Searching for bliss

[Bliss]

Here is my ideas thread, with all my extant interests finally compiled in one place!

I have no preference for male versus female writers - anybody who can write well can write either gender satisfactorily, in my experience.

If any the ideas entice you, and you'd like to help shape a story with me, or if perhaps one or several of these inspire a new and/or hybrid idea you think we might enjoy writing together, please contact me. <3

Currently these are in no particular order; I'll work on getting them into approximate categories at some point.

In brief:
Forsaking All Others - (currently seeking) - in which Elzbietta must enter into a marriage of convenience, but fears that the vows and consummation thereof with strip her of unearthly powers she has carefully developed in secret
The Lost Childe of Faerie - (Currently writing with Velasterian) - The child of two fae of opposing Courts, hidden for her youth among the humans, is summoned back to the home realm she never knew she had to shake up the power stagnancy
Arranged Marriage - (currently seeking) - She hates that she must submit to an arranged marriage, refusing to see him before the wedding day - not realizing that he resents it as well. Enemies-to-lovers trope over the course of their honeymoon, followed by the difficulties of reentering society so different from how they had left it.
Unmasked - (currently seeking) - After making a strong connection with a gentleman at one masked ball, she daringly engages in scandalous behavior at another - only to find out through being discovered by others in a compromising position) that it is another gentleman entirely. The three create an arrangement, sorting out who she will choose - assuming she will choose at all.
Housesitting - (currently seeking) - The last thing this college-aged young woman expects while house-sitting is for someone to break in. The burglar expected the place to be empty. Is a deal struck? Is it a hostage situation? In the process of trying to control the situation, do they discover a knack and propensity for the enjoyment of bondage and BDSM?
The Neath (currently seeking) - in a darkly Victorian and literally underground world, he makes his living navigating dangerous back alleys and swampy byways to courier packages to their destination. Messages, secrets, small objects are his usual trade. Not this - not a woman.
Windfall - (currently seeking) - a bratty young woman, having just lost her parents, comes into a hefty trust fund - and a caretaker along with it, who is determined to truly take care of her...even if it is in ways she does not like.
The Slave Princess - (currently seeking) - A princess long away from her court for education and diplomacy is returning home to meet her caravan when it is attacked, and she is made the slave of the Conqueror. Or, at least, of the Conqueror's forces, precipitating a slow, Evita-like rise through the ranks as she attempts to meet the Conqueror and delicately protect the kingdom she longs to return to.
Fallen - (currently seeking) - There are tales of a great winged creature lurking in the forest; only the cleverest of hunters will capture it. Or, rather, capture her.
Fates Entwined - (currently seeking) - A Romeo and Juliet pastiche in which it is not only two star-crossed lovers, but three - the third being a gentleman who, seeing the Juliet on the same night she and her Romeo meet, goes to her parents and uses all the proper channels to attempt to woo her.
Mispronounced - (currently seeking) - In which a young sorceress inadvertently summons something darker and far more powerful than she intended in her attempt to get back at those who would try to restrict her power.
A Lover And A Fighter - (currently seeking) - Sometimes, they meet on the battlefield; others, in the bedroom. It is often difficult to tell who is victorious, and who wrests more deaths from the other.
Steampunk Supervillain - (currently seeking) - I need someone to play a steampunk-style victorian-era supervillain against my progressive, wealthy heiress; I'm anticipating a longing/obsessive relationship, not unlike Dr. Horrible, except with more potential/success for both characters and less, uh,

Dr. Horrible Spoiler

dying horribly in a shabby town hall

. Especially since it is entirely possible that the interest is returned in kind, but equally restrained due to fear of rejection.



Forsaking All Others


"I do not understand your insistence upon these colors, 'Ietta," the older woman grumbled as she fussed with the bride's hair, carefully arranging each long chestnut twist carefully around the young woman's bare shoulders. "It may not be the match you had hoped, but it should be a happy occasion."

"I cannot expect you to understand, Maman," Elzbietta replied, staring into the looking glass upon the wall but without truly regarding her own image reflected there. The catches of the corseted bodice glimmered in the early morning light, like jewels. Like hooks. Like knives. "When you were wed to Pere, it improved your lot. It was a time of joy. But I will lose- ...my lot will not be improved through this marriage."

