![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Avoiding work. Well, as much as its possible to avoid work while at work, but eh. You get the point. I'm waiting for an item at Neopets on auction to get down to the point where I need to pay attention to it. (Geez, how I wish they had a more precise count down.) In the meantime, I ramble. You read. This is a good arrangement, no? I may end up incorporating this into a Powerpoint. We'll see.
I was just considering pairings. I started my yaoi/slash/shounen ai/whathaveyou career pretty much somewhere in the Gundam Wing or Dragonball Z fandoms. I was into both at the time, and while I first found it in GW (it's almost impossible not to find there), I got into it in DBZ. (Yes! At one point, Faery was a muscle fan! Die of shock now, I command thee!) This was back in the late nineties/early millennium, so the fandoms have probably evolved a bit. Everything's evolving "a bit", actually. Heck, I remember distrusting DVD players because they were so expensive! Now it's harder to find a new VHS player than a DVD player, and the only reason I still buy VHS is because it comes down to, "three VHS of a series, or one DVD?" Even that may stop soon if I can't get the player to work. So this tells you roughly how old in fandom I am. (That is, old enough to have been around, but not "old school". For this, I am grateful.)
In DBZ, I don't remember the pairings being a big deal. Of course people had preferences, but in general characterization was what made the difference. This is a series with lots of big, burley, aggressive men-type people, most of whom spend about half of their 10-episode fight scenes grunting in close-up. Feminizing a person (usually Vegeta) could be fun and cracky, but the favorite fics were the ones with the most accurate characterization. Where gender-stereotypes appear, they tend towards masculine. B-chan is a prime example of model characterization, both in het and yaoi. She never loses the "not human" element which can be so exotic when used properly, but she never made them so foreign as to be impossible to understand. Similarly, the masculine-feminine in her stories balanced well. The "bottom" was/is seldom actually submissive (such as her Vegeta/Bulma fics: Bulma so obviously tops Vegeta that a lesser author would have her whip out a strap on. Not that I object to girl-tops-guy.) In such a testosterone-soaked series, it was important not to lose the very masculine qualities we all loved so dearly. So regardless of who "topped" in the bedroom, the relationship tended to be give-and-take. If bedroom dominance mattered between the characters, the story usually involved quite a bit of struggle for the role, even if the winner was consistently one and not the other. And the bedroom was not necessarily reflective of everything - each character was a dominate in their own way. Political stories tend to have Vegeta ruling everything with an iron fist (velvet glove mysteriously absent), more emotional stories focus on Goku's touchy-feely human tendencies which so baffle Vegeta. Trunks gets to pound into the board room, and Goten (like his father) cares about everything so hugely that it's hard not to sit back and let him take the reins in emotional matters. Dominate and submissive tend to have the more traditional "relationship" meaning here, rather than focus on who catches and who pitches. Switching is barely thought of as an issue at all. There will almost always be some form of sadomasochism or bloodplay, though mild.
GW? Totally different fandom. For one thing, top and bottom are almost always defined as sexual. Period and a paragraph. Furthermore, it bleeds over into characterization in a huge way. If Heero likes to bottom, expect to see him cry. If Quatre is a top, he will be a bastard, and probably like (American) football and potato chips as well. Frequently, the GW fandom has a problem with the characters being used as models which can be painted however and dropped into a story willy-nilly. In stories where there's a relationship either in the making or in existence, focus tends to be primarily on the couple, rather than an alternative plot. Yes, there are some wonderfully fabulous stories in this fandom, but there's a lot of dross to be waded through first. Furthermore, top/bottom , friends/couple/sexual and straight/bi/gay/name-sexual are huge issues. The entire header-style of this fandom has pretty much evolved around these issues. I won't go into the details of the headers, but I've had the lovely experience of indicating a switch pairing and then being called out because I failed to "show" the switch. (That was moderately unpleasant.) In other words, GW tends towards stereotypes and extremes, with a solid focus on the romantic. Characterization comes from sexual preference (not to be confused with orientation), rather than vice-versa. Gender-stereotyping is usually feminine. There may be ruffled pink aprons. Probably on Quatre or Duo.
