#jude.writing

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Hello tumblr do you like autistic people and living weapons and genderfuckery and also <3 codependency

#tbf I'm 11k into the doc and the codependency is not there yet BUT IT WILL BE OKAY IT'S COMING #pov you're autistic and get mind melded with a guy who is all facades and thus kind of smooths out the fact that you can not mask for shit #and you're gay about it also #jude.writing #img. #wip: hunger like smoke #ch: mariel blackwater

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j.d. baudelaire - 12/12/23 - hunger like smoke opening lines

The dog wakes with its own blood in its mouth and its master’s lipstick still tacky on the side of its lips. Its master, however, is not here. They hold court down the hall, the dog knows, enchanting future cannon fodder with a blistering smile and a frankly irresponsible amount of alcohol and the children held in their thrall make so much noise that the dog's head becomes leaden and very solid suddenly. Perhaps it should not condemn, it’s nearly submerged beneath the influence of the alcohol itself, or had been before it had dozed off. The half bottle of forty proof had helped with the noise of earlier in the afternoon, but doesn’t help the suctioning separation it feels from the animal hide it wears. Even hungover though, the world goes smudgy and unsure around it when it opens its sticky eyes with a click like teeth meeting each other, as though it is still dreaming. When the dog dreams, because it had been dreaming before it woke even if the memories of those dreams fade as mist might when crushed into a fist, it dreams of frothing gunfire and white capped waves. It dreams of a crown of thorns digging into its hairline and when the blood drips down it’s nearly another baptism. Of flight. It dreams of fathomless, cruel eyes, of long fingers tracing the spotted skin beneath its broken nose and pulling away stained by the encounter. It dreams of an embrace so warm and tight it drives the cold from its marrow. It dreams of holding an ember and letting it burn through its palms. It wakes and it does not remember much of its dream. Nor is it anywhere near sated. The dog is nearly all stomach, a miasma of dulled hunger and brittle desire. The dog emerges from beneath its own surface with a magicked fever in its muscles, a weary ache. As if it contains oil beneath its simmering surface, popping inside of its veins. Fizzing and spatting and peeling at the dog’s seams, where it is lashed together with willpower, tightly laced. When it tries to cough, a ragged-run scratch escapes its throat instead of sounds. Its blood in its mouth goes bitter when it moves past the back of its tongue. It coughs again. Then, it closes its eyes again and the noise continues to drip in, through the thin walls and the sleeping bag it pulls over its head. The sound is not gunfire, the kind of noise that might hammer the dog into something capable even if it is not able to be anything shiny or dent free. The sound is laughter and scatters inside the cavity of its skull with ridged vibrancy, coalescing into something viscous and heavy with nothing to bounce against.

#ch: mariel blackwater #jude.writing #wip: hunger like smoke #hi <3 i am here to drop writing and then not do that for like three more months but anyway have my little guy waking up <3

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the fool in her wedding dress

after escaping her mother's clutches, the bride is delighted to be married. alas, his hands are no kinder than the ones she had just fled, and as she runs from his knife, the forest is the only place that will embrace her. however, the forest's fingers run ragged with foul magics, and as the brush of the branches bestows a curse upon her brow, the fae come to find her. there are three ways to leave: join the eternal hunt, win one of the faerie king's games, or seek sanctuary at the witch's cottage until there is a quest to fulfill and life outside becomes a possibility you may yet grasp once more, one day. and so the bride hides, and she waits, and the forest begins to keen in pain.

the bride - she/her - shy, sheltered, deeply kind

the witch - she/they - cynical, exhausted, wise

the princess - he/him - curious, gentle, creative

the knight - she/her - chivalrous, warm, mischievous

the faerie king - she/they - cruel, indulgent, fascinated by the perishable

-x-

notes: hiya! so this is my nano project for this year <3 it arrived in my brain last week and went you're going to write me, and i listened. the goofier explanation of this wip is imagine if your parents, who were princess mononoke and the deer with the antlers divorced so bad that anyone who enters the forest becomes part of their custody battle. also, what if eldest daughter syndrome syndromed so badly you became a witch about it! and what if house full of mommy issues. and perhaps also bone magic and body horror and weird fucked up blood religion. anyway, hope y'all enjoy!

tagging: some mutuals and people, hope you don't mind <3 this is just a one time tag btw. @onomatopiya @cream-and-tea @encrucijada @macywrites @coffeeandcalligraphy @xiaofiaan