Her mother scoffed, and gently but sharply tugged one of the locks she was fixing in place. "He is not so bad, and if you allow yourself there may become fondness in time. And if not fondness, at least fortune. You will not starve. Your children will not struggle."

"I do not struggle now, Maman!"

"Don't you?"

Elzbietta scowled at the mirror, and drew the necklace into place upon her throat. It was a weighty thing, a heavy mass of dark metal surrounding an amber stone that glinted from within the organically irregular cage that held it, and it seemed as if the chain should snap beneath its weight. Yet it did not, and Ezbietta, stood, pulling away from the insistent maternal ministrations. "I will be in the gardens," she said shortly, and swept from the room.

"You must find your veil!" her mother's voice floated after her, but Ezbietta did not slow her tread along the stone corridors and stairs, escaping the gloom for the air and light of the gardens. It was cool, the sky somewhat overcast, and she fought the urge to shiver. Instead, she brought her hands up as she strolled down a small cobbled path, clasping them above her head. Softly they parted, as quiet as the whispered words that slipped from her lips, and as her hands moved apart a black smoke boiled between them. It followed her hands, staying with her as she walked rather than drifting in a trail behind her on the pathway. The further apart her hands drew, the more the smoke thinned, resolving into a dark and translucent fabric that covered her head and fell all around her nearly to the ground, the edges of her new veil coiling like runnels and eddies of breeze-disturbed candle-smoke.



The Lost Childe of Faerie
She had always believed in fairies, but not like this.

Ever since she was really small, she felt connections, even in spite of her adoption: connection to other girls, to nature, to the flowers that bloomed in a riot of fragrant color in her adopted mother's garden. When she found wicca as a tween, it all appealed to her - the idea of connection, of being able to tap into power, of respecting the earth and trying to live in harmony with it. Even as other friends grew out of it through high school and moving on in the world, she carried on in he tradition. It wasn't simply a phase; there was something in the idea of magic, of power, of unseen beings, that all just seemed to make sense.

Now a young woman in her own right, she has taken the savings her adoptive parents slowly built for her and, instead of pursuing a career in higher education, she's taken her talent for gardening and nature work and done what felt right for her by opening a nursery. She's set someplace almost rural, but she's so good with all sorts of plants that people find their way to her, and she finds a way to put together the right plants for them, be it to fill out a full garden or simply to bring some life to the middle of their kitchen table.

Everything changed when the fae world made itself known.

In a move that had her thinking, of all things, of the way vampires had 'come out of the coffin' on an amusing fictional television show, an unearthly man and woman appeared one night to all the world, taking over the broadcast of every news station big and small; they claimed to be the King of the Seelie Court and Queen of the Unseelie Court, and together revealed to all mortality the existence of fae living among them. They were glorious and terrible in their beauty, and even moreso in their revelation and appeal - a child of their people, they said, had gone missing. One in whose veins ran blood from both courts, and who could be the key to the mutual survival, or mutual destruction, of all the fae. They needed this child found.

She felt it, in that moment; she knew it was her.

The question becomes now, whether she will show herself to them, or will she be sought and found? It does not take long for a great many young women and men to decide that they, in fact, are the Lost Child of Faery, and the world is thrown into turmoil. Finally it is declared, for the sake of keeping peace among the mortals (despite how much delight some of the fae take in such upheaval) that these many would-be faery children will be examined in the proper way, and any among them with Seelie or Unseelie blood will be welcomed to the proper courts. It is given out to the world that this will happen with the pomp and circumstance of a ball. For one night, a way will be opened for each and all of them into Faery, and they will be tested.

What the hopeful do not realize, not even she, is that after the dancing and mingling, after the very brave eat and drink with the unearthly beautiful creatures who swirl among them, that they will be tested by way of The Great Hunt. Those beautiful beings and some far less beautiful will set all the hopeful to running, and then will give chase - countless beings and beasts running down their prey, with one mortal after another falling beneath their feet to be sent back to the mortal realm, a glimmer on their skin and a terrible, irrepressible longing for a return to those otherworldly delights they had been granted for the span of a night. When morning comes, only the true and hidden fae will remain, and only one will have outrun all the King's horses and all the Queen's men.

