#absolute favourite.

this is one of my favorite questions. ever since going to uni, i've become obsessed with film down to a cinema membership lol. here is a quick list of my favorites:

pride & prejudice (2005)

murina (2021)

arrival (2016)

jackie (2016)

the virgin suicides (1999)

black panther: wakanda forever (2022)

the great gatsby (2013)

priscilla (2023)

an easy girl (2019)

spirited away (2001)

the worst person in the world (2021)

fresh (2022)

jane eyre (2011)

beautiful creatures (2013)

thoroughbreds (2017) — this is the reason for my username

mother! (2017)

salt (2010)

the twilight saga: new moon (2009)

annihilation (2018)

monster (2023)

crimson peak (2015)

mustang (2015)

the neon demon (2016)

swallowed (2022)

uptown girls (2003)

carmilla (2019)

the beguiled (2017)

stoker (2013)

you won't be alone (2022)

nosferatu (2024)

bound (1996)

raw (2016)

revenge (2017)

sinners (2025)

furiosa: a mad max saga (2024)

portrait of a lady on fire (2019)

maria (2024)

/ what are a few tips you find helpful when beginning a new story?

i love you and you're work xo

hi sweetheart. this is such a lovely question; i love getting into my creative process!

so a lot of the times i'm visually inspired first. so i get stuck on a phrase i've seen in a book, the way the light looks in a film, etc. i then sketch out the visual nature of the fic. i attached an example below!

then when i write, i split my document into two as seen below.

one tab is the actual fic itself and the second is the "notes" section where i dump all of my html formtatting for the gradient text effect on the title, bullet points of an outline if i have one at all, brand names if i am focusing on characters clothing as a characterization device, things to look up, etc. sometimes i drag things from my iphone notes app into this section too—like beats i have written when i've been out or distracted or wrote for some other pairing and want to repurpose. not everything in notes makes it in!! but it is still useful.

i find a song or two to loop for the entirety of the time i spend writing and that usually fuels me. i find it easier to have a loose understanding of what my "thesis" of the fic is and then i kind of spiral up. it's like building a spider web from the center.

i also find that i rarely begin with plot so much as i begin with a mood. an ache, a tension, a texture of feeling that won’t leave me alone. once i have that, i listen for the voice of the piece. the cadence of a line, the rhythm of how it wants to be told, often guides me just as much as the visuals. my characters, too, lead the way: i’m less interested in what happens to them than in how they shift and reseam on the inside, and how that quiet movement spills outward. sometimes the fic changes its shape halfway through, and i let it. i think that’s part of the magic, trusting that the story knows where it’s going, even if i don’t.

lastly, i think it's important to also know what you focus on as a writer. for me, it's interiority, the inner working of every piece of the story. every writer’s process is different, but finding the things that are your guiding light is what will make every piece feel alive.

You said you like smelling good

What are your go to products?

hello, hello, angel. thank you for this question ; i am locking in like i never have before. okay so: ⊱ ۫ ׅ body

vanilla bean body lotion

anything glows vanilla body oil

creme de corps soy milk & honey whipped body butter

burts bee's almond and milk hand cream

i mix the vanilla bean body lotion and vanilla body oil! i use the soy milk & honey for a fresh, spring scent.

⊱ ۫ ׅ perfume

mixbar coconut palm (hair spray as well)

phlur missing person

phlur soft spot

dossier almond cherry

viktor and rolf flowerbomb tiger lily

shams al emarat khususi ard al zaafaran (oil roller)

bastet black alchemy lab (oil roller)

i focus on smelling warm. i want to smell intimate and am drawn to amber, vanilla, coconut, and woody notes. not largely into floral. i love to layer as well—here are some of my favorite combinations:

⤷ skin-to-skin.

base (oil): bastet (bpal) → golden amber + resins, warm and lush and lasts forever middle: phlur missing person → lactonic bare skin essence finish: mixbar coconut palm (hair + skin mist) → creamy coconut

⤷ hypnotic poison dupe.

base (oil): shams al emarat khususi → caramelized vanilla + oud middle: dossier almond cherry → almond-cherry syrup made spicy by cinnamon finish: a light mist of flowerbomb tiger lily → lush, tropical floral, this is like crackkk to me

angel caught in a keylime weep

- how do these lines just occur to you

dallas had a way of staying inside you. heat in the blood. sirens in the nerves.