These two fandoms could not possibly be more different, which is probably why I notice these things.
In my time, I've lurked/dabbled in DBZ & GW, HP, CCS, StT, FAKE, SM, Ranma, Gravi, IY and many, many other fandoms. Each have their own idiosyncrasies, and I love them all. The bigger the fandom, the more individual. (HP, for example, tends to be divided into Slash, Femslash, Het and Gen, and then subdivides from there into specific ships and eras. Kingdom Hearts can sometimes be considered a Disney/FF Orgy.) Still, the faults of randomized characterization and stiff/stereotyped relationship bothers me, regardless of the series or genre. Kingdom Hearts is where this is starting to bother me the most, ATM.
My favorite pairing is the issue: Sora and Riku. KH is rather like GW, in that sexual-dominate tends to be relationship-dominate, but this isn't as widely polarized. At first glance, the immediate reaction is "ZOMG KAWAII TO ATSUI DA YO", followed immediately by brutal glompage and, possibly, a noogie. Riku has hot, taller, older and more angst going for him. Sora has adorable baby face, shorter, younger and uber-cheerful. As you can probably tell, Sora bottoms in a lot of stories. And this works in a way. Riku dominated their younger best-friends relationship in pretty much every sense. Any story going off of that characterization is going to end up with a Riku-dominated relationship, and dominate personalities tend to dominate in the bedroom. (This isn't always healthy, and it's not always true.) I'm only considering post-canon here, but the pattern does bleed over into AU and alternate-canon.
However.... later in the series, Riku gets humility handed to him very pointedly (along with a bitch slap, a lecture on the nature of friendship and a boot in the ass for good measure), and Sora gets a lesson in taking charge and responsibility. Riku's guilt complex is probably the size of a small third world country, and almost entirely focused on Sora. In other words, the relationship has evened out (in spite of the obvious neuroses), with neither being hugely dominate or submissive. So why do stories with this characterization continue to star Riku as top in both relationship and sexual matters? It's almost impossible to find a story with Sora topping in either position. Sexually, that's just a matter of preference - what feels best. But the emotional give-and-take imbalance is very much odd. This sort of worries me, because the result I'm running across is that they're both being mis-characterized in order to "fit" their pre-defined sexual patterns. In other words, they're slowly going GW, where people picture a character (Sora) as the sexual-bottom and immediately morph personalities to fit that stereotype, which is highly feminine and tends to involve crying. This, in my opinion, is even worse than when everyone suddenly starts flaming inexplicably. Both cause reality and characterization to fly out the window, but gender-stereotyping also affects the plot by making it more predictable, which is very. VERY. ANNOYING.
Sora is a comfortably dominate personality. He's someone who is entirely secure in his own skin (or as secure as a teenager/young adult can be), and has no problem sitting back and letting someone else take charge. Why not let someone else pick the game? He'll have fun playing either way, as long as he's with his friends. At the same time, leadership comes naturally to him, and it's no hardship to initiate things. This becomes more apparent in KHII, when he's more notably calling the shots for Goofy and Donald.
Riku, on the other hand, is a practiced dominate personality. He takes the lead because it somehow reflects on him - his leadership, his strength, his popularity... So he forces the issue. In KHI, Sora sat back and let Riku lead, but then the whole "possessed by darkness" thing went down, and now Riku is questioning himself. His first instinct is to take command, but that's immediately followed by a question mark. Riku's learned that he's not always right, and that "leader" doesn't mean much in the long- or short-run. This is reflected by the way Riku follow Sora's lead in KHII, from the fight scenes to the final cut. Maybe after a few years it'll change, and Riku will recover from the huge blow to his self-confidence, but as of now, he hasn't. If the story is set during this "recovered" stage, he's still not going to be as careless and unheeding of Sora's needs and preferences as he would have been at 14.
With this sort of relationship developing, Sora would be the one to initiate traditional "do you want to date me" motions, with Riku slowly getting the confidence to take more control as they went on and,of course, questioning himself the whole time. (A good example of that is Inspired Curiosity by Hades Phoenix. Very in-character, I think.) Because they started off as best friends, that would take precedence over any romantic relationship, since romance would probably just end up as an extension of their previous friendship. When given interesting plot twists and unique scenarios, this can go a long way towards making worthwhile fics, regardless of who does what in bed.
