There’s a lot of amazing fanfic writers in the tf fandom, so I wanted to throw a week-long celebration as a way of saying thank you! Starting February 1st, each day of the week is themed after a different type of fanfic, so people can participate by making fanart and promo-ing one of their fave fics for each theme! Those who can’t draw are encouraged to participate too by doing promos, recommendations, and as always, commenting/kudos-ing/ and bookmarking their picks, or contributing in any way you can! It’s all about saying thank-you to the hundreds and hundreds of authors out there that spend their time giving us countless amounts of free content to enjoy.
Feb. 1st: Fluff Feb. 2nd: Angst Feb. 3rd: AU Feb. 4th: Humor/Crack Feb. 5th: One-shot Feb. 6th: Multichapter Feb. 7th: Your choice! BONUS Feb 8th: 18+ Smut day
Tag your contributions as #TFILF and remember to link the fanfic and send your appreciation to the authors too. So please, spread this around and get the word out so we can properly thank the many talented writers in this fandom!
You know what kills me the most when I tell people I’m never having kids?
Guys my age.
A lot of the older generation pulls the “you’ll change your mind/your parents want grandchildren/kids are different when they’re your own” and I’ve become a master at shutting that down.
But guys my age?
Women my age seem to get it. I tell another women in her mid 20s that I don’t want kids because I plan on getting my master’s and spending a lot of time traveling and I don’t want to give up my goal me for kids and she almost always gets it no matter how they feel about having kids.
But guys my age?
Guys in their mid 20s seem to take it as a personal insult. “What about your husband? You’re being selfish!”
I’m not straight, so jot that down. And also, isn’t it pretty selfish to try to force someone into an expensive 18+ year commitment that changes their life. If someone really wants kids, I am not the partner for them, it’s really as simple as that. I’m perfectly capable of finding someone on the same page as me, I promise.
I really don’t care that someone else thinks I should have kids
“Oh, you’re so good with kids!”
Thanks, I do view children as living thinking beings with intelligence and treat them as such, why is the bar so low?
Why is the default to have kids? That’s such a big and permanent decision. It’s should be to opt in to having kids, not opt out.
When it comes down to it, I’d rather never marry and travel the world with my dog than deal with someone trying to force me into such a decision.
Secret Santa “The Light Pours Out Of Me” for@zvous !
@tformers-secret-santa Exchange for 2017, and with twelve hours to spare! (I had a personal goal to get this done.)
I went with the OpScream Coronation prompt, as it’s been aeons since I’ve done straight up G1. I opted to, instead of using my trusty Zig brush and Tachikawa nib pens for the inks, using the more traditional dip nibs and brushes.
Originally I had believed I might not have enough time to finish this with markers, as this month had turned quite chaotic for me and the hubs. Instead, as I haven’t seriously worked in digital colours for almost as long as working in G1 style, I opted to upload it to my Medibang Cloud, so that I could, if needed, work on my tablet (which I didn’t need to overall). While it is going towards my previous Medibang doodles I’ve done in the past, this is the second piece I’ve done using my traditional inks as the base.
I hope it meets expectations! 🙂
Also: My original OpScream idea involved G2. Literally, I had good shoulder angel Skidblast telling me “Cav No!” and bad shoulder devil Warlordenfilade telling me “Cav yessss….” Skidblast won that one due to the fact that fewer people know the G2 lore.
Tech Specs: Traditional inks: Deleter Black and Deleter White inks on 11×14 Canson 96# smooth bristol; NIKO G Nib, Hunt 102 Quill Nib; and 0 Round, 6 Filbert, and 1 Liner brushes. Scanned in TIFF – Bitmap, 800dpi, and cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop CS2. Colour: Medibang Paint Pro 13.0 (ver.1.8.11), Toshiba Portege M780 with Wacom-enabled touch screen. References: M-01 Optimus Prime and M-11 Coronation Starscream for design; G1 Optimus Prime (reissue) and G1 Starscream (reissue) for scale. (I do put my toys in compromising positions on a regular basis.)
This one is a little tricky because Whiplash is not my OC, he is Gatekat’s but I loved him so much we end up using him quite frequently in our joint works. He isn’t even a joint OC like most of the ones you’ll see (Radiance, Sucre, the Praxus gang, etc.). So, these answers are not from the creator but rather what an avid fan imagines!
28 –
What is their biggest fear? What in general scares them? How do they act when they’re scared?
