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Great question! They're from the Ariadne's Angels novels, all the pertinent information for which can be found in this post! Captain Ariadne is the main protagonist, among a wide ensemble cast. Donna Nicoletta "Nicks" Rizzo is a villain who first appears in the second book and takes on a major antagonistic role for Ariadne and her wife Spacebreather in the third!

Check them out if you get the chance! They're 100% free, and a lot of fun!

Is there a word for it when the villain is transparently in love with the hero, wants them bad, and genuinely believes they're soulmates destined to be locked in high stakes sexually charged battle until they finally go over a waterfall together, and the hero holds the villain in the same esteem as a call from Scam Likely?

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Would you believe I had "(top)" and "(bottom)" written into this post and almost OK'd that without thinking

Is there a word for it when the villain is transparently in love with the hero, wants them bad, and genuinely believes they're soulmates destined to be locked in high stakes sexually charged battle until they finally go over a waterfall together, and the hero holds the villain in the same esteem as a call from Scam Likely?

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For clarity there's no repression at play here, Donna Nicoletta (above) is well aware that she's attracted to women and that she's doing All That because she's down bad for Captain Ariadne (below). This is not one of those situations where the villain could be reformed if she just, like, got a girlfriend. She doesn't want a girlfriend. She wants a nemesis who shows up to stop her when she takes a building hostage, but for it to be a sex thing

Is there a word for it when the villain is transparently in love with the hero, wants them bad, and genuinely believes they're soulmates destined to be locked in high stakes sexually charged battle until they finally go over a waterfall together, and the hero holds the villain in the same esteem as a call from Scam Likely?

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Is there a word for it when the villain is transparently in love with the hero, wants them bad, and genuinely believes they're soulmates destined to be locked in high stakes sexually charged battle until they finally go over a waterfall together, and the hero holds the villain in the same esteem as a call from Scam Likely?

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Fun experience of being a Prose Writer who also does visual artwork is that I tend to draw my characters as I see them (precious pretty little guy having fun with friends) and it doesn't always reflect how they look in the text most of the time, were you to adapt the book to a visual medium.

For instance, take one Corantine Ghostrunner in the kind of scene I usually draw (left) versus her in 95% of scenes in the books (right)

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Today (4/29/2298) is Blue's birthday! I thought I'd honor her cyberpunk roots by doing a frame redraw from a classic of the genre, Ghost In The Shell!

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A little sampling from a friendly Drawpile, featuring the most intense zealot on this particular pirate crew (head chef)

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Today (January 7th) is Ariadne's birthday, and by an astounding coincidence, it's mine too! My birthday wish is that you all go to this link, where her various adventures are posted in official reading order, and get to know her and her friends and family!

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Anyway, point I'm making is that, like, I'm not really interested in situations where authors, and readers, feel the need to hem and haw and reassure people that their main relationship is toxic and their characters are Evil Protagonists and then I read the damn thing and it turns out the actual problem is that their main relationship is a little too obsessed with each other, in a romance story, or that their protagonist is a murderer, in an action story. Yes, in real life, it's unlikely that Batman's proteges would all be children who would've 1000% gone into vigilante work with or without him, and would've been killed if they did it without him. In the context of the story, it is believable that such a child would exist, and choosing to characterize the Robins as this type of child allows them to have a Robin without making Batman a child abuser.

I love a good story about an evil protagonist who's a bad person whose actions are wrong and who I'd be satisfied to see get their Comeuppance and unsettled to see them win! But I think people got so worried about "glorifying" this or that and now they're afraid to let their characters beat up bad guys without exploring how wrong they are to do it, or let their romantic lead impulsively kiss the protagonist without a whole screed about how they crossed the line by not checking that it was okay. Maybe it's enough that those are Commander Evil's Armed Storm-Nazis the good guy is blasting apart! Maybe it's enough that this is a character who would believably respond with "thank god you kissed me, what took you so long?!" You gotta think about the context of the story. Something doesn't have to be Likely In Real Life to be Believable In The Story!

I don't think that a narrative necessarily has to condemn the "Bad" and "Wrong" things that their characters do, if those actions are believably Good and Right within the context of that narrative. Which is why my books are full of super-intense relationships between people who'd benefit from such a relationship, and why my killer protagonist can find an endless supply of objectively evil people to kill, and circumstances to kill them in where they're in the right.

Something that's often troubled me as a writer is seeing other readers, and other writers, take the whole "Protagonist doesn't necessarily mean The Good Guy, or even A Good Person" thing a little too seriously and apply it to characters, including their own, where it doesn't really apply, to characters who do "bad" things that, in the context, they were entirely right to do. I don't even mean in like a "sometimes good people are pushed to extremes and have to do bad things" sort of way, I mean like, I don't think you need to bend over backwards to condemn the actions of your original story's characters when the story is specifically crafted to give them a context in which the things they do are Fine or even Good

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Like, there's the crucial point that a lot of stories are specifically built to explore scenarios where things that, under normal circumstances, would be considered Clearly Wrong, are morally justifiable or even morally commendable.

