FemslashEx letter
Aug. 31st, 2014 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breathedoutHello dear story-writer!
Aren't I a lucky duck that you want to write me some delicious f/f goodness; I adore you already! I'm copy/pasting some text from prior Dear Author letters, which reads:
Aren't I a lucky duck that you want to write me some delicious f/f goodness; I adore you already! I'm copy/pasting some text from prior Dear Author letters, which reads:
Sadly I don't use my DW or LJ for anything but commenting on other peoples' posts and posting Dear Author letters, which I realize is not very satisfying from a poking-around perspective. Please feel free, if you'd like, to peruse my Tumblr (warning: often NSFW), which should give you some idea of what I'm about. Stuff I've written is over here.
Barring that: I am a bookish, mostly-lesbian, 33-year-old cis lady living in the Pacific Northwest. Particular loves of mine include: formidable yet complex women being formidable and complex together; sex writing that is emotionally nuanced and/or ratchets up the narrative tension more than it resolves it; unreliable narrators; atmospheric settings; lovely turns of phrase; strong narrative voices, and weird narrative tricks.
Squicks: My huge, body-horror-level squick is pregnancy and babies; please avoid them if at all possible. Other than that, I'm up for pretty much whatever, including dub-con or even non-con as long as they're acknowledged as such within the context of the story. I write a ton of porn and I love to read it, but it's in no way required or expected, so just follow your muse!
Feel free to disregard fandom-specific ramblings; but if you're interested, I've gone into a bit more detail below. Thanks again for writing me a thing! You rock. :-D
Carmilla (Laura/Carmilla)
Laura/Carmilla pretty much writes itself, and since you're already on board for femslash you can pretty much do no wrong. Obviously HOT VAMPIRE SEX (or UST, or makeouts) is the tl;dr here, but as far as more specific takes, might I suggest: an angsty, guilt-and-lust-riddled Laura during a visit from Carmilla that she will later forget? An unreliable-narrator Laura who was actually aware of Carmilla's vampirism from Day One, and has been waiting to lure her back to her side ever since that glimpse of her as a child? A Laura who is less conflicted than Carmilla about Carmilla's predatory nature, and eggs her on to tell stories of her past bloody exploits while they're in bed together? A Laura who uses Carmilla's bond with her as blackmail to essentially domme the vampire? I AM UP FOR ANY OF IT. As you can probably tell I am especially delighted by the idea of a Laura who is much savvier and less the victim than she makes out in the "official"/canonical account, but seriously, any direction you take this is GOLD.
Killers Kill; Dead Men Die (Society Dame/Society Broad, Songbird/Queenpin, Aristocrat/Maiden Aunt)
I'm pretty much going to keep nominating and requesting this photoset for every exchange I participate in until the day I die; and you'd have a hard time finding a way to go wrong with anything you want to do with it. (And hey, it's just a series of photos! Looking at it takes five minutes! Even if this isn't why you were matched with me, feel free to run with it.) I adore noir fiction of all stripes, from classic Raymond Chandler era stuff to more modern versions—especially when the modern stuff adapts the genre to reflect minority and female POVs (Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels, for example, or Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski ones). I would adore, adore, adore more noir fiction that's told from a queer female POV, that preserves the rough edges and moral ambiguity shared by all the best noir characters, very much including the protagonists. And hey, this challenge seems custom-made for such a request.
My big ships here are the Anjelica Huston/Sharon Stone characters (scheming society matrons running the underworld from the ladies' lounge, oh my!) and the Helen Mirren/Judi Dench ones (MOBSTER WIVES, OMG, HOOK IT TO MY VEINS), but I'm also super intrigued by the Penelope Cruise and Rinko Kikuchi characters, and would love to see them form an unlikely alliance that is so unexpected as to fly under the radar of everyone around them. I should note that I'm not at all attached to the names, relationships or story fragments that Vanity Fair posted along with this photoset: feel free to use them if they speak to you, but also feel free to build your own versions of the characters from the ground up, based on their images.
The Fall (TV) (Danielle Ferrington/Stella Gibson, Stella Gibson/Reed Smith)
Basically, Gillian Anderson as Stella Gibson is absolutely phenomenal in this show and radiates a kind of hardened, melancholic sexual energy. Giving that energy a female-centric push just sets my heart all a-flutter.
I really could go either way on pairing Stella with Danielle versus with Reed. To my mind, she has more of an immediate "click" with Reed: she's visibly intrigued during the scene in the second episode where Reed arrives on her motorbike; and she also seems to be visibly off-center during the scene where Reed shows her Olson's postmortem x-rays—which, for someone as unflappable as Stella, is saying something. That is in part because of her complicated feelings about Olson's death, certainly, but it could also have something to do with Reed, or a combination of the two. And Episode 1.4! The scene where they're going over the crime scene together, and then go out for a drink! Goodness me, the slightly macabre yet also oddly touching fic writes itself.
On the other hand, Danny is canonically gay, and I love the push/pull that happens between her and Stella as the show goes on. The show is so understated with its depictions that there's a lot of room for interpretation: to what degree does Stella interpret Danny's disclosure about getting rid of evidence that she had company, to be a power play? To what degree did Danny intend it that way? To what extent does Stella feel blackmailed into offering Danny the position as her right-hand woman? To what extent does Danny realize that? At what point does their dynamic shift away from one-ups-manship and into mutual regard (or has it? or will it in the future?), and how might sexual attraction map over that? I don't have ready answers but I find all these questions really intriguing, and I'd love any story that explored them a bit.
