Yay, fandom stuff!
I. Memeage.
LJ Interests meme results
Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.
If you want: ask me about an LJ interest of mine, and I'll explain it.
II. Seme/uke roles: my thoughts. (But what are my thoughts on yaoi?) Also, how I classify characters in my various fandoms.
Yaoi fandom is so weird. Ultimately, it shouldn't mean anything much which of two characters someone prefers to see on top in sex, but somehow, people's preferred sexual positions are warped into being the defining factor of their relationship. Someone likes the idea of Sasuke doing Naruto up the butt instead of the other way around? Suddenly Sasuke is big and strong and suave and utterly in control of himself, while Naruto is a delicate blushing girl.
There are some relationships where I think of one as on top and the other on the bottom, but that's not a simple matter of who's putting what in whom; it's more about the complex interplay of their personalities. What they do in bed might sometimes reflect that, but it's not always a perfect mirror.
Some of this might stem from my own sexual preferences. I'm a true switch--it's not being dominated or dominating that gets me off, but the act of domination itself, the power dynamics themselves. Pairings with an element of the power dynamic are especially interesting to me--which helps explain why Sasuke and Yzak are my "fandom bikes" (I'll explain that terminology in another post, I think; to me, there's a difference between Fandom Bikes, Fandom Sluts, and Little Black Dresses), since they insist on charging all their interpersonal relationships with the issue of power.
As much as I disdain the rigidly-defined roles as they often are in yaoi fandom, there are some characters I find to fit the roles fairly well, and in interesting ways. So I'll talk about them now! Note that just because I think of them as "seme" or "uke" doesn't mean I think they'd always be "on top" or "on the bottom." Sometimes people get bored with standard sexual positions, you know. Whatever.
Naruto
Naruto: Seme. Part of this comes from exposure to the fandom. Their idea of uke Naruto is just so utterly alien to how I perceive the series that I've lost my ability to conceive of an uke Naruto at all. But when it comes to other guys, he really is a more dominant type, right down to the animal aspects of his nature. He totally bottoms for girls, though.
Sasuke: Uke. Totally. The pissy variety of uke, of course, because he's so damaged and angry, but still. Whenever he shows himself to be in control, it's in a profoundly unhealthy way--by hurting the people he loves or by suppressing his own emotions and becoming more like Itachi. It's hard not to see that it'd be better for him in the long run to learn to give up control sometimes. As far as healthy relationships go, a person like him ultimately needs to learn to give up control to people he trusts and loves, like his teammates; and as far as unhealthy relationships go, he's a big bright target for the sort of people who like to manipulate and molest.
Bleach
Aizen: So very seme. One of the things that makes Aizen so fascinating to me is that he takes it as a given that he is utterly superior to everyone else, to the point where they are all children and he is their only worthy father. The only person who's ever managed to break free of this and be perceived as another real, adult person is Gin, and even he isn't truly considered an equal. But any more of that and I'll have to get into why I love Aizen/Gin, and it's not exactly a popular pairing around here.
Rukia: Seme--but this is one that I have the most trouble explaining, so I'm not sure how trustworthy my judgment is. But it just seems to me...that whenever Rukia is sanest and most at peace with the world around her is when she is capable of taking charge. There's always an attractively lost quality to her, yes, but somehow she manages to assert herself all the same even if she doesn't precisely know her own place. On top of that, the times when she's submissive are the times when she's most broken--when she's submitting to her own death, when she's submitting to Byakuya (not that I'm saying that Byakuya is eeeevil or anything, just that Rukia has a long way to go to have a healthy sibling relationship with him), when Gin is jerking her around...and it just seems off to imagine her as sexualizing those situations.
Yoruichi: Seme, of course, and this is way simpler than any of the others--it's simply that she's so blissfully in control of her own sexuality, and nobody else seems to quite know how to deal with it. :D
Soi Fong: Uke, the pissy kind! But she would only bottom for Yoruichi, because no one else is worthy. So...Yoruichi is the only person for her, period. But that's no surprise.
Gundam SEED
Kira: Uke--the willing kind. Kira strikes me as unusual for a hero (although admittedly, I wouldn't know, since it's not like I've watched all that much anime, let alone Gundam anime) in that he is almost stereotypically feminine in his submissiveness--to other people, to his own emo, to fate and the world. He doesn't want to be in charge, even in sex. He just wants to make other people happy and enjoy it himself in the meanwhile.
Yzak: Uke, the other kind. :D There's something about the way that Yzak constantly seems to demand that the people around him prove themselves to him. He wants to prove himself awesome, yes, but when he really cares about someone, it seems that ultimately he wants them to prove themselves even better than he is, so that he's not disappointed in them. I find the thought of him doing the same in bed pretty damn hot.
