SlowBurnGirl's tales of *ahem* slow burn love (f for anyone)

[SlowBurnGirl]

Are you feeling a little overwhelmed? Is modern life simply too hectic? Have you stopped recently while merely existing and said, "Too many things are happening"?

Hi. I'm SlowBurnGirl, Slowbie to my friends, and I I think we've all felt that way from time to time! So why would you want your fiction and/or online collaborative storytelling experiences to be similarly hectic and fast-paced? Why not step back from the hustle and bustle? Why not embrace a story where two people's feelings for each other verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry gradualllllllllllllllllllllllllllly develop until they burst open, seemingly all at once?

The things I most value in online roleplaying of both the sexy and non-sexy varieties are great character detail and descriptive settings. Plots are great! Love a good plot! But if it's not being driven by the characters, I don't care. I also tend to like really rich character webs, so there are more than just the two main characters involved. I'm a bi trans woman who is slightly more hetero than homo, but, like, hot people are hot people, who am I to deny this? I often like to work transness or queerness more generally into my stories, especially as they bump up against the cishet mainstream. But I'm not exclusively looking for stories in those regards. So if you see something below that seems sort of interesting, but you're bumping up against an element, just ask!

I also like transformation stuff! It's not my main focus right now, but the right idea is the right idea.

In case you were wondering, here's an ons/offs thread.

I have prepared a handful of ideas below. See something you like? PM away! See something adjacent to something you like? PM away! Confused by all of this? I don't know what to say!

Is This a Romance Novel?

You'll note these ideas are often built around a trans woman main character or an f/f romance. I would prefer to keep that element for these ideas, because without it, they become sort of bog-standard romance plots. Which is fine! I love a romance plot! But I'm interested in how those stories intersect with transness or queerness.

That said: If you see an idea here that feels almost right to you and you want to pitch back and forth on it, drop me a PM. And if you like the overall feel of these ideas but none of their specifics, I'm happy to talk it over!

The Bully: Our hero left her hometown immediately after high school to move to the big city. She transitioned early in college, then cut off ties with her family when they were less than supportive. Now, however, those burnt bridges have been reconstructed and she's back home for a family wedding/the Christmas holiday/something where everyone is gathering. And then she bumps into the guy who made high school hell for her, who, of course, has no idea who she is at first. Maybe he's a single dad, maybe not. He's stuck here and feeling a bit frustrated about it. The attraction is real, but maybe the weight of the past is just too much to overcome. (I've left a lot of this vague to allow for others to fill in details. I think the basic skeleton of it allows for a lot of variation.)

Football Girlfriend: Our hero is new at Midwestern State University, where she is taking the first fledgling steps toward being herself after gutting out a long childhood in a domineering religious conservative home. Over the summer, she went to a party and blurted out the truth of her transness to one of the few out students in her class, whose older brother just happens to be the hotshot quarterback for Midwestern State University. His womanizing tanked his last season, and he's in danger of no longer being a hot prospect, so his sister convinces him to buy into a scheme: She'll give him the perfect fake girlfriend to help keep at least some of the other girls off his tail. And who should fit the task better than the trans girl who needs all the help she can get. (Is this She's All That? It's not not She's All That. Also could be switched to a high school setting probably.)

The Family Trust: Our hero is a random schlub with a dark secret: "He" would really rather be a woman, all things considered. Enter the best friend, a millionaire playboy with aspirations of being a billionaire playboy. But to get in the good graces of his grandmother, who will decide who will get the family's considerable assets upon her death, he needs to make her think he's met "the one." So he asks his friend for a little help. There's a magic spell, see, and that will help make the friend into a dream girl. But once the spell is cast, the new girlfriend is just... a pretty, normal girl, not the supermodel expected. Things progress from there! (I'm always happy to play around with more fantastical elements, so long as they have a grounded basis somewhere.)

Those are just a few ideas along those lines. I'm happy to brainstorm on or around those themes.

NEW: 8/8/23

I'd love to add something f/f to my current repertoire, so here are some ideas along those lines!

Pop Star: She's the BIGGEST POP STAR IN THE WORLD, and she's absolutely miserable, thanks to a long string of disappointing relationships with guys who just won't cut it. She's got a reputation in the press as someone who can't keep a relationship together, who obsesses over men, who falls in and out of love too easily. In the midst of her latest breakup and the attendant tabloid spiral, she bails on tour rehearsal and gets a car and just... drives. And when she thinks she's been spotted, she ducks into a little shop, where...