All of this taken into consideration, this is that pattern I'm seeing in Sora-and-Riki stories:
Relationship starts, usually by Riku kissing/fondling/molesting/confessing to Sora, which can and frequently does lead to Sora (the more inexperienced and sometimes entirely naive) having all traces of virginity removed. Relationship goes on pretty much like that and seems to mostly consist of pinning Sora to various horizontal surfaces and occasionally a vertical one. It is a secret, because gods forbid anyone find out they're together, whether homosexuality is an issue or not. Regardless, both boys will identify as hetero, except for each other. If one is gay, it will be Sora, and he will cry at least once every 2000 words.
In fact, I've passed 2000 words. Feminine Sora! Cry!
Sora: RIKU DOESN'T LIKE MY TINKER BELL SOCKS! WAH! T____T
You see?
Riku is always the one pushing for secrecy - Sora spends most of his time on the verge of bursting out into dopey love songs which substitute "Riku" somewhere in the lyrics. This may be an excuse to see Sora's amazing ability to sing the author's favorite ballad. Sometimes during the wall-slamming and semi-public sex, Riku will screw up. Big time. Kairi may be involved, but by now she's probably already been established as EBIL EBIL I TELL YOU or as a hormone-crazedauthor stand-in fangirl. Sora will bawl, wail and generally mope, all the while accomplishing nothing particularly useful. Long, emo moments about how Riku doesn't love him or how much he loves Riku will be evident. There may be cutting. Something horrible will happen, possibly to Riku but not always. And Riku and Sora will mysteriously get back together without an adequate apology or even a real discussion, swearing eternal love and whatnot. More kisses. Probably sex. KEYBLADES, HEARTLESS OR PRACTICE FIGHTS HAVE NOT APPEARED ANYWHERE IN THIS STORY. The End.
This, clearly, has got to stop. Sora is not a girl. Riku, while he may have a dick, is not a walking one. Sora can get angry without bursting out into 'you don't like meeeeee' tears. Both boys have hormones and are teenagers, ergo Riku is not the only one interested in sex. "I am name-sexual" is not a valid excuse to avoid making them gay or bi, nor to avoid the issues inherent in their sexuality. In other words... QUIT IT WITH THE THE GENDER ROLES ALREADY!
I was just considering pairings. I started my yaoi/slash/shounen ai/whathaveyou career pretty much somewhere in the Gundam Wing or Dragonball Z fandoms. I was into both at the time, and while I first found it in GW (it's almost impossible not to find there), I got into it in DBZ. (Yes! At one point, Faery was a muscle fan! Die of shock now, I command thee!) This was back in the late nineties/early millennium, so the fandoms have probably evolved a bit. Everything's evolving "a bit", actually. Heck, I remember distrusting DVD players because they were so expensive! Now it's harder to find a new VHS player than a DVD player, and the only reason I still buy VHS is because it comes down to, "three VHS of a series, or one DVD?" Even that may stop soon if I can't get the player to work. So this tells you roughly how old in fandom I am. (That is, old enough to have been around, but not "old school". For this, I am grateful.)
