ratcreature | gratuitous poll post

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gratuitous poll post

I rather like D/s stories, obviously not all kinds, for example characters doing the responsible "safe, sane, consensual" thing works less well for me than stories which are a fantasy directly (like slave!fic), rather than a fantasy once removed, but I've been wondering how much characterization (as I see it in the source) matters to me in the context of this kink.

The thing is, at first I was quite sure that how I perceive characterization doesn't have a lot of impact on whether I can get into a D/s story, for example in any pairing I like my preferences for who ought to be submissive and who dominant tend to be fixed, and I figured that that was a result of who my favorite character is, rather than any actual extrapolation I was attempting from the character's personality.

I simply have a preference for my favorite character to be submissive. That is true for me in TS with Jim Ellison, in XF with Mulder, in DS with Fraser, in SW with Obi-Wan, and mostly true with Sheppard in SGA (though I'm a bit more flexible there)... however it didn't hold up in HP. My favorite character is definitely Harry, but while I do read stories with him as submissive sometimes (that is, I'm not actively turned off by those, like I am in some of my other fandoms if a D/s story for my favorite pairings doesn't match my preference), I prefer Harry to be dominant by a vast margin. And I'm not really sure why that is, it might be because submissive!Harry kind of collides with my other kink for powerful!Harry, but then again I actually want my favorite characters to remain powerful and competent, even when I like them to be submissive.

I mean, when a story works for my kinks I'm pretty easy-going wrt characterization, but one thing that will cause me to stop reading even then is when a confident and competent hero character I like is turned into a snivelling, insecure idiot or saddled with neurosis and issues that are just completely not there in canon (it's not as if they don't usually have enough problems without adding random eating disorders and the like).

Anyway, the inexplicable glitch with HP in my personal pattern aside, I still think that my preference for whom I like as submissive in a D/s story is kink for me first, not characterization, though obviously I like stories much better if they get the character to fit with my kink while staying in character or at least arriving at the OOC place starting from canon characterization in a believable progression, rather than starting OOC. And I am curious about other people, so I made a poll:

[Poll #805849]

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I voted for #1, although I think my real answer would be a mix of 1-3. Still, I have to go more strongly for #1, because there are definitely stories out there that I think are hot, but no matter how well-written they are, the best author in the world can't really make me believe 100% that Rodney McKay would be a very good dom. *G* Or, like, John/Ronon where Ronon is the top. I *guess* a good author could make me believe it, and I would definitely enjoy the story because I totally love sub!John, but that's not how I see the canonical "vibes" of their relationship.

It's kinda sad that I love sub!John stories so much, but I don't really buy either Rodney or Ronon as a dom (well, not for John, anyway.) Which pretty much leaves me with Caldwell, I guess. Or Teyla. ;)

Maybe John could have a fling with visiting SG-1 members? I think Vala with sub!John would work really well for me personally.

Eee hee hee hee-- I actually have about 90% of that story written, except it's an AU of Prometheus Unbound, so Vala is still a Space Pirate and not a valued guest when she arrives on Atlantis. So she gets captured and thrown in the brig, but then escapes of course, and there are sexy adventures and John tied to a chair and getting beaten up, while Vala tries to use her wiles on Rodney. *g*

Yay!

I can't wait to read this!!! :)

You know, thinking some more about how one might get to have sub!John in a story, it occurred to me that it could work in combination with another one of my favorite SGA kinks, John/Atlantis. I mean, with sentient!Atlantis he could be connected to an alien consciousness (an AI and/or some conveniently stashed Ancient-ex-machina) 24/7, and I'm sure in the right hands that could be played out as D/s kink and work.

I voted 3.

I prefer the "safe, consensual" stuff myself. :) One thing I do like is if a character that is usually more "dominant" in RL (eg, has a higher military rank) becomes the sub, and vice versa, as that sort of makes the relationship more "equal" (if that makes sense).

While I can still find sex scenes with D/s *play* the characters engage in hot as a sex scene, it only truly pushes my own D/s kink if the power scenario is real for the characters and not a fantasy. It's not about sex scenes, for example my D/s kink can be pushed by stories that are completely gen and the characters don't have sex at all or are even attracted to one another, as long as the power dynamic between them pushes my buttons. (Though sex is a plus *g*)

And I find the impulse to use a D/s dynamic to make characters more equal and to balance out other areas in their relationship surprising, that never occurred to me, because my kink buttons are pushed more effectively the more unequal the power in the relationship is distributed (hence my love for slave!fic).