In real life, people who go on killing sprees are pretty universally terrible people. I get that! In a movie, though, the storyteller decides who the victims are and makes those choices in service of the story's agenda. The agenda of the filmmakers of John Wick is "look at all these cool violent stunts we can make Keanu do, without worrying about the ethical implications of killing 439 people," and in service of that agenda, they tell a story in which John Wick is faced with roughly 439 clear cut self-defense scenarios in a row.

It's the same freedom that allows romance writers to explore things that would likely be unhealthy, inadvisable, or straight-up dangerous in real life. In real life, a surprise public proposal is not a great idea, because it puts immense pressure on the recipient who might not appreciate the "grand romantic gesture," but in a romcom, the writer can guarantee that it only ever happens in the safety of circumstances where it's Okay, and only ever happens to people who Appreciate it. I know there's a lot of discourse about the bodice-ripper fantasy, but the same logic applies there: in fiction, if you want to read a story where that scenario plays out and it isn't a horrible tragedy, it's possible to guarantee the romantic lead who does it, only does it in situations where it's Okay, to people who are Happy About It Happening.

Now, it's possible to criticize a narrative work for how it handles these topics, but the thing that always gets me is that a lot of stories, certain actions are only "glorified" in very narrow circumstances that couldn't possibly ever happen in real life, and are allowed to shake out in a way that they probably wouldn't in real life

Something that's often troubled me as a writer is seeing other readers, and other writers, take the whole "Protagonist doesn't necessarily mean The Good Guy, or even A Good Person" thing a little too seriously and apply it to characters, including their own, where it doesn't really apply, to characters who do "bad" things that, in the context, they were entirely right to do. I don't even mean in like a "sometimes good people are pushed to extremes and have to do bad things" sort of way, I mean like, I don't think you need to bend over backwards to condemn the actions of your original story's characters when the story is specifically crafted to give them a context in which the things they do are Fine or even Good

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Something that's often troubled me as a writer is seeing other readers, and other writers, take the whole "Protagonist doesn't necessarily mean The Good Guy, or even A Good Person" thing a little too seriously and apply it to characters, including their own, where it doesn't really apply, to characters who do "bad" things that, in the context, they were entirely right to do. I don't even mean in like a "sometimes good people are pushed to extremes and have to do bad things" sort of way, I mean like, I don't think you need to bend over backwards to condemn the actions of your original story's characters when the story is specifically crafted to give them a context in which the things they do are Fine or even Good

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she's sitting in the corner of the lab causing problems for everyone trying to do science in there

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Now that Nothing But Blue Skies has dropped, you all finally have context for this illustration!

Trying to do more illustrations of scenes from the stories I'm cooking up!

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It's here! Get yourself familiar with the woman herself!!

Get Ready! It's almost Time

This coming Saturday (11/16/2024) I'll be dropping a brand new, full-length anthology, all about everybody's favorite machete-wielding vulgar lunatic Blue.

The stories in "Nothing But Blue Skies" include:

Catching Flax - a tense conversation between Blue and the woman who introduced her to her partner (previously released as a standalone)

My Dinner With Ariana - Blue tries to make nice with her partner's sister, who can't stand her

Moon State - A long-awaited family reunion is interrupted by chronic Pirate Nonsense while Blue is trying to cruise for tail at a college party

Tonic and Gin - An attempted Sexy Body Swap goes horribly wrong

Ain't We Got Fun? - Two country mice find their way to the big city! Blue breaks into a conservative couple's house to steal their cat

Now, this is gonna be the longest single update I've ever posted: "Nothing But Blue Skies" is approximately the length of the first book in the series, so I wanted to release it before the holidays, when people are likely to have time off.

I can promise you this anthology will include plenty of old favorite characters, new favorite characters, funny jokes, heart-wrenching emotion, and at least one sexy misunderstanding.

I will be posting the stories here and on ao3! Watch this space, and please, let me know all your reactions when you read! Oh, and if you do, make sure to join the series discord so you can share your reactions with other readers!

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NOTHING BUT BLUE SKIES

A collection of stories about a complicated woman, as told by an eclectic group of her friends and family­ around the dinner table

Author's note: want to talk about the story? Come hang out with us on Discord! Need to catch up on past updates? All of them are available, free of charge, on ao3!

Author's note: Listen gang I'm gonna level with you, this thing is way too big to fit in a single tumblr post. I'm working on ways around it but for now here's the ao3 link to the whole anthology!