In DBZ, I don't remember the pairings being a big deal. Of course people had preferences, but in general characterization was what made the difference. This is a series with lots of big, burley, aggressive men-type people, most of whom spend about half of their 10-episode fight scenes grunting in close-up. Feminizing a person (usually Vegeta) could be fun and cracky, but the favorite fics were the ones with the most accurate characterization. Where gender-stereotypes appear, they tend towards masculine. B-chan is a prime example of model characterization, both in het and yaoi. She never loses the "not human" element which can be so exotic when used properly, but she never made them so foreign as to be impossible to understand. Similarly, the masculine-feminine in her stories balanced well. The "bottom" was/is seldom actually submissive (such as her Vegeta/Bulma fics: Bulma so obviously tops Vegeta that a lesser author would have her whip out a strap on. Not that I object to girl-tops-guy.) In such a testosterone-soaked series, it was important not to lose the very masculine qualities we all loved so dearly. So regardless of who "topped" in the bedroom, the relationship tended to be give-and-take. If bedroom dominance mattered between the characters, the story usually involved quite a bit of struggle for the role, even if the winner was consistently one and not the other. And the bedroom was not necessarily reflective of everything - each character was a dominate in their own way. Political stories tend to have Vegeta ruling everything with an iron fist (velvet glove mysteriously absent), more emotional stories focus on Goku's touchy-feely human tendencies which so baffle Vegeta. Trunks gets to pound into the board room, and Goten (like his father) cares about everything so hugely that it's hard not to sit back and let him take the reins in emotional matters. Dominate and submissive tend to have the more traditional "relationship" meaning here, rather than focus on who catches and who pitches. Switching is barely thought of as an issue at all. There will almost always be some form of sadomasochism or bloodplay, though mild.
GW? Totally different fandom. For one thing, top and bottom are almost always defined as sexual. Period and a paragraph. Furthermore, it bleeds over into characterization in a huge way. If Heero likes to bottom, expect to see him cry. If Quatre is a top, he will be a bastard, and probably like (American) football and potato chips as well. Frequently, the GW fandom has a problem with the characters being used as models which can be painted however and dropped into a story willy-nilly. In stories where there's a relationship either in the making or in existence, focus tends to be primarily on the couple, rather than an alternative plot. Yes, there are some wonderfully fabulous stories in this fandom, but there's a lot of dross to be waded through first. Furthermore, top/bottom , friends/couple/sexual and straight/bi/gay/name-sexual are huge issues. The entire header-style of this fandom has pretty much evolved around these issues. I won't go into the details of the headers, but I've had the lovely experience of indicating a switch pairing and then being called out because I failed to "show" the switch. (That was moderately unpleasant.) In other words, GW tends towards stereotypes and extremes, with a solid focus on the romantic. Characterization comes from sexual preference (not to be confused with orientation), rather than vice-versa. Gender-stereotyping is usually feminine. There may be ruffled pink aprons. Probably on Quatre or Duo.
These two fandoms could not possibly be more different, which is probably why I notice these things.
In my time, I've lurked/dabbled in DBZ & GW, HP, CCS, StT, FAKE, SM, Ranma, Gravi, IY and many, many other fandoms. Each have their own idiosyncrasies, and I love them all. The bigger the fandom, the more individual. (HP, for example, tends to be divided into Slash, Femslash, Het and Gen, and then subdivides from there into specific ships and eras. Kingdom Hearts can sometimes be considered a Disney/FF Orgy.) Still, the faults of randomized characterization and stiff/stereotyped relationship bothers me, regardless of the series or genre. Kingdom Hearts is where this is starting to bother me the most, ATM.
My favorite pairing is the issue: Sora and Riku. KH is rather like GW, in that sexual-dominate tends to be relationship-dominate, but this isn't as widely polarized. At first glance, the immediate reaction is "ZOMG KAWAII TO ATSUI DA YO", followed immediately by brutal glompage and, possibly, a noogie. Riku has hot, taller, older and more angst going for him. Sora has adorable baby face, shorter, younger and uber-cheerful. As you can probably tell, Sora bottoms in a lot of stories. And this works in a way. Riku dominated their younger best-friends relationship in pretty much every sense. Any story going off of that characterization is going to end up with a Riku-dominated relationship, and dominate personalities tend to dominate in the bedroom. (This isn't always healthy, and it's not always true.) I'm only considering post-canon here, but the pattern does bleed over into AU and alternate-canon.