Eventually, even she will fall, exhausted, a sleeping Stag for one of the Hunters to find - for she is the Lost Child of Faerie, and on her rest their hopes, for in the begetting of a child of both bloods came proof that the Fae are not yet dying out, and in her they must plant the seeds of the new generation.

So who will find her first? And who will steal her away? Will he be of the Seelie or Unseelie?

Will she be invited into the warmth of a well-lined nest, or granted wings but placed in a cage?

Will she feel the terror of a faceless, featureless coupling, or be granted the soothing relief of a truly pure and depthless darkness?

Will she be forced to submit endlessly to the chase? Will she quail before the power of storms?

Will she bring forth a light in a lover, or drain it from him entirely?

Can she endure the encompassing heat of a Djinn's passion, or be set aflame like the phoenix?

And how will she handle those with even less humanity of form? What of it when the Sluaugh try to press a claim upon her?

Will her revealed presence among the fae and their desire to be the first to beget the new generation bring these fae to blows - will it instigate war between the Courts, whose work to find her together was part of a truce precarious at best? Will someone decide the best thing for her is to hide her away new, and force the fae to die out entirely? If so, who might mount a rescue?

For this unexpected princess, this lost child of Faerie - can there be a happy ending?

And, if so, must it only be with one alone?
~~~~~

As you can likely tell, I have put a lot of work into this call for a partner. This will not be a one-and-done story; I want it to be long-term and arching, with a lot of sex, a lot of intrigue, with connection and betrayals on both the personal and national (insofar as Faery can be considered a nation) level. If the idea of playing a multitude of Fae appeals to you, over the course of the long slow journey toward the future of Faery, please let me know so we can start working out some of the metaconflicts, and figure out some of the fae folk.



Arranged Marriage

The last thing she wants to get is married.

She wants to read her books, and ride the horses, and explore the land, and raise a ruckus... all of which has been very well and good under the watchful but largely indulgent eye of her father. But there has been a longtime arrangement set up between her family and another that, when she comes of age, she'll be wed to their son to honor the longtime friendship of their families, as well as to wed their not-inconsiderable fortunes into a new and greater estate.

She, however, hates the very idea of being married to anyone, let alone a man she has never met, and only her love and duty to her parents is enough to let her acquiesce, ever so reluctantly, to this occasion.

Even so, she refuses to meet the man before their wedding day, figuring that he must be somehow loathsome to need to be arranged to marry her.

What she finds herself wed to is, in fact, a handsome man, as intelligent and cultured as herself, and equally as interested in pursuing his own adventures in the world, rather marriage to a girl that he presumes must be ugly and useless indeed to merit an arranged marriage on the weight of family name.

Imagine their surprise, to find themselves at the altar with someone attractive, well-spoken - even desirable. So begins their honeymoon: expectations at war with actuality, individuality and independence at war with their duties to family and to each other. Both angry, picking fights, and yet unable to deny the base attraction of their bodies... nor able to cast off the promises, extracted with great reluctance, to provide their parents grandchildren upon which to dote.

A honey-month wherin any sweetness found is laced with spice, every bit of commonality and acceptance hard-won in the face of being nearly strangers who want, at the outset, nothing to do with one another.

In a house that has been built expressly for them:

...they will fall in love with their spouse by slow degrees, in fits and starts punctuated by the angriest of fightsex and the most delicate overtures of trust and acceptance.

Then the honey month is over, the time of seclusion alone together, and they are expected to begin participating in the social world around them - hosting and attending dinner parties, and even a masque. Or perhaps some investment of his erupts with success (or a problem that needs tending), calling him away.

Will they successfully navigate the intricacies of parlours and ballrooms without losing the gossamer bindings of affection between them? Will they yearn for one another across distances? And who, new, will come into the picture to potentially disrupt it all - a friend of his youth who has long had a candle burning in her heart, an enterprising man who is searching for a rich, exquisite lover, someone else entirely? Will she become a target for his enemies to spirit away to some hidden place?

Will you find out with me?

Unmasked

She is one of the country cousins of the rather extensive Moscastle family, brought into the city of London to live under the care of her married elder cousin who had, some several seasons back, managed rather skillfully to catch herself a well-to-do Earl for a husband. It is a source of grand excitement to finally be included in the thick of the social world, particularly as the ton enters the spring and summer season of countless balls and parties for innumerable reasons (though, truly, most of them are at their heart parties for the sake of parties). This year, there is a particular fashion for holding masques. And so, with her family's not-insignificant money and her cousin's connections at her disposal, she prepares to attend her first such masked ball, dressed to be noticed.