- yes. love this.

wheat blonde hair pulled low into a loose ponytail at the nape, roots gone dark like the soft spots along a fruit

- so layered and good

fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead, relentless, bulbs washing everything with antiseptic honesty.

- never read anything more accurate. antiseptic honesty is so so so good

“i think this city likes to pretend violence is something that happens in dark places. you know, like in the movies: the woods, that alleyway you were told to steer clear of, somewhere you can blame it on bad choices,” she said. “but when i look at her, at tempest, all i see is a fellow woman in her twenties, tired and battered and trying her best at battling the truth: that she’s one of the only reasons the violence doesn’t happen in your living room.”

- CHILLLSSSSSSS

someone who looked old money but was as boring as the wood it came from

- i had not realized your beautiful writing style could lend itself also to such scathing insults

her eyes would find the overbearing reach of the city billboards, and she refused to look away, imagining all the ways azzi’s face would be stretched out over them.

- romance

- also so sickeningly gay

everyone else was clustered together like flies, sticky and helpless in the spider’s web

- yup perfection

her gaze momentarily distant as she chose between two true things and decided which one to hand over

- THIS CHARACTER BUILDING you are so unmatched.

paper-thin lie, cucumber ribbon of words wanting badly to be believed.

- A CUCUMBER RIBBON OF WORDS ARE YOU KIDDING ME

the way her mouth had just opened and her throat had gone wrong as the horrified shriek of paige’s name left her, so she wasn't saying it.

- i’m speechless.

paige hated that shit, that azzi was finding ways inside of her, crawling off that tv screen and into her blood to tell her, you know that i know what's going on. you know i’ll handle you at every turn, even hand around my neck, even teeth punctured miles deep in my arm.

- crawling off the screen and INTO. HER. BLOOD.

and azzi felt her heart begin to throb in aching; a try at beating free, out of its cage of bone and straight into paige’s hands.

- i think this is my favorite line but fuck is it hard to choose

azzi laughed again, properly this time, damp and a little undone, and paige felt it move through her like a current.

- damp and a little undone. damp and a little undone!!!!

and she saw paige register it—saw her slip into mild tension, as if azzi had yanked on a leash paige hadn’t realized was at her neck.

- I LOVE THIS SO MUCH

she was suddenly eclipsed by desire, by the wanting to cross the room and get on her knees, read it with her teeth. the urge was so immediate and so physical that it briefly displaced everything else, her mind going white-hot and empty like a new york summer.

- this is so good and “read it with her teeth” is perfect. carnal and yet still delicate. perfect.

azzi felt her own heartbeat stutter, trapped beneath paige’s mouth.

- !!!!!!!!!!!!

and pressed a kiss to her cheek—a candied crush of lips in full view of the entire newsroo

- A CANDIED CRUSH OF LIPS !?!?!??????

i don’t think i can string words together to form a line of praise that comes even close to what you deserve. i am just overwhelmed with awe and also. gratitude. for your existence. and of course, for your selfless practice of offering up your words for us to read.

my sweet peach. i waited a couple of days to answer this because i wanted to genuinely sit down and respond line by line. you are never ever late. you are genuinely one of my favorite people on here; i love you no matter the time passed.

first of all, thank you so much for reading so deeply and intentionally. this quite literally made my week; its the entire point of why i write.

angel caught in a keylime weep

you catching my favorite lines from the get-go, god you're a gem. so what's funny is that these lines often occur to me separately from the final scene. when i first wrote this, i knew paige would see azzi on the ground, but i didn't know yet that azzi would be covering her face from a bout of noxious gas. i couldn't explain how the gas was moving because it was less billowing and more of a seep, like rain or crying on someone's shoulder. keylime weep ended up being the closest articulation i could get of the visual in my head.

