#grumblecrows memes

Thank you to @versocidal for the tag! <3

This is a small bit I am working on from Those Who Came Before, chapter 19:

"It helps widen the channel without strain," Verso explained. "Since I know now how fast you can burn your chroma out, I thought it might make your new job easier. It should work as is if you keep it close, but I think you already know my stance on carving it. Especially since you have just proven you've got the skill to do it right." "I do," Julie murmured. She tilted the plaque, following the painted lines of the pictos with her fingers and watching the chroma glimmer in the dimness of the lamplight. "Thank you for thinking of me, Verso." "It didn't take much effort." Well, now. Julie's eyes snapped straight up to his face; she braced herself to find a smirk or some other smugness intended to set her off again, the knot winding tight to the brink of pain in her stomach in anticipation of it. Nothing could prepare her for the sight of Verso's widening eyes, the tensing set to his mouth and the deepest blush she had ever seen him sport to date. "I- uh. I meant finding the pictos," he said quickly. Quickly enough for Julie to realize that he had just gone off-script. She found herself transported right back to the riverbank from the day before in an instant, back when she had put her foot in her mouth and had wished to sink through the ground under the scrutiny of his sight. Was this what she had looked like? Unlike that chat on the riverbank, though, guards patrolled the perimeter of the Gestral encampment. No Nevrons could barge in on them to save Verso's skin like they had Julie's. This game of cat and mouse was starting to chafe. What exactly are you playing at? she wanted to ask, her pulse leaping into her throat despite the thought. "Did you?" Julie said weakly, exhausted.

I imagined that the whole Verso-Monoco Frozen Hearts living situation came about as an attempt to escape from everything after Verso fought with his father and split from the family. That sort of place would be fertile ground for self-reflection, both the good and bad kind.

Thank you to @randomrosewrites and @asaara-writes for the tag!

This is for chapter 5 of Causality, with Writer!Julie having a totally chill chat with P!Verso about the adventures he and her painted self got up to:

She asks with visions. He answers with memories, and the context behind them he so badly wants to explain and she just as badly needs to understand. There is life. Then there is loss, so staggering a loss it mangles the mind. Friends. A frantic search for lost loved ones. Nevron enemies. Human lovers. Black dreams, white hair. Clea and the barrier. A dead man walking. Dualliste and the fortress. A dead man, walking. Each passing recollection turns Verso's knuckles whiter as he grips the table's edge, gaze fixed to hers by chains of his own design. Everything pieces together into a play in Julie's mind. Combined with one vision left to suck up the air between them and a playwright's feel for storytelling, she sees the light at the end of the tunnel, and her lying eyes cannot prevent her from making out the train. Bile wells on the back of her tongue. Oh, how she loathes being proven wrong. What is eight months to twenty-six years? To sixty-seven? Julie had thought she made her peace with it, her dove sacrificing himself for his family, as excruciating a pill that was to swallow. She knows him, loves him so dearly for it. But to sacrifice her. Part of her wonders what her Verso would have done, had Alicia's guilt been heard by fate and her grave had taken his place. The lengths he would have gone to had Honoré not snipped the burning fuse to this bomb. For all the scioness' skill for realism, whether squinting hard enough would allow Julie to see where the Painter ends and the Painting begins. Maybe this one had been a dove once, with all the gorgeous trappings of his plumage, fit for the cage. It is hard to hear cooing when they stand at two ends of a hall stretching over a century long. He sounds more like a magpie, with that scratch to his voice and the sorrow dripping from his every word. Looks it too, with his black and white streaks. Like the pen has run dry of ink.

Doing chunks instead of just lines, cuz my context lacks without it. I've only gotten back into writing last year, so I'm not at a nice round number yet, but getting there. Even so, here's what I have :)

Those Who Came Before (posted, ongoing): The Fracture was the sort of thing that was only supposed to happen in stories, in Julie's personal opinion.

Childish Whims (posted): The first time Verso had asked, it had been as he and Maman walked through the park. "Can we get a dog?"

Da Capo (posted): It's a cruel thing, that the world not-him painted is a finite place. When Verso looks out across the sea and sees the flat horizon beyond the Monolith, there's a lie in how forever it seems. He can stretch out his hand, yet never reach it, but it isn't for the reason he'd once thought it to be.

Alla Prima (posted): The idea had sounded cute when Verso suggested it: a paint date to celebrate la Saint-Valentin. More specifically, a day all about painting with an infusion of romanticism that came from holiday traditions rather than the artistic movement.

Simple Steps (posted): It's the engineer's ego within him that makes him want to think he could have stopped the blast.

(End of Act 2 WIP, not finished): Papa's visit serves as little but a harbinger for the dawn. All touch and go, but his departure still leaves the air charged, Verso's hairs standing on end. He can sense the lightning waiting to strike at the Monolith's base; he does not know who it will hit, only that it will hurt when it does, and fingers will point at him for forces only the gods can control, lightning or otherwise.

(Frozen Hearts WIP, likely abandoned for now): Verso's legs dangle off the edge, through the gaps in the railing where passengers would get off the train, if only the train car wasn't sat right at the edge of an ice shelf instead of a platform.

(Clea 5+1 WIP, not finished): The shack looked hideous. "You chose to live in a forest, surrounded by materials to build something substantial, and couldn't be bothered to add a bedframe?" Clea sneered at the the painting's bundle of blankets.

(E0 Poem WIP, not finished): Verso, phoenix-like, from grief Was born the painted prince Unbeknownst to him, back then He has come to know it since

I've realized that my openers are usually preambles of some sort... I must fight my technical writing instincts a little harder. The urge to explain is strong.

The Dowager Countess (Downton Abbey)

Olenna Tyrell (Game of Thrones)

Anna (also Downton Abbey, sorry for two from the same piece of media but GAHHHH she is so sweet)

Yennefer of Vengerberg (Witcher 3 - my moots also seem to really like her. for good reason >:) )

Karlach (Baldur's Gate 3)

I have an extra word dump in mind to give Verso and Simon a chance for some more banter, plus a little more insight into Verso's mindset. All we get is Julie's side of the little something-something going on between her and Verso in the main story, so this is the place to gauge how he's feeling. We also get to see the healing progress on that cut he got from flying waters 😏