THE 31 CHARACTERS 31 DAYS CHALLENGE DAY TWENTY SIX

And I just keep on going, even though technically, I failed the challenge.  Shouldn’t penalize RAINN for this, though.

This event is to create 31 characters, one for every day in May (although it looks like, due to my depression, that said event will bleed into early June) , that will be featured in an upcoming project I’m working on tentatively called Strikeforce Liberty.   It is to raise money for RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  If you donate here, you will have the option to sponsor a character or give me a name to create a character for.  In these times, where the Alt-Right is attacking a woman’s right to her own body, we need to support organizations like this.

If you are a Domicile of Dread Patreon, you’ll get a short podcast discussing the creation process for each character.  I made one of these podcasts available to the general public here.  If you’d like to hear all of these podcasts, get other exclusive goodies like reviews and essays, and can spare at least a dollar a month to support my efforts to Make The World Stranger, go here to sign up.

Please enjoy, and please donate.

ACE OF BLADES

Name: Zandra Wessex
Location: East St. Louis, IL
Occupation: Presently Between Jobs

The Four Aces patrolled the night in one of the roughest cities in the country.  They were successful, and were seen as a beacon of hope.  The four siblings, trained in martial arts from a very early age, enjoyed their lives and basked in the fame it afforded them.

But then Serpentine rolled into town led by their leader The Deathless Brain.  The Four Aces were just four young people; this crew had highly advanced weapons, super-powered thugs and a mastermind capable of possessing other people.  They were not prepared for this kind of fight.

This is the original Ace of Blades...

They fought hard, but they lost.  By the time the smoke had cleared, two Aces were dead, a third was commandeered by the Brain, and Zandra was in the hospital for a month.

When she recovered, she knew she had to elevate her game.  She carries the weapons of her brothers and sister in their memory and has been seeking out ways to make her on par with the monsters that were out there.  It has caused her to delve into some dark corners of this world...and she met a woman named Will who might find her something interesting....


Next: A certain Twisted Girl Next Store has agreed to take on the villainous role of the mirth-destroying KillJoy!

THE 31 CHARACTERS 31 DAYS CHALLENGE DAY TWENTY FOUR AND TWENTY FIVE

Still trying to catch up here...and I should start writing the story soon (Expect it to be very...Christopher Priest).

This event is to create 31 characters, one for every day in May (although it looks like, due to my depression, that said event will bleed into early June) , that will be featured in an upcoming project I’m working on tentatively called Strikeforce Liberty.   It is to raise money for RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  Please donate here.  In these times, where the Alt-Right is attacking a woman’s right to her own body, we need to support organizations like this.

If you are a Domicile of Dread Patreon, you’ll get a short podcast discussing the creation process for each character.  I made one of these podcasts available to the general public here.  If you’d like to hear all of these podcasts, get other exclusive goodies like reviews and essays, and can spare at least a dollar a month to support my efforts to Make The World Stranger, go here to sign up.

Please enjoy, and please donate.

DAY 24-ATMOS FEAR

Name: Molly Haines
Location: Memphis, TN
Occupation: Performance Artist

Molly Haines needed to create.  She needed to comment on the world around her, connect with the masses.  She strove to communicate the way the world was broken.

She was not very good at it.  And her lack of success frustrated her.

Molly struggled for years presenting her work, feeling humiliated at the odd jobs she had to take to keep her head above water.

But then there was the incident.  She doesn’t remember much save for making her way back home and bright multicolored lights and the smell of rotting strawberries and nicotine.  She remembers waking up in a military hospital....and being surrounded by a curious mist.

A mist that allowed her to manipulate the emotions of those around her. 

It allowed her to leave the place before they tried any experimentation on her.  It allowed her to get things she needed without worrying about money.  It allowed her to get a satisfying revenge on those employers and co-workers who treated her badly. 

And it’s going to allow her to reach her audience with her message...whether they want to or not.

DAY 25-WILL O’THE WISP
Name: Wilhemina Joanna Carter
Location: In-Between Worlds
Occupation: Procurer of Stuff

One of the Great Secrets of the Universe is that there are many different versions of the world.  Every time there is a major shift in history, another divergence happens that creates an Earth that can be as different as to be a different planet altogether.  There are versions of Earth which have created entirely new kinds of tech, new materials and new advances in science.