#jude.writing #wip: the fool in her wedding dress #hiiii so this is my baby #soft sapphics meets body horror meets generational trauma and also all the fairy tales i loved as a kid #i'm so sorry for all the guys i tagged there's no pressure to interact with this #nanowrimo #nano #writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr

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hiiiiiiiiiiiiii chandra

#ch: chandra dayal #< 3 #jude.writing #wip: hunger like smoke #they are so they are so #my fucked up little child star simp < 3 #they are everything to me

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I made a lil thing (inspired by @coffeeandcalligraphy & @encrucijada with the help of @onomatopiya)

#jude.writing #wip: bathtub gods

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The Powerpoint < 3, for the part I am writing right now at least (too tired to do an image ID so this will certainly be updated in the future)

#my writing #jude.writing #img. #wip: hunger like smoke

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About Me: Hiya! I’m Jude (it/its pronouns if you must, but preferably no pronouns)! Writer, Dungeons and Dragons fanatic, ex-obsessed with mythology. I’m a huge fan of Naddpod and Dimension 20 and also recently got VERY into The Silt Verses. Mostly, the stuff on my blog is whatever I’m thinking about at the moment, and occasionally my writings! Trying to get into that more, and removing the pressure to make the write-posting as aesthetic as I want it to be, because that means I’ll never post any of it. WIPS listed below the cut!

Hunger like Smoke:

Mariel Blackwater and Chandra Dayal return for the ninth season of Dayal Legacy, revisiting old missions and hauntings, joined by Ille Raefa and newcomer Elaine Richards.

All across the galaxy, television screens beam their faces. Mariel Blackwater: bloody, breathing, living weapon and vessel to the searing light of stars. Chandra Dayal: the glittering heir, muse and musician, a face that could launch an thousand ships, and burn them all too. Barely a hair apart from being two sides of the same coin, and the two that have managed to survive this long. 

With magic like theirs, the frothing gunfire fades to the public’s ears, their crimes made glossy through editing and military backing. But when old memories come calling, the blood on their hands not quite scrubbed off yet, a question emerges: how far have they gone to survive? What will the breaking point be?

(intro post coming soon)

Bathtub Gods:

In the isolated swamp town of Sithau, yet another girl goes missing. But this time, the effects ripple: the two remnants of a brittle, broken friendship return, still stained in grief. Delilah, the glittering, intoxicating beauty, the universal object of desire. Eleanor, the one with a future, who left it all behind them. And Irene, ever a ghost between them.

But it is not just the cruelty of men who consume in this poverty-stricken town, but the holy things lurking beneath dark water, and the holier things these once-friends have brought with them.

(intro post coming soon) Join the server i talk about a bunch of my writing in! Taglist: (I’m redoing my taglist! If anyone wants to be added, feel free to ask!)

#jude.txt #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writeblr introduction #writing #jude.writing

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< 3

#rb. #jude.writing #< 3 chandriel #tw: physical abuse #ch: chandra dayal #ch: mariel blackwater #ship: chandra x mariel

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WIP Introduction - Bathtub Gods

In the isolated swamp town of Sithau, yet another girl goes missing. But this time, the effects ripple: the two remnants of a brittle, broken friendship return, still stained in grief. Delilah, the glittering, intoxicating beauty, the universal object of desire. Eleanor, the one with a future, who left it all behind them. And Irene, ever a ghost between them.

But it is not just the cruelty of men who consume in this town sick with verdancy and poverty, but the holy things lurking beneath the dark water, and the holier things these once-friends have brought with them.

Aesthetic: overgrowth lush with rot, dark stagnant water, elk trussed up by their antlers, crushed beer cans underfoot, the smell of damp growth and lavender and gasoline, the smell of alcohol and teenage desperation, birds calling and then going quiet all at once, jagged fingernails and scratches in bedroom walls, light reflecting off glossy hair like an oil spill, pinkies hooked into each other, scuffed sneakers, pockmarked asphalt and beat up pickup trucks, cigarette smoke unfurling from bloody red lipsticked lips, runes carved into the bark of ancient trees, rusted iron and old woods

POV: second person, present tense

Themes: gender, violence, gendered violence, generational trauma, religion, what does it mean to be holy, how do monstrosity and girlhood entangle, what does it mean to be a girl in a place where girlhood is suffering, what simmers beneath the all too practiced artifices of gender, memory

Jude Rambles: the love of my life, the bane of my existence, this wip and these characters live in my mind rent free but simply refuse to be written. yes, i can slip into the character voice without a second thought, but no, i can’t write this project. what the fuck is the plot? you tell me. i can ramble for eight hours on the character dynamics and relationships though! this is a litfic novel masquerading as a fantasy novel but also a fantasy novel masquerading as a litfic novel, so who’s to say.

