#Denora Walker

[snoodls]

there's room for everyone under the big sky (ty 1ore for letting me borrow Dia!)

if you have some spare change, please consider donating to one of the organizations: Transgender Education Network of Texas (TENT)  | Thrive Youth Center | Equality Texas

[soulfullofold]

HIHIHIHIHIHI #18, #32, #40 OF COURSE and #27 if its cathartic!

😳 writingwritingwriting

#18 Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy version: Questioner provides the passage.

Wellllll after showing up in your dms like buff garf it's been determined that my recent set of haiku will be the victims of this, specifically 457's!

So I guess overall I should begin by saying that tldr; one of the main tenets of haiku is to write from your own experiences. After doing this exercise, I agree; living the moment is the best way to condense it down to a tiny thought nugget moment in haiku. For most of my esk, this is not a problem. I already tend to base my esk where I've lived or been or from my experiences so this was a walk in the park for most of them. 457 is my first esk that really. Challenged me in that way because she's nowhere where I've been or what I've directly experienced. She's kind of still in a mutable space in my mind, I guess, with her nature features being from one place but me wanting to transplant her to another...and there was a lot of thought early on about what time period I wanted her to be from, exactly--ancient hunter or more modern? She's taken like 2% more shape since when I first got her and I really need to do more serious noodling but. I was treating her haiku as like little "obvious" or concrete notes about her personality. Sometimes that's what you gotta do to write lol. Just put something on paper. I was pretty surprised you wanted to know about these, since out of the entire set, these were some of my least favorites overall...Just because I felt they lacked the richness of others that drew on my experiences, because she's in this still-developing limbo, and...I don't think they're really haiku. I think the bitter-snark of her voice fits more for senryū but that's my onion. ANYWAY

ferns on the riverside whip-poor-will in the leaves oh, i will never return here

whip-poor-wills are migratory and I just liked the play between continually coming back to a place and 457's bitterness/sadness/angry spitting "I will never come back here". Self destructive much??? Also it's really subtle but I like the arriving bird & the play on leaves as in leaving idk just a fun thematic element. Though I definitely made a mistake and probably should have said nightjar instead of whip-poor-will bc. w-p-ws ARE in the nightjar family but I think when I wrote this I was thinking more specifically of a nightjar. IT"S FINE it's FIne please forgive me my ornithologist friends

the forest dies unceremoniously i bite back bitter tears against the sweet smell of rot

You know the Smell of a mushroom or a log rotting. Actually I got to Smell It this past week bc I just came back from a hiking & biking trip but YEAH it's such a visceral smell to me. I liked the LOOSE cutting word / juxtaposition between bitter and sweet. I also liked the um. Kind of "if a tree falls in a forest..." thing & 457 whoooo self-isolated herself in life and falls into eskhood unceremoniously. Lost into lost.

hollow as stone light as tin quiet as a thrush

a bundle of contradictions(?) here. stone can be hollow or solid. tin can be light or heavy. birds can sing or be silent. i thought it kind of fit her vibe to be both like. something that she shouldn't be, but also defiantly empty as;kdlfj hard to explain. It's the vibes. I went with tin here specifically because one of the motifs I associate with her is a tin camping mug that she drank her coffee in.

running is futile the earth still follows on the underside of my sole

Ah, I dunno this one felt so 14 year old journal to me but alas here we are. She scrambles through the forest trying to...outrun Something but she's surrounded by forest, inundated in it...isn't that what she Wanted in life? Idk she just has to be a ghost to work out what's been bothering her. I did have an adjacent experience to this where when I came back from hiking in Arizona I found sandy dirt and mud pressed into the soles of my hiking boots, No doubt from Beaver Creek that had somehow dried and stayed lodged in there even after all the other hiking around Prescott. Unlike 457 though I thought it was a delightful discovery :')

forest’s sweet solitude is only for those who refuse to hear

Another kind of eh one for me. I'm continually inspired by Richard Powers' Overstory so this is a brief synthesis of those ideas poured into 457. Aside from that, I was thinking about how peaceful and idyllic people regard forests are when in reality they're buzzing with activity and decay and communication at all times.

