When first approaching this project I had a few ideas in mind, and so as I did some brainstorming I made notes on my iPad. I am already quite an experienced writer and so a majority of the ideas were from universes and stories that I had already made, taking characters out of those worlds and doing a smaller side story with them. I first considered this idea since I have a small but slowly growing community on Discord primarily that I’ve built over the years around my writing and host written roleplays. If I created a game that was based on a universe my community and friends were familiar with, I thought it may be a fun idea to give them something to play within that universe that they already enjoy.
However, in the end, I landed on a story that was a bit more meaningful and far less developed, giving me much more room to create something entirely new for this project.
Over the past couple of years, for lack of better words, I’ve been through hell. For years a never-ending series of unfortunate events overtook my life and I struggled to even keep a roof over my head at times. I felt like a shell of myself, and I thought it might never end, that I’d just feel like I’m running from problem after problem for the rest of my life. However, everything finally started to settle this year, and I slowly started discovering who I was properly. While things are far from perfect or peaceful still, I finally feel somewhat settled. I feel the most comfortable in my own skin that I’ve ever felt. Despite everything that’s happened and any bad days I still may have, I’ve preserved on and finally have the motivation to continue and plan for the future I didn’t think I'd truly have.
This is what I want to base my story on. Especially since I’ve already started at least the loose concept of it.
During this time that I was slowly picking myself back up, I started to write again.
I’m unsure what exactly to call this piece I found in my notes, since it doesn’t quite feel like a poem despite its poetic and metaphorical nature. But this piece of writing was written on a day I’d say I “snapped” into my current mindset. And so even though it’s very much unfinished it holds a lot of weight to me, which is exactly what I want this story to be, heavy and emotional but liberating while adding my own artistic flare to it.
Starting out, I didn’t know what the visuals of this story may be or the general feel of it. I had the loose framework of a space theme from my writing, plus wanting a somewhat ethereal or even eerie feel to parts of the aesthetic. So I started out by heading onto Pinterest and browsing some general aesthetics that somewhat matched these few keywords to get some inspiration and make a mood board.
Within this ethereal theme, it seemed like forests and nature was often associated with pictures of woodland at night with ghostly figures sometimes added in. This inspired me into thinking about the symbolism within the story as it could start out with more of a nature theme and then progress into the cosmic visuals. The woodland visuals can be associated with being grounded, having deep roots in the ground that keep you in a place like a tree. However, space is vast and endless, filled with possibilities and unknowns. I thought both these fit the entire progression of the story quite well and so it became the focus of this first mood board and brainstorming.
However, after thinking about this project and where I might take this first initial idea, I considered that maybe I should explore others especially due to the heavy nature of this story. While making art about such topics, especially personal ones can be almost therapeutic, it can also be draining. So I decided, in case I wanted to do something more fantasy and fiction based, that I should create a “Plan B” story idea.
As mentioned before, I decided on using one of my already existing story universes so it could be shared with my friends and community as an extension of what we have already created together in this world.
While I usually lean towards more historical or typical high fantasy settings, I decided to lean into a more recently created world of mine which I currently called “The Eos Fleet”, set in a somewhat dystopian sci-fi and cyberpunk universe.
Within this universe, there are already quite a few well-known and loved characters in my community and so those are the ones I turned to when thinking of a side story my players could enjoy. In particular, there was one gang in the main city of the universe that I thought could be interesting to explore more. “The Keys” are a gang/ group of activists that fight for better conditions for the poor and low-class workers in this dystopian city. Their name comes from the fact that they carry around musical instrument cases to hide illegal weapons, or just often carry around actual instruments too and use them during protests to make as much noise as they can, drawing attention to themselves, especially since electronic instruments are so much more common in this setting the traditional nature of their acts makes them even more eye-catching.
Since another module of this year's work is Sound Production, I thought having a group of people so heavily linked to music as the focus of the story would feed into the other aspects of my work well.
One character known in the community for being in this gang is a somewhat well-known favourite and so I decided to make her the focus of the story, incorporating her aesthetic into parts of the story. Her name is Beverley O’Neill, or simply just Bev.
So with these decisions made, just like I did for the first idea, I created a mood board for this story.
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