gonna use my first comment on this site to make a poorly laid out discussion of Words, yeaH.
For context on my past and present: I spent most of my active sex life as an unwillingly submissive bisexual woman and I'm now an ace nb transman with power bottom tendencies, and throughout most of my partners have been men. I'm going to occasionally haphazardly lump cisfemale chars and transmasc chars together because the language issues overlap and I'm trusting yall to keep up with me. I'm also going to use cf/cm for cisfemale/cismale.
For reasons that may be obvious, I don't have much experience with f/f wlw type actions. But, for similar reasons, there's a complete lack of trans characters in fanfiction and @sciatrix's complaint about scene structure is one of the things that tripped me up big time when I vowed to start writing more transmasc characters. The language/vocabulary is the second thing that tripped me up.
I, the author, know my characters want to fuck because I've arranged their universe to make that happen. I know the desire is there because I've put it there. And using the scene shorthand that m/m fic has given me, it's relatively easy to show that desire/lust. Because a dick gets hard (which has implications for arousal vs consent).
Without dicks, how do we write that desire/lust? There's no convention for writing arousal for parts that aren't dicks.
There's the obvious- vulvas get wet, clits get stiff, all that heartrate and breathing prose we're so fond of. But those are 'hidden' things, right. Dicks stick out. Easy to see.
I spent a while retrofitting the same action centric language that @siderea and @lazaefair mentioned onto cf/cm and nb/cm ships because if two dudes can have active sex, why not everyone else? 'she thrust her fingers' and 'he thrust his dick' can carry the same energy. 'she ground the palm of her hand against', 'she slammed her hips into'. The same vibe can be carried over for arousal- there's no reason a character with a vulva can't rub on their partner. No reason they can't say they wanna fuck with their words and their hands and their body language and their genitals.
Feel awkward? sure.
Still left me with a language problem. At least for me, it's awkward using words that I'm not used to. I'm comfortable using 'dick'. 'Clit'? Not so much even though it's got the same mouth shape. How about 'click'? How do you integrate strapons? For me as a transmasc person, the correlation between putting the hard dick on and fucking is hard to miss, but there's still arousal and play before the strap on comes out, right? How do words work, honestly.
I started hanging out on blogs that are horny on main. (fuck you, tumblr!) topmemesdeluxe normalized the use of 'strap' in the same way that I'm comfortable using 'dick'. Which lets me play with the distinction between a guy's dick and that very same guy's strap. lesbianmonsters used to post a lot of reader/creature fic and while readerfic and lesbian content doesn't float my specific boat, it normalized vulva and clit and female desire for me. Hell, even thirstbloggers helped me out. You know, the ones who go off in the tags. It's real actual experience there, people are saying what they want and how they want it. And adapting that language to my work feels far better that digging through the discourse on what's a good word, what's a best word, how do we say it.
I think I lost track of my point in there somewhere. Anyway - we gotta make our own scene structures - read your demographic's actual real experience. find your thirstbloggers. use their language. they know how they wanna get down. - everything is awkward until suddenly it's not - go write, no shame
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 02:06 am (UTC)For context on my past and present: I spent most of my active sex life as an unwillingly submissive bisexual woman and I'm now an ace nb transman with power bottom tendencies, and throughout most of my partners have been men. I'm going to occasionally haphazardly lump cisfemale chars and transmasc chars together because the language issues overlap and I'm trusting yall to keep up with me. I'm also going to use cf/cm for cisfemale/cismale.
For reasons that may be obvious, I don't have much experience with f/f wlw type actions. But, for similar reasons, there's a complete lack of trans characters in fanfiction and @sciatrix's complaint about scene structure is one of the things that tripped me up big time when I vowed to start writing more transmasc characters. The language/vocabulary is the second thing that tripped me up.
I, the author, know my characters want to fuck because I've arranged their universe to make that happen. I know the desire is there because I've put it there. And using the scene shorthand that m/m fic has given me, it's relatively easy to show that desire/lust. Because a dick gets hard (which has implications for arousal vs consent).
Without dicks, how do we write that desire/lust? There's no convention for writing arousal for parts that aren't dicks.
There's the obvious- vulvas get wet, clits get stiff, all that heartrate and breathing prose we're so fond of. But those are 'hidden' things, right. Dicks stick out. Easy to see.
I spent a while retrofitting the same action centric language that @siderea and @lazaefair mentioned onto cf/cm and nb/cm ships because if two dudes can have active sex, why not everyone else? 'she thrust her fingers' and 'he thrust his dick' can carry the same energy. 'she ground the palm of her hand against', 'she slammed her hips into'. The same vibe can be carried over for arousal- there's no reason a character with a vulva can't rub on their partner. No reason they can't say they wanna fuck with their words and their hands and their body language and their genitals.
Feel awkward? sure.
Still left me with a language problem. At least for me, it's awkward using words that I'm not used to. I'm comfortable using 'dick'. 'Clit'? Not so much even though it's got the same mouth shape. How about 'click'? How do you integrate strapons? For me as a transmasc person, the correlation between putting the hard dick on and fucking is hard to miss, but there's still arousal and play before the strap on comes out, right? How do words work, honestly.
I started hanging out on blogs that are horny on main. (fuck you, tumblr!) topmemesdeluxe normalized the use of 'strap' in the same way that I'm comfortable using 'dick'. Which lets me play with the distinction between a guy's dick and that very same guy's strap. lesbianmonsters used to post a lot of reader/creature fic and while readerfic and lesbian content doesn't float my specific boat, it normalized vulva and clit and female desire for me. Hell, even thirstbloggers helped me out. You know, the ones who go off in the tags. It's real actual experience there, people are saying what they want and how they want it. And adapting that language to my work feels far better that digging through the discourse on what's a good word, what's a best word, how do we say it.
I think I lost track of my point in there somewhere. Anyway
- we gotta make our own scene structures
- read your demographic's actual real experience. find your thirstbloggers. use their language. they know how they wanna get down.
- everything is awkward until suddenly it's not
- go write, no shame