I voted #3, but there are some cases where I really can't see them in any other role. In HP, for example, I cannot see Sirius as anything other than subby. I am sure I could read a fic and believe it if the author was really good, but for my own writing, whether it's with James or Remus, he is always the sub, just from the way I read the dynamic with them. That's the only one I can think of. But for anything else, I have no presets. It would still have to jibe with how I see them in canon, though, and not be like totally OOC.

I wouldn't call slavefic D/s, though. To me, D/s or anything labelled BDSM implies RL type BDSM, not scenarios where there is no choice in the matter.

Well, I use D/s as a label for all of the genre with a broader power kink that pushes those buttons for me, while the BDSM label is a sub-genre for stories in which the characters play.

I mean sure, slave!fic also works as a separate label, but there's plenty of stories that push my D/s buttons where no character is a slave nor do the characters engage in sexual play. Like, take Sentinel stories which posit a sentinel-guide bond in which "naturally" the guide had power and control over the sentinel. There doesn't even need to sex in the story to push my buttons, and it's certainly not consensual or anything like a RL BDSM relationship since there's no choice, but neither is anyone enslaved. It's just easiest for me to call any story that panders to that kind "D/s". What would you call those stories to make them easy to find in archives and such? AFAIK there is no other label for them, if you limited "D/s" to only consensual sexual play.

I don't know what to call them. I know fics where Voldemort and the DEs torture Harry are quite commonly called BDSM, but I don't really like that, either. It seems to be confusing the issue.

That I find a bit odd, since there is an established "torture" genre/label in fandom, e.g. even way back there was the Mulder Torture Archive and the like, and for me torture is a different kink to power issues, though sometimes related. But in general I find it useful to label stories according to how they work for the reader, and on that level it's not confusing at all to call stories that are not play for the characters D/s as well, and I can see how it is the same for people who are turned on by stories involving physical pain, like whippings or whatever (which isn't my thing), so on that level it makes sense to call them "BDSM" especially if that is the only label in an archive for example. I mean, for people only into safe and consensual stuff it's usually it's quite easy to guess from a summary whether it's just play or not.

I voted 3 because most characters I can be convinced to see in either light, but some characters or pairings have to have a certain orientation (I could believe Spike in either role, but Spike/Angel with Spike dom is beyond credibility).

I too don't much care for D/s or BDSM of the real life type in fic because it would be generally anachronistic or out of character for my favourite fic fandoms. I like it when it's not out of place.

but Spike/Angel with Spike dom is beyond credibility

There's people writing Spike/Angel with Spike as dom?!? *is vaguely incredulous*

A purely hypothetical scenario, I assure you.

[Here from

metafandom. [wave]]

I said "something else entirely" because my d/s preferences don't quite fit any of the other answers. :P Most of the time I'm a shallow person who goes by the age and body type thing -- the smaller/weaker guy or the younger guy is the sub, and if the smaller one is significantly older then that just messes everything up in my brain. [laugh/flail] (Yes, I know that in real life physical size and strength have nothing to do with a power exchange, but this is just how I'm wired to enjoy things.)

However, that said, a good writer can make me buy just about anything, in all areas of fanfic and not just BDSM. I know someone who plays Adam Baldwin (the actor who plays Jayne in Firefly and Serenity) over in Citadel and she plays this six-foot-four stack of rippling muscle as a switch, which means about half the time he's taking the bottom and/or submissive role. Usually I wouldn't be interested but this person is a great writer and I love reading her Adam. She makes it work for me and I have no problem seeing Adam dominated by someone significantly smaller and weaker. And in the same game, someone else plays Elijah Wood as a dominant. o_O That's all kinds of weird, and a less skilled writer wouldn't be able to pull it off IMO, but Jess rocks and she makes it work. He's very Elijah, but when he's in dom mode he's strong and... dominating, and without abandoning any essential part of his character. It doesn't feel like the dom part of him is stuck on with duct tape; it works smoothly and it's hot and I love reading it, despite how it goes against my usual preference.

I guess my answer is that I DO have a clear preference for the character's role, but I'm fine as long as the writer makes me believe it. :)

Angie

Yeah, the "really good writer" exception makes me see and read a lot never thought I would consider, but that's not really how my actual preferences work or particular to my D/s kink, it's more a case of fiction working for me despite my preferences. I mean, I have read stories making me believe all kinds of things about characters for the duration of the story, that I would have never thought I could buy. For example despite liking D/s I have a domestic discipline squick about a mile wide, especially when it's played non-sexual, yet I have read stories making me not only like it, but buy it for the characters.