- yes. love this.

yes. love you.

wheat blonde hair pulled low into a loose ponytail at the nape, roots gone dark like the soft spots along a fruit

oddly enough, one of my favorite focuses to write about in this fic was paige's neck, specifically her baby hairs. i find the neck to be so beautiful; i love watching the women i love put their hair up. it's so revealing, a stretch of vulnerability. something like here i am with my back to you or my gaze, trusting you to stay where you are - to keep me safe.

CHILLLSSSSSSS

i am so glad this portion didn't come off as cringy. i wanted it to feel as more like a talk show, a signal of how lines are already blurred; they had no hope from the beginning. i rewrote this like seven times alone, haha.

i had not realized your beautiful writing style could lend itself also to such scathing insults

HELP lmfaoo. i get this from the south i fear; the culture is rife with the art of smiling while you slide a knife into the belly. has truly aided me in corporate culture, lolll.

also so sickeningly gay

well, yes! i was really representing the all-consuming crush-havers in this world i think.

everyone else was clustered together like flies, sticky and helpless in the spider’s web

i love syrupy, saccharine descriptors for circumstances of entrapment. again, this idea of something horrible happening that is beautiful and slow, but too immediate to look away from. i'm terrified of spiders, but spiders' webs are quite beautiful in the morning, especially when wet.

THIS CHARACTER BUILDING you are so unmatched.

i am SO so happy someone picked up on this! paige and the people she loves have established her as deeply loyal, and i knew from the beginning that i wanted to explore how that, in and of itself, could be the worst trait to have to a fault, especially when magnified to the point of being a hero, which renders you inherently loyal to millions. i think that's terrifying—and it sets you up to fail.

A CUCUMBER RIBBON OF WORDS ARE YOU KIDDING ME

again, one of my favorite lines! at first, i thought of the accordion cut of a cucumber, how it makes it spiral, but eventually flattened the image to a ribbon because i thought it was much better to showcase how paper-thin the whole premise was from the beginning.

crawling off the screen and INTO. HER. BLOOD.

me vs writing normal declarations of love. i always lose.

i think this is my favorite line but fuck is it hard to choose

this really made me smile. this was a thread-through line, one i thought no one would really read or remember as they continued. i am so glad that if it's anyone's potential favorite, it's yours.

carnal and yet still delicate. perfect.

this is the thesis of everything i write. love is carnal to me, but very delicate. love is a hunt, i think, in its essence, and willing or unwilling, we all have been game. i think it's important to acknowledge that when i write.

anyway, thank you for sharing your work with us <3 your writing is always such a joy to read.

also p.s.

i second that anon that said it was the best smut they’d ever read

hello, hello, sweet angel. this is genuinely one of my favorite asks i've ever received. first off, thank you so much for reading so intentionally and catching all these specifics i weaved in; you are so clever. i'm going to be rambling a bit, but yes i am so glad you are curious because i worked with several things while writing.

so first the basis were these color palettes:

it's funny because i think i mention black, green, and blues more than this but i wanted this vision of dallas to exist in a tropical-sunset haze, harkening back to that idea of dallas as perfume over sweat. paige in my head when i write her is often very much a pastel sweep against azzi's darker, more saturated palette. i have no idea why that idea prevails so much when i write, but i often picture paige as specifically the cusp of spring-into-summer and azzi as winter-into-spring.

then i did a bit of research on vintage comic styles, the dramatics of them, the way color could communicate so much, how to build a properly jaded superhero you still want to root for. i used supergirl (especially the upcoming 2026 interpretation) as the basis for a lot of paige's characterization. milly alcock is one of my favorite girls in the world, so i'm really excited to see her on my screen.

for azzi i was a bit more abstract. her journalistic presence was structured on a more textile basis, so the atmosphere of certain images. here was some of what i had down for her:

https://x.com/sunshineldpdl/status/2010085513517248810?s=46