Characters: Delilah Holloway: 20 | she/her | You dream of dead girls and dead gods, and wished you could count yourself among them. But girls like you are begging for tragedy, so a final silence might still be the first to embrace you without the lustful expectation you can’t help but provoke. Our protagonist, a girl who has collected all the festering hurt in the town of Sithau and stores it underneath her skin. Delilah refracts cruelties, reflects only the things you want to see and the things you want to condemn her for.

Eleanor “Ellie” Sinclair: 21 | they/them | They talked of escape, as if it would be easy to leave you behind. But perhaps you’ve simply forgotten how many times they begged you to join them. The one who got away. Ellie is the smart one, the responsible one, the one who had a chance to get out and took it with both hands. They’re less kind than they think they are, and care far too much about anyone’s opinion.

Irene Bishop: deceased | she/her | Irene blazed and blistered, was the red-hot end of a cigarette illuminating the panels of your face. How do you describe her outside of that? Irene exists only in your memory now, but she’s as abrasive and affectionate as ever. Irene is dead, and she’ll stay that way.

Caroline Sinclair: 18 | she/her | Before you’d left, Caroline had started to unspool into an imitation of your masquerade, and you hadn’t cared enough to ask her to emulate someone actually worthy of love. But you care enough to come back for her. Caroline is missing. Who will you pray to to find her?

Josephine “Josie” Perez: 25 | she/they | (Josie) evaded definition by refusing to exceed or disguise any part of herself, glorious in all her imperfection. But you hate her for that, don’t you? You hate that she gave up and you can’t. Josie has finally decided to hold onto life with both hands, but they’re very much aware that they’re a substitute in Delilah’s life. But Delilah’s a substitute for them too, so in some ways it’s symbiosis.

Romeo “Beau” Beauregarde: 25 | he/they | Romeo Beauregarde is bred from old money and older gods, money dripping from his fingers and mouth and pooling at his feet. Rich boys can always afford to wield nothing but the heavy request that everyone love them. He’s a pretty boy, a holy boy, not a boy, all broad shoulders and narrow hips and golden, golden, golden. Delilah has taken their heartstrings and spiderwebbed him into fawning, full-hearted and empty-headed devotion.

Taglist: (ask to be added)

#wip: bathtub gods #jude.writing #my writing #wip introduction #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #tw: missing people

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🍄: lived on a farm with an uncle who taught me how to forage wild mushrooms and carve wood, where i would climb out of the window and sit on the roof and stargaze until i was discovered and told not to. (dry summer grass, stargazing, napping in a hammock with a sheepdog lying atop you, reading nothing except 20yo national geographics)

🐦‍⬛: as a child wasn't allowed to be outside unattended because the birds would eat my eyes (big ravens with glossy feathers and sharp beaks, wicker baskets, mango trees, pulsing heat contrasted with blasting air conditioning, tasting food as it is cooked, sitting on stone steps and peeling pomegranates, watching television on an antenna television in black and white)

🏊: trained in competitive swimming for 10+ hours a week, formed childhood rivalries friendships and spent hours and hours driving to competitions in the early hours of the morning (the clinging smell of chlorine, the taste of honey, sleeping with your cheek resting against the seatbelt, staring at orange tinted snow flurrying past the window in the early hours of the morning, the blue-tinged peace of being underwater broken by breathing and turns at either side of the pool, everything being edged in orange or blue)

🏰: wrote parts of a novel I'll never finish in the forested ruins of a building no one knows the function of anymore (trees twenty times taller than you, scribbling in notebooks, dappled afternoon sun, the sounds of the highway muffled by the vegetation, graffiti on yellowed plaster and faded brick, cool green moss beneath your fingers)

⛵: spent hours and afternoons and evenings sailing with friends (wind and sun in your face, lemonade on your tongue, white capped waves, sunsets over the water, trying to find your way home in the dark, collapsing into bed after a long day, ever fluctuating sense of being too warm or too cold, funky tan lines, callouses from old and frayed ropes, picking paint off the boat and trying not to think about how you're going to have to fix that come the winter season)

