Okay so I kinda liked this graphic, and it got a decent amount of clicks and likes on insta.
Sorry, had to use the one I made for the blog entry banner, apparently I deleted the one without text off my computer, and I can’t be bothered to go download it right now… So just imagine the text isn’t there.
Anyway, this image has a story. Now, I lost access to my photobucket accounts, and wouldn’t pay to open them. And so I deleted them. However that was the only place where I had any screenshots of my games stored, so I lost all screenshots of my Dragon Age original characters, such as the Warden Commander Hashim, and my Inquisitor Harun. All but one, that I used as a banner on my story on my fanfic archive.
This is obviously a manip, and it’s also a very old one. But there they are, this is the only image that exist of them, and my computer can hardly run youtube anymore, so it’s not like I can install my games and get new ones. And this is what we have AI for.
So I isolated the images, asked chat GTP to describe the images to make me a prompt, and then imported the image, and used the prompt in Night Café.
I’d lie if I said the results were good. As in looks like the characters, but I might try a different approach some day.
So Harun became these – and that image is what I used for the above banner I talked about.
However, I liked that isolated png of the dark Inquisitor so much I started to play around with it, I had actually intended to look at making a new frontpage for one of the other stories.
Okay, so we gotta get into a timemachine for this one.
Back when I wrote both Heart Shaped Tattoos, Episode Blackthorn, Bedlam Lullabies, and Outpost Lazarus (that one isn’t finished btw). I did so from a concept me and Anne made, with having the same 6 characters be the only characters in the stories, and have them return over and over just in different roles. And each story would highlight one.
Three of hers, and three of mine – characters that is.
But as the project got on, and years went by. I realised it just wouldn’t work like I thought it would. We’d either need some padding between characters, and a reason for it. Or we needed to somehow explain this very badly thought out idea in the intro.
And any concept you gotta explain is a bad concept.
We tried, but couldn’t come up with anything good. And well I might mention that Anne is very hard to catch in the wild. She is very busy, and I always feel like that annoying friend from some fandom forum back when, trying to make her do shit. And so I kinda stopped reaching out, not because I don’t like her, I miss her terribly as a matter of fact. But I always feel like she has to ‘make’ time for me, and that it’s an inconvenience. And that is why I just published Heart Shaped Tattoos, without waiting for her.
It should have been published through her company, Raven Ridge. But we just never got to it. Also she never bought it the book, so I take it, she is either super over it. Or figures she’ll come around to it eventually.
And I just don’t want to push.
I think I might not like the answer, to be honest. So I just do my shit, and pretend I have a friend, who is interested but just don’t have the time.
Anyways, free of that concept. I was also free to stick in more characters, change characters and whatever – because they were technically not connected anymore, because the connection had been the return characters.
I decided to keep the slightly obvious resemblance as I talk about in this entry.
And if someone should ever read these books and go ‘wait, these characters are kinda similar’ – that is why, and that is on purpose. I think the odd one out is Outpost Lazarus, since I am only half way through, if that. Writing this story – and perhaps it ends up not being a part of the series at all.
Why am I saying all this. Well because it’s important of course.
Because with the gimmick gone, the stories not interlinked. The plots didn’t work.
I was not joking when I said, I come up with weird concepts and redo the entire damn book, only to hate it.
So let’s take Bedlam Lullabies, It had many names since it’s birth.
The first cover with the sketched look, well it’s slimmer than the other one, and that was because I had originally thought I’d publish that through Wattpad first, which I didn’t do. But I still really, really like that cover. Anyway, the cover was made as it is, because this is the original. Back when it was a story about how Seth and Callum was in fact lured there, because their grandparents wanted to find out which of them were the better vessel for his immortal soul.
The second cover with the tentacles, was born when I changed the concept from grandfathers immortal soul, renamed Seth to Caleb – and made it Lovecraftian, and more about the weird arcane rituals they partook in. And that they were the key components for a ritual to awaken the imposter Nyarlathotep.