He would fear letting his Prime down more than anything, in any way, whether it’s failing to protect him or just disappointing him. I think his biggest fear would be failing in such a way that caused a Prime’s death. Thankfully, the more afraid he is, the more focused, determined, and grim he becomes. He combats fear with action and skill.
41 – What’s their sexuality? What do they find attractive? Physically and mentally? What do they like/need in a relationship?
If I had to put a word to his sexuality, it would probably just be “consensual.” He’s code-driven to be attracted to Matrix-bearers, of course, but that is not his choice. What he truly finds attractive is someone else who feels the same devotion to Primus as he does. Physically, all kinds, but he does seem to have a bit of a soft spot for someone the same size as him. There’s also the extreme need to feel vulnerable to a Prime, and often that happens by letting a Prime spike him to injury.
48 –
Do they enjoy any parties? If so what kind? Do they organise the party or
just turn up? How do they act? What if they didn’t want to go but were
dragged along by a friend?
The best kind of party is one where he can watch and learn something from it. He might plan one as part of an op, but he’d likely assign the bulk of the actual details off. He would skulk around in the rafters if given his choice. But, should he be required to appear or dragged along, he socializes easily. Still all in the name of knowledge, of course. Or to intimidate.
the problem with having been wistfully deterred every time I tried aggressively to dive into femslash writing the first time is that I just have way less to draw on for scene structure than I apparently can pull from for m/m. Which is ridiculous: I’m not even limiting myself to standard human vulva-inclusive genitals, so why the hell is this hitting me so much harder than sex from a male PoV?
like, why is shit like “I would like clothes off, please remove” and “excuse me, please put your hand on my fucking clit now now now” and “I am nervy but I want to make my body feel good please and thank you” suddenly so much trickier from a female PoV than a male one? It’s not like I don’t have a ton of experience with the latter to draw on here. but okay, it’s intimidating, fine; I’m a baby writer, I am still learning this shit, practicing is okay. gotta think on it and chew a bit.
so I go looking for resources and advice. and…. there are none. fuck.
well, okay. that’s not entirely true. but what there is seems to be very focused on either anatomy, mechanics and safe sex (”how do lesbians do it, anyway?”) or on coming up with good words to use for genitalia in your porn writing. and. neither of those are my bloody problem here.
first, I am pretty acquainted with the theoretical ways that you can get up close and personal with a cunt. tribadism and cunnilingus and fingering and fisting are not foreign concepts to me. I am aware of the difficulties with actually pulling off scissoring and frankly tits present all manner of possibilities, and all that assumes your characters have never heard of toys. I don’t need another list of dry descriptions of Possible Activities to do if you have two editions of Slot B.
hisses Scarleteen is a lovely resource but it is not particularly helpful as a guide to writing porn, thank you.
second, the wording thing people complain about is not usually what I’m bothered with. which: c’mon, folds? lips are right there, or rely on texture and sensation to describe things. obviously euphemisms like ‘love tunnel’ are Right Out, but I wouldn’t have been using those anyway. (also I’m gonna be honest: vulva is an appealing, velvety word. fight me. and cunt: also lovely. I can take or leave pussy, but cunt and vulva are buddies to me.)
besides, word choice normally wouldn’t bug me much–after all, I tend to not be someone who writes heavily on the anatomy references anyway, so
that’s stalling me just a bit, but it’s not actually the thing that keeps smacking me in the head as I try to write this scene and derail.
no, what I’m scrambling for is descriptions of sensation, of experience, of feeling…. from the perspectives of actual people. And scenes with women fucking each other described in an interesting way that illustrates the vulnerability of the characters
and it’s not just me: cursory searches from my trawling through DW comms yields an anon femslash thread wherein the first comment when asked what people would not want to confess to off anon was people complaining about the paucity of anything but fade-to-black.
so is it something about the headspace? my internalized weirdness? what is going on with my head?
and gah, is there like a treasure trove of How To Write Good F/F Explicit Sex I’m missing somewhere? I’ll work up a bunch of links to all the best stuff I find in the morning as I trawl Dreamwidth and LJ comms, but I’m regretfully afraid of the possibility that there’s just nothing for it but to go hunting for the best f/f in my favorites lists, reread them, and brood.
oh, oh, the horror.