However.... later in the series, Riku gets humility handed to him very pointedly (along with a bitch slap, a lecture on the nature of friendship and a boot in the ass for good measure), and Sora gets a lesson in taking charge and responsibility. Riku's guilt complex is probably the size of a small third world country, and almost entirely focused on Sora. In other words, the relationship has evened out (in spite of the obvious neuroses), with neither being hugely dominate or submissive. So why do stories with this characterization continue to star Riku as top in both relationship and sexual matters? It's almost impossible to find a story with Sora topping in either position. Sexually, that's just a matter of preference - what feels best. But the emotional give-and-take imbalance is very much odd. This sort of worries me, because the result I'm running across is that they're both being mis-characterized in order to "fit" their pre-defined sexual patterns. In other words, they're slowly going GW, where people picture a character (Sora) as the sexual-bottom and immediately morph personalities to fit that stereotype, which is highly feminine and tends to involve crying. This, in my opinion, is even worse than when everyone suddenly starts flaming inexplicably. Both cause reality and characterization to fly out the window, but gender-stereotyping also affects the plot by making it more predictable, which is very. VERY. ANNOYING.
Sora is a comfortably dominate personality. He's someone who is entirely secure in his own skin (or as secure as a teenager/young adult can be), and has no problem sitting back and letting someone else take charge. Why not let someone else pick the game? He'll have fun playing either way, as long as he's with his friends. At the same time, leadership comes naturally to him, and it's no hardship to initiate things. This becomes more apparent in KHII, when he's more notably calling the shots for Goofy and Donald.
Riku, on the other hand, is a practiced dominate personality. He takes the lead because it somehow reflects on him - his leadership, his strength, his popularity... So he forces the issue. In KHI, Sora sat back and let Riku lead, but then the whole "possessed by darkness" thing went down, and now Riku is questioning himself. His first instinct is to take command, but that's immediately followed by a question mark. Riku's learned that he's not always right, and that "leader" doesn't mean much in the long- or short-run. This is reflected by the way Riku follow Sora's lead in KHII, from the fight scenes to the final cut. Maybe after a few years it'll change, and Riku will recover from the huge blow to his self-confidence, but as of now, he hasn't. If the story is set during this "recovered" stage, he's still not going to be as careless and unheeding of Sora's needs and preferences as he would have been at 14.
With this sort of relationship developing, Sora would be the one to initiate traditional "do you want to date me" motions, with Riku slowly getting the confidence to take more control as they went on and,of course, questioning himself the whole time. (A good example of that is Inspired Curiosity by Hades Phoenix. Very in-character, I think.) Because they started off as best friends, that would take precedence over any romantic relationship, since romance would probably just end up as an extension of their previous friendship. When given interesting plot twists and unique scenarios, this can go a long way towards making worthwhile fics, regardless of who does what in bed.
All of this taken into consideration, this is that pattern I'm seeing in Sora-and-Riki stories:
Relationship starts, usually by Riku kissing/fondling/molesting/confessing to Sora, which can and frequently does lead to Sora (the more inexperienced and sometimes entirely naive) having all traces of virginity removed. Relationship goes on pretty much like that and seems to mostly consist of pinning Sora to various horizontal surfaces and occasionally a vertical one. It is a secret, because gods forbid anyone find out they're together, whether homosexuality is an issue or not. Regardless, both boys will identify as hetero, except for each other. If one is gay, it will be Sora, and he will cry at least once every 2000 words.
In fact, I've passed 2000 words. Feminine Sora! Cry!
Sora: RIKU DOESN'T LIKE MY TINKER BELL SOCKS! WAH! T____T
You see?
Riku is always the one pushing for secrecy - Sora spends most of his time on the verge of bursting out into dopey love songs which substitute "Riku" somewhere in the lyrics. This may be an excuse to see Sora's amazing ability to sing the author's favorite ballad. Sometimes during the wall-slamming and semi-public sex, Riku will screw up. Big time. Kairi may be involved, but by now she's probably already been established as EBIL EBIL I TELL YOU or as a hormone-crazed
This, clearly, has got to stop. Sora is not a girl. Riku, while he may have a dick, is not a walking one. Sora can get angry without bursting out into 'you don't like meeeeee' tears. Both boys have hormones and are teenagers, ergo Riku is not the only one interested in sex. "I am name-sexual" is not a valid excuse to avoid making them gay or bi, nor to avoid the issues inherent in their sexuality. In other words... QUIT IT WITH THE THE GENDER ROLES ALREADY!