Exactly. I like good writing and that'll trump just about anything. :) I don't really have any squicks, but there are some things that don't generally do anything for me, you know? But if it's sufficiently well-written, all bets are off.

Angie

I vary from fandom to fandom, and I don't know that I really have a good explanation for it; but there are just particular people that I do not like to see submissive. I particularly don't like submissive women, which may be because I'm female and I relate too much to female characters.

Some of the fandoms I read D/s and slavefics in...

Harry Potter - I can't stand sub!Harry. But I *love* sub!Snape. I'm not entirely sure why, except that I don't think being submissive is healthy for Harry after an abusive childhood.

X-Files - I can read sub!Mulder, but I *love* the role reversal of sub!Skinner.

Stargate SG-1 - I like sub!Daniel, unless it's Sam/Jack in which case I'm all for sub!Jack.

SG Atlantis - sub!Rodney, and usually dom!John unless Elizabeth's involved (so, similar to SG-1 there)

And many more that I can't be bothered going into, but basically I think it's all a mix of reasons: the characters' personalities, how I relate to them, their gender, age & positions, etc etc. You give me any two characters in a fandom I'm familiar with and I'll probably pretty much instantly tell you who I want to be the sub & who the dom - probably without having a clue why I'm saying that.

(Feel free to try that out, lol).

...oh, I think I'll go post a link to this discussion on

slavefics. It's interesting.

I rarely read het D/s and then almost never with the woman as sub. In part I think it's because women being submissive to men hits a whole lot of squick buttons to me, unless it is handled very well, or is just so far into a certain kind of porn on one level that strangely enough I don't care about aspects that would otherwise squick me, but that usually doesn't work with fanfic as I see the as characters as the people I'm invested in, even if the story is somewhat OOC. The other reason is that like I said I prefer my favorite characters to be submissive, and those are always male (for reasons not really relevant here, but which generally involve a lot of flailing, rambling meta, as always when I try to make sense of my fictional preferences).

I think I generally prefer my favourite characters to be dominant. Not absolutely always, though.

As for women... I love femdom, although I tend to read slash just because there isn't much of it. But I don't like submissive women, and I think it's partly because I relate to women more than men (and I'm not at all submissive), and partly because of everything I know about RL domestic violence and the rest of it - women are usually the victims, so non-voluntary submission (e.g. slavefics) are too 'real', and voluntary I just don't understand.

I never paid much attention to het D/s so I don't know about rare, but IIRC I've noticed a decent amount of het D/s way back when I was into XF in 1998? or so, when Mulder/Scully with Scully as a dom didn't seem that uncommon.

It's more common in some fandoms than others. Buffy naturally has a lot of it, as I believe does Xena. It's not really common in my favourite fandoms though (Harry Potter, CSI and Stargate).

I voted for number 1. When I'm in a fandom, I have a clear idea if a) there is a BDSM vibe going on at all and b) which characters are subby or toppy. This can change during the course of the fandom, as we see episodes of the show that change our perception. Mulder for example started out as incredibly subby but grew quite toppy by the end of the show. Skinner did the reverse. Also, I always found that Skinner, while a very toppy character on the show in the early days, did have a little bit of subbiness in him that was delicious to play with every now and again.

In SGA I find Rodney to be the subbiest character on TV since early!Mulder. He exudes subbiness to me, so I'll admit I find toppy!Rodney quite hard to believe in unless it's very well done. It's not my preference.

My favourite character in XF was Skinner and I more often wrote him dominant and my favourite character in SGA is Rodney and I usually write him submissive so I don't think the notion of "favourite character" has any influence over what I write or want to read. That's just how I *see* them based on the show and the vibe they give off. Others may see something different of course!

I don't usually get any such vibes from the sources at all, but then I rarely see "slashy vibes" either. While I can spot relationship "subtext" when I try, i.e. recognize scenes slasher will find squee-worthy and such, for me to really see anything relationship related it needs to be fairly explicit. And that's also true for D/s, like say, Kenneth Irons/Ian Nottingham in Witchblade would be an example.

One of the things that makes a character sexy for me is perceiving ze as switchy, so I voted for "I'll believe anything if you make the case."

BTW there's a Firefly top!Simon comm and ficathon, including lots of Simon/Jayne:

talkcrazy.

Unfortunately while I liked the show, I'm not very interested in Firefly fanfic.

(here via metafandom)

A mixture of 1-3? Basically, it has to make sense to me in some way.

Wow, this is an interesting discussion. I never thought other people had preferences for who is submissive and who is dominant in d/s stories.

