#vcaudley

[talesfromopenpages]

ROY G BIV Tag

tagged by: @vcaudley tagging: honestly it's been a while so i'm just gonna tag like @ossidae-passeridae @morris-wayts and @heatherfield and if you see this and are interested, go ahead and do it! rules: search your WIP for the colours of the rainbow and post the excerpt.

some of these chapters are already posted but from the Codywan Persuasion AU (i.e. if i'm good, will you come back?). i went with the first mention of the colour in the entire WIP.

red

Cody’s breath was caught in his throat. There were more lines of grey than he remembered, the red of his General’s hair a little less bright and a little more faded than in his memories.

orange

“Master!” The familiar voice was bright and warm, accompanied by more orange than blue these days, a burnished warm colour that seemed to wrap around Obi-Wan in the hug Ahsoka then pulled him into gently.

yellow

Cody was buttoned up, his light yellow - so light it almost looked white - jacket pressed neatly in a way that belied his nerves.

green

There was a half-knitted scarf in a mix of lime green and eye-searing pink on the couch that had not been there in the morning.

blue

A flicker of blue, and the frame shifted from the news reporter to a young Senator Cody did not recognise.

indigo & violet

N/A

[frozen-fountain]

1, 20, 100!

A book that is close to your heart

His Dark Materials. Rather than moulding me, I think it reflected and encouraged things that were already there, but either way it's been a huge guiding light since I first read that trilogy at thirteen.

20. A book that got you out of a reading slump

My mid-twenties were a long and almost unbroken reading slump thanks to severe burnout and complex trauma. Reclaiming my love for it was a huge part of learning to feel human again, and maybe the sad part is that I can't remember what it was that caused the switch. I read a few light-hearted fanfics here and there, committed to going through some comics to see how the format was done, and bit by bit came back to books. I do remember Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy finding me in 2019 and making me really excited about literature again, though.

100. Your favourite gothic novel

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is right up there as well, but Nell's story encapsulates these feelings of being alone in the world and painfully singular better than most. And nothing in text has ever frightened me as much as what Theo saw on the lawn and didn't divulge.

[whatsaboomlakalaka]

🌿how does creating make you feel?

💎why is writing important to you?

💌share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

🌿how does creating make you feel?

i answered this one in words already so have some emojis: ✨🥰🙌🤗🫶🎉

💎why is writing important to you?

creative release outside of my day job is VERY important to me and writing and d&d are my favourite types!!

💌share something with us about an up-and-coming work (WIP) that has you excited!

ria ty for letting me gush about my current wip. let's talk about the bridgerchuks. under the read more bc l o l

✨ fic writer asks meme ✨

ok so i mentioned in a previous reply that i'm writing a fic where matthew tkachuk is the eldest of eight so like.... here's a list of all my tkachuks, in age order, including all the ocs bc i love them:

Matthew - my son, not much different to canon but turn that Big Brother Energy up another, oh, 5 notches

Braeden (Brady) - brady also isn't much different, really, i'm not here to change too much up

Aisling (Ash) - here the changes start!! ash is two years younger than brady and was born the summer the family moved to st louis. she's loud and sure of herself and athletic to an extent but not into team sports - she goes to school in california and likes to surf and she's going to be a lawyer

Olena (Lena) - lena came two years later - the summer keith ended up reporting to training camp overweight which like. good reason. so many kids buddy. she's the quiet tkachuk. she likes her alone time more than any of the others and she will carve it out for herself, but she still loves them all fiercely even if she wishes they'd shut the fuck up. she watches everything so she knows a lot about hockey even though she never plays (and eventually will become a hockey scout bc of this)

Ciaran - Twin #1 - ciaran did the thing all the other boys did and went "hockey? ok!" but he did it different and went "shouldn't one of us play d though?" so he's a defenceman. i realised during the draft this year it would have been his year to get drafted to based the team he plays for off the teams who took d men in the higher pick so ya boy's a hab! and excited about it! he loves attention, and did theatre in high school (which is where he met his long term girlfriend who will follow him to montreal after college) and he's passionate and not afraid to speak his mind and stand up for minorities

Madison (Maddie) - Twin #2 - maddie saw her twin playing hockey and went "me too!" and then saw him switch to d and went "erm, no?". matthew and brady will be the first to tell you she's got the best slapshot in the family. she's playing collegiate but we'll see what happens with all the pwhl stuff before i decide what happens with her.

worth noting kieth had a vasectomy after the twins which, erm, did not stick. sorry buddy.

