Helluin

I'm not one the older writers, sorry, but I just wanted to thank you for considering me one of the youngsters at 36. Online fan communities tend to be strongly skewed towards the 16-20 range, and I often feel like a pompous old lady. So I guess I'm just a pompous young lady! Ack. Hmmm. I do remember, though... -- that horrid noise cassette tapes made when loading a program into your top-of-the-line 48K computer. -- 15 cent stamps. -- when ATM machines were the new cool thing. And before that, going to the bank to deposit or get out paper money. -- Gerald Ford tripping over things. -- LPs and 45s. -- Mission to Mars, the People Mover, and Innerspace. -- When Star Trek wasn't retro or Classic. -- The 1960s Ballantine edition of LOTR with the acid trip 3-part cover. You know, the one with the emus. -- 1 dollar paperbacks. I think they were 20 cents when I was a kid, but I wasn't paying attention. -- covered wooden bridges, one lane bridges. (okay, there's still a few left where I grew up.) -- when you couldn't get strawberries in the grocery store in January. -- wondering what the heck a Kiwi Fruit was -- ! They made Ultra-man look sophisticated!-- When Doctor Who had silver hair and a magician's jacket, and his female companion screamed loud enough to shatter Daleks' circuitry (I'm not exaggerating, although the Dalek-shattering episode was a Patrick Troughton episode, I think) -- Pay phones all over the place. Have you looked for one lately? They've pretty much gone the way of those blue mimeographs. -- jamming the keys on a typewriter. -- Merlin. That little red plastic computer game thingie with the blinking lights that looked like an oversized phone. -- when Dungeons & Dragons first came out, and you had to draw a numbered cardboard chit from a bag because the only type of dice in existence had six sides -- stockpiling Coca-Cola before New Coke replaced it on the grocery store shelves -- the first year Toyota Camry came out -- when cars still had corners -- when you watched a movie in a theater, you didn't expect to see it again out of the theater -- Ditto for TV shows, unless they went into reruns YOU ARE IN A MAZE FULL OF TWISTY PASSAGES, ALL OF THEM ALIKE. THERE IS A TROLL HERE. >N THE TROLL BLOCKS YOUR WAY. >E THE TROLL SWINGS A BLOODY AXE AT YOU. > KILL TROLL WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KILL THE TROLL WITH? > KILL TROLL WITH NASTY KNIFE

I don't know about "all the time," but in the example you gave, the person was reacting specifically to the statement, "it's because you're a girl, you don't know X." Why did her being a girl make a difference in whether she knew it or not? Why did your being a man make a difference in your knowing it? You were saying that her knowledge of this topic is dependent on her sex. That is a sexist classification system, by definition. If you base your argument on, "well, it's because you're a girl," you will have to get used to some people pointing out the assumption you're making with that argument, rather than the topic you're actually talking about -- which, in this case, was make-up and wrinkles.

It's not more likely for lesbian relationships... see my comments above. If anything, a lot of lesbian women are trying to get away from the "sexual roles" straitjacket (pun intended). For all lesbians, active/passive roles aren't gender-related, and for many lesbians, such roles are a matter of invented roleplaying akin to, "let's pretend I'm the pizza delivery girl..." or just plain irrelevant. I've had one "first time" and was lucky enough to be the first for three wonderful women. Dom/sub didn't enter the equation for any of those experiences. In all of them, we were experimenting mutually with what felt good. I do know one couple that plays dom/sub sometimes, but they don't always keep the same roles. It's a game. One can have bondage and/or D/S games without one person being dominant... it often just varies by who's in what mood on a given night. Often, couples take turns. I tend to think of lesbian sex as a mutual process, rather than a dom/sub dynamic.

Myth: Lesbians have short hair. I don't see that so much in fanfic, because there's so little of it, but... aha. ahahaa. Not most of the ones I know. Myth: Lesbians are butch or have fixed dom/sub roles. I've never met a bona-fide fem. I've only met one or two honest-to-gosh butches. And I went to a women's college where there was a very out queer community. The last two generations of lesbians have basically chucked gender and sexual role differentiation out the window, as far as I can see. Corollary to a myth posted above: All people who write het porn are het. Um, no. Surprise! Myth: Women squirt gobs of "juice" when they orgasm. In my limited experience of four including me, no. Maybe a little more moisture at that point, but usually they're already wet, and then they're... wet. Myth (mostly in porn movies): Lesbians have long, painted nails. Ow. Nope -- if you ever see a woman with all the fingernails on one hand kept short, there's a good chance she's either lesbian or a guitar player. Myth: Lesbian sex always involves penetration. Actually no. I know someone who doesn't like it. Myth: All women are turned on by having their breasts touched. Actually, no. Again, I know someone who dislikes it, and apparently someone forgot to connect up my nerve endings in that area, 'cause I really can't tell. Myth: All lesbians are young women learning about their sexual identities. Yep, most started out that way, but... gray hair, people. It happens. My relationship lasted 13 years, and... here's a photo of a bona-fide lesbian couple. Are they not ADORABLE? That's one of my professors and her ever-so-cool partner of many years. Also of course there's the amusing convention in porn that women never have periods (apparently), and at any rate that they wouldn't have sex during their periods. I fondly remember a pixie-ish dyke at my college commenting brightly, "That's the best time!" And can I just say "amen" to the "bis are not promiscuous" comments above? Much to the consternation of the person who's been trying to get me to be more than a friend for a year... nope.

