Nightshade Gallery

My Uther expressions sketch-dump is finally finished. I feel so proud. Behold, my beautiful son.

I had such a fun time drawing all these, and I took inspiration from all over. This was such a fun exercise for me, and I got to practice drawing a singular character over and over with different facial expressions and angles. I think he’s such an amazing character.

You could have gotten the Amazing Digital Cyber Punk neighborhood, or Star Fleet Cabin, High School dormitory , Fire Department, or Planet Fitness Gym.

Or my favorite, The Amazing Digital Horse Girl Ranch.

The characters never interact with the setting in any meaningful way. The only time they do interact with the setting is on adventures from Caine, that are not even in the circus. The fact that they are in a circus means nothing. They never do anything circus related. And the circus itself never plays a role in any episode or plot. They could have all been transplanted exactly as they are into any other setting and you wouldn’t have to change anything about the story.

The first time the setting actually played a meaningful role in an episode was a beach episode, and they didn’t even interact with the circus. They interacted with a lake.

Just thought that was interesting.

Gender: male

Age: late twenties

Name etymology: Turkish for “Final Man” or “Last Hero”

Introducing my character, Soner the dragon knight. He rides a Quetzalli. (Quetzalli are omnivorous serpentine dragons with feathers and fur, four wings and hind feet.)

Backstory:

Soner started his journey as a soldier in service of Mardin during a war with Drukdzhong. Mardin sent their soldiers to raid Drukdzhong aviaries and steal baby and unhatched Quetzalli. Soner was one of the soldiers that stole a dragon egg.

When his Quetzalli hatched, Soner raised the baby to become his mount, and reached a position of dragon knight within the Mardin army. He named her Biscuits because much like a dog eating cat poo, she would not stop eating horse biscuits, despite his effort to train her to stop the disgusting habit. Years passed and Mardin and Drukdzhong finally reached a ceasefire and began negotiating a truce. Part of the negotiations were that Mardin had to surrender ALL stolen Quetzalli back to Drukdzhong so they could be destroyed.

Note on Quetzalli: Quetzalli trained for riding only bond to a select few riders at a very early age. Any unbonded person that tries to mount the Quetzalli is likely to be thrown, killed or maimed, depending on temperament. While possible to bond with an adult Quetzalli, the time and resources it takes to recondition a Quetzalli to a new rider far surpasses the effort of just raising a new one entirely. And that Quetzalli will always pose the risk of suddenly rejecting the new rider, even after reconditioning. Lastly they cannot be set free to join a wild population, they would not be accepted by a colony, and they have none of the skills to survive on their own.

Soner, who loves his dragon more than the world, decides to forsake his country and flee with his Quetzalli, Biscuits. He deserts Mardin, gives up his title/position as knight, and becomes a courier in the country of Taria, where no one has flying mounts. He sees moderate success in his business, as he can deliver packages faster than any other courier service, and bypass nearly all checks and tolls.

It is because of this, that he is hired by the Marchioness of Calomel’s sister to deliver some sensitive packages to Calomel. He completes several deliveries for the sister, before learning that the packages delivered contained poisons that were used by the sister to murder the entire Calomel line.

Shortly after this discovery, and wallowing in immense guilt, Soner happens upon one of last surviving members of the Calomel family, Keleila, and learns that she is taking back her home from her corrupt grand aunt. As an act to assuage his own guilt, Soner pledges fealty to Kel, promising to serve her until his death. He does not tell her about his role in the death of her family, only using his service as a means to ease his own guilt. He helps her oust and exile her Grant, taking back Calomel.

In the process becoming her first knight, and advisor as she becomes the new Marchioness.

Quirks, Personality and Appearance:

I took it down because I’m writing a novel. I wrote a fanfic originally based on a story idea my husband came up with. And I had a blast writing a semi-short fanfic based on the idea. But when I finished writing the fic, I realized I had so much more I wanted to write. So many ideas, so many plot threads I wanted to explore. A huge entire plot I wanted to explore as a sequel. And I also realized that it would be a LOT OF WORK to waste on a fanfic that no one was going to read, because it featured background characters from a 20 year old game that no one cared about.

The thought of wasting all this original plot and ideas on a fanfic that almost no one read was disheartening and daunting.

And many of the people who actually read the fic told me that my ideas were too good to waste on such a fic. They told me to take them and rework them into an original novel.

So I’ve taken my ideas, and my plots, and built an original fantasy world, filled it with creatures and fantastical races and politics and religions. I’ve sketched out a world map, and designed original geography. I’ve replaced characters with original characters that I built from the ground up. And I’m in the process of reworking and rewriting and deconstructing and reconstructing my story into a wholly original work.

I’ll be adding 13 new additional chapters, and rewriting and changing the original 13 chapters. Scrapping some, salvaging certain elements of others.

While I’m in the process of writing a novel, I don’t want the original fanfic to continue floating about. I know my novel will be overwhelmingly different, a brand new beast. But I also want to stop comparing the two, and to stop living in the fanfic version. And it’s not going to happen if the fanfic stays up. So I gave people a month to finish reading the fic, as I knew a few people were in the process of reading it, and I didn’t want to rip it down while they were mid read. I think a month was plenty of time to finish reading.

Now I can put to rest that fic. Cherish that it inspired me to write an original novel, and focus entirely on my novel.

I have a fun story to tell about original characters I feel passionate about, whose personalities, inner demons, and issues I want to explore and delve into and really flesh out. And along the way I get to tell a story about messy romances, and friendships, smut and drama. All against the backdrop of a fantasy world I built myself.

I’m also sick and tired of seeing the god awful slop that is the current popular published fantasy romance books. I won’t name names, because people probs already know them. But I’ve tried reading enough of the popular published romantacy books and found them all terrible and poorly written, (I’ve read many fanfics better written than current published romantacy) I decided it’s time to put my money where my mouth is. I’ve been writing for 20 years, and I know I can write something better.

Hi all! At the end of this month my story We Danced Anyway will become unavailable to read. I’ll be taking it down. So this is your very last chance to check it out, and the beautiful artwork within before it goes poof.

(I’m saving and preserving all the lovely comments people left on it. And when my novel is finished I might reach out to ya’ll and do something special for you. Because honestly you guys helped inspire me to take my ideas further and try my hand at an original novel.)

This fanfic was a treasure for me to write, and if you were tempted to give it a read at all, please do before it goes away forevers.

I cherish the experience I had writing this story, and to the handful of lovely people who enjoyed it with me.

It means my life is AI free. I coined this as a phrase for myself, and have used it to casually describe myself to peers in person.

I don't use AI, Alexa, Siri, or any of the fancy smart fridges, or what have you. I live a fairly simple life. And prefer to do most things myself without involving big tech and AI, or connecting my appliances to the internet.

But mostly I use that term to describe an AI free life. I don't need big tech's experimental slop and plagiarism machines to live my life.

And I'll continue to do my own research, write my own emails, resumes, essays, recipes, etc. I'm not going to outsource my intelligence.