For the bingo! Cersei/Melisandre annnnnnd Missy/River?
YAAAAAAAAY femslash
CERSEI/MELISANDRE:
I think it really says something that J/C is basically THE™ ship to me, but Melisandre is the only other character I can actually see Cersei with and enjoy the idea. One of the few fandom events I ever did was writing a piece for them, and I have no clue if it holds up (I haven't looked at it in years), but I had a lot of fun writing it. Woman devoted to family, woman devoted to a religious cause, both devoted in their own ways to the idea of legacy, both understanding that sometimes people do terrible things for the sake of what they care about...a CRIME they never met.
RIVER/MISSY:
You would THINK I'd go the fucked-up toxic yuri route with this (which, don't get me wrong, is always good), but I genuinely think they could be just. So silly. They're both showy thrill-seekers who love grappling for the upper hand all the time and WILL solve problems with violence. They'd definitely make each other worse with outside collateral damage, but they're both so stubborn and assertive that I actually think the "making each other worse" would only go so far. Ultimately, I'd be more likely to classify them as "Weird About Each Other." I do think they should play Scrabble, though. And make it the world's most intense, deranged game of all time :)
Please tell us about i loved in shades of wrong and/or How to Love Horribly
I talked about i loved in shades of wrong here, but I'm going to share another excerpt because I really like working on this one.
She should ask him a lot of things, but what comes out is, “Why did you give me a painting?”
Kogami blinks a few times. She blinks back.
For...it’s probably only a few seconds, but it feels like days, she thinks he’s going to make some sort of joke or change the subject. Or maybe even walk away, without acknowledging the question at all. She really can’t stomach the possibility of that last one, so she prepares to either take it back or bury it under something he’s willing to answer.
But before she has the chance, he sighs, purposeful—eyes flicking off to the side as cigarette smoke billows in front of him in a way that shouldn’t ground her nearly as much as it does. (In a way that shouldn’t ground her at all.) “A thank you, I suppose.”
How to Love Horribly is...I hesitate to call it "original fiction" because it WAS in direct response to something I watched, and I don't think I can ever fully divorce it from that context. But also it has virtually nothing to do with the source material.
This came about mainly because I started mulling over what makes a given dynamic spark my interest. And doing that also required parsing out why some Fraught Ships With Conflict/Rivalry/A Significant Moral Mismatch (<-something I am known to like a lot) just do not click for me.
A lot of the ones that Did Not Click involved a guy who was kind of horrible (at least) and a woman who was genuinely a nice person (and never underwent any kind of corruption arc). Which definitely isn't Inherently Unworkable; I just found, in a lot of these cases, that I couldn't see what the woman in the equation got out of the relationship.
So: what would it take, for this kind of character set-up to work for me? What would have to happen, for me to actually believe a female character would fall in love with a guy who she, in some pretty big ways, morally disagreed with?
Enter Celine--a traumatized detective who doesn't believe what happened to her "counts" as trauma and tries to compartmentalize all of this into a stoic exterior. She is only sometimes successful. Ultimately, all she wants to do is help people, but because she has few resources of her own, She's forced to work with a guy who has....uh. Different priorities. And a much more agreeable attitude toward moral grayness.
And so they disagree. And work well together. And push each other. And come to an understanding they don't have with anyone else. It's messy, and it's not good, really, but it's also something neither of them can bring themselves to get away from.
I still need to pin down the exact setting, as well as flesh out the supporting characters (and, tbh, I think that, to fully work, this needs a degree of social commentary that I don't really feel equipped to handle), but I sure do enjoy thinking about this amorphous thing in my brain :)
I do have a playlist for this, but I don't really like linking my Spotify on here, so there are screenshots of all the songs under the cut.
Dammit. I can’t…put images in this ask (VALID!) so I’ll just DM it to you. But ANYWAY. For the WIP meme:
i loved in shades of wrong
🖤🖤🖤🖤
I adore my followers, but tumblr in general gets the absolute bare minimum of ask privileges.
ANYWAY, REMEMBER AKANE, THE SPECIALEST GIRL IN THE WORLD? SHE'S GETTING A LONGFIC CHARACTER STUDY.