ANYWAYS R&R my haiku LOL

32. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

Y'know I've never been a quote person. People always ask like "what's your favorite quote" and I literally never know what to say. I feel like I can never remember ONE line of anything perfectly vs like. The core concepts in peoples' works. I return to images / film bits WAY more often than words.

But when I was thinking about this last night, an iconic line from WTNV popped into my head. It isn't even my favorite by far, but I remember hearing it and thinking wow... it's (i think) from the pilot, about Cecil describing Carlos: "teeth like a military cemetery". Again, not even like one of the more poignant ones but it really impressed on me in 2013. I think one of the hallmarks of my writing (past & present) isssss the way I make comparisons or string together ideas like poetry. Wow that sounds super indulgent but I think that's something that always catches my attention in writing and something that I consciously or subconsciously do with my own. Just the surprising "huh!" evocative connections between ideas. Or like little details. Thinking of johnmountaingoats' lyric in Picture of My Dress about the Dallas Texas Burger King & the extra mayo. The rhythm of it too. Mil-i-tary-ceme-tary. I think of another quote hilariously. Well, not really a quote because I KNOW it's not right and I forget WHO said it. But something like "the place of poetry is on the tongue". I think the rhythm sticks with you there. Plus of course like. Being the first openly gay / queer Media (outside of fic) I ever consumed. That pilot episode meant a lot to bby me!!!

#40 Please share a poem with me, I need it.

How about... Good Bones by Maggie Smith:

Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

comment for one person only but Buckle about Donny thanks

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

Hmm...I was thinking about it and probably honestly Ora. Not because she's stressful to write, but because I put a lot of pressure on myself to get her right. Mostly her dialogue I waffle on, trying to make it Sound like her but not be too curt but not be Too wordy etc. etc. Also out of all my characters, she's the one I do the most research for because of the setting and time period. I like including historical details or making a scene feel plausible for its world so I put a lot of energy into research for her!

THANKS FOR THE AAAAAASK I know it was a doozy!

[flugmunk]

AF23 for @snoodls of denora walker

[m0r1bund]

[Image: A page of Dias. She's a lanky, kindly-looking lawyer with perpetual eye bags and a huge ponytail of radially-patterned hair. She's variously depicted hand-speaking with a little flourish, smouldering, passing out on her desk, and so forth.

In one particularly involved spread, she descends on the storied cowpoke, Denora Walker, as a flurry of broken banjo strings and frayed hairs. In another, she weathers a late night on the floor in a mess of legal documents. She studies the wanted poster pinned to her wall, depicting a very familiar woman indeed...]

◆ 

Dia!

The silver lining to Ghost River being retired is that I get to go off the shitts, sharing whatever I do with Dia. I'm not entirely clear what that will be? But she's been an ex-lawyer as long as she's been, like, a character, so that will always stay with her.

(fun fact... I first wrote Dia as a lawyer because TWWM provides beginner players with make-your-own esk that have certain pre-determined attributes. Dia's nature / personality was listed as “vexatious.”-- ergo, vexatious litigation... and the rest is history :' -) )

Anyway. It's nice to finally share her in earnest. The woman of her previous life is very unlike the esk-- loving, gentle, ostentatious, strangely timid at times, but unafraid to make enemies in high places.

Well, maybe they share that last trait.

The scribble in the bottom right is heavily referenced from this wonderful little 1890s strip, a temporal contemporary of Dia hehehe.

