Okay, is this annoying or am I just weird?

[effervescible]

What is the deal with (some) yaoi fans listing their pairings as A x B/B x A? I'm aware that the order indicates who's on top, but it is really important enough to justify writing it twice like that? There's a lot more to romance/sex/whatever makes you write a pairing than just who's being schtupped, and the way it's written makes it look like they have multiple personalities or something. Plus it seems too me that by making a big deal out of what is, to me, just an fyi for those who want to know what characters are in the fic, it's being kinda pretentious, and that makes my head explode.

But then, I wouldn't categorize myself as a yaoi fan, so maybe it's just something I'm missing. mistressrenet? uiggu? What say you? Does it really matter?

Comments

[arafel.livejournal.com]

Well, yes - who's the seme and who's the uke is supposed to reflect in personality, and there are height rules and age rules and all that stuff. Some ppl get rabid about A being on top; some ppl get rabid about B being on top; and some ppl just don't give a shit. Since my primary interest is het, and since there's not a whole lot of question who's the pitcher and who's the catcher where m/f pairings are involved (unless a strap-on is involved), I don't pretend to understand these intricacies. However, they're taken quite seriously by yaoi connoisseurs.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Not all of us, believe me. And I'd like to find whoever devised the 'height rule' and shoot him/her. In what universe does that even begin to make sense?

[arafel.livejournal.com]

The universe where people think it's weird for the dominant person to be short, I guess. Since the seme is supposed to dominate the uke and make him cry and make it look like he's being poked with an ice pick instead of having an orgasm, and all the while not change his expression even once, except for the "I know you don't want to enjoy this but I know you're enjoying it anyway and I'm totally loving your conflict" face. *shrugs* I think it's silly too, but then, Zell doesn't get to top anyone in FFVIII.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

. Since the seme is supposed to dominate the uke and make him cry and make it look like he's being poked with an ice pick instead of having an orgasm
Bwah ha ha! Yeah. What you said.

[angstymcgoth.livejournal.com]

I read a fic where Zell topped Siefer of all people, and it was disturbingly dirty XD

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Actually, the A x B/B x A, or AxBxA means you don't care who's on top, or something like that. Like, there are people out there (not me!) actually think if you say, say, VashxWolfwood, that means Vash is gonna be on top. So sometimes people will do the repetition to show they're not those kinds of morons. I generally feel that if people care about such things they're reading the wrong fic, so I don't bother, but I do understand why people do it.

[jaina.livejournal.com]

Ah, so it's an attempt to show that you're NOT being anal--okay, I get that. That makes sense, though I still think fondly of my non-anime fandoms, where nitpicking about pairing order will get you a blank stare and some snickering.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I've actually been in non-anime fandoms that cared about such foolishness, or that just assumed one character or the other was the 'bottom' because they were shorter/less outwardly aggressive/whatever. The whole thing is absurd, IMO...but you probably guessed I felt that way!

[jaina.livejournal.com]

Man, I guess my fandoms had entirely different brands of crazy.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I once read a Sentinel story (described by someone far witter than me as "giving multiple marriages a bad name. Not to mention Sentinel viewers, slashers, internet people and science-fiction fans in general. Not to mention the human race.") where two characters who really wanted to have sex couldn't because they were both bottoms. Uh-huh.

[jaina.livejournal.com]

Dude. There are no words for that. Just no words.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

It may be the worst fanfiction I ever read (I just started it, never finished it...think there are something like twenty parts...oh, the pain). And d00d, that's saying something.

[sarahtheboring.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but AAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA.

that's all.

(Can't sum up the A/B vs. B/A thing better than has already been done. Yes, it matters THAT MUCH to some people who are rigidly hidebound about their roles and are also, more often than not, idiots.)

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I'm just glad I don't have to have sex with them because they must be hella dull.

[angstymcgoth.livejournal.com]

Once we were contemplating Yami pairings over lots of drinks, and madamanda was like, "Tsuzuki/Hisoka? What the hell are they going to do, sit around and fondle each other? What'm I going to do with two bottoms?!" and Jason was like, "Anything you want...."

Oddly enough, I think I might've told you that story before, but it's a good one.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

It is! And you haven't told me before. And I love Jason now. Also, Hisoka still is OMG so not a bottom.

[angstymcgoth.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but we're dealing with people who've just seen the series and we were throwing pairings out there. Madamanda and Jason aren't the biggest fic-readers, but they do like to speculate XD

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Bless their hearts. &heart;

[rhi-silverflame.livejournal.com]

Nah, you're not the only one. I find it kind of stupid, myself -- because if feel the need to announce right of the bat who's absolutely, definitively, on top in your story's depiction of the relationship, like it's set in stone, then you just might need to rethink your priorities a little bit.

[pantswarrior]

The other day, I saw someone who said of their favorite pairing something to the effect of "I really love A x B more than anything else in the world, but if it's B x A, ewwwww, forget it!"

...I just can't understand that. The characters are still the same characters. They are apparently still having sex with each other. What is the big freaking difference?