Okay, that's it for now. My next tl;dr fandom rambling will probably be about the difference I see in Fandom Bikes, Fandom Sluts, and Little Black Dresses.
III. Okay, guys. Once I've finished rereading/catching up on Bleach and catching up on D.Gray-man, Naruto, and Fate/stay night, what the hell do I read/watch next?
Poll Next!
LJ Interests meme results
- bondage:
...What? It's totally hot. It's also related to my having a huge interest in power dynamics in sex. They just totally turn me on. - doomed spy love:
It was le Carré who first got me into the concept of spies in love being inherently doomed, and I've sort of clung to it since then. Whether it's a le Carré couple, Adam and Fiona, Maes and Gracia, or Axel and Roxas--being a spy and being in love is a recipe for doom, but there's something thrilling about the fact that they throw themselves into it anyway. - fllay allster:
Fllay is my second-favorite Gundam SEED character, and I'm not afraid to say it. >:O She's one of the most complex and issue-laden characters in the series--the way her motivations all intertwine is fascinating. Plus, daddy complex! I just wish she'd gotten more focus on her redemptive arc towards the end, but I suspect they sort of shoved her to the side as the series went on when the creators realized that people hated her so much. :/ - jiraiya:
Although I don't talk about him as much as I do Kakashi or Team 7, Jiraiya is still my second-favorite Naruto character. He hits my contrast kink--the fact that he's an obnoxious pervert but also a perfectly serious legendary ninja is ♥. And I love how flawed he is--beneath all his sass and suavity, he's a failure, and fandom doesn't acknowledge that enough. He escaped tortuous regrets and angst by not caring, and that's not exactly an admirable trait. But I love him for it. - li komui:
Komui is easily my favorite character in D.Gray-man. He's zany and nuts, but he also takes what he does very seriously, because it is, after all, saving the world. And as I've gone over before, I love contrasts like that.
Also, the fact that he went into the Black Church solely to find Rinali and yet somehow wound up in charge of it is awesome. I heart him so bad. I need to write that fic about the three missing years in which he's searching for Rinali. - new jersey:
What can I say? I love my stupid state.
You're allowed to diss it if you've actually lived there, but if you just drove through it on your way from NYC to Philadelphia or vice versa and want to talk about how icky and smelly it was, you can suck it. - savatage:
Probably my favorite band, although I haven't been listening to them as much lately.
They're sort of metal, I guess, but their music is so intense and dramatic and gorgeous and epic. "Chance" is one of my favorite songs ever. If I knew how to do AMVs, I'd do an Elric brothers one to "This Isn't What We Meant." - sweeney todd:
Favorite musical ever.
What?
Yes, I'm sick. But! But! It's got everything. Murder, sex, cannibalism, rape, pseudo-incest, insanity, vengeance, injustice, and pies. All in one musical.
And it's just so amazingly packed with symbolism. You can delve and delve and not reach the bottom, and all the while you're going deeper and deeper into the darkness of man's heart, because that's what the show is about.
Also, pies! - transmetropolitan:
...you know, for all that I love this series, I don't think I've ever completely finished it. I've read most of it, and evilbeej showed me the last issue (which was awesome), so I at least know how it ends. But I think there are still scattered gaps in my reading. I really should pick the whole damn thing up at some point; I have, I think, the first four or five TPBs, plus some extras.
That said, the series is freaking awesome. It's foul and unrepentant and brutal, and despite its crudeness it's still hilariously funny. And yet mixed in with all the humor and the crack, there are genuinely touching, even heartbreaking moments, as well as sharp social commentary. And despite Spider being a total asshole, it's hard not to root for him. It helps that the Filthy Assistants represent the reader in many ways--they are sane people who nevertheless, like the readers, find themselves falling under the sway of Spider's drive and backing him up. Also, they're hot.
"What's next?"
"Some actual journalism, I think."
"Actual journalism? Is that when you don't commit crimes?"
"Hell, no. It's when we commit really good crimes." - 夜砕:
...haha.
Where do I even begin?
I love this pairing so much. It is so intense and gorgeous and hot.
I have resolved to put it in my interests in as many ways as possible, hence the kanji. Yes, I'm a dork.
Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.
If you want: ask me about an LJ interest of mine, and I'll explain it.
II. Seme/uke roles: my thoughts. (But what are my thoughts on yaoi?) Also, how I classify characters in my various fandoms.