[snoodls]

call my name when the world is upside down i'll still be around x

[snoodls]

she's got OPINIONS!!!! feat. @1ore's Dia : - ) (original here)

[snoodls]

Finally throwing together an art blog. Not sure if I should be posting my backlog of work to start, or interspersing it, or what...but the important thing is that I have it! Thought it would be good to christen it with my dear sweet Ora interning at Dia's office. Her 🤝 me finally making this blog omg

[soulfullofold]

bro yes. yes. yes. i am menacing #31 and #41 and #48 lol and #22 for the spice. Also since you went certifiably deranged in my inbox this is my free ticket to you to answer any of them that look interesting to you >:)

(DOES A LITTLE JIG)

31. Pick one OC & explain what their tumblr would be like

Xiyu's tumblr would be so funny. Tan, charcoal grey, light green, light blue, and white as the color scheme. It starts off minimalist & "~aesthetic~" with just a left sidebar and a one-column scroll. Simple bio. Totally dedicated to posting her poetry. And then as it gets popular, it pivots into a writing help askblog of sorts. She's put her truncated FAQ as the right sidebar (with a link to a miles-long, hyper specific FAQ) and like the status of her inbox and what requests she's open for. Occasionally she reblogs her friends' calligraphy. and you Know she's got a dedicated tagging system. I would say she goes off in the tags but she doesn't hide ANYTHING in the tags. Commentary Straight on the post.

41. Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs?

BUT REALLY I'm very veryveryveryvery thankful for it and so touched ;m; It's so hard to pick!! I keep any art I get of my OCs in my dA favorites. Here's only the tiniest sampling of some of my faves: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z ♥ And a THOUSAND MILLION other things I want to show but I'm trying to keep the parameters to only stuff posted on dA so it links directly back to the creators too if you wanna follow them :) <3

48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure

jesus christ kK;FLASDFJA;SDF the way 2015 smacked me in the ass ok. uh uh i wish i could come up with something better and snarkier and more witty but literally all of my ocs are scrappy like there isn't a single one who hasn't committed a crime, done something bad, or -- ... wait.

Ora's butterflies have done nothing wrong in their lives they are my bewinged cinnamon rolls. i guess.asdlkfj;a

anddd questions phoned in from vlpn: 31. Pick one OC & explain what their tumblr would be like

Elle's blog would be all blurry, low to the ground, kind of strange photos scanned from instant camera prints. They're both kind of unsettling in their contextless nature but also sort of whimsical and charming. 5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be?

This is SUCH a hard question. Because like. On the one hand, of course I want to make my OCs known because I love them to death. But at the same time I just. I WORRY about them being tossed to the dogs. I'm going to say probably Ora since I've developed her the most and she could hold her own against anyone who would be weird about her.

24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?

There's literally. They're all ghosts. If I met any of them I would be in such deep shit. Maybe Mossclaw because I would give her a good home where she would never have to worry about being a feral cat again. ;m;

[soulfullofold]

what;s up miner and crafter. do ora's playlist with that playlist post you sent me (i'm trembling how did you insert a link into that ask) Quickly.

OF COURSE. look im gonna do it again. 🪄 HERE IS THE POST

song that is pretty accurate to the character’s story *that i MADE FIT

adding this* stipulation because these picks were both accurate enough to storyboard entire amvs to...but the inherent narrative framing of the songs and some of the details i interpreted loosely in order to fit those structures. does that make sense. they're accurate because i made them accurate sadfasd -- yours & mine by lucy daucus (now a lil outdated but i still like it) and wide open spaces by soccer mommy

song that doesn’t fit the character at all but i was thinking about them while listening to it on loop

i thought my entire playlist would be this but they mostly all fit in SOME way in vibe, sound, lines...or now they are just associated with ora bc i've listened to them so many times. i think the most accurate answer for this is no shortcuts by heather maloney. this is also the first song on her playlist and the first one i put on her playlist! i hadn't figured out ora's personality or story or anything, really. i just liked the sound so much that it became the one that started it all... c)=^)

song that has one or two lines accurate to the character’s story

very literally. 1 john 4:16 by the mountain goats . "but i know you're thinking of me 'cause it's just about to rain..." arguably also "the endless string of summer storms that led me to today / began one afternoon with you, long ago and far away..." and "if the clouds are gathering, it's just to point the way / to an afternoon i spent with you when it rained all day..."

