My 9 Year Old Still Likes Bedtime Stories.

She’s nine. She has opinions about everything — music, which font looks right, which soda flavor makes sense depending on her mood that day. She has a DJ name. She wears vandal pop clothing she creates. She is probably more digitally fluent than most adults I know, but… she still wants a bedtime story. and I have stopped trying to rush past that because YOLO, you only live once. And she still needs me. That feels good.

We’ve been building the Vandal Pop universe for a while now. Six characters, each one their own thing. Vandalynn, who left home at 13 and trusts only those she teaches, and has a temper that gets her into trouble and a heart that makes you forgive her for it. Kyro, who is 12 and already the best artist in the crew, and defers to Vandalynn out of respect even though he doesn’t always agree, and on Sundays walks alone on the beach looking for shells and thinking about the day he runs his own crew in another city. Nokturn, who only comes out to paint when the moon is full and believes things harder than most people as a kind of substitute for actual powers. Slader, who is loyal to a fault and handsome and he knows it and once speedskated into a grocery store and knocked down all the merchandise. Preshess, who thinks for a full hour about what she’s going to wear in the morning and paints in pink gloves so she doesn’t get anything on her hands, and was likely painted into existence by an artist named San Simeona from Madrid, and for now she’s just going to pick another outfit and enjoy the moment. And Inkz — 14 years old, oldest in the crew, still looks and acts 9, lanky, a showman, humming to frogs by the river the night Vandalynn found him almost getting arrested for disturbing the peace, and his one real dream, the thing he gets quiet and dead serious about when it comes up, is singing Michael Jackson at Madison Square Garden.

My daughter and I built those personalities together. Their voices, their tensions, the details that make them feel like people you’d actually know. That part was ours.

For the storyline, I gave it to Claude.

I handed over the characters — all of it, their whole world — and asked for a story with 4 of the characters (6 felt too much). What came back was called Vandalynn’s Worst Night, and it was about a mural on Christian Street that wasn’t going right, paint the wrong colors, Slader knocking two cans into the gutter with his skateboard, Vandalynn snapping at everyone and then walking off into the dark because she had to. And then Kyro picking up a brush and sketching, in the lightest possible lines, the shape of the mural she’d been trying to make — not to finish it, because that wasn’t his place, just so she could see it when she got back. And Slader finding her on the steps of a closed laundromat and sitting next to her without saying anything for almost a full minute before telling her: I’m loyal to you because you’re worth being loyal to. Not because you’re perfect. And Nokturn whispering to a half-moon that her friend was going to be okay, and then saying it again because she wasn’t sure, and that was just how Nokturn worked.

I read it out loud. My daughter got quiet in that specific way kids get when something actually lands. Then I looked over and she was asleep. Wasn’t that the point?

———

The visuals were a combination of Claude (first iteration) and Midjourney (final iteration) — the look of the characters, the color palette, the feel of the world they live in. Some of it prompted, some iterated, all of it back and forth in a way that used to require a whole team and a real budget.

Claude’s 1st iteration version.

Midjourney’s final version.

And I’ll be straight about it: the storyline was Claude’s. I gave it the characters, which we created from our minds, and it gave me a story worth reading out loud in the dark to a nine year old who didn’t move until it was over. That’s a collaboration. I think that’s valid. More than valid — I think it’s one of the more interesting ways AI can actually show up in a family, not replacing the story but helping you tell one you couldn’t have gotten to on your own.

The next night she said: Can we do another one? Apparently it was working for her. Claude and I will make another story tonight. Teamwork makes the dream work.

The first bedtime story can be accessed on the Vandal Pop website. Perhaps your own child will enjoy it too.

Vandal Pop is a Gen Alpha craft soda and character IP brand based in Malibu, CA. Read the latest Bedtime story at vandalpops.com/bedtime-stories.