#starcat

4. 💜 What pairing would you like to write but never have?

This is such a fascinating question, I think, not so much in what it asks directly, but what it is asking by implication.

I have a large (and somewhat incomplete) list of ships, but in my entire fanfic-writing career, I have written for just two main pairings—Hope x Josie (Hosie) from the tail end of the TVD universe, and, starting this year (thanks @the0fi 👋), Kate x Yelena (Bishova/Katelena/Bishlova/…) from the MCU. (I also have a strong second pairing of Penelope x Lizzie [Pizzie] in a few Hosie fics and WIPs, but they’ve never been a primary pairing with the story’s genesis coming from an idea about them.)

So what is it that takes a pairing from something I ship to something I make the leap to writing about? On the one hand, I don’t feel like I’m obsessed with the characters I write for, thinking of them constantly, but on the other hand, I do spend an inordinate amount of my free time writing fanfic for them—and additional weird time (shower, garden, yard work, teeth-brushing, sleep) thinking about the fics I’m writing or coming up with new fic ideas 😂 So…maybe it is an obsession after all?

To some extent, I think the chemistry of the characters has to hit me just right, in a way that still feels ineffable. Pair that with circumstance—I first owned a TV in grad school, so while I watched a decent amount of television during those years, I had neither the time nor the mental capacity to expend on beloved fictional characters.

Compare that to 2020, where annoyance with the handling of certain plot threads in S2 of Legacies led me to start writing my first fanfic since middle school several weeks before the world began shutting down from the pandemic. I’m not sure that I would have necessarily continued writing after that fic had it not been for the pandemic.

Contrast that with Bishova, where I had written a couple of ficlets—one fun, one just silly—and had them out of my system, until one night I woke up thinking about Kate and Yelena in the Hunger Games. I wrote a prologue, and the rest, as they say, is history! (Also the really great response of the Bishova fans to said prologue, of course 🙏)

But I don’t actually have a good answer to what promotes a pairing from a ship I enjoy to one I write for, in spite of that digression 😂

The other interesting thing is that I do have fic ideas for two prior ships, despite never having written them. I couldn’t tell you how I got there (at all!), but back in the mists of time, I somehow was turned on to Jade x Tori (Jori) from Victorious despite having never seen a second of the show. I read a bunch of fics on FFN and at some point ended up with a somewhat expansive enemies-to-lovers idea involving pop star Tori, her daughter with Beck (from a one-night stand?), her dead Italian husband, and screenwriter/teacher Jade, roughly 15 years on when Tori finally comes home and her daughter ends up in Jade’s class. And during the hiatus between S1 and S2 of Stargirl, I came up with a couple of Courtney x Yolanda (StarCat) fic ideas (I can now only remember part of one of them, something about a drunken sleepover). So there’s a partial answer to what other pairings I would like to write for but never have.

Beyond those, at the moment I think the only pairing I would feel an inclination to write for would be Supercorp, Supergirl’s Kara Danvers/Zor El x Lena Luthor. Katie McGrath’s ability to effortlessly straddle that line between evil/foe and friend, and leave us guessing the whole way, is just 🤯 She made Lena (and before that, Morgana in Merlin) such a complex and compelling character, and there are so many fascinating dynamics to explore between the two characters.

I don’t actually see myself writing for any of them, given the currently-26 pages of ideas for the ships I do write…but one never knows when something will seize my brain and not let go, either…

11. 🔥 What are your favourite three fics that you wrote and why?

Oof! When you have 58 published fics, it’s difficult to pick just three! My babies!

OK, that was a bit dramatic, because I was able to come up with two fairly easily 😂

First, I’d have to pick Please Come Home For Christmas, which is the fic that inadvertently kicked off the Josie Saltzman’s Final Holidays trilogy. I was really pleased with all of the descriptions, setting the mood, and the emotions of it all. It feels a lot like Christmas to me, that thoroughly ambiguous relationship. If I’m never sad enough at Christmas, a reread of this always does the trick.

Second, ’Cause That’ll Be the Day When I Die. It was my third “real” (aka excluding the ficlets) finished Bishova fic, and it was one of the longest fics I had completed at that point. In fact, I think it was the fic that convinced me, after years of running out of steam in the middle of fics with long or expansive conceptions, that I would be able to sustain writing a longer fic. I still think the idea behind the work is fun and I enjoy the way I developed Kate and Yelena’s characters and their relationship. I seem to gravitate towards that immediate-post-Hawkeye period and enjoy reading those fics, so this was my contribution to the genre.

I think I mentioned somewhere in notes or replies, but a few strands of my ancestry have lived in that general area of Ohio since statehood, and I have driven through Mount Vernon more times than I can count when visiting relatives. When I realized that was the town name Marvel had chosen for the Rowleys’ residence in the Ohio mission, well, it was fated. (Ironically, nearly all the scenes depicting Ohio were shot here in Georgia, and I’ve been to/driven along almost all of them well before they were ever Ohio!) So much of the story was a love letter to my ancestry and that part of Ohio. Parts of their road trip I’d done multiple times, other parts of it just once, but it was nostalgic to relive that, too—and hopefully all of that felt authentic to everyone reading.

It doesn’t hurt that the fic is still my most popular Bishova work (I say “still” as though I haven’t only been writing for them since this spring 😂 but I do have almost a dozen works under my belt).

Picking a third favorite child is like shoving your hands into boiling water; you don’t want to do it, and if you are forced to, it hurts 😂 I had identified three or four candidates of fics I liked for one reason or another, but I couldn’t figure out how to pick among them.

Eventually, I slept on it and woke up with “Kate Bishop, Fancy Meeting You Like This Again.” because it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling when I think of it (even though it was born out of a tumblr meme/joke). It was my first “5+1” fic, I got to write a couple of fight (or fight-adjacent) scenes, and the angst of the unsaid things between Kate and Yelena and the different lives pulling them apart was there and played an important role, but it wasn’t overwhelming. Once again, the story is playing with that theme of Kate and Yelena meeting up after the events of Hawkeye (with a bit more distance in time this time), taking on missions that are important to them…and then, finally, in the “+1” scene, coming together for their happy reunion and start of forever after.

So there we are, my “favorite” three fics I have written so far 😀