song that just kind of is the character’s vibe

jeff davis county blues by the mountain goats is just sort of her vibe. not really anything literal about the lyrics, but the deep feeling of traveling away from someone you love and still feeling like a lost runaway kid. meet you at the gate

song that just kind of is the character’s vibe

meet you at the gate by jayne trimble it just IS gamers. ghost feelings.....

song that is NOT the character's vibe

taking some creative liberties and adding this prompt because nothing in the post really got at this kind of song. inexplicably juniper by begonia is on here despite having to do little with her in terms of sound, delivery, lyrics, content, not even a line or two to save it. can't explain it but she is wives with the song that comes after her.

song that i desperately wish they would listen to because i personally like it

LITERALLY I NEED ORA TO LISTEN TO good woman by the staves SO BAD IT'S THE REASON WHY I PUT THIS ON HER PLAYLIST!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOURE A GOOD, GOOD WOMAN......

song that fits the character so well that it’s scary

GOD. going in by wild child. 100% her. a dear friend of mine introduced me to wild child when we were both plotting rp / character interactions with her character and ora, and so many of their songs ended up on her playlist. but this was the first new release the band did when i was a fan of them and it was like it was written for her. i drew her bday piece in 2022 to this song ;m;

unsure why this song is *STILL in the playlist but it’s so ingrained in my mind as 'part of the playlist' that it would feel weird to remove it

changed the prompt again because i know why i put all of these on there, but even though i KNOW i would remove them in the public-facing one, should i ever publish it, they're here because they're a a part of the journey LMAO the sickness unto death by typhoon, is leftover from an earlier plot musing that i've scrapped. so is tangles by lady lamb. it astounds me to think i was going to make an amv to this because girl what. girl where. literally which part. anyway! anddd loving her by katie pruitt. nothing against katie but i'm embarrassed to have this one on here lol i didn't really want it on there in the first place but i was amazed about a vaguely twangy sound about wlw love and it just hasn't left LMAO. it's kind of cheugy to me

ANYWAY that's it! at the time of writing this, ora's main playlist has 103 songs on it! i do literally have a dozen other ora-related playlists too but that's another ask for another day

[soulfullofold]

FOR THA ASK MEME..#4 and #5 for denora dearest and also #38 for miss archivist and miss kalpis :J

How easy is it to earn Ora's trust? / How easy is it to earn her mistrust?

Truly earning her trust is an ordeal to say the least. Even in the face of unabashed and repeated kindness, her guard will remain up...unless one does something that convinces her otherwise. No amount of lip service will do it. It took a courageous sacrifice for Ora to trust her now-friend Heath. It took Tex helping to break Ora out of jail. It took Willa a canyon trip and a horse-wrangling mission. It took the repeated sacrifices Dia made during her case to help her. The list goes on. Mistrust, though... Once you've got her trust, you've got it for a long, long time. It would take intense cruelty to have Ora not on your side. But when that trust breaks? ✌ She's outta there forever. You'll never see or hear from her again. If you want it back, tough luck.

What memory do The Archivist and Kalpis revisit most often?

Oh weird. It's the same one. Soooo strange haha wonder why.

[soulfullofold]

(skitters in) HEWWO I come for the oc ask meme :)a

For Denora:

25) how do they move? are they clumsy? light on their feet? do they use mobility aids?

