Current music:

Loreena Mckennitt - The highwayman

Masquerade. Paper faces on parade. Masquerade. Hide your face so the world will never find you.
My Mp3 CD player thing managed to make it past the 65th song, as such I got to hear a chain of songs that, a long time ago, triggered a story pretaining to an anthropomorphic character of mine. But the infuriating part.. was that during part of the song I -knew- there was a portion of the story to that part, but I couldn't remember it for the life of me.

Series: Original [Fray]
Comments: Writing it down so I don't forget again.
Disclaimer: Uhmm.. it's based around Furries. And includes crazy enhanced dogs.

So the character I'm referring to is Fray.

He's an anthropomorphic donkey, inspired by the donkey character Abe by Chris Goodwin. Goodwin left an amazing impression on me at the VCL while I was active there, and seeing his donkey character definetly stood out amidst the onslaught of pinks, tigers, wolves and various dragons. At the time it kind of hit me that his character was a mule, and not some popular based animal like the previously mentioned.

Fray was pretty much just a donkey with "mage lights" or little flames at the tips of his ears. I think I added those simply to differentiate between Abe and Fray. He later developed a roamer type of scenario to his person, and carried a gun instead of using whatever magical like powers he may had had at the time.

Fray's story came together through basically 3 songs.

Natalie Imbruglia - Smoke
Natalie Imbruglia - Torn
Nightwish - Nemo
and
Nelly Furtado - Forca came up inbetween the last two because of the alphabetical order thing on the CD, but doesn't really instill any definite story or imagery.

Smoke
- This one pretty much told the backstory of Fray. Their house was sort of an Auntie Em, Dorothy type of house in the middle of a really really large field with one dirt road leading away to civilisation. Thunderstorms were beautiful there during the day, the lower half of the sky being dull yellow mixed in with the wheat when it was in season, and the top being a coal gray with streaks of hot white flashing down. There was a clothes line outside the back door.

my lullaby, hung out to dry - a child fray looking out the window at a stuffed animal of his hanging the clothes line, as drops of rain begin to hit the window what's up with that, he turns from the view and looks towards upstairs it's over.

Fray's father had left 3 years earlier, while his mother went into a downward spiral because of it. She no longer made dinner, lit the lamps in the evening, or noticed her child for the most part. While she became neglective, she also became a whore. She often went missing for days into town, sleeping with men to replace her missing husband. Sometimes, those men would come after her to the home and much violence would often ensue. During these times Fray would usually be huddled, hidden behind his bed clutching his favorite stuffed animal, hopeing not to hear anything.

This was pretty much the trend of Fray's life.. until his mother stopped going into town. He took this as a positive thing; she wasn't going towards other men anymore. Maybe.. maybe she could depend on him instead. But she just stayed silent, smiling at him when he made his presence clear, but not really seeing him at the same time.

Two months passed, and still his mother remained locked up in their house. He cooked for her, what he could, he tried to take care of the house, but they were starting to run out of food in those past months.

One night, his mother had locked herself away in her room, actually taking up a lighted lantern with her this time. During the night, Fray went to the bathroom to get a glass of water, [they don't have electricity, but they have plumbing? Wells, I guess], and his mother came out of her room, and opened to door to her sons room. Looking in, she saw in her eyes her son sleeping there. Shutting the door, she locks it with the turn of a key, and turns back to her own room, locking herself in.

When Fray comes out of the bathroom he walks to his room, and tried to turn the handle.. but it won't open. He looks over, and notices the light still glowing from underneath his mothers door. It wasn't uncommon for his mother to stay up nights on end. But the glow gets brighter, and smoke starts to seep through the door cracks.

My lack of story telling ability lets you know that his mother was trying to kill them both. To just end it all. Fray tried to open his mothers door frantically, but he was too small and not strong enough to do so. He didn't want to accept that his mother was trying to kill him.. but he could hear her inside the room, laughing to herself, cooning, and craddling herself as the flames spread. Had some imagery of her on the opposite side of the room, as the door is burnt away, Fray can see her through the flames, naked, and smiling to herself.

He ended up running out of the house as the flames ate past the door way, and began to consume the rest of the house. Outside, the sky is nothing but gray, his stuffed animal fallen from the clothes line from the weight, lieing lifeless in the dirt. Fray turns and runs through the fields, in the opposite direction of the road heading to the town.

Other notes: Fray's dad = scientisty-guy w/ the dogs.

So there's that one. I honestly didn't think it would take this long. Blah.

Torn
-This one tells part of the story of Jessica. At least that's what I called her at first. I'm not sure if I actually want her named Cleo, or to have her real came be Cleo [real name versus normal name was a Nemo influence]. We'll call her Jess for now.