Well, the shop owner is a shy, bookish sort of girl who inherited the place from a beloved family member and is now watching it circle the drain. Nobody wants to shop at [insert type of shop here] anymore! But holy shit. Is that the world's biggest pop star? In here? She's even more beautiful in person. (Maybe don't say that out loud. Did you just say that out loud? Shit.)

Is this just Notting Hill but f/f and with a thinly veiled riff on Taylor Swift? Yes it is!

Valedictorians: This isn't even an idea. It's just about two girls who are seniors in high school who compete at everything and are constantly trying to one-up each other, and then they start having sex. Wow!

NEW: 10/21/23

The Mean Girl's Holiday: I have a hankering to do something Christmas related, but, y'know, queer. So. One of us was the only trans girl in our little town's high school when we graduated in 2008. The other of us was the most popular girl in school -- who didn't really mind lording that popularity over an insignificant weirdo like the town's only trans girl. Now, said trans girl is back from a big, successful life in Big City, nursing a bad breakup. The popular girl got divorced from the quarterback a year ago and is trying to put her life back together. Is she maybe a little bit queer? She hasn't examined that. But it's Christmas, and sometimes, MAGICAL THINGS happen at Christmas. Kissing, sex, etc. (Addendum: I could easily see this story working with one of the characters being a trans guy!) 

I guess a boarding school story?: I just like the subgenre of "we're at boarding school/college during the holidays, and everybody else is gone." Let's do that, but then maybe there's kissing??

Weird Bullshit

I also really like stories about characters whose roles or social status shift. These stories often have less focus on sexy stuff for me, though obviously, they can have that. Here are a few ideas to show you what I mean.

Grounded for Life: A man and his younger wife -- not May/December but definitely, like, June/September -- move to a lovely small town, and an offhand comment by one of them means that they are interpreted not as husband and wife but as father and teenage daughter. They try to correct the matter at first, but gossip spreads in small towns, so they decide to play along and see what the worst that can happen is. Spoilers: It gets worse.

Freaky Friday But Played For Realism For Some Reason: A mom gave birth to her daughter at 16. Now, she's 32, and her daughter is 16, and they're on the cusp of moving to a new town. But nobody there knows them. In the course of a very standard mother-daughter argument, one of them proposes, well, hey, we're new here, why don't you just try living my life for a second, figuring it will be easy enough to just switch back when the time comes. But they keep spending longer and longer in each other's lives, etc., etc., etc.

NEW: 8/8/23

The Suburbs (not by Arcade Fire): Two women -- a trans lady from the BIG CITY and a suburban mom -- are best friends. And one day, the mom, who is exhausted, is, like, "Hey, I found this body swap spell. You wanna try it out?" So they do! And the mom, now living an exciting BIG CITY life, finds herself falling for the trans lady's wife, just as the trans lady is, like, "Oh, hey, shopping at Target seems fun!" and starts sleeping with her best friend's husband but in her best friend's body, so it's less weird. Honest. We swear.

The Clone: A teen girl desperately wants to be popular, so she casts a spell, but her father walks in at the exact wrong moment. The spell instead just... turns him into a clone of her. But then over the intervening weeks... he starts to get a lot better looking... and starts to sort of... take over her life. Does she care? Does anyone? Who can say!

NEW: 10/21/23

Ms. Megachurch: A trans girl, deeply in love with her new girlfriend, agrees to go home with her for a little while. Her girlfriend is from a very conservative Christian family, and trans girl thinks she's just going along to provide moral support in what will probably be a painful visit. But no! She's been lured into a trap. Her girlfriend's family takes unsuspecting trans women and gives them what they think those girls want, giving them uteruses and so on and turning them into perfect housewife types. Naturally, this fate befalls our girl. And her captors already have an eye on exactly the right husband for her.

A Fandom Noodle

Midsommar, Part 2: I love the movie Midsommar, and I'd love to do a story examining what happens to Dani after the end of that film. Cults! 

Those are just a couple of ideas. I'm sure you'll have even better ones.

Thanks for reading all of this. It means a lot that you spent so long staring at the unfiltered inside of my brain.

--Slowbie

[SlowBurnGirl]

Both sections updated! Now with f/f ideas! And even weirder bullshit!

[SlowBurnGirl]

Updated 10/21/2023 with ideas for the holiday season and to, I guess, explore my darkest fears about the current political trajectory of the United States!!! But, y'know, sexy.