I’ve run into this, but when trying to write trans and nonbinary experiences. Which you’d think as someone who is nonbinary I’d be able to write…
There’s a kind of shorthand that m/m writers use. There’s an easy familiarity available to the writers. It’s not quite a trope, but some kind of archetype(?) maybe? And that shorthand simply does not exist for f/f writers, and even less so for trans and nb characters.
I think for f/f it’s fallout from the vitriolic hate that many female characters used to get / still get. Readers aren’t as experienced reading f/f (makes it a more “”challenging”” read) and significantly more difficult for writers because there’s no consensus framework to fall back on. Like, we all know how dicks work in fanfiction, even if they don’t work like that in real life. That’s not true for clits.
That shorthand is also missing for trans and nb experiences. I don’t think it stems from character hate here- there’s no canon characters to hate. But instead, the subculture itself it still trying to figure out what the words for it are and the consensus is that there is no consensus. Which makes it difficult to even establish that shorthand.
Oh, and the extremely rational fear of doing a “bad” portrayal and getting dogpiled and abused for it.
Thank you.
I’m also struggling with this.
Ive only written one f/f sex scene in my long writing history (cunnilingus) and it was a struggle and I honest to God don’t know why- I’ve written plenty of m/f cunnilingus without those mental blocks. The fear that I was doing it wrong was just so much more prevalent.
I’m really going to work on writing more f/f in 2018 and deal with those mental blocks.
I feel like there’s this jump between gentle flirting and hardcore porn that I have the hardest time writing in F/F. Like??? How to get to kissing??? IDK man! Can’t I just fade to black and then come back in flagrante delectio?
aaaaaalso lady types being stereotyped as less aggressive about sex?
YES, @once-a-polecat, that–that’s a thing I am running into! And I think it might have to do with norms and shit about, as Rat says, women being stereotyped/punished for sexual assertiveness–I wouldn’t actually necessarily say aggression, tbh, just “hey I want that, make it happen.”
And I do think it has to do with just…. there aren’t so many templates, I guess, or good scenes to kind of use as a “oh, this here, this worked well for that, and that other thing worked well in the other story” and build our mental library.
And yes yes yes on frameworks and fear. It’s hard! I need to find more f/f communities to lurk on–is there one going round? All I can find is on Dreamwidth and years defunct.
really a+ commentary, gonna chew on this and come back to it later
It’s really true. When I was writing my f/f fic, I found it so hard, and I have to believe that we all carry some weird internalized bullshit around that makes us feel weird about writing women initiating sex with other women. I’ve irl initiated sex with another woman, so it shouldn’t be hard to write! I’ve written a sentient raccoon getting some! It shouldn’t be hard at all.
But it is.
This is so interesting. When I was in high school, I realized I’m bi and then shortly after that realized that in fiction I was more attracted to men (both in reading and writing) and that in real life, I was more attracted to women. This confounded me until I grew up and saw through the creepy misogynistic veil all around us.
Even seeing through that, though, doesn’t change that I naturally will want to write about men, or at least characters with “he” pronouns. Transformers and the non-binary aspects they provide have helped a lot, but I still find it easier to write two “he” pronouned characters together than “she” pronouned ones, even if I’m writing the exact same sex act. And honestly … my favorite thing is probably “m/m” cunnilingus, but it honestly feels different from f/f cunnilingus. This has forced me to really think about the difference, and conclude that this is something deeply-coded within me stemming from our society. It’s definitely something that I’m still examining in myself. Some of the Transformers OC triads have really helped (Brava, Mira, and Contact come always to mind – Contact is written as “he/him/his” but he is the one who plays the traditionally “feminine/wife” role, and Brava and Mira will have eternal hots for each other for forever – I’ll often actually envision them when writing f/f and find it much easier).
Anyway, rambling (new laptop can handle Tumblr pretty well omg!).
what they mean: i dont know how to handle small animals and consider them lashing out in SELF DEFENSE an insult
Usually what it boils down to is “I’m mad because the cat didn’t act like a dog”.
Pushing fragile things off tables and breaking them: Self defense.
Destroying Christmas Trees: Self defense, I mean the tree attacked them.
Scratching their owner’s eyeball: Self defense.
Scratching their sleeping owner’s face: Self defense.
Jumping on their owner’s back and clawing into their spine: Self defense.
Admittedly yeah
A dog doesn’t do those things because a dog’s version of self defense is to be a good animal who loves you and doesn’t attack you unless you attack them first.
