Who comes first?

[flambeau]

Yay, lame sex joke! I meant to post about this back when I read this thread in the speak-up-anonymously-about-fandom thread in nostalgia_lj's lj, but then I forgot until a comment from hampden today reminded me

Comments

[callmesandy]

Dude, that's weird - the rant, not you. :)

Seriously? I list pairings with the POV character first. Remus/Sirius, when I list my stories, just means Remus is the POV of the story. Sirius/Remus would be where Sirius was. Who gets listed first for me is just who 'tells' the story and nothing to do with sex.

And now i'm all, people list the 'dominant party' first? WTF? What if there's no sex? What if the sex happens offscene, as it were? I'm SO CONFUSED! Also, much apologies to anyone reading my stories thinking I categorized them that way!

[flambeau]

I list pairings with the POV character first

Okay, that is a whole new and interesting concept that had never occurred to me, either. :) And I agree with your questions about what to do if there's no sex. (And, dominant? Whether there's penetration or not, that doesn't necessarily apply, either.) Although of course now that you've said how you think, I also have to ask you how you list it when you do alternating POVs in a story, or when it's told from the POV of someone who isn't part of the pairing. (Or am I the only one who ends up writing stories like that? *g*)

[callmesandy]

When there's alternating POV, I generally go with whomever has the most. It actually only has come up once or twice. And when viewed from someone else's perspective, I generally throw up my hands and go with whatever I type first. Though I do think about it. :)

[callmesandy]

You know, with first and last names? I think I go by how they are referred to in the books/movies/shows. If I ever wrote Snape, I would use Snape not Severus, if I ever wrote Homicide, I would use Munch and not whatever Munch's first name is since I have no memory of it at ALL. like that! :)

[cmshaw]

(Is it Hape if Harry's on top?)

i had a comment i was going to make, but now i've been distracted giggling.

...oh, right! so, yes, i have internalized the trek rank thing, but i found in due south -- see, the thing is that due south is really my first free-for-all pairing fandom, instead of the sort of pairing segregation where you had the mulder/krycek people over here and the mulder/skinner people over there and pairing names were an important part of intrafandom identity -- i found that i was writing the pairing as pov-character(s)/other-character(s). i don't have many stories which switch pov, so that works pretty well for me. i suppose it's a variant on the dom/sub theme.

[flambeau]

Another POV person! I'm starting to find this very interesting, because that's a choice-of-order that makes more sense to me than most, but it's never actually occurred to me that people do that, either. *g*

pairing names were an important part of intrafandom identity

Oh, yeah. That. They really were, weren't they?

[cmshaw]

Another POV person!

i was surprised to find more people did that, honestly. in general the otp-ists seem to settle into a pairing name and spread it around -- pov-based naming was a conscious attempt to break out of that, for me.

Oh, yeah. That. They really were, weren't they?

it seems so long ago! (*peeks into her fullmetal alchemist folder with no two stories the same pairing or even gender mix*)

[flambeau]

no two stories the same pairing or even gender mix

How many stories do you have? Or to put it another way, how many genders does the fandom have? :) (Maybe I should check out FMA. It sounds intriguing.)

[northernveil]

I tend to put it with the one I think is dominant first. Of course, that opinion changes from situation to situation.

[flambeau]

I knew there had to be someone. :) Emotionally dominant? Physically, if that applies? And does it have anything to do with POV?

[northernveil]

Emotionally, or... the one I feel has the most control over the situation. Sometimes that applies physically, and sometimes it doesn't. And, as far as I know from thinking about it, it doesn't have to do with pov.

[trixiesfic]

Wow. That's... bizarre. I had no idea people had any kind of ruls of how they put pairing names. I've never even thought about it when I did it. I've generally just gone with whatever seemed the most prevalent in the fandom, and now that I think about it, they seem to be what I would consider the main character in the source text. Thus... Duncan/Methos, Fraser/RayK, Jim/Blair. It's never had anything to do with what's in my actual story.

As for popslash, well it's a whole different world because of the smushed pairing names, but when I do use the slash, I tend to use it in a way that corresponds to the smushy name, ie Trickyfish becomes Chris/Lance.

[flambeau]

I think people like to have rules about things. *g* I hadn't even thought about how closely I'd internalized the Trek thing until I found myself speculating on who might be older of Mitsuru and Shinobu just so I'd get the listing right...

Smushed pairing names seem mostly to be based on pronounceability (that word does not look right at all, does it), as far as I can tell, which seems as reasonable as any other method. I guess there could be a bit of confusion if people interpret Timbertrick to mean that Justin is somehow the dominant half of the pairing. *quiet snicker*

[fleurrochard]

I guess there could be a bit of confusion if people interpret Timbertrick to mean that Justin is somehow the dominant half of the pairing. *quiet snicker*

LOL! Sometimes I have the impression though as if that's the thing with Trickyfish - Top!Lance is much too rare a thing. *sighs*

[flambeau]

He is? I think this goes to show that I don't read a lot of Trickyfish, because I had no idea it skewed like that. :)

[elynross]

I tend to list by main character/sidekick order, ie, Duncan/Methos. *g* I find that often, Methos-primary fans use Methos/Duncan. I think Mulder/Skinner is the same way, going neither by rank nor age. Jim/Blair, ditto, although less obviously sidekicky -- but it is The Sentinel. Also Harry/Snape.

I don't do smushes. *g*

[flambeau]

That theory really does explain Mulder/Skinner. :) But then, of course, you get the ensemble shows...

[elynross]

And see, I never even really thought about ranking them by rank -- to me it was always Kirk/Spock because 1) that's the way it was *g*; 2) Kirk/Spock is more like the hero/sidekick pattern; 3) I'm a Kirk girl...

So quite possibly, for me, it's "favorite character/not as favorite character," which just almost always maps onto "hero/sidekick."