🏛️: learned philosophy and rhetorics in rome during the off season (spending hours in bookshops and wandering historic plazas and fountains that are devoid of people, frantically writing essays and speeches while walking across the city with a group, sixteen-year-old deep conversations, dragging luggage over jutting cobblestones, ice cream, lectures overlooking the city)

#jude.writing #sort of #anyway this is half my actual experience but creative writingified yeehaw #poll #aesthetic #tw: body horror #tw: eye horror

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j.d. baudelaire - 06/11/23

a collection of media surrounding the idea of chandra dayal and what they think love must be.

who could love a child like me - j.d. baudelaire / cleopatra - the lumineers / uncredited image / swimmer - alice brasser / uncredited image / cleopatra - the lumineers

#jude.writing #nanowrimo #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing #ch: chandra dayal #pspspsp everyone come look at this

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Synopsis:

Chandra Dayal and Mariel Blackwater return for the ninth season of Dayal Legacy, revisiting old missions and hauntings, joined by Ille Raefa and newcomer Elaine Richards.

All across the galaxy, television screens beam their faces. Mariel Blackwater: bloody, breathing, living weapon and vessel to the searing light of stars. Chandra Dayal: the glittering heir, muse and musician, a face that could launch an thousand ships, and burn them all too. Barely a hair apart from being two sides of the same coin, and the two that have managed to survive this long.

With magic like theirs, the frothing gunfire fades to the public’s ears, their crimes made glossy through editing and military backing. But when old memories come calling, the blood on their hands not quite scrubbed off yet, a question emerges: how far have they gone to survive? What will the breaking point be?

Aesthetic: the cold void of space, freckles as constellations, fingers clenching in sheets, the sound of hundreds of boots marching in unison, sleek metal revolvers, silhouettes backlit by stars, blinding spotlights, the prickle in the back of your neck that you’re being watched, cigarettes on an empty stomach, copious amounts of black eyeliner and blood red lipstick, white-knuckled clenching of rosaries, the scent of oranges and clove, the scent of ozone and woodsmoke, foam-capped waves, the thick cloth of a uniform being rolled up to the elbow, dog tags burning around your neck, iron-tipped boots, a target with the bullseye blown out, the gleam of too sharp teeth

Themes: how do you define your humanity, what is the cost of a human life, how does the spotlight shape you, religion, humanity versus monstrosity, how can you understand gentleness when all you have known is war, healing, the cyclical nature of violence, (there are probably more but like, these are the vibes)

Jude Rambles: so this is the wip that has gripped me and is shaking me around like a dog with a chew toy. this project showed up in my head around december ish, even though the idea sort of had been floating around for a good while, and then i decided to expand it and now i am being eaten alive. it’s so easy to write?? i am attempting a new drafting technique, which is certainly helping and i need to try more often, but after working on bathtub gods for so long, this project is startlingly easy. and it’s so much fun too, i am having the time of my life! anyways, this is one of the more genre projects that has shown up in my brain and maybe i do need to write more science fiction and fantasy, or science fantasy like in this case.

Characters: Mariel Blackwater: 18 | It/Its | Space Irish Catholic, autistic, immensely religious, chronically guilty and hyper repressed, mildly an alcoholic, more weapon than human, avatar for the space catholic church. It’s a constellation witch, which means it can bring constellations to life and also, draw from their energy and create space storms and star lightening

Chandra Dayal: 19 | They/Them | Space Indian, bisexual & nonbinary the child of a legendary tragic love story between the heir to a media conglomerate and a general, who died when they were a baby, deeply burdened by their legacy (both the show and their actual legacy). Their magic is the harnessing of sound waves, to manipulate people’s emotion and also shatter things with sound waves.

Ille Raefa: 18 | Ve/Vim | Prophet, burdened by seeing all that will happen but in no particular order and without any particular logic, eldest sibling trauma, by far the most genre-aware and apathetic from the start, Ve is just waiting to die. Vis magic is visions, in vis dreams and sprinkled throughout vis day. Ve also is the most genre-aware character: ve knows the tropes, ve is just not entirely aware what type of book ve is in.