I mean if a cat feels that threatened by everything in their owner’s household maybe the owner shouldn’t have gotten a cat.
Pushing fragile things off tables and breaking them: Playing. Cats are well-known to like to play with small objects. Your cat does not know what “fragile” means and does not understand the distinction between toy and not-toy objects. Place fragile things out of a cat’s line of sight and reach, and if you don’t provide them with enough enrichment items that they go looking for them, that’s on you.
Destroying Christmas Trees: Cats like to climb things. They’re not doing it to spite you.
Scratching their owner’s eyeball: Probably an accident, due to overstimulation when playing. It wasn’t trying to hurt you. Don’t anthropomorphize animals by attributing spite to them. Animals don’t do spite the way that humans do.
Scratching their sleeping owner’s face: Trying to rouse you with its paw, probably gently, because it loves you and wants to play with you.
Jumping on their owner’s back and clawing into their spine: Come on. If a cat is jumping on you, it loves you and wants to be close to you. Digging in with its claws is how it balances itself on an unstable surface and is purely a reflexive reaction. It isn’t intending to hurt you.
99% of cat behavioral problems stem from bored cats. Cats need to climb, need to scratch, and need small objects to play with. I only recommend adopting cats in pairs, so that they can keep each other entertained. Cats are not purely solitary. They get lonely, and lonely cats act out. Once again, your entire problem with cats as a species seems to stem from the fact that you don’t understand how cats express affection and it upsets you that they don’t do so the way that dogs do. Cats aren’t small dogs and cannot be expected to behave as such.
Story time!
About seven or eight odd years ago (MY HOW TIME FLIES) a feral cat gave birth to a litter of kittens on our back porch. We wound up adopting her and two of the runts, and adopting the rest away to (hopefully) good homes.
This meant that, in addition to a neurotically aggressive toy poodle and my ancient Himalayan cat (mid teens, declawed in the front by its previous owner), we now had a completely feral cat and two kittens to take care of. FUN TIMES AHEAD.
Fast forward to today, though, and they’re the most loving cats you’ll ever meet. The feral cat has been domesticated to the point she has stopped building hidden nests, opting instead to hide under the sofa when threatened, which is increasingly rare I might add. She’s even brave enough to come out and visit when the terrier (the toy poodle passed away) is out and OMGEXCITEDLETSPLAYMOTHAFUCKA. She even curled up in my lap while I played video games, and loves letting me pet her.
The two kittens are now fully grown, and still have hunter instincts going on, to the point they will attack the TV (gently, unclawed) when they see prey animals or fast moving objects in the screen (like my video game characters!). Otherwise, they’ll romp and play with each other, knock the lowest ornaments off the tree, and destroy tissue paper lying around. These are all acceptable sacrifices given how they have adapted to a fully domesticated lifestyle.
The reason they don’t knock the fragile stuff off the cabinet soffits, or dig their claws into our skin, or otherwise hurt us, is because we A) gave them plenty of outlets to scratch and hunt elsewhere in the house, B) give them the love and attention they crave, when they need it, and C) give them firm, but kind feedback when they make a mistake.
Here’s an example: one of the cats, demanding love as a kitten, tried to scale my pants leg. Claws ensued, as did the desire to swear in pain at the cat. Instead, having dealt with a rescue before, I simply bent down, petted its head, and gently lifted it away from my leg while going, “Ow, please don’t do that, it hurts,” in a calm and reassuring voice. The cat likely didn’t understand anything I said, but it did connect the word “ow” to my discomfort, given enough instances of claws-meet-skin, and now doesn’t need manual intervention if they accidentally nick me. A simple, “Ow, that hurts <cat>,” is enough for them to retract their claws, take a step back, and then go back in for attention again without their claws out.
Cats cannot be trained like dogs, in my experience. Dogs seemingly operate off firm commands and positive or negative reinforcement, but a cat is like a person: richly complex and rarely impossible to boil down to a single statement. Treat them like the small, fuzzy people they are, and both of you will come away enriched for the better.
And for chrissakes, get them multiple scratching posts. Get them scratching posts, scratching poles, scratching wood, any and everything they can peacefully annihilate with their claws. Declawing them is dangerous and traumatic, and letting them naturally sharpen and trim their claws on good posts/logs means their nails are less likely to hang in fabric on accident, and it gives them better control over their deployment and use. Sacrificing wood or posts to the kitty claw gods will save the rest of your house.
Verilidaine's Scrapbook 