Ooh what's Violet Ink?
Violet Ink is my dearly beloved problem child. It’s a “Wild Swans” retelling set in a fantasy version of Victorian Oxford. Exactly what kind of fantasy it is has shifted multiple times over the years, but the core of the story is the four main characters.
Sarah is a fantasy version of Dorothy L. Sayers--a bold and brash proto-feminist who has fought for years to get admitted to the university. Now she’s finally able to attend at the same time as her younger brother, and she takes education very seriously. She is extremely devoted to her brother’s well-being and success, and doesn’t realize that she can be rather smothering in her attempts to arrange his life. She lives in an upstairs apartment in a building where Leo lives on the lower floor.
Leo is Sarah’s younger brother, a phlegmatic musical genius who’s brilliant at the piano and doesn’t know how to handle much else in life.
Jack is a Psmith-like cocky genius who invited himself to be Leo’s roommate and who coasts his way through life, much to Sarah’s annoyance. He also likes to help Leo arrange his life, and his ideas often go contrary to Sarah’s--much to Sarah’s extreme annoyance. (Of course the two of them get a romance subplot).
Eliza has the role of the fairy tale heroine. She shows up at the house in need of a place to stay and gets a place as Sarah’s roommate. Leo’s falling in love with her, Jack’s striking up a friendship, and Sarah doesn’t trust her. The girl is constantly occupied with some mysterious task, and the evidence is pointing to the fact that it might be something that puts all four of them in danger.
The latest version of the story gives the fairy tale a time-travel twist--Eliza’s brothers are time-travel researchers who have been trapped in the past, and the house is in a timey-wimey place that could give Eliza the key to figure out how to rescue them. However, my interest in the story always skews more toward the characters than the timey-wimey, so I often consider dropping that angle. Ideally, I’d want most of the story to be from Sarah’s POV, because she has the most complicated relationships with the other three (and her life is most upended by Eliza’s arrival), and I think it would be interesting to see this fairy tale from the POV of the mother-in-law character. But I’ve never exactly been able to figure out how the fairy tale fits in with the other elements of this story.
This story started life as a Pinterest board, so it has a very strong aesthetic. Here’s the tag dedicated to this story.
Here’s a link for a snippet that shows a bit of the dynamic between Sarah and the boys.
Here’s a link to a little scene showing Eliza with her brothers. (Though this specifically applies to a version of the story that definitely involves time travel, when Eliza came from their future--the latest version makes her a contemporary of the rest of the characters.)
At this point, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrangle a coherent story out of this mess of possibilities, but it’ll will always have a special place in my heart.