I really could go either way on pairing Stella with Danielle versus with Reed. To my mind, she has more of an immediate "click" with Reed: she's visibly intrigued during the scene in the second episode where Reed arrives on her motorbike; and she also seems to be visibly off-center during the scene where Reed shows her Olson's postmortem x-rays—which, for someone as unflappable as Stella, is saying something. That is in part because of her complicated feelings about Olson's death, certainly, but it could also have something to do with Reed, or a combination of the two. And Episode 1.4! The scene where they're going over the crime scene together, and then go out for a drink! Goodness me, the slightly macabre yet also oddly touching fic writes itself.
On the other hand, Danny is canonically gay, and I love the push/pull that happens between her and Stella as the show goes on. The show is so understated with its depictions that there's a lot of room for interpretation: to what degree does Stella interpret Danny's disclosure about getting rid of evidence that she had company, to be a power play? To what degree did Danny intend it that way? To what extent does Stella feel blackmailed into offering Danny the position as her right-hand woman? To what extent does Danny realize that? At what point does their dynamic shift away from one-ups-manship and into mutual regard (or has it? or will it in the future?), and how might sexual attraction map over that? I don't have ready answers but I find all these questions really intriguing, and I'd love any story that explored them a bit.
Scandal (TV) (Mellie Grant/Olivia Pope, Olivia Pope/Abby Whelan)
God, just please give Olivia a break from her own terrible, terrible taste in men.
Seriously, I love both these pairings for different reasons. Mellie/Olivia is such an amazing hate-ship: both those women have some serious pent-up aggression and resentment regarding Fitz, both in terms of their relationships with him and in terms of how he figures into their ambitions for themselves. Standard relationship models would dictate that they simply hate and/or avoid each other, but their actual canonical relationship is a lot more complicated than that, because of their ambition and their shared pragmatism; and I can definitely see an attraction building out of that. So while I can see (and would savor) a straight-up hatefucking scenario between Mellie and Olivia, I can also see a situation (porny or no) in which resentment would vie with an unexpected sense of solidarity or grudging respect.
Abby is much more squarely on Olivia's side, to the point where she sometimes seems more a minion than a peer. But there's unexpected complexity there, too—multiple points at which Abby really tangibly resents Olivia, where her loyalty is tested. I think my favorite bits are where they're closest to being peers, though: I love the domesticity of the episode(s) where Olivia is calling Abby at home while Abby bustles around her kitchen. I also love Abby's domme-ish tendencies in her sex scenes with David, and since Grant is obviously (like, OBVIOUSLY) so useless as a lover, I enjoy thinking about Olivia getting someone who just takes charge and shows her a good time for a change—even if that take-chargeness might be to some degree mixed up with Abby needing to prove a point.
Seriously, I love both these pairings for different reasons. Mellie/Olivia is such an amazing hate-ship: both those women have some serious pent-up aggression and resentment regarding Fitz, both in terms of their relationships with him and in terms of how he figures into their ambitions for themselves. Standard relationship models would dictate that they simply hate and/or avoid each other, but their actual canonical relationship is a lot more complicated than that, because of their ambition and their shared pragmatism; and I can definitely see an attraction building out of that. So while I can see (and would savor) a straight-up hatefucking scenario between Mellie and Olivia, I can also see a situation (porny or no) in which resentment would vie with an unexpected sense of solidarity or grudging respect.
Abby is much more squarely on Olivia's side, to the point where she sometimes seems more a minion than a peer. But there's unexpected complexity there, too—multiple points at which Abby really tangibly resents Olivia, where her loyalty is tested. I think my favorite bits are where they're closest to being peers, though: I love the domesticity of the episode(s) where Olivia is calling Abby at home while Abby bustles around her kitchen. I also love Abby's domme-ish tendencies in her sex scenes with David, and since Grant is obviously (like, OBVIOUSLY) so useless as a lover, I enjoy thinking about Olivia getting someone who just takes charge and shows her a good time for a change—even if that take-chargeness might be to some degree mixed up with Abby needing to prove a point.
But really, you can pretty much take these pairings in any direction and I will be on board. I find all three of these women super compelling and interesting to think about, and I'm sure I'd be intrigued with things you see in their dynamics that I didn't necessarily pick up on.
Scott & Bailey (Gill Murray/Julie Dodson)
Oh man, friend. Gill and Julie. Julie and Gill. This might be, across all fandoms, across all of media, the pairing of my heart at the moment. I just adore their dynamic SO much. The trust between them; their obvious history together; their high expectations of each other and the uncompromising way they hold each other to them; the palpable affection in the way they rag on each other and pretend to insult each other; the way, when they're working a case together, they move in tandem and communicate with each other so seamlessly. The way they ask each other for reassurance and give each other a hard time but eventually provide it. They are individually smokin' hot (I have a major thing for both Gill's expressive hands, and for the hint of butchness about the way Julie shrugs off her jackets), and their chemistry is phenomenal: I'd be great—more than great, over the moon—with seeing a sex scene between them, but I'd also like to explore that push-and-pull, tangible-caretaking-while-ostensibly-ragging-on-each-other dynamic they've got going. Maybe a post-3.8 episode tag? But really, as with all these, if you capture even a bit of their dynamic I will be so so happy and not care what specific direction you took it.
Anyway, hope that helps, and thanks again for the story, you are wonderful!
Groove on,
HBBO
Anyway, hope that helps, and thanks again for the story, you are wonderful!
Groove on,
HBBO
