#why didn’t the lotus root recipes survive!!!!!!!

[sakhafa]

this blog is brought to you in part by the anti feseekh squad 💯💪🏼🔥🚫🎏🤮 fuck feseekh all my homies hate feseekh

[emphasis-all-mine]

I love seeing all the thought and planning you put into Paper Skin! If you don’t mind my asking, what was it that initially gave you the idea for the fic?

As always, I don’t mind at all! (Y'all know I love questions like these right? I am all about reflection and introspection!)

The short answer is:

A daydream

The Freemasons

The book “Feeding Hannibal” by Janice Poon

The initial premise was came when I was just sitting around my house daydreaming and it spilled out. It was originally supposed to be evil vampires take back a vampire that defected or whatever, kidnap who they assume is their human lover, and surprise! They’re a werewolf. They fight back, ride off into the sunset, fade to black, one and done. Just a Halloween-themed little idea I had in my head.

I started poking at it, coming up with some basic rules for the universe (I definitely was inspired by True Blood, but in reverse. Werewolf blood was going to be the delicacy to vampires instead). I didn’t have any other big overarching mythologies. I thought it would be fun to write it as Klance, with Keith as the vampire and Lance as the werewolf but that’s it. 

In the same time as this was in the back of my mind, I had also just started to regain my confidence in writing after a 10+ year hiatus/block. VLD/Klance had me feeling energized and really happy about what I was doing! I was surfing around writing blogs for inspiration, and there was a suggestion about writing your characters into your work life, and though I immediately dismissed that, but thought maybe it’d be fun to “sort” the VLD characters into the different neighborhoods in New York City.

New York City really is the background character of Paper Skin for this reason. I have lived in this city my whole life, and I used to do this with my friends in high school, sort fictional characters into neighborhoods and boroughs based on their personalities (ex: Character A would be a Brooklyn hipster selling crafts, Character B would be old money from the Upper East Side, Character C would live in Spanish Harlem and host block parties during a blackout, etc.)

One fine day, I was off and I had one single errand to run, go to my post office and pick up a package. I had a lot of time to waste, and honestly I wanted to up my step count because I had started a new phase of my job that had me at a desk more than usual, so I felt restless. I took a very twisty-meandering path to the post office, and an equally random walk back to my apartment so I could explore my neighborhood while the weather was nice and I had no responsibilities other than my one task.

That’s when I walked past a building, and did a double take. It was a beautiful building with lovely doors and white marble columns… and it was a Freemason building. I laughed because, well it tickled me. I grew up on The Simpsons, so I always think of the Stonecutters when I see Masonic imagery and the idea of a crazy secret underground society pulling strings behind closed doors, in the middle of my neighborhood? I don’t know why but I just couldn’t stop laughing and I walked along my way.

But that’s what took my little tiny seed of an idea, a vampire tormented and starved into biting their lover—all the while a shadowy force is pulling the strings from behind the scenes to manipulate things. Some evil society thinking that they have control, but surprise! The lover is a werewolf who gives the vampire strength to fight back! How would the society react? Who would they be? Could someone kill a moose at some point?

Something just clicked. 

The piece of the puzzles started falling and I started seeing scenes play out. I’d already settled on making it a quick klance one-shot if it was sticking to the original plan, so Keith was the vampire and Lance was the werewolf, but now I had the idea that Hunk was also a werewolf, and his gf Shay was a human vet, and maybe Pidge was a helpful shapeshifter that had to convince Keith and Lance’s neighbors that he just had a large wolf-like dog sometimes. But now I started thinking about what happened after the two escaped, getting picked up by Dad!Vampire Shiro on the Jersey turnpike, the werewolves using an abandoned sleepaway camp for hunting grounds and the moose thing, and more! I started “sorting” the characters back into neighborhoods as well as into supernatural species, and it just kept growing from there.

The last piece of the puzzle was already there, curtesy of a longtime fandom and IRL friend who is a fan of the NBC series Hannibal. She was very active on Twitter and would sometimes interact with a lovely member of the Hannibal crew, the food stylist Janice Poon. Janice was responsible for making all the food look like it was food made of people that wasn’t supposed to look like people but actually did look like people–and also was in charge of researching how Hannibal’s chosen ingredients would ‘behave’ when cooked. She compiled all of her recipes and more into a book that also spoke about how she would have to search for speciality meats, and also that she would incorporate blood into her recipes.

In short, Janice Poon wrote the book on creating meals fit for a cannibal, or for my purposes, a monster. My friend found out that Janice was holding a dinner party to celebrate the release of her book in Toronto, and we both decided on a whim to fly for a 3-day jaunt to Canada. (My proudest moment was non-stop joking about going to the Mall as a reference to Robin Sparkles, and then WE ENDED UP SPENDING A DAY AT THE MALL). At the release party, Janice and my friend had a wonderful time, and there was a private dinner where we got fed a meal “fit for a cannibal”, mostly delicious things like Lotus root with black rice, my first taste of bone marrow, other goodies and lots of wine and cocktails but the best part? The Sanguinaccio dolce she served for dessert.

I loved that pudding so much, it was sticking out of my mind when I started plotting out Paper Skin, I could remember the chocolate and the richness and that tiny little metallic taste that lingered, reminding me I was eating slowly simmered, thickened blood.

I start typing up the prologue and intro to Paper Skin, and I stop in the middle of the scene where Lance meets Shiro and Keith outside of the bar. I remember I stood to take the book off my shelf, and then I was struck with an idea for more of their backstory and what they DO. So I grab a bunch of those little post-it note flags that I haven’t used since college, and start bookmarking all the recipes that I think could be werewolf or vampire-friendly. I start reading Janice’s stories, how she learned to cook blood and to always get it frozen. What it was like to break down and stuff a heart (which she wraps in twine, I came up with bacon from my mom’s tendency to do that to our Thanksgiving turkey). I start researching blood sausage and Cuban cuisine, and the ball is already rolling. This isn’t just an urban fantasy romance with a mystery lurking beneath, it’s also a story about food and erasing the idea that an obligate carnivore or blood-drinker should be ashamed of what they eat to survive. 

It’s about love, and loving who you are, fiercely.