Although for the record, I do think some characters make better semes or ukes... but if they're both consenting adults (which all the pairings I care for are, if you don't count adult minds in permanently childlike bodies as in my userpic, or a pair of consenting almost-adults), why shouldn't they try it any way the mood strikes them? Top, bottom, side by side, upside down, in mid-air, tied to the bed... okay, stopping now.

(And also for the record, height rule still pisses me off, and for more and more reasons the deeper into fandoms I go. ;))

[jaina.livejournal.com]

I just don't get the height thing at all (now that I'm aware of it). What the HELL does height have to do with sex, assuming you're not trying some seriously kinky positions?

[pantswarrior]

I think it's something like this: A lot of bad yaoi makes one guy a stereotypical man and the other a stereotypical woman, and there's that general expectation that the girl will be shorter than the guy. Therefore, the uke must be shorter than the seme, because the uke is just a girl with different parts anyway. :P

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I've also heard it's an asthetic thing, which also makes not the sense. (And for me Hisoka is the least likely uke, like, ever. At least not without a lot more therapy.)

[pantswarrior]

Uh... yeah. They both look the same, they're just... better looking from different angles? Actually, hair length might have a better say in seme/uke dynamics, logically speaking. ;)

Actually, I'm reminded of my art teacher pointing out that no one's face is completely symmetrical, and so often the profile from one side of a person will look slightly more attractive than the other... so uhm... if the wrong person was on top and you were viewing them from the side, they would both be less attractive! ...Yeah.

(And yes, so right there. Not without therapy, or lots of gentle, patient, sweet lovin' encouragement and support from Tsuzuki. ;) Till then, he's staying on top. He can be in charge of the handcuffs, too.)

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

(Like he'll ever let go of the handcuffs.)

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

Top, bottom, side by side, upside down, in mid-air, tied to the bed... okay, stopping now.

Sounds good. People who don't change positions mid-sex can be so inflexible. Er, that is to say, yay for pr0n!

>^..^

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

And if you're in the Gundam Wing or Saiyuki fandoms, you use numbers, which draws on some sort of mathematical law that says they're the same and...meh.

>^..^

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Evidently, all the Gundam pilots have names that correspond to numbers-- Duo, Treize-- in one language or another. The Saiyuki number code is just to fuck with my poor head because the usual habit of mushing names together doesn't work when you have two characters with "Go" at the beginning and three with some variation of o/ou/u at the end.

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

Does Nii = 2? And what of Doukugakuji? WHAT ABOUT JEEP?!

Everytime I see a fic that says 585 I think it's some sort of deranged psyche threesome. (Though I did technically once read an 858 cuz Hakkai got two orgasms, ne?)

>^..^

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Everytime I see a fic that says 585 I think it's some sort of deranged psyche threesome.
You say that like it's a bad thing. I suppose an 858 could be Gonou/Gojyo/Hakkai?

[angstymcgoth.livejournal.com]

I think that's all another way of writing "pairing reversible" which is what you also see sometimes--like Renet said, it's just the acknowledgement that there is no set top in the relationship and you're dealing with men, dammit, MEN! Also, in some fics that tend to be longer, they can have both W/V and V/W.

[lushdesolation.livejournal.com]

I never knew about any "height rule." The way I understood yaofic, shouen-ai fic summaries was that AxB meant that A was more agressive than B, that A was the Seme (top) and that B was the Uke (bottom)... that, therefore, B was in the woman-like position and that could be construed in some fics that they were the inferior.

(I've heard that there are communities onilne that deal with this stuff in the real sense - basically say that all gay men who are on the bottom are weak, crybaby wimps beyond belief, subhuman creatures. Someone mentioned the idiocy of one of these sites once on GAFF).

Anyway, I've always taken it to denote Seme x Uke relationships, and they aren't always to be taken as Seme = superior to or tougher than Uke, but some people will put in AxB/BxA into a fic summary to denote a "mutual sharing" sort of relationship, and when sex is involve, they switch positions and "share equally."

Over on Trigun pairings, I talked of a het pairing (Rem x Alex, like that. I didn't give thought to my "order"). Sumire-chan, manga-translator and doujinshi dealer extrodinare gave me a good natured tease about that. "So Rem's the seme?" I explained that I gave no thought to my pairing order and said "Hey, maybe she is. Some women are more aggressive than their men." She responded that some pairings ARE written like that in Japan to denote a pairing between an agressive woman and a passive male. ^_^.

I bet no one thought a prude like me would know so much about yaoi, eh?

[jaina.livejournal.com]

Hee. I have been edumacated! And the idea of Rem as seme cracks me up. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I should scan one doujinshi I have where Rem's kind of communing with the plant on the ship and thinking of Alex--I can't read the text, but it seems to indicate that her loving memories of Alex inspired the plant to kind of use him as a father-figure and so Vash and Knives look like him. Awwww.

[lushdesolation.livejournal.com]

Scan that! I wanna see! I wanna see! (Always interested in doujinshi, fanart, or anything that features Rem).

[jaina.livejournal.com]

I'll have to drag it out when I go back to school. The book is Tri-Girls if you're ever looking for it on ebay.