And noticed she is. While somewhat of a shy girl, sweetly demure as one would expect, she finds there is something freeing about being masked among many other masked folk, nearly all of whom are strangers. The wine flows, the dancers spin, and while she certainly does not court any particular scandal, she indulges in what feels like harmless flirtation with one of the gentlemen - and he flirts back. While they dance with others, they keep returning to one another, drawn to the slowly building rapport between them. Is it that they notice the silliness of others? Is it that they are enjoying silliness of their own in the face of staid traditionalism in spite of the masks? Is it something else entirely, perhaps? One way or another, when he suggests a walk in the gardens to cool, despite her chaperone being nowhere in sight, she agrees. While the air is cool upon her skin, something in his smile, the brush of his hand, the glint of moonlight off the eyes within the mask... something has her heated. And when his body moves closer, so does her own, indulging in the sweet wickedness of a kiss, in which her own heat is met with equal fervour. They part - discovered by her cousin? Disrupted by another pair of lovers seeking a secret bower? - and all too soon the night is ended, and she must part without his name. But something about him she feels certain she will remember. For several days, sitting through the calling hours and parlour visits that mark time between the greater to-dos, her mind returns to him often - and her hand perhaps to a flower, or some other small favour handed her before they lost one another.

Because of her locks, he called her something - his golden rose, perhaps? or swan of the sun? - and so come the next masque before the week's end, she sees to it that the tailor has constructed a gown to suit her accordingly, of yellow silk and cloth-of-gold, or whatever else required to cause her to look all the more like the affectionate name he bestowed upon her. Therefore, when hands are laid upon her in the crowd and she is escorted familiarly from the bright heat of the dancing to the cool, quiet dimness of a room elsewhere in the big house, it does not occur to her to protest. Who could it be but he, having recognized her and wishing to take up their delightful connection where it had been broken off. Now, too, she knows how much she wants to kiss and be kissed... and perhaps even more. Yet as he is kissing her, something is not right - he is too tall? His hair the wrong color? His eyes? This is not the man she thought him to be!

And then - OH, then! - and then... what, my prospective partner? Does this stranger ravish her? Does she find that she likes it? Are they discovered, and forced into a quick betrothal due to the scandal? Who is he really, and who did he think she was? What of her first paramour - will he press his suit in spite of the circumstances? Perhaps even because of them? How will she act and react - will she bow to the pressure of the rules of Society and wed to avoid scandal? Will she refuse her accidental betrothed, daringly seeking out her first flirtation? Or might she take the most daring road of all, refusing to choose either and seeking a way to, somehow, have them both?

Who will they all become, when they are unmasked?



Wanted: One writer (perhaps two, if we can make it work as a group game) to take on multiple roles for what will be, essentially a reverse harem type story. A reverse harem type story is, essentially, a story in which a woman is romantically/sexually entangled with two or more partners at the same time, for reasons determined by the story. This genre often found in various sorts of anime, as well as certain supernatural romance stories.

I would like to base this on the Meredith Gentry series of stories, but develop it in our own direction. It will begin in much the same way.

My character is essentially the MC of a hidden princess type narrative, the spawn of royal blood in both the light and dark (Seelie and Unseelie) fae courts who was hidden among the humans and grew up not knowing her actual roots and potential. By happenstance that we shall determine, she comes into contact with the fae and her power awakened, bringing her to the notice of the courts. The light court pretends not to care, until the dark court determines she is of the royal lines, and tasks her with the geas of proving she can produce an heir. If so, she will become the next in line to lead the Unseelie court.

Whosoever can get her with child will thereafter be father to the heir, and her consort when she rules. Naturally, given the power games and intrigue of the courts, anybody who is anybody might want to try to court her, and to have the chance to impregnate her. This/these would be your character(s), with whatever powers and aspects you choose. A man of frost and cold? One of leafy greens and growing things? One who has more in common with dark beasts than the world of men? A prince of the Sluagh, those too monstrous for either court? A creature of illusion? Someone who embodies darkness and pure shadow?

Emotional tussles and entanglements will ensue as she tries to find her own way forward through the strange new world she is destined to rule, fighting her own heart as she grows attached to each of her suitors in their own way – and fighting, quite literally, to stay alive as forces who would see her own line extinguished seek to snuff her out.



House-sitting

My character is a college-age student who, to make some money during winter break, has taken on a house-sitting job for a wealthy family outside of town; a day or two after their departure, when she has arrived to settle in, there is a home invasion. A man has been watching the place, intending to break in and burglarize after the owners have gone out of town - only to find the place occupied (Not unlike the classic film Home Alone). Ensuing events to be played out to whatever end is satisfactory to both writers.

Setting: New England, Suburban/Rural, Modern



The Neath

The world is much like Fallen London - a sweeping, intricate city, located entirely underground. Darkly Victorian in flavor, it is a world rife with danger, thick with rats, riddled with beer, and threaded through with phosphorescing poetry and startlingly shining spots of beauty. The world above is so distant as to be unknown; the folk who have traveled down here from the Above have no wish to return, wanting to forget or be forgotten. Most live their lives Beneath.

I have more shapes than distinct plot in mind, thus far; I see someone scraping out an existence as an odd-jobber and runnerman, carrying messages, killing rats, retrieving packages lost in the mudwastes, and trading in overheard whispers and stolen secrets to make a bit of extra for comfort.