And if you know Will O’The Wisp, you can get your hands on some of this other-worldly stuff.

According to Wilhemina Joanna Carter, she was born ‘out of continuity,’ not tethered to any one Earth.  This allowed her to travel between the different realities of the ‘MegaDimensional Matrix’ freely.   She spent her teen years exploring the different versions of Earth and discovered something...

Every version of Earth has something another version needs.

So as she grew into her 20‘s, she began her own business.  Wilhemina can be contacted through the Dark Web and can get you anything for a rather large fee...although that fee can be discounted in exchange for a favor, like hijacking a refrigerated tractor trailer truck and filling it with ice for her (There’s one Earth that’s going through a severe drought, you see, and she can get a good price for potable water...)

Some people opine that Will O’The Wisp is a criminal, but she would argue otherwise.  To her, she’s a businesswoman who is providing a very specific service no one else can.  And that suits her fine!

Next: When only the Ace of Blades is left, what will she do?

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#613

We’ve got an old-fashioned potpourri episode this week.  First up, Des and Duane dive into the diabolical anthology A Taste of Phobia.  Then Rich The Monster Movie Kid investigates the latest entry in the Conjuring Universe (although you wouldn’t know it from the trailers), The Curse of La Llorona!

The trailers are below, as is an artist’s rendition of various phobias, a primer on the real La Llorona myth and a song about the Weeping Woman.

Listen to Dread Media #613 here

THE 31 CHARACTERS 31 DAYS CHALLENGE DAY TWENTY THREE

This event is to create 31 characters, one for every day in May, that will be featured in an upcoming project I’m working on tentatively called Strikeforce Liberty.   It is to raise money for RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  If you donate here, you will have the option to sponsor a character or give me a name to create a character for.  In these times, where the Alt-Right is attacking a woman’s right to her own body, we need to support organizations like this.

If you are a Domicile of Dread Patreon, you’ll get a short podcast discussing the creation process for each character.  I made one of these podcasts available to the general public here.  If you’d like to hear all of these podcasts, get other exclusive goodies like reviews and essays, and can spare at least a dollar a month to support my efforts to Make The World Stranger, go here to sign up.

Special thanks to Diana Prince, best known to horror fans as Darcy, The Mail Girl on Shudder’s The Last Drive-In with Joe-Bob Briggs.  In a fit of inspiration, I asked her if I could use her name for one of the characters and....well, here we are!  If you’ve got Shudder, please tune in tomorrow for the last episode of Season One (which I expect is going to feature one of my all-time favorites, Prom Night II: Hello, Mary Lou.  There’s hints she might even cosplay as the great Mary Lou Maloney, which gives me strange thoughts...lol).  And follow her at @kinky_horror on Twitter to learn what’s going on!  If The Maybe-Not-So-Good-Doctor ever appears in visual media, it’s Diana who should play her....

Please enjoy, and please donate.

DR. MERCY

Name: Diana Prince
Location: Amarillo, TX
Occupation: Medical Visionary...at least that’s what she says....

Nobody understood Diana Prince’s vision.  In medical school, she was uniformly mocked by her fellow students and ultimately expelled for violating the rules in her quest for scientific and medical truth.

But there were outcasts before who achieved glory, modern Promethi who were proved right in the long run.  Diana was determined to be one of them.

She reached out to various questionable types to finance her research, agreeing to provide medical services to them in exchange.  She focused on the unexpected benefits of these arrangements--a surprising access to willing test subjects hoping to become parahuman (or unwilling ones foisted on her as punishment), materials that wouldn’t be considered safe for experimentation, utter privacy....

And there was some of the experimentation she did on herself.  There were the cybernetic hands that made her instruments a part of her.  There were nanofluids running through her veins that gave her an incredibly accelerated healing factor.  She is always looking to improve on her physical form so that she will finally show humanity the true path to being Perfect....

THE 31 CHARACTERS 31 DAYS CHALLENGE: THE LOST DAYS

You’ll start seeing the podcasts again shortly.  As you know, I’ve got a lot to catch up on.

And speaking of catching up...