Oleksander (Xander) - xander was a suprise and i realised after building the spreadsheet (of course there's a spreadsheet) that his conception would have been when keith got home after being a playoff rental to the trashers LOL. he plays hockey as a kid bc he feels like he has to, and he's so nervous to admit he doesn't want to but everyone's like.. literally do what you want. why would you play professionally if you don't enjoy it!! so he's gonna go to college and do something DIFFERENT and be so much happier for it

Taryn - taryn is still taryn!! just much younger!! she is born in 2009, so keith's last playing year as he retired post 09-10 season. she's still the baby, still perfect in everyone's eyes. still highly competitive and will go into field hockey.

i went OFF and i'm not even sorry but i love them its nice to release them into the world a little after so long of them living in mine and @puckthisshift's head lol

[frozen-fountain]

top five places you've been and the best memory in each of them

I'm afraid I don't have exciting or impressive answers for this. I've not had the money to travel much, and if I hope to rectify that some day, it's not happening in the immediate future. But I do still have powerful memories associated with certain places, so I'll do my best.

Manchester holds a lot of personal importance to me; my memories of drunken adventures with @garth-greensleeves kind of blend into one phantasmagoric and vaguely hysterical haze, but I treasure them.

I've been to Whitby a few times and it's hard to pin down a single favourite memory. Holidays there when I was young are among the few good ones I have from that age. I don't know, the vibe of the place has always felt welcoming to me in a way most don't.

My brother and I were dragged on a family outing to Windermere and Ambleside, but we ended up mostly splitting off from the others. Obviously it's a beautiful place anyway, but the day we went had it cloaked in thick fog. While most of the visitors complained, I thought it was atmospheric as all hell and lent the day a different feel to other times I've been to the lakes. We spent most of the day singing Nick Cave songs and making Apocalypse Now references (shoutout to the woman with the tiger plush in front of us as we did indeed get out of the boat). Nothing that notable, just an enjoyable day with my joint-favourite person.

My favourite walking route in the village I hesitate to call a hometown is one of the few things I miss about the place. I followed the road up into the hills, and the way home included one very steep slope that I hated but that always made me feel accomplished. Highlights include: seeing deer run close by me at sunset during the summer, walking under a pastel-coloured winter sunset with frost glittering all over the fields, and seeing a rainbow that arched like a bridge right over my head.

I took these photos in a park close to me back in December. The winter that's just gone by was the first time I've enjoyed snow in my life, and wandering about, seeing a familiar place in a new way, not having my whole life put on hold by bad weather the way it would've been in the place I grew up in - it felt very close to being home.

[frozen-fountain]

4, 5, 8

Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline?

My brain is a leaky tap and I need some degree of pre-planning if I don't want to forget all my ideas (I like to let a concept marinate for a while before I start writing proper). For shorter pieces I'm happier to jot down what I know I want to include and then wing it, but for anything longer and more complex, I will probably outline extensively. First just by writing down everything I already have and filling in the blanks, then coming up with a full description of every scene I want to include and the information I intend to impart in it.

I need to do this or my probably ADHD-riddled brain is never going to get started, cowed into submission by the endless arctic expanse of that blank page. But I do know that my conception of a character will change the more time I spend with them, the more angles I have to consider them from; as such, I always end up deviating quite a bit. There's parts that become no longer necessary and others that need to be fleshed out more, every time.

What is the perfect environment for you to write in?

At my kitchen table on a quiet day that's neither too cold nor too warm. George has had a decent spell of being a fierce and mighty hunter so he's tired himself out and curled up in a box next to me, and there's a cup of tea ready to go.

Do you listen to music while you write? If so, share a song that’s been inspiring you lately.

Sometimes any sound is too distracting, but I live under a family of six, so it's usually necessary to have something in my ears. Even if it's just ambiance that suits the scene I'm working on.

Lately, Blues From Down Here by TV on the Radio has been really good for getting into the mindset of the character I'm currently writing as she learns where her anger really ought to be directed.

[talesfromopenpages]

Heads Up 7 Up

tagged by: @vcaudley (thank you for the tag!!!) tagging: @heatherfield @firstelevens @ouzoathena11 @cypresssunn and honestly whoever else wants to! rules: post the last seven sentences from one of your WIPs! i’m not going to say it has to be the absolute last seven sentences you’ve written - just from something you’re still working on.

Samar softened, wrapping a hand around hers. He squeezed gently, and the point of contact grounded her. “Hey,” he soothed. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything about it. Let yourself just - bask in it for a little.” He wrinkled his nose. “Try not to embarrass yourself in front of your crush like I did with Varun.”

“Nobody can top that,” she murmured automatically, feeling her anxiety subside at the other’s tone and words, and the comforting grip of his hand.

He squeezed her hand gently again, the complete opposite of his dry, “Thanks, Vi.” *

It was a reassurance she needed, even if she wasn't completely settled. For now though, it was enough.

[frozen-fountain]

🌹

From a presently untitled "the porn is the plot" piece I'm working on:

"You should know better than anyone that I'm not the glass flower the others think I am."

[screechfoxes]

9 and 11!

9. Best month for you this year?

tricky one, but honestly probably this December! i've done a lot of nice things this month, even if i also got a cold and have had pain flare-ups for some of it.

11. Something you want to do again next year?

i'd like to go to Glasgow again, on a day/weekend when there isn't as much train disruption, so i can really get a feel for the city and not just a little bit of its riverside