He is good at what he does. He has built reputation for efficiency, and moreover for trustworthiness (in his jobs, at least), which is a decidedly rare quality in the Underneath. It is for this task that he is hired for a transport job - but when he arrives he is not handed a package, but given the care of a heavily cloaked figure to escort.

Somewhere along the route, they are attacked - and the cloaked young woman it turns out is every bit as able in fending off their attackers as he. There is more mystery to her as well.

Will he deliver the package and be done with her? Or will he decide to unravel the mystery?



Windfall

It wasn't just that she was rich. It was that she was sickeningly rich, and so suddenly. Her parents had already been incredibly well off, and when the accident took them during the summer months, suddenly everything that had been theirs became hers.

Almost.

Because her trust fund is set up in such a way that she won't have full access to her inheritance until she is twenty-one, and until then all her living and schooling expenses are going to be paid out under the control of the executor - an old, old friend of her parents' that she hasn't ever actually met, and who her lawyer has been struggling to contact. Through one careful legal maneuver and another, the lawyer was able to make sure she continued into her final year at her expensive, exclusive prep school. Where she, never particularly studious or obedient to begin with, has been driven through grief and loneliness to full-out Wild Child misadventures.

What will her new caretaker think of her - and how will he bring her in to line before she takes full control of everything his old friends had spent his entire life building?



The Slave Princess

The setting is an alternate earth-type world, medieval, with limited magic but much mysticism. In this world, a man has arisen from the mire of many kingdoms and brought them together under his banner, expanding his reach outward in the manner of Alexander the Great - quite forthright in his intention to bring the entirety of the world under his rule, one kingdom at a time. Much of the continent has already fallen to his sway, and his men at arms are moving into the powerful borderkingdoms of other climes.

The story begins with the princess of one such warm and sandy kingdom, en route from the cool, remote village that has housed her away from court for training and education in seclusion; she is returning to court, to take her place and to meet her betrothed.

A band of men loyal to the great and terrible Conqueror attack her small caravan, and the Princess is the only one left alive, in the hands of their leader - who decides to bring her along as they head back toward civilization, giving her rudimentary instruction on behavior and expectations of her in her new role. A slave.

Thus is the lowly beginning of what shall be her slow, Evita-like ascent, climbing one man at a time through luck, intent, or happy accident, up the ranks of the Conqueror's forces. She is no normal slave - she has the grace, elegance, education and intelligence of a princess, and it gains her notice. She learns how to please; how to be seen to catch notice for the sake of her man, and how to be silent, ignored due to her station and therefore let to learn secrets that would not be otherwise stated.

One day, she will become the Conqueror's - and what will happen then remains to be seen.

My partner for this story will play the series of men - military, merchantmen, nobility - that will have unwittingly a princess as a slave, culminating (presumably) with the Conqueror. Will she be discovered and elevated? Will she be discovered and demoted or slain? Will she and the Conqueror turn out to have far more in common than either of them expect, and rule together? Will she destroy the Conqueror and attain the whole of his holdings herself?



Fallen

Perhaps she was an angel, once - or a harpy, flung from the cliffside nests of her sisters for reasons only they might divine. Perhaps she is a creature of the wildest and darkest of woods, little more than a rumor spread by those so brave - or foolhardy - or desperate - as to forage or hunt in its trackless depths. Perhaps it is her feathers reknowned to grant protection, or her tears to grant healing, or her song to entrance.

She is there for you to hunt. But if you do manage to capture her, will you get not just what you want, but also an unexpected boon of which the legends did not sing?



Fates Entwined
Romeo and Juliet and ...who?[/i

This idea is rooted in Romeo and Juliet. The Romeo character (we can retain or change the names) and the Juliet meet at a ball and fall into that instant, fabled passionate love, despite being of ages-old warring families.

Sounds familiar so far, right?

Except that we'll throw a third into the mix: this character is a gentleman of another noble family, powerful in its own right as much as the other two fable houses, who on that same fateful night has seen the girl and sought out her parents for permission to meet and woo her socially, as is right and proper.

The character as as I see it is not, in fact, a villain - though he might seem that way from some angles. His desire for the young woman is no less valid than the other young man's, and he goes through all the proper channels of gaining her hand. It's not his fault that she's fallen for someone else, and thanks to societal and family pressures, she's going to be drawn into betrothal and marriage with him.

Yet she loves another, and when he discovers cuckoldry.... well. We can figure that out when we get there, for as it stands now, the story begins on the night of that first ball.



Try to restrict her powers, would they? She'd show them!

That was the perverse anger driving Lygeia as she drew the pentagram slowly, carefully on her workroom floor in a pattern of black dust with candles set at the points, and a white circle of salt surrounding. She sprinkled a potent admixture overall, and then stepped back out.

Raising her arms high, she began a complex chant.

A pity she did not step back only a foot more, to keep the hem of her gown from marring the circle of salt.

A shame that the anger within her altered the pronunciation of her incantation... changing some of the words almost imperceptibly, but enough that instead of the powerfully intelligent but benign spirit she intended to summon, her chant reached deeper into the Otherworlds, calling forth something different.

Something darker.