This event is to create 31 characters, one for every day in May, that will be featured in an upcoming project I’m working on tentatively called Strikeforce Liberty.   It is to raise money for RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  If you donate here, you will have the option to sponsor a character or give me a name to create a character for.  In these times, where the Alt-Right is attacking a woman’s right to her own body and trying to introduce the words 'consensual rape' to justify their attempts to turn women into property, we need to support organizations like this.

If you are a Domicile of Dread Patreon, you’ll get a short podcast discussing the creation process for each character.  I made one of these podcasts available to the general public here.  If you’d like to hear all of these podcasts, get other exclusive goodies like reviews, essays, and the upcoming Cinematic Mirage: The Theater of Movies That Don't Exist and can spare at least a dollar a month to support my efforts to Make The World Stranger, go here to sign up.

Please enjoy, and please donate.

Graphic courtesty of  zsuzsanna1987

DAY 17-THE GREY LADY
Name: Ambrosia Wright
Location: Mobile, mainly London
Occupation: Savior of Queen and Country

Ambrosia Wright, former SAS officer, is the latest woman to take on the identity of The Grey Lady, Special Protector of The Crown.  An identity created after World War I, The Grey Lady was designed to address the increasing proliferation of parahuman beings in the world.  She has had a hand in turning back a number of major superhuman crisis both in the U.K. and around the world, backed up by a secret organization code named Oberon which supplies her with the technology that allows her to be a heavy hitter in the parahuman community.

Ambrosia, who is of Indian descent, is the first Grey Lady of color...which has caused some controversy amongst those associated with Oberon.  This has caused Ambrosia to be more...show-offish and outspoken than previous holders of the title.  She has the support of the Royal Family and the immediate staff of Oberon.  But there are forces to want to take the title back....and they may use less-than-legitimate means to do so.

Graphics courtesy of HighlightmanSR

DAY 18-CAIRO JONES
Name: Probably not Cairo Jones
Location: Boston, MA
Occupation: Paranormally-Appointed Cleaner

When the Beings we once worshiped as Gods in ancient times decided it was time to leave, they knew there were things that needed to be taken care of--some of their own who wouldn’t go willingly, cursed or blessed objects that needed to be disposed of...and creatures that were mutated into monsters in fits of pique or to teach some mortal a lesson.  So they appointed one woman to be their representative on Earth and tasked her with the job of removing all traces of their presence on Earth.  These beings gifted her with knowledge and abilities known only to them and then left.

This woman has been devoted to this task ever since.  She has taken on different names and identities throughout history.  Legends have built up around her, and she has quietly fed and exaggerated them to hide behind so she can work without much attention.  If there’s something weird going on--you might find her at your doorstep.

DAY 19-X OF THE UNDERGROUND
Name: Long abandoned
Location: Everywhere and Nowhere
Occupation: Goddess of the Future

The woman who would become X--

nO i Do nOt tHiNk i WiLl lEt yOu

But the people have the right to know about you, about your--

tHey WiLl KnOw WhEn I wAnT tHeM tO kNoW wHeN iT iS tImE fOr ThE uNiFiCaTiOn Of ThEiR wOrLd AnD mInE tHeY wIlL kNoW eVeRyThInG tHeY wIlL bE tAuGht HoW tO TrAnScEnD aNd ReAcH tHe NiRvAnA oF tHe NeXt LeVeL

 You’re making this sound all scary and ominous

WhY aM i TaLkInG tO yOu BeGoNe

YoU

YeS, yOu ReAdInG tHiS dRiVeL.

DoN’t Be AfRaID

YoU aRe On ThE cUsP oF a EvOlUtIon

I kNoW wHaT i SaId.  tHeRe iS aN eVoLuTiOn GoInG oN, aNd I aM hErE tO gUiDe YoU wIlL bEcOmE a NeW fOrM oF lIfE, a StAtE oF bEiNg UnLiKe AnY oTheR

I’vE lAiD tHe ClUeS aLl OvEr.  FiNd Me

AnD pRePaRe fOr GoDhOoD

Next: Pray you don’t show up in the surgery of Dr. Mercy (played by a special guest familiar to certain Shudder fans!)