This is going to have a lot of pieces to it, but the main ones are:
She slowly starts to realize she's defined herself by her job and not really connected to herself/the world/other people in quite the way she'd like to
She bonds with Shinya (and her own creative side) through various forms of art, because I'm me
She learns how to want things, independent of what is Good For Other People
She reaches a deeper understanding of her own feelings (including romantic ones, because she and Shinya for-real make me insane)
The "shades of wrong" are the tying herself to The Work She Can Do For Other People/thinking too hard about If She's Handling Things the Right way. (And also "State of Grace" is THE Ship Song for the relevant dynamic. To me.)
Here is an excerpt!
Akane could swear he almost laughs.
Not derisively. Appreciatively.
“Thanks,” he says, gaze blinking away from the cover photo to settle on her instead. His face still has that fascinated look on it.
Once again, all she can manage is a mildly-clumsy dip of her head.
Kogami seems to get the idea, though, as he is peculiarly wont to do. And Akane feels...not understood, but...
...sensed. In a way she doesn’t normally.
Something tells her she shouldn't think about what that might mean.
Well, I know YOU know what this is from. Pour one out for...somehow the most functional anime ship in my arsenal. Also, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS POST, I MEAN IT
Putting this under the cut for. NSFW reasons. And also heresy.
send me 👀 and I’ll post a snippet of writing that I never got around to finishing this year
But he hears how erratic her breathing is, sees the heavy way she swallows when she looks at him and how rapidly she blinks just afterward, and he gets the feeling that the stopping wasn’t for his sake, but for hers.
That’s quite a thought: a godly creature overcome by her own want. No one has earned the right to be selfish more than Akane has, even if she’s never made use of that right. He’s supposed to be the selfish one, the one who has to keep all his baser impulses in check—and knowing that the only indulgence she allows herself is him...it stirs up a hedonism of his own.
Upon first glance, that, also, might seem dangerous or concerning (after all, he knows what happens when he loses track of himself). But he’s always felt less like either of those things, around her.
The haze around Akane has evolved into a glow, almost blinding as she bends down to lay the crop, gingerly, across his lap. It looks somewhat like she’s bestowing a gift, although he knows better; especially since she’s careful not to touch him—another indulgence for her sake.
thoughts on apple pie, dr. phil, alligators, and 2011?
Apple Pie--not my favorite type of pie, but very tasty. Just about any sweet dessert is delightful in my book.
Dr. Phil--an un-charismatic hack who should never have been a major (or even minor) public figure. Joke of a man with a joke of a "show."
Alligators--cool af. Also scary af. I love them as long as they are not within sight of me.
2011--surprisingly, one of the best and most mentally-healthy years of my life. I have no sense of chronology re: world events at large, and I am not going to taint that memory by reacquainting myself with said world events right now. I will have a better and more accurate assessment when I have a break in Rage Mode™ over. The world now.
💗 Pink: Do you find a certain character (or characters) easy to write? More difficult -- and if so, do you avoid writing that character (or those characters) when possible?
Honestly, (and this probably the most predictable thing I have ever said), I find Cersei the easiest to write, probably. I finished that character study oneshot I did on her in ZERO time. The words flow a lot more naturally when I write for her (including fic I've either put on the backburner or decided not to finish). I would assume this is because I've dedicated an UNREAL amount of mental real estate to this character specifically.
I'm finding that the characters who are the most difficult for me to write are the ones whose speech patterns aren't like mine (which includes how they talk to themselves in their internal monologue). Even if I relate to them or can analyze them with little problem, if they...for example, speak more bluntly or in shorter sentences than I do, or if they couch things in less delicate terms than I personally would, I find it a lot harder and a lot more time-consuming to convey their perspective. I'm sure this has translated to me subconsciously avoiding writing various things from a certain character's POV, but I will say, I have never intentionally avoided writing a character in a situation for this reason. Because not even God Themselves can stop me once I've decided I Need To Write Something.
🤍 White: What's a fanfic scenario or idea you'd like someone else to write so that you can read it?
Oh, geez. So many. I'm a big proponent of "If I can't find it, I'll write it," but the problem with that is I only have so much time and energy.
I guess? The biggest one is probably "comprehensive history of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's relationship pre-play, to see how they got to where they are when we first see them," but the play's been around for over 400 years and is in the public domain now. So it's entirely possible someone wrote a published book with this premise and I just haven't found it.
DW-wise, I saw a post a while back about "Girl who is a Noir Detective and boy who is a Femme Fatale" and my brain immediately went, "This is SpyDoc." So. If that's anything.
