Davec5299
Magistrate
Introduction
This story is set in Yorkshire, England several centuries ago. It is not intended to describe a specific real-life time, specific real-life events, or specific real-life places. Most importantly, the characters are creations of my imagination, and are not designed to be depictions of real people, past, present or future. This is a work of fantasy.
Around the time that this story evolved in my brain and on my computer, I was binge watching the UK television series ‘Cracker’. It was topical at the time because of the sad passing of its star actor Robbie Coltrane. He played a Professor of Psychology who was assisting Greater Manchester Police Force in the 1990s, helping them crack murder cases, of which there seemed to be quite a large number! The series was created by Jimmy McGovern, a well-respected writer and producer from the north of England. McGovern is multi-award winning and known for writing gritty, insightful dramas, often based on his own experiences of life in working class areas of the north of England. Recurring themes in his writing include poverty, inequality, injustice and the abuse of power, with the roles of the Church, the Police, Local and National Governments and other influential institutions regularly portrayed in a poor light.
I have attempted to include some of those same themes, if you wish to look for them, albeit in a very different context, and without the great skill, attention to detail and multiple intertwining subplots of McGovern’s excellent works. Of course, these themes are prevalent in many stories about the crucifixion of slaves in Rome, the persecution of witches or the atrocities committed in times of conflict, so should not surprise anyone reading this story on this forum. The olde English Nursery Rhyme below is quite apt.
For those of you who are only interested in the ‘good bits’, please be patient as the story unfolds. If you wish, just wait until the whole thing is finished and pick them out. For me, the back story is important to help understand the influences, motivation and behaviours of the main characters.
I know that images draw members to posts rather than lots of words, and I understand why. I had never used GIMP until I wrote this story, but once I started I found it pretty addictive. So, having intended to find and create just a few relevant images I now find that there are well over 150 images to accompany the thirty thousand words of text. They are presented as screenshots from the imaginary film or TV mini-series of my imaginary story. Some are almost unaltered captures from movies or TV, when the image transfers well to the plot of this story, but most are heavily manipulated to better match the events depicted here, particularly in the later chapters. All the images have been saved so they are less than 400kb in size and I shall post no more than ten in a day. As these are my first feeble efforts using GIMP, please don’t judge them too harshly in comparison with many of the excellent manipulations posted elsewhere on the forum!
I hope that these images add to your experience of reading the story and may help you use your own imagination to visualise the action. The story is set well before electric lights were invented, and much happens after nightfall or in dark places so please accept that some of the images are not brightly lit! I have hoped to capture some of the atmosphere and emotion of the different scenes.
There are thirty short chapters to this story, and I will intend to post about one a day, though I may post two when they are very short, and I will have to split some chapters when they are lengthier or have a lot of images.
I used no ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) programs to help write this story, save the spellchecker and grammar ‘correction’ features in Word, and whatever is behind the scenes in GIMP. The only AI in evidence will be my own rather over-excited ‘Animated Imagination’, and the only intelligence will be my own very limited brain power. I’m sure some typos will remain, for which I’m sorry, as my experience tells me that my brain dictates the text faster than my fingers can type, so words can get missed out or mistyped, or annoyingly mis-corrected. No matter how many times I proof-read my creations, my brain often reads what it knows should be there rather than what I’ve actually typed.
Finally, I really hope some readers derive some pleasure from this story, but if you don’t, please don’t worry or feel sorry for me. While feedback would be great, and positive reactions would make my day, I really enjoyed writing this story and making the images, and that’s enough for me!
To get things started, here’s the cover photo, to introduce the main character, Ellie. She’s in every scene. This is her story, and it will start to be told next week.
This story is set in Yorkshire, England several centuries ago. It is not intended to describe a specific real-life time, specific real-life events, or specific real-life places. Most importantly, the characters are creations of my imagination, and are not designed to be depictions of real people, past, present or future. This is a work of fantasy.
Around the time that this story evolved in my brain and on my computer, I was binge watching the UK television series ‘Cracker’. It was topical at the time because of the sad passing of its star actor Robbie Coltrane. He played a Professor of Psychology who was assisting Greater Manchester Police Force in the 1990s, helping them crack murder cases, of which there seemed to be quite a large number! The series was created by Jimmy McGovern, a well-respected writer and producer from the north of England. McGovern is multi-award winning and known for writing gritty, insightful dramas, often based on his own experiences of life in working class areas of the north of England. Recurring themes in his writing include poverty, inequality, injustice and the abuse of power, with the roles of the Church, the Police, Local and National Governments and other influential institutions regularly portrayed in a poor light.
I have attempted to include some of those same themes, if you wish to look for them, albeit in a very different context, and without the great skill, attention to detail and multiple intertwining subplots of McGovern’s excellent works. Of course, these themes are prevalent in many stories about the crucifixion of slaves in Rome, the persecution of witches or the atrocities committed in times of conflict, so should not surprise anyone reading this story on this forum. The olde English Nursery Rhyme below is quite apt.
For those of you who are only interested in the ‘good bits’, please be patient as the story unfolds. If you wish, just wait until the whole thing is finished and pick them out. For me, the back story is important to help understand the influences, motivation and behaviours of the main characters.
I know that images draw members to posts rather than lots of words, and I understand why. I had never used GIMP until I wrote this story, but once I started I found it pretty addictive. So, having intended to find and create just a few relevant images I now find that there are well over 150 images to accompany the thirty thousand words of text. They are presented as screenshots from the imaginary film or TV mini-series of my imaginary story. Some are almost unaltered captures from movies or TV, when the image transfers well to the plot of this story, but most are heavily manipulated to better match the events depicted here, particularly in the later chapters. All the images have been saved so they are less than 400kb in size and I shall post no more than ten in a day. As these are my first feeble efforts using GIMP, please don’t judge them too harshly in comparison with many of the excellent manipulations posted elsewhere on the forum!
I hope that these images add to your experience of reading the story and may help you use your own imagination to visualise the action. The story is set well before electric lights were invented, and much happens after nightfall or in dark places so please accept that some of the images are not brightly lit! I have hoped to capture some of the atmosphere and emotion of the different scenes.
There are thirty short chapters to this story, and I will intend to post about one a day, though I may post two when they are very short, and I will have to split some chapters when they are lengthier or have a lot of images.
I used no ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) programs to help write this story, save the spellchecker and grammar ‘correction’ features in Word, and whatever is behind the scenes in GIMP. The only AI in evidence will be my own rather over-excited ‘Animated Imagination’, and the only intelligence will be my own very limited brain power. I’m sure some typos will remain, for which I’m sorry, as my experience tells me that my brain dictates the text faster than my fingers can type, so words can get missed out or mistyped, or annoyingly mis-corrected. No matter how many times I proof-read my creations, my brain often reads what it knows should be there rather than what I’ve actually typed.
Finally, I really hope some readers derive some pleasure from this story, but if you don’t, please don’t worry or feel sorry for me. While feedback would be great, and positive reactions would make my day, I really enjoyed writing this story and making the images, and that’s enough for me!
To get things started, here’s the cover photo, to introduce the main character, Ellie. She’s in every scene. This is her story, and it will start to be told next week.
I don’t want to make Melissa all mardy