When I write, I tend to have two tried-and-tested methods. Or three, if you count blogging. But it's how I deal with emotions; whether about my life or purely fandom feels or I just have a line of dialogue or a sense of a scene, a turning point of a relationship...

Mostly I just plain old write from life. AUs of my life. That suits me well, because my biggest challenge as a writer is producing dialogue in character. I KNOW when other people do it wrong, I am totally sensitive to it, but I can't manage to do better myself.

So I write what I know.  I get to be my protagonist, and depending on what I need - antagonist/ love interest/foil/ whatever, I just use you-know-who. Maybe I don't write him realistically always,  after all, I need him to fit all the bizarre and fucked up universes I create, but I always find it easy to write words for him and imagine them in his tone of voice for realism.

So that's the first method. The other set of characters I use, who have dialogue that flows for me is Ellie/ Homer from TWTWB. But the more I consider it, the more I find it's because they are the same damn personality/ characters as you-know-who and I. The dynamic is so similar. And I'm not sure which way the influence goes. Do I write Ellie based on me or me based on her? Is the differences between fictional and real you-know-who the bits based on Homer Yannos? It's odd.

Homer and Ellie were one of my first ships.  He's just a badass, the only real match for Ellie.  And even if she never fully realised it or accepted it herself, she loved him a fuck ton. This passage is one I love, and I just got up to this point when I started this post so here, have it.

"Homer rose up out of the ruck.  It was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen.  He had blood all over his face and his hair was red with it.  But he towered above them. All he needed was a torch in his hand to be the Statue of Liberty. He threw two more guys off,  one in each direction: just threw them like they were stuffed toys. A man came at him and Homer head-butted him with a dull thunk, like a breaking watermelon. He headed for the door again, kicking people clear with every step.  I fought desperately to get rid of the guys holding me but I wasn't as strong as Homer,  and they gripped my wrists so hard their hands felt like steel bands. A bloke jumped on Homer's back and tried to ride him down to the ground. He managed to get his hands around Homer's throat to pull his head back. With his huge paws Homer started ripping the hands off his throat, but in doing that he tipped backwards, and two young blokes realised they had a good chance at last. They dove in simultaneously at his stomach and down he went again. This time he didn't come up.
I saw a couple of boots go in and some fists fly, but the next time I even had a glimpse of him was five minutes later when they started standing up and counting their own bruises. First I could see Homer's legs, and then one arm. Inside I was feeling hysterical but no way was I going to give them  the satisfaction of knowing that. I had no idea if he was alive or dead.
When I did see his face I realised at the same time that he had been neatly trussed up; his arms and legs tied behind him, like a sheep in the back of a ute. But I wasn't very interested in that. All I wanted was to see his eyes, for any sign of life.  But his eyes were closed and his head had rolled to one side.
I mightn't ever know a more terrible feeling than the one I had then. I felt a bomb had gone off inside me. It was like my heart had been ripped in half in the middle of my chest. I seriously thought I was having a heart attack.  I couldn't get my breath, and the pain only seemed to grow all the time. The only way I could get relief was to see Homer's eyes open. I was dimly aware of Gavin on the other side of Homer, being held by two men,  and across to my left Fi was also held by someone. But I had no real interest in them, just a terrible all-consuming desire to throw myself onto Homer's blood-covered body  and breathe life back into him."

If I wasn't on my phone (yes I just typed that all out on my phone), I would place the "That's love, bitch" gif here.

I so wish they ended up together but what I like is that Ellie's story never gets wrapped up in an epilogue like Katniss's in Hunger Games, or all the endgame ships in Harry Potter. The end of the Tomorrow series is her saying about Homer something like 'I think I like him a little too much, but we'll have to work out what the next stage of our relationship will be' and saying that she thought her and Lee (her on/off boyfriend/lover were over. But then at the end of the Ellie Chronicles, Ellie realised she was still in love with Lee, though Homer was now very much in love with her.

It's realistic that things change, and a happily ever after isn't guaranteed and I like to think that in different circumstances they could have been happy and very compatible together. Like Tony and Kate in NCIS.

Oh my god, I really was thinking about Ellie and Homer only just then, but I can't believe I compared them to Tony and Kate, yet another fictional couple that you-know-who and I had been compared to.

I guess it's a popular dynamic and unfortunately the dynamic I am attracted to in real life is also the one I like in fiction, therefore the crossover... too bad it's never an endgame though. At least I wasn't shot in the head by a sniper.

In other news relating to my actual life, and not just musing about relationships that I don't have, I spent my morning (as I have no computer now) cleaning the flat and my room. It took all morning but I watched Planet of the Apes while I did most of it so I enjoyed myself and now, I give thanks to God and also Jesus that it sparked Jen and Julia into making a cleaning roster. We all have one week that we are responsible for everything and my week consists of only today because it's Saturday of Week 6 and I did everything except the oven and the insides of cupboards. I like living in a clean flat though, it's just nicer all around.

Then Simon and I went out shoe shopping and he hates clothes shopping so he asked me to join. I got a new pair of boots that I think will be waterproof (please God) and we got tickets for a gig/show tonight which will be fun hopefully? I mean I'm not really a live music person but Lucy 2.0 means I do things that could be fun and make me look cultured.