Frequently Asked Questions
This page was developed to help explain a little bit about the Perils of Dawn and is designed to orient new or confused readers. Keep the questions coming!
Q: What the heck is the website all about?
A: The Perils of Dawn is a website that chronicles the misadventures of a plucky and often foolish young woman named Dawn Meadows who is a reporter for the Rose Tribune. Each peril is a combination of a story and an accompanying art gallery.
Q: What kind of stories are they?
A: The overall idea is to give the stories a mystery flavor, but they often branch out into many different genres, including drama, horror, comedy, and sometimes even a little romance.
Q: Is it true that Dawn dies in the end of every adventure?
A: Yes
Q: Why would you kill the heroine in every story. Isn't that a little creepy, weird, and evil?
A: The explanation is more easily described in the inspiration for the Perils of Dawn
Q: Okay... so what was the inspiration for the Perils of Dawn?
A: The Perils of Dawn takes its root inspiration equally from the Sierra PC games that were popular in the 1980s and early 90s, and the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books that also found their fame in the 1980s. They both had one very distinct thing in common. In these classic archaic pixel games and text adventures, players went on grand adventures that were fraught with danger and many deadly game overs. More often than not, the player was rewarded with humorous quips from the game after their character met a most untimely end. This dark humor often led to seeking out every possible direction to put your character in harm's way in anticipation of the morbid humor as your character once again bit the dust.
Q: So um, what does that have to do with Dawn?
A: Well, as I got to thinking about all the dark humor surrounding killing off your character in a video game, I began to ponder some questions that nobody ever asks. What happens in other games, like arcade games, where the point of the game is to rescue your girlfriend from the clutches of evil, and you get a game over? I mean, so you failed, you're dead, but what about her? What ever happens to her? The games never really say of course, but sometimes, she was dangling over a bubbling vat of acid, or other such grisly ends. What happens when Superman fails to rescue Lois
Lane. No games ever explore this angle.
Q: Ok, so really... your point is?
A: I felt it was my duty to write stories and gather artists to tell the story of the good guy losing every time, and evil winning the day.
Q: So why a female protagonist?
A: Dawn Meadows is a Lois Lane type character. She represents a classic damsel in distress. At the same time she makes a great satire character. She can have the history of being an intrepid investigative reporter who seeks out truth and justice similar to Lois Lane, but there are a thousand comics, movies, stories, websites about damsels getting rescued and vanquishing evil. I needed to bring the one website to the internet where the heroine is actually a really stupid girl, and her naive foolishness gets her killed again, again, again... um, and again.
Q: Got it. One last question. What's with the pantyhose theme?
A: That one probably needs a little explanation. To make the website unique, work, and get a few laughs, I needed a good foil for my protagonist. Since Dawn Meadows is a woman, it actually made sense to me to make her ultimate enemy : her pantyhose. I took all the inspiration I had found in all the old Sierra adventure games and thought to myself, what if the character you played in these games was a naive and nosy girl dressed up in a skirt suit and pantyhose? How many awful death scenes could I create that involved that? The pantyhose became the theme to tie around all the peril. I needed to make my protagonist ultra feminine. What could be more femininely iconic than a pair of pantyhose? They played the perfect balance between good and evil. They make women's legs look very classy and professional, and yet most women detest wearing them, and peel them off the second they get the chance. Then came the point where I decided to create the satire of the ridiculousness of the pantyhose in the stories. What if Dawn were required to wear them at work at all times, or face termination if she were caught without them on, or worse, if she got a
run in them? Perhaps literal termination? Stockings are so fragile, and most women fuss over how easily they are ruined. Imagine if Dawn's very life force was connected to the state of her nylons? The more runs that she got, the weaker she would become? Imagine perhaps, that instead of her life meter on the side of the screen, that instead there was a pair of pantyhose, becoming more and more ruined as she took damage. At the same time, the pantyhose cover the legs completely, and in a sweltering jungle or swamp setting, they would be so inappropriate that they might literally cook Dawn alive, while in a cold setting, even though they cover her, they offer no protection so thus, she might freeze to death. Again the lack of protection opens her up to the poisonous bites of any number of critters, or can snag and hold her in place while she pathetically tries to escape. These are many of the devilish questions I asked myself as I decided that it would be pantyhose that would foil my heroine. Superman would not save her, and she would learn that buying pantyhose at the drug store would cost her her life every time.
Pinup by Felinaedeath