gratuitous poll post

[ratcreature]

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]

Comments

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

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.

[ratcreature]

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.