Jess was, way back when, an anthropomorphic dog. The kind that you'd find in the pet store, and in dog shows, not the kind that're out in the wild. See, a long time ago common dog anthros were in large population. But as time went on it seemed as if they were disappearing.
To the citizens it was said that these dogs, originally created and bred to be "pure breds" based mostly on looks and appearence, were now upper classmen. They were so pure, and so beautiful that they no longer lingered with the normal types or the riff-raff of country folk.

Fray used to have an old Bearded Collie neighbour they'd visit frequently. He was good friends with his father, and would let Fray take a few apples from his orchards every now and then. They were bright green apples that would make your lips pucker, and your eyes leak if you ate them too soon.

Jessica was a Borzoi. She lived in the city, and walked back and forth to work from her apartment. She was having a bad string of luck that day when her purse, including her wallet, ID, everything.. was stolen from her that day. Later she was essentially drugged from off the street and taken away.

In this way.. nearly all canine anthros were removed from society. It left the economy in a bad shape since nearly a third of the population was now missing.

Some of the canine anthros were... Well, honestly.. I'm not too sure. But when jess is introduced, she's no longer an anthro, but a four-legged canine. She can't talk.. she has little personality besides being able to rip through meat like a rabid doberman. Essentially, she's an attack dog.. but she's run away from her master.

When she sees Fray in the streets, he's standing in front of a fortune teller (getting his fortune told.. although the kind that creepily give it to you without asking. Like when you're walking down the street, then all of a sudden they yell out "DEATH!!!!!!!!! *you turn to look* ... awaits you down this road.").. seeing him triggers an anger response because she relates his image to her masters.. which provokes unhappy thoughts that she can't really understand.
She attacks him in anycase, but Fray doesn't really retaliate. Her jaw pinches down on his arm, and her head whips from side to side trying to tear it off.. but Fray doesn't do anything. He simply looks at her. He goes to pet her gently, going to place his hand on her head, her eyes wide she's stuck between deciding on either continueing to clamp down on his arm, or to bite this other appendage.

He manages to get a hand up under her ear and brushes his hand down smoothly against her neck. Her seething starts to fade and the muscles in her jaw beging to loosen.

Fray's head turns, led by the flicker of his ear, and the sounds of hounds and dogs are heard. Hearing an odd chingle, he looks back and see Jess starting to shake, the collar around her neck making the noise. As the hounds get closer she breaks away and runs, Fray completely forgotten as this new panic takes over.

Blah blah, he finds her later cold and wet in an alleyway and not in good health. He nurses her back to life pretty much, and they become companions on Fray's travels.

Fray's travels involve something involving his father and the dogs, and something else I'll figure out.

Nemo
-Nemo is essentially one part of the climatic ending type dealy. The whole real name versus normal name thing came form this. The real name being some sort of code or something that triggers an animalistic response. This part probably also sounds the most cliche, overused or corny most likely.

Fray finally gets a hold of one of his fathers, or his fahter's co-workers books which explain the dogs and their push of using the animalistic behaviour in them for some not-very-good purpose like war, or assassination, or maybe global genocide if that's possible through a crap load of dogs. Granted, they're not normal dogs, which is where it gets kind of corny.

Mm.. I'm trying to remember the imagery I had with this. Fray finds out Jess's real name is Cleo which triggers the silver rain dealy. Rain to wash things away, but-- the CLEO program takes over Jess, and this whole weird imagery of a sort of large spiritual dog like thing in the sky, and opening up to rain down silver needles (kind of like the lances or crosses in Eva? But not exactly globally or anything), and then Fray actually having to use some of that magic stuff he had to begin with (I don't really know how it fits in to the whole story..) and Jess seperating herself from the spirit Cleo thing and intercepting the needles such that she dies instead of Fray.

I feel like I just lost all credibility for this story. And my snacks are gone.

But yeah. There's that written down for later reference. As always, no plot of timeline to go with it to form some actually planned story.

Pictures of Fray: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

What a Borzoi looks like: Boop.


Aaannnnddd..... Mmm... RANDOM IMAGE!

I think I like where it's going. Need to fix that nose and a few more lines, but hopefully it'll look okay when I get more done. Need to do the markings, shield and flames next. Then figure out some cop-out of a background.


This is what I get for not writing things down =/.

With that said, I found an old sketch book that had the original ideas for my summoner story thing, and the one with dragons. I find it weird how when I have a story in the back of my head, I usually only see it in one medium. Comics for Fray, RPG for Summoner, Movie/Series for the Dragons.

Mmm-- And gorgeous work by Jennadelle in this post. I hope I'll be able to colour and compose like that. Everything seems too.. un-stimulating so far. I need more practise ::nods::.