*facepalm* I actually meant the seme was listed first, not the uke, sorry. I think in some fandoms that holds true when using Western notation X/Y, but in most it doesn't.
It's true, the doujinshi I've read are all very clear about the seme/uke distinction...in my preferred pairing it's actually especially fascinating because Western fandom, when it has any recognizable version of seme/uke, fairly consistently has the two characters exactly the reverse of Japanese fans of the same pairing. Show a Western fan a Japanese SupermanxBatman doujinshi and they'll boggle with horror at uke!Batman. I've thought a long time about why that happened, and I think some of it is the Japanese roles are usually assigned relative to age and physical power, in which Superman beats out Batman, but in the West the more "feminized" partner is usually a personality issue, with Batman a lot more dominant and controlling. But yeah, fanfics seem in general a lot more careful to keep dynamics outside of the bedroom more equal...and Western fans are a lot more likely to kick and scream early and loud if they see one of the characters regularly assigned the "female role" (although this depends a lot on the pairing, I guess...Batman/Robin I've never seen Robin played as seme that I know of).
I'm kind of shocked at the HarryxSnape dynamics! An older, larger man and his social superior? There must be something very interesting overriding the defaults there...
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2010-02-22 01:19 pm (UTC)It's true, the doujinshi I've read are all very clear about the seme/uke distinction...in my preferred pairing it's actually especially fascinating because Western fandom, when it has any recognizable version of seme/uke, fairly consistently has the two characters exactly the reverse of Japanese fans of the same pairing. Show a Western fan a Japanese SupermanxBatman doujinshi and they'll boggle with horror at uke!Batman. I've thought a long time about why that happened, and I think some of it is the Japanese roles are usually assigned relative to age and physical power, in which Superman beats out Batman, but in the West the more "feminized" partner is usually a personality issue, with Batman a lot more dominant and controlling. But yeah, fanfics seem in general a lot more careful to keep dynamics outside of the bedroom more equal...and Western fans are a lot more likely to kick and scream early and loud if they see one of the characters regularly assigned the "female role" (although this depends a lot on the pairing, I guess...Batman/Robin I've never seen Robin played as seme that I know of).
I'm kind of shocked at the HarryxSnape dynamics! An older, larger man and his social superior? There must be something very interesting overriding the defaults there...