THE 31 CHARACTERS 31 DAYS CHALLENGE DAY TWENTY TWO

I think I’ve given up trying to convince X Of The Underground to let me tell her tale.  She’ll be speaking to you directly in The Lost Days soon, along with write-ups for The Grey Lady and Cairo Jones.  I am planning on starting to record the podcasts for the last week or so tonight.

This event is to create 31 characters, one for every day in May, that will be featured in an upcoming project I’m working on tentatively called Strikeforce Liberty.   It is to raise money for RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  If you donate here, you will have the option to sponsor a character or give me a name to create a character for.  In these times, where the Alt-Right is attacking a woman’s right to her own body, we need to support organizations like this.

If you are a Domicile of Dread Patreon, you’ll get a short podcast discussing the creation process for each character.  I made one of these podcasts available to the general public here.  If you’d like to hear all of these podcasts, get other exclusive goodies like reviews, essays, and the upcoming Cinematic Mirage (The Theater of Movies That Don't Exist) Project, and can spare at least a dollar a month to support my efforts to Make The World Stranger, go here to sign up.

Please enjoy, and please donate.

...as if you didn't know this character is a love letter to Pam Grier...

LADY DYNAMITE AND HER RACKETEERS

Name: Donna Price
Location: Detroit, MI
Occupation: Social Worker

In the mid-70‘s, Detroit was patrolled by the two-fisted team of Lady Nitro and her teen sidekick Dyna Mite.  The two women kept the city safe during a turbulent time.

The duo disappeared into the aether during the 80‘s.  The girl who was Dyna Mite went into civilian life, got a Doctorate in Social Work and devoted her time to making her hometown a better place.

Things improved a little...but new problems arose.  There was a rise in gang activities.  She heard reports of criminal organizations like Serpentine coming in from out of town recruiting wayward teens to become low-level thugs.  She went to the authorities to try to get help to protect these at-risk youth, but was turned away.

Donna Price knew she was too old to go back to her career as a vigilante full on...

...but there were other things she could do.

If kids felt they needed a gang to be protected, she’d provide one.  She’d provide training, structure, a headquarters....and her ‘Racketeers’ would take back the street, acting as a civilian police force and acting as inspiration to the city.  And every once and a while, if Lady Dynamite shows up in support, well.....

THE 31 CHARACTERS 31 DAYS CHALLENGE DAY TWENTY ONE

So X of The Underground is still resisting my efforts to tell her origins--she’d rather use the space as a platform for her manifesto--but The Lost Days are still forthcoming.  I intend to catch up on the mini-podcasts this week.

This event is to create 31 characters, one for every day in May, that will be featured in an upcoming project I’m working on tentatively called Strikeforce Liberty.   It is to raise money for RAINN (The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).  If you donate here, you will have the option to sponsor a character or give me a name to create a character for.  In these times, where the Alt-Right is attacking a woman’s right to her own body, we need to support organizations like this.

The visualization of today’s character is by Mel Cartagena.  Please follow his Instagram at @robopulpproductions!  If you’re an artist who wants to visualize one of the other characters in the Challenge, please contact me through Twitter (@NocturneTomDeja) or in the comments section below.

If you are a Domicile of Dread Patreon, you’ll get a short podcast discussing the creation process for each character.  I made one of these podcasts available to the general public here.  If you’d like to hear all of these podcasts, get other exclusive goodies like reviews and essays, and can spare at least a dollar a month to support my efforts to Make The World Stranger, go here to sign up.

Please enjoy, and please donate.

THE ELECTRIC RAY

Name: Stephanie Blaese
Location: San Diego, California
Occupation: Oceanographer

Stephanie, the daughter of a Filipino oceanographer and an American stuntman, learned to love the sea at an early age.  She frequently accompanied and helped her mother on expedition and studied a variety of sciences in school, determined to follow in her footsteps.  While working on her doctorate, Stephanie devised tech that allowed her to withstand the high pressure of the depths, benefit from enhanced mobility and even communicate with cetaceans.  Adding a special device to fire electrical bolts to the outfit, Stephanie began working with the Coast Guard to break up piracy and lawlessness on the Pacific Coast...and from time to time breaks up crimes on the mainland.

Next: Just because there’s some grey in Lady Dynamite’s ‘fro doesn’t mean she can kick back on crime with the help of her Racketeers.....