings, even trying my hand at flash animation. My YouTube skits did relatively well, and some time spent in the Lion King fandom creating comedy dubs helped me make a name for myself and create some important connections that would lead to success in the next phase of my music career. It was in the Lion King fandom that I became friends with ShadyVox and EileMonty, the former of whom taught me a lot about serious music production, and the latter of whom would become one of my most important collaborators.

I was in middle and high school during these years, and was really invested in figuring out my identity and my place in the art world. I tried a lot of different mediums, but never quite felt any one of them was my calling. I wanted to be a filmmaker at the time, but very soon my music would be recognized in a way that made me truly discover it as my calling.

To the right you can see a 2009 drawing of my fox fursona, the very first art that exists from the "grey fox" era, by a friend at the time who went by 1337dingo.