Then again, perhaps this should have been obvious considering: in X-files - Krycek or Mulder is always submissive while Walter is almost never submissive; Star Wars - Obi-Wan is usually the bottom; Sentinel - it's the guide who submits to the sentinel. It seems many of the authors for these fandom tend to favor one character over another for the submissive position.

For me, which character gets the submissive role and which gets the dominant role depends on a few factors. First, I dislike stories where women is the submissive. (It reminds too much of the old days when women meekly obeyed men.) Second, if the story has a clear distinction of good and evil characters, I dislike stories where the good guy submits to the bad guy. (Good doesn't always triumphs over evil in real life but I'd like it to my fanatasies) Third, I don't read stories where humans become enslaved to aliens, vampires, and demons. (That's just yucky)

After those criterias, it depends on who had the submissive role and who had the dominant role when I read a fanfiction story for the first time in the genre. For example, in my first X-file story, Walter was a strong alpha male while Krycek was broken from his encounter with the Consortium. Ever since then, I can't read stories where Walter is a bottom. I think this is because the first story makes an impression upon me about the characters and their strengths.

I don't pay any attention to how the character is portrayed in canon.

In TS I never got why so many extrapolated submissiveness from the guide fanon, as to me it always seemed more logical that the one guiding the sentinel would be in charge of said sentinel. Thankfully there was a sizable minority in TS writing stories with sub!Jim, so I was never lacking stories catering to my preference in my beloved first online fandom.

And there's apparently no accounting for taste as I tend to find humans enslaved by aliens and demons hot, especially if those are non-human and the human is even more miserable while enslaved.

I think it's because Blair is younger than Jim. Younger characters tend to be submissives.

For me, which character gets the submissive role and which gets the dominant role depends on a few factors. First, I dislike stories where women is the submissive. (It reminds too much of the old days when women meekly obeyed men.) Second, if the story has a clear distinction of good and evil characters, I dislike stories where the good guy submits to the bad guy. (Good doesn't always triumphs over evil in real life but I'd like it to my fanatasies) Third, I don't read stories where humans become enslaved to aliens, vampires, and demons. (That's just yucky)

I think you've summed up most of my preferences there. And I agree on the 'first one I read' thing - I've never seen The Sentinel, but the first fanfic I read for it was sub!Blair so that's what I like.

For me it absolutely depends on the character. I can't see Rodney as a dom at all. He doesn't have the self-control and stability I think is needed for that. Actually I can't see him as a sub either due to his control issues, but I can see him as that easier than as a dom. John and Ronon I can both see as a switches, but in that pairing John would always be the dom. Scully I can't see as anything but a dom, and while I can see Mulder as a dom, I see him as preferring to sub.

I don't really read anything other then slave,BDSM,Servant,D/s fics. I prefer Slavefics by a large margin.
I didn't know what to answer in the poll as it's a mixture of all those things really.
In HP I like the darker characters as dominants. Snape domianting Harry is my favourite by far. With Lucius as a close 2nd.
In LOTR Aragorn dominating any male characters.
In BTVS Angel dominating Spike or Spike dominating Xander or Giles dominating all or any of the above.
But I'll read any dark fics and I'm not easily squicked accept prehaps by limb amputation. Other than that I don't really mind anything else.

I guess my only rule I that I don't like good characters as dominants, although I don't mind if the bad guys are unwilling Masters.
There a few acceptions though but not many.

Sorry this seems to have turned into an essay. Lol!!

I guess my only rule I that I don't like good characters as dominants,

How does that work with your preference for Aragorn as dominant? He is a rather archetypal good guy? Or is that one of your exceptions? (Though I have to admit that my mind kind of boggles at the idea of LOTR D/s, as that is one of my fandoms where I stick rather closely to the canon pairings, i.e. I see Aragorn epically in love with Arwen... which doesn't lend itself to kinky scenarios *G*) Also Giles is a good guy too, even considering stuff from the "Ripper" days of his misspent youth.

Okay I guess I should have made that one clearer.
Bad guys as Dominants is a HP only rule.
I'm not so picky in other fandoms, good or bad guys; it don't matter so much as long as the charcters feel right in their roles.
I love LOTR canon and Young Estel growing up in Rivendell fics have a special place in my heart but as for Arwen... I only read slash.
I'm afraid D/s in LOTR makes me melt!!
And with Fandoms, other then HP where it's pretty much shown in the canon that the line between good and bad are blurred, especially with Snape, Good guys usually have a dark side in my mind, Fanfiction just helps them discover it, even if their still fundamentally good!!
It also goes with my love of recovery fics!!

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