Yaoi fandom is so weird. Ultimately, it shouldn't mean anything much which of two characters someone prefers to see on top in sex, but somehow, people's preferred sexual positions are warped into being the defining factor of their relationship. Someone likes the idea of Sasuke doing Naruto up the butt instead of the other way around? Suddenly Sasuke is big and strong and suave and utterly in control of himself, while Naruto is a delicate blushing girl.
There are some relationships where I think of one as on top and the other on the bottom, but that's not a simple matter of who's putting what in whom; it's more about the complex interplay of their personalities. What they do in bed might sometimes reflect that, but it's not always a perfect mirror.
Some of this might stem from my own sexual preferences. I'm a true switch--it's not being dominated or dominating that gets me off, but the act of domination itself, the power dynamics themselves. Pairings with an element of the power dynamic are especially interesting to me--which helps explain why Sasuke and Yzak are my "fandom bikes" (I'll explain that terminology in another post, I think; to me, there's a difference between Fandom Bikes, Fandom Sluts, and Little Black Dresses), since they insist on charging all their interpersonal relationships with the issue of power.
As much as I disdain the rigidly-defined roles as they often are in yaoi fandom, there are some characters I find to fit the roles fairly well, and in interesting ways. So I'll talk about them now! Note that just because I think of them as "seme" or "uke" doesn't mean I think they'd always be "on top" or "on the bottom." Sometimes people get bored with standard sexual positions, you know. Whatever.
Naruto
Naruto: Seme. Part of this comes from exposure to the fandom. Their idea of uke Naruto is just so utterly alien to how I perceive the series that I've lost my ability to conceive of an uke Naruto at all. But when it comes to other guys, he really is a more dominant type, right down to the animal aspects of his nature. He totally bottoms for girls, though.
Sasuke: Uke. Totally. The pissy variety of uke, of course, because he's so damaged and angry, but still. Whenever he shows himself to be in control, it's in a profoundly unhealthy way--by hurting the people he loves or by suppressing his own emotions and becoming more like Itachi. It's hard not to see that it'd be better for him in the long run to learn to give up control sometimes. As far as healthy relationships go, a person like him ultimately needs to learn to give up control to people he trusts and loves, like his teammates; and as far as unhealthy relationships go, he's a big bright target for the sort of people who like to manipulate and molest.
Bleach
Aizen: So very seme. One of the things that makes Aizen so fascinating to me is that he takes it as a given that he is utterly superior to everyone else, to the point where they are all children and he is their only worthy father. The only person who's ever managed to break free of this and be perceived as another real, adult person is Gin, and even he isn't truly considered an equal. But any more of that and I'll have to get into why I love Aizen/Gin, and it's not exactly a popular pairing around here.
Rukia: Seme--but this is one that I have the most trouble explaining, so I'm not sure how trustworthy my judgment is. But it just seems to me...that whenever Rukia is sanest and most at peace with the world around her is when she is capable of taking charge. There's always an attractively lost quality to her, yes, but somehow she manages to assert herself all the same even if she doesn't precisely know her own place. On top of that, the times when she's submissive are the times when she's most broken--when she's submitting to her own death, when she's submitting to Byakuya (not that I'm saying that Byakuya is eeeevil or anything, just that Rukia has a long way to go to have a healthy sibling relationship with him), when Gin is jerking her around...and it just seems off to imagine her as sexualizing those situations.
Yoruichi: Seme, of course, and this is way simpler than any of the others--it's simply that she's so blissfully in control of her own sexuality, and nobody else seems to quite know how to deal with it. :D
Soi Fong: Uke, the pissy kind! But she would only bottom for Yoruichi, because no one else is worthy. So...Yoruichi is the only person for her, period. But that's no surprise.
Gundam SEED
Kira: Uke--the willing kind. Kira strikes me as unusual for a hero (although admittedly, I wouldn't know, since it's not like I've watched all that much anime, let alone Gundam anime) in that he is almost stereotypically feminine in his submissiveness--to other people, to his own emo, to fate and the world. He doesn't want to be in charge, even in sex. He just wants to make other people happy and enjoy it himself in the meanwhile.
Yzak: Uke, the other kind. :D There's something about the way that Yzak constantly seems to demand that the people around him prove themselves to him. He wants to prove himself awesome, yes, but when he really cares about someone, it seems that ultimately he wants them to prove themselves even better than he is, so that he's not disappointed in them. I find the thought of him doing the same in bed pretty damn hot.
Okay, that's it for now. My next tl;dr fandom rambling will probably be about the difference I see in Fandom Bikes, Fandom Sluts, and Little Black Dresses.
III. Okay, guys. Once I've finished rereading/catching up on Bleach and catching up on D.Gray-man, Naruto, and Fate/stay night, what the hell do I read/watch next?
Poll Next!