Elaine Richards: 18 | He/Him | Ultimate simp, from space kansas middle of nowhere who is so excited to be here and among his idols, desperately trying to fit in and make sure he doesn’t die or get kicked off of the show. Also eldest sibling trauma, except he’s not going to think about his siblings ever < 3. His magic is essentially magic metal bending

Taglist: (ask to be added/removed) @cordy-muses @cream-and-tea

#wip: hunger like smoke #wip introduction #jude.writing #writeblr #writers on tumblr #my writing #writing #writer

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j.d. baudelaire - 04.04.23 - hunger like smoke

(Roughly, when they have settled on a worn bench beneath a bandied sycamore, Mariel starts to rustle their snarls of hair, chipped black nail polish and jagged nails catching and fluffing it into something resembling a halo, the day’s last dying glow shading the edges into bursting flame, hazing the edges in gold and the bleached ends even lighter, curving along their cheekbones and the hook of their nose. Chandra shifts toward it to allow it better access.

They smell of the orange peel and clove of their perfume and when Mariel is hit with this scent, with this reminder, a blurring scrabbling something eclipses the hollows of its ribcage and scrapes up its throat.

Dayal has leaned into its touch, something Mariel can’t name in their eyes, ample lashes brushing their warm brown skin as they blink and stare.

“Let’s go,” Dayal says when Mariel untangles its fingers from their hair, a beat too late. Mariel obeys, like it always does.)

#jude.writing #this wip is so I'm so i am going insane #anyway yeehaw #not me coming out of my self induced void every so often to post a thing lol

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first & last line tag

tagged by @encrucijada & @macywrites & @karangarin & @subtlefires

first lines:

opening line of hunger like smoke: (technically the opening lines of book three but who knows what the fuck is going on with the order of this series, certainly not me) 

I don’t have a homeland, but I used to.

opening line of bathtub gods: 

What did you do when you realised monstrosity suited you better than femininity?

opening line of paradise sick: 

Summer comes in two varieties: the washed out pastels of youth, and the honeyed, sultry, slickly swallowing kind that change everything. The summer of 1973 was of the second variety.

last lines:

what i wrote last for hunger like smoke: 

That’s what I’m good at: when I get to let go and pull an apocalypse from the fuzzing clouds overhead, when the last thing that people will see, something forever burned and scarring in their retina’s, is my sintering form. When I get to burn from the inside out, when the ironroot wears off and for a moment I am almost all magic, that is when a camera will flash and draw me back into the shaking, cracking, aching body that is too fragile to hold me.

what i wrote last for bathtub gods: (kind of long but bear with me, out of context the lines don’t work lol)

Butterfly wings have feathers: that’s why you shouldn’t touch their wings. As a child, or as close to a child as you ever were, you’d kept a few injured ones in an old box under the couch, fed them sugar water. Their wings would flutter delicately, their tongues would unroll. After you’d been able to keep the first few until they’d healed and flown away your optimism should have curdled. Nothing good lasts. Your fourth butterfly had been crushed into the floor, even though you’d sworn you’d shut the box.

Sometimes it is hard for even you to believe yourself. Somehow it had gotten out. Somehow, someone had managed to step on it, smashed pigment into the concrete. You hadn’t kept any butterflies after that. You pretend you never had.

what i wrote last for paradise sick: (context, the main character is talking to her boyfriend about leaving to go to university. Ramona Whit is the main character’s favourite author)

“You’ll be the next Ramona Whit,” Joey said. 

“Here’s hoping,”

thank you guys for the tag <3, tagging: @phantomnations @godknives @khufiya-khaufnak-antariksh @onomatopiya and anyone who wants to do this !!! no pressure obviously to do any of this !

#jude.writing #wip: hunger like smoke #wip: bathtub gods #wip: paradise sick #my writing #tagging. #tag games. #my writing. #tw: insects #tw: disassociation #tw: insect death

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i am being soooo normal in my notes app

#jude.writing #ship: chandra x mariel

[saltwaterbells]

Chandra places more pressure on their smile. “Well, that’s a lot to ask from him, or anyone really. For them to be as breathtaking as I am.”

Kaira turns their chair toward the mirror taking up the entire wall of this changing room, costumes strewn about and piled on the floor hindering the view. “Look at you,” She says.

Chandra looks, familiarly acquainted with mirrors in a way Mariel says is vanity and a self-absorbed habit of theirs, but they know is just an appreciation for fine art that a brute like it wouldn’t understand.

Chandra Dayal do you know i would lay down my life for you without question

#jude.writing #look they're a vain lil bugger but i love them a ridiculous amount #this character is in no way judebait #and yet #and yet!!!!!!l #chandra dayal love of my life bain of my existence i am a little in love with you #but mostly i want to study you like a bug