~~~~~~~

What has the sorceress summoned?

Perhaps you know. If you think so... then perhaps you're the partner I'm seeking in this endeavour.



Are you are a lover or a fighter? Why not both?

My muse is alit with the possibilities that could be made of the image below with the simple substitution for the guitar of a spear-headed staff, a sword, or a sword and shield. If you can see it, and it gets your gears turning, contact me; I am open to alternative history and historical(ish) as well as straight-out fantasy world settings.

SteamPunk SuperVillain

I need someone to play a steampunk-style victorian-era supervillain against my progressive, wealthy heiress; I'm anticipating a longing/obsessive relationship, not unlike Dr. Horrible, except with more potential/success for both characters and less, uh,

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

dying horribly in a shabby town hall

. Especially since it is entirely possible that the interest is returned in kind, but equally restrained due to fear of rejection.

[Bliss]

Bumping for new interest checks, and also to add that, while I've gotten fairly detailed in the setting up of circumstances, I'm not completely tied to things as laid out here; masked balls are a handy conceit to leading in to the issues of mistaken identity, potentially damaged reputation, and complicated feelings amongst the parties involved. I am very much open to discussing some other set of circumstances bringing these three together.

[Bliss]

Added two new ideas.

[Melendrith]

Like the concepts, especially Windfall. Not sure if Im up to par as RP partner though. ^^;;

[Bliss]

I've updated this thread to gather all of my extant ideas into it, and will update here with others from now on rather than starting new threads. It just seems more efficient.