So I redid the entire damn story, and also added like double its original length unto it, working towards the goal. But I just couldn’t make it fucking work, I just couldn’t try as I might.
Apparently I deleted the coverfile for this, and I am not sure it was my subconscious telling me it sucked and had to go. Or if it was indeed a giant brainfart, but it’s gone – and that is okay.
And this is how it looks now. It changed it’s name from Sons of Caina – which actually didn’t fit the Lovecraftian story either to be honest. To Bedlam Lullabies, which is a name I never really liked, I just couldn’t come up with something better. The theme shifted from Lovecraft and arcane rituals. To a story about Werewolves.
Yep. Werewolves.
Now of course me, being me… I had to go and create something new, so not werewolves, but the Lleuadine. And now it’s about a power struggle when the secret pack is turned upside down. To keep as much as possible of the old story, I made it so Caleb have no idea he is in fact not completely human. And I kept the part from the earlier version about imprinted false memories to hide the truth.
I am not sure it will work, the title sure as shit will not. I did go and make my own story about the lleuadine, and I made a couple of music tracks too.
But you know me by now. I do all of this shit, and decide to do something else. And just while we’re at it. I am thinking of just nuking that youtube channel completely. But I don’t know man. I just feel it’s dumb, and a whole lot of work and planning for fuck all.
Again, thanks to the anti-ai assholes… you’re absolutely ruining everyones damn fun, hope you choke on it.
So… my point is really, that this story changed many times, both in vibe, genre and concept.
And this is where we get back to where we started.
Because you see when I messed around with that graphics, intending to change the front for the story above actually, just because i hate the cover, and I hate the name – I know I kinda liked it once, and I like that it looks like a children’s book. I just got better at what I do, and I wanted to make a nicer cover. And change the name to fit the actual story.
But what happened was another story.
So what was supposed to be the second story in the series is this one.
So the first title it had, was the funeral lullaby, yeah I see the theme here. But that was also a fucking stupid title. And when the story was done, I changed it because there really were no funerals or lullabies there to be had.
So Episode Blackthorn is about a guy who asks all his ragtag group of old friends out to an old plantation, to record a silly episode for his (very fake) ghosthunting program on a local station. However there something is wrong, and in the first version it was actually ghosts. But I changed that to one of them being a psycho, killing his friends.
But there is so much shit in that story that doesn’t connect, and doesn’t make sense. I changed it around too many times. Shifted between who was the killer and why, and to try and incorporate something supernatural only to take it out. So nothing makes sense in that story really.
The thing is, the characters interaction, that works very well. Also the location and perhaps even the starting concept as I mentioned above, works. It’s the ‘why’ that doesn’t. So I had to find some reason as to why they had to die, and of course also why some of the other shit happens in the story, like people get roofied and shit like that. And I couldn’t.
I was actually just about to place it in my ‘so that happened’ folder on my discord archive (a private archive), where all my shit goes to die. It would be a shame, cause I do like the characters, but hey it wouldn’t be the first time… looking at you Nocturnes, – and for context, Nocturnes are made up of two other stories that I scrapped, one fanfic and one not.
This is how the frontpage looked when I last even touched this story, both in word or graphics. And I do like that cover, but when the story doesn’t work… what does a smart Raven do?
Again, I needed the why. Not why were they there, that was the easy part. But then what? Why did this weekend not turn out as they planned? All bets off, I mean from Nuclear war, to the show actually being ballet.
And as I played around with those graphics with no real plan. this happened.
And I went… Of course man… Zombies.
I got no apocalypse story between these stories. Anne had one, but I didn’t. The title does work still, but I might change it… like that is no fucking surprise by now, is it? But I mean I could do a ‘Titty Twister’… I mean you saw from Dusk till Dawn right? – the moment they hit the Titty Twister, the movie changes completely, it goes from being a kidnap, crime story. To a very over the top vampire flick.
So I mean they could have gone there to the plantation, to film that episode. And then something happens.
I do believe that is perhaps the only way to save this clusterfuck of a story.
DREAMS OF A LOST MOONCHILD 
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