Okay! Unless I'm flaking, I don't see a Crossover category in the Final Fantasy archive; there's categories for each of the games by number (early ones grouped together), then a "Misc" section. One other question I keep forgetting to ask. If there's subcategories for yuri, yaoi, het and challenges in an archive, then what goes in the main or front part of the archive that comes up first? I'm always tempted to post my stuff in the front section so it's not as hidden, but that defeats the purpose of the subcategories.

Most of the erotica I've posted is het, which is odd, since I ain't. However, I've written two fairly (in)decent yuri pieces. Lulu Sutra: Lulu/Rikku. Lulu, underwhelmed by Rikku's louse of a boyfriend, offers to teach her what good sex should feel like. This one's got a little plot to set up the situation; the sex is in chapter 2. Keraunophobia: Lulu/Rikku PWP. What happened that week Rikku camped out on the Thunder Plains trying to get over her fear of lightning?

I had that problem when I started writing erotica fic as opposed to genfic -- the pairing I like (see avatar) is strangely uncommon in my fandom, and in fact many people seem to hate it great hate. Mainly, apparently, because both characters are over the age of consent, and we can't have THAT, now can we?! But I digress. My solution was to post my poor measly fic and to create a fansite and a Livejournal blog for it, with my "interests" part of my profiled flagged with every possible permutation of CharacternameXcharactername. I ran into two other fans interested in the pairing, and we started writing stuff, and/or reading and reviewing, and boom. Critical mass achieved. It's harder when you're a reader that doesn't want to write. But try googling. I found that out there on the web, eventually, you can find almost everything... even if it's tucked away in some hard-to-find spot.

What's wrong with it? There's too many boy bits, that's what! I get their clothes off, get them all hot and bothered, and then... flop. I have no idea how to write what comes next. Oh, wait, you mean what's wrong with it. No, the question is what on earth people are doing coming to a fanfiction website and NOT expecting to run into it. D'oh! It's an integral part of fandom. I'm sometimes puzzled why yaoi seems to be so prevalent to the exclusion of het and yuri, but there's certainly nothing wrong with it. I just wish that more women would write yuri. Almost every piece I read seems to have been written by a desperately clueless teenaged male. And to answer the poll question, I read/write het and yuri, don't usually read yaoi unless it's particularly well-written or it focuses on the characters more than the act. I see nothing wrong with gay male sex, I just don't find it a personal turn-on.

I edit as I write, so usually final editing is a pleasure, a chance to read back through and refine. The hard work is the writing itself. Sometimes, however, work IS pleasure!

I post my strictly-smut stories on AFF, but for me it's now a secondary archive. There was an upheaval in AFF in early 2006 which left me a little skittish of the community, and at that time I pulled back from it and moved to LJ and another fanfic archive that allows me to post ALL my stuff, both the smut (which is filtered to trip parental controls) and non-smut.

It's a problem anywhere, because more fanfic writers are here to post and share their work than to read. Conscientious writers ALSO try to read/review, because we know how it feels, but I suspect I'm not the only one who's a writer first and a reader second. It's a particular problem on AFF because it's largely an archive for masturbatory material, and who's gonna write a review when they're doing that? Rate, maybe, but not review. I once thought that any review was a good review, and I still mostly feel that way, since they are rare and precious commodities. However, sometimes I'm a little disappointed when I rush to read an ACTUAL REVIEW from an HONEST TO GOSH READER only to discover it's just, "cool rite more plz". Encouraging, but I wonder if the person who wrote that would say the same thing if I'd written "They kissed and they fucked. The End." I'm still grateful even for those, though. However, I'm getting a little tired of the person who seems to be making the rounds of my personal blogs, websites, and fanfics with the same comment everywhere -- "INTERESTING BUT I DON'T AGREE" whether I'm giving a discussion of the role of Dionysos and Apollo in ancient Greek religion, or posting a transcript of a hidden cutscene, or writing a piece of fanfic. Eh?

Donno how many of us there are, but I have an offering. I've created an FFX Complete Script website, including all NPC dialog and alternate cutscenes for minor characters like Luzzu and Gatta. I've got more lines than the other excellent but not-quite-as-complete script that you've probably found on GameFAQ. I've linked it to screencaps of all the npcs. You can download the whole script, or browse it by chapter; you can show/hide optional dialog with party members, secondary characters like Isaaru and Lucil, and/or the unnamed npcs. Hope it's useful to somebody. Kinda crazy to make another complete script when there was one already flapping around out there, but I wanted to be able to track the various recurring Crusaders and villagers who may not have names, but still have minor backstories and personality quirks you miss when they're all indiscriminately labelled "man" or "woman." Also, I found a few extra hidden cutscenes that Shotgunnova's doesn't have (although I've emailed him the transcripts for O'aka's last scene, so he's added that now).

One of the other reviewers also commented on this -- a crossover story for FFVII and FFVIII posted in the FFX section. I suppose the author was splitting the difference. But it goes better in Final Fantasy Miscellaneous. I'll kill two birds with one stone by noting it here, but in future, where should I have reported it?