The funny thing was I annotated quite a few ideas of mine, and they didn't pop up.
I felt 8. f4 was not great, maybe a gambit...
15...Rb8 was a move I was not 100% sure about, but it seemed an okay way to monitor the pawn for the moment.
17...Qf5 was when I was recalling schemato's words about the b1-h7 diagonal and the queen. Here I am attacking both the e5 and c2 pawns. I like Black here. (This is without checking with a computer first, however...)
Okay, the idea in discussion is 6...Qa5 against the Mainline Winawer, or the Portisch-Hook (I think this is also referred to as the Black Queen Blues).
I found this idea to be a satisfactory approach for me to use in my repertoire. It provides annoying, somewhat safe queen aggression against White's setup, with positional characteristics that seem to fit my style.
Today I got in what I would typically classify as an "annoying" win against my opponent. My queen definitely got her work in, but I played patiently, and I remember schemato's response about the queen dominating the b1-h7 diagonal, so I kept that in mind towards the end of this game.
It was a 21-move win, I am open to ideas with how I handled this. He lost on time, but I think I definitely had a winning advantage (I say this without checking with a computer first...)