For Kalpis:

34) how would your character describe themselves? it doesn't have to line up with how they really are

25. How does Ora move? Is she clumsy? Light on her feet? Does she use mobility aids?

I wouldn't say Ora is clumsy. She's got working hands that bear the scars of little accidents--burns, scars, discoloration, etc.--but neither I nor her would call her clumsy. She sees herself as a little inelegant, rough, rugged, unable to get the hang of finer, delicate motion like that western formal dance or writing script require. She's a good shot, but more the type to plant herself in the ground than doing spins or flowy movement. Like, she's alright at dodging, but sometimes will land a little hard or accidentally scrape against a tree. She walks with purpose and a strong gait. Only when her guard is down does she truly allow herself to trundle. She paces when she's thinking through a big problem. Her body is covered in scars from aforementioned accidents, fights, scrapes. They can be a bit tender and can really hurt if she's not careful. Not sure if her horse counts as a mobility aid, but she's definitely an emotional support animal ;m; <3

34. How would Kalpis describe herself?

Awesome, amazing, incredible, show-stopping, brilliant, never before seen, groundbreaking... Waiiit, is this a riddle?

[soulfullofold]

Yes Yes Yes Yes YES YES YES YES. 🔊 for Roz and Kyan and Wide-eyes and Ora because of course I'm gonna ask about her . Also you menaced me with this last time, so if you're holding back any Dia music, speak now or forever hold your peace

a BOUNTY... this jukebox is wild but here we go! (drops a sleeve of quarters in) 📻🎶

God I wish this ask was for ON-VIBE songs for these characters because I have killer takes. But:

Roz - Pacific by Kelly McFarling

pacific is bigger / than I ever knew / until I got in her / and the water it moved / yeah it moved me / and if I was frightened / out there on the shore / well I had good reasons / but I don’t anymore / yeah it moved me / there’s nowhere to go where the earth doesn’t quake / it moved me

It's just the ocean gamers...and love kasdj;lfkaj

Kyan - St. Francis Loves All the Animals - Four Eyes

A moth in the floodlight, its wings lit up like fires and your eyes alight when you learn your own powers A deer in the driveway, the headlights leave her blind She's still as a memory of something left behind St. Francis loves all the animals, when they cry out, he's listening St. Francis loves all the animals, and your father named you for him

A vague and very off-sound adjacent mentioning of some of her themes; the naming, the coming into your own (violently), scraping up the memories of something left behind, the weight of a named (or unnamed) legacy.

Wideeyes - Broken Necks by Gabby's World

While you were breaking your neck trying to keep your head up I was breaking my neck just to stick it out for you

Not off-vibe in sound necessarily, but off-vibe in her bitterness. I think Wideeyes is 95% of the time very forgiving and meeting people where they are (like the Spore friendship meter LK;FDSJA;LKFJASLKD. I blame Kyle & YOU), I really like this song for her bitter/bittersweet moments. She does a lot of the heavy lifting for others and doesn't mind it but man sometimes it weighs on you when others don't show up in the way you do for others. The first verse with the breaking branches really reminds me of her and Ubi Sunt ;m;

Ora - Winona by Miloe w/ Janelle Monae & Vagabond

Tripping over mistakes I can't see You’ll find out It catches up before you know it All I know It's simply as it goes It's simply as we know It’s simply as we go where we go I was done, I stayed a while Didn't really wanna go Hasn't rained in so long Pleasant pains when you're gone

THIS is why I wanted to do this ask. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for the rest of my guys but Ora is spiders georg with how many off-vibe songs she has on her playlist. Anyways. Did I put this on here because the title is the name of her horse? .....Nooooo,.,,. it's ... the, well, the Lyrics ok look at the lyrics AS;KLDFJ. Genuinely though I really like the layered vocals and how it feels like Ora's vibe kind of with the simple lyrics. It feels like her voice without sounding anything like her. The beat too like makes me think of a Journey and reflecting while on that journey. GOOD STUFF

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE ASK!!! I love them your honor. I love Music too .

... you're still here? : - ) ? oh. WELL um since you insist. I am in fact holding back lots of Dia songs. 2 playlists of them WHOOPS. it's just. You know how it is, they aren't Ready sl;kdjaf. but I can put a few that I culled or are on the chopping block. Just as a treat.

