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Description
Continued from November's Pet ...

As Ashley Somerset she's the popular, attractive blonde with questionable morals who typically gets killed in horror movies. Ashley is essentially the same person in each tale, usually meets a bad end, but returns in the next - mostly-unrelated - story unaware of what happened to her. Malevolent ghosts and possessed trees, wicked goblins, demonic scarecrows, Lovecraftian horrors...

As Dakota Black she's (unknowingly) the result of a top secret highly-advanced genetic engineering program from the 1950's. It was deemed a failure, all results flawed, the program shut down and resources directed elsewhere. The final line of test subjects, thirteen pregnant women - Dakota's mother among them - were allowed to return to their old lives because they had little or no knowledge about what they were really involved in. Dakota's "flaws" - none of which are visible - blossomed during her teenage years.

In both versions her father was a wealthy clergyman, her mother a free-spirited woman who "reformed" and became a strict disciplinarian. In Ashley's various stories both parents had usually passed away by the time she was in college, leaving their estate to her. In Dakota's case she ran away from home at seventeen and didn't come back for several years, after many misadventures. When she returned, she wanted only to hide away from the world and people, and stayed at the secluded summer house on the edge of her family's estate. Eventually a handsome groundskeeper named, Graves, who was himself a troubled veteran, drew her out and they formed a relationship. Dakota's stories were framed as her telling him about her past adventures. All stories were set during the 1970's, but there was a possible continuation of Dakota's series going into the 1980's. It would have explored her science experiment origins with Dakota being "Number Thirteen."

Description
Continued from November's Pet ...

As Ashley Somerset she's the popular, attractive blonde with questionable morals who typically gets killed in horror movies. Ashley is essentially the same person in each tale, usually meets a bad end, but returns in the next - mostly-unrelated - story unaware of what happened to her. Malevolent ghosts and possessed trees, wicked goblins, demonic scarecrows, Lovecraftian horrors...

As Dakota Black she's (unknowingly) the result of a top secret highly-advanced genetic engineering program from the 1950's. It was deemed a failure, all results flawed, the program shut down and resources directed elsewhere. The final line of test subjects, thirteen pregnant women - Dakota's mother among them - were allowed to return to their old lives because they had little or no knowledge about what they were really involved in. Dakota's "flaws" - none of which are visible - blossomed during her teenage years.

In both versions her father was a wealthy clergyman, her mother a free-spirited woman who "reformed" and became a strict disciplinarian. In Ashley's various stories both parents had usually passed away by the time she was in college, leaving their estate to her. In Dakota's case she ran away from home at seventeen and didn't come back for several years, after many misadventures. When she returned, she wanted only to hide away from the world and people, and stayed at the secluded summer house on the edge of her family's estate. Eventually a handsome groundskeeper named, Graves, who was himself a troubled veteran, drew her out and they formed a relationship. Dakota's stories were framed as her telling him about her past adventures. All stories were set during the 1970's, but there was a possible continuation of Dakota's series going into the 1980's. It would have explored her science experiment origins with Dakota being "Number Thirteen."