Dia extravaganza: The Park by Haley Heynderickx & Max García Conover Removed because...the thesis wasn't really there? It didn't make sense for her playlist really. It's about the narrator finding a man crying in a public park and reflecting on masculinity and being like wow I never saw my own father cry. I wonder what cause him to cry. I put it on there INITIALLY probably because of the scenario of like her seeing a stranger cry in public and it affecting her deeply as someone so empathetic and passionate about her community and the well-being of people. Plus the handful of lines here make me think of Dia:

Was someone planting him a daughter Was her life as strong as the river pushing water from the sides And gently out to sea

Just the . growing into your own / transness / becoming into your own identity of it all and ofc the river.

back again by flor Off-sound and kind of...generic-ish I guess? A little too pastel youtube animation amv for Them. Though I really like this song and the instrumental end is my favorite part. I don't think you'd like this one given your music taste so it's on the iffy list LOL. What made me put it on in the first place is like. thinking about the themes of returning / coming home, and then doing it again as esk.

Oh, I won't be long It's just for now Oh, I'll come back here When time allows Save my name in your phone I'll be fine, but I don't know When I'll be back again I'll be back again Keep my love close to yours We'll lay down again, once more When I get back again I get back again And it's so hard to live without Your softest touch Your burning mouth 😳🥵 I don't want to be long And it's too hard for you to ride along 🐎💨 So wait for me And I'll be back again

And then these for eskhood ofc ofc.

Let me know if you feel a little lost A little too real And I'll come back again I'll come back again It hurts alone But don't you worry I'm coming home I'm coming home

WHEEEEEW there we go. :) there's my testimony. Now you know why I've been keeping these to myself for now. because it's. they're just Nooooooot Quiiiiiiite ready! Dia deserves the Good Takes.

[soulfullofold]

35 n 27 of the oc ask?

oc ask time.......... >:3

I was just telling @1ore how I would browse people’s OC asks and writing prompts recreationally for fun but never had anyone to answer for so salkdfjkk this is kind of a treat!

35. Any sibling characters?       Y’know, not a lot! I don’t usually explore sibling and biological family dynamics in my stories that often. That being said, actually Hei has a younger sister who’s super important to her, who she gave up her life for in a way. Annnd Ora’s dad Charley has a younger brother, Levi. Who is Ora’s uncle. Because that’s how that works alkjsd;fj. They also have a complicated but tight-knit relationship. 27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?                     Realizing that I’m super boring and like, honestly, not really? I have these elaborate, miles-long playlists for literally all of my OCs, but the songs always come after the dude. Though, there’s some songs that are intertwined with early development of my characters. The closest I can think is maybe In Corolla by The Mountain Goats for 4664... because 4664 was born of the emotion and time that had me putting In Corolla on repeat. Or maybe No Shortcuts by Heather Maloney for Ora. It’s the first song on her playlist and very anachronistic for her, but I really loved the themes in the song and the narrative voice of the singer so I was thinking about them as I was developing and approaching early Ora. :>

[soulfullofold]

△ Mrs. Denora Walker. Is this town big enough for the both of us? Asking for a friend.

"Mrs. Walker?"

"Mhm."

"Is this town big enough for the two of us? Asking for a friend."

"Well, this bed is big enough for the two of us...but I'm glad we don't act like it."

...

"Did you just call me Mrs. Walker?"

[soulfullofold]

△ Miss Denora Walker. Actually I can't ask her anything :( I don't want to make her frown unless?

A rough-hewn woman glances at you over her shoulder. Leather tassels tangle with the motion. "Need somethin'?" she mutters. In your silence, she turns back to her drink.

[soulfullofold]

Sorry for the follow notif, ASK is too close to unfollow pfft. anyways. 🎁 ORA

c)=^) ✨