fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3064 ]

[ SECRET POST #3064 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3064 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 044 secrets from Secret Submission Post #438.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With smut it sometimes bothers me when one character in fandom is always top or bottom. Like, even if I enjoy the visual, there's something about it that makes me want to opposite (which of course no one will write).

And characters barely resembling themselves, but that one is kind of obvious.

It really depends on the pairing for me. Thought it is more for dominant/submissive, but very rarely do authors write the character on top submitting and vice versa. And some characters I can read as switches, but some characters I just prefer as being mostly dominant or mostly submissive.

Honestly, I have preferences too and don't see anything wrong with that. People like what they like, they're attracted to what they're attracted to.

In some cases it might make more sense for certain characters to be more dominant or submissive (or enjoy topping or bottoming more), but when there's no clear indication in canon and people write the sex one way (with very little deviation), I often get bored.

(And sometimes I actually prefer the thing that no one writes, so that's def disappointing, but you can't always get what you want.)

That's true. I've just lately been reading pairings involving power dynamics where I can only see the characters in certain roles within them (though I've read some that switch that up in interesting ways).

I do agree, though, that generally I like things switched up in interesting ways. And I've been reading this one fic recently where the dominant partner really likes bottoming and ignores any suggestion by the submissive partner that they switch things up and I've really enjoyed that dynamic.

What fandom, if you don't mind me asking? Just curious!

I've been in a lot of fandoms with interesting power dynamics, but not always in that specific way.

That would be the Tolkien fandom, which is mostly what I've been reading lately. The pairing is Melkor/Sauron, which is why the dynamics are usually very specific except in this fic where Melkor is still in charge but really likes to bottom.

I suspected as much! It's always nice to see Tolkien fandom represented around here.

Same here. For one pairing, I love them as a switch couple and it makes sense for them to be, but for another I prefer one person topping over the other. It just depends on the dynamics of the characters.

I have my preferences, but when pne character is ALWAYS the top (and switching it up isn't even mentioned like, at least once) I just get bored. Really bored. Even if it's the character I like seeing as the top, to have the dynamic be the same completely throughout a fic bores me on any smut so I just skip it after a few scenes.

I wonder if it's a variation thing. It usually defaults to the same position in my experience with about the same feelings, tab A goes into slot B, etc etc.

I wonder if that has to do with it.

Because like I said to philstar, I understand that people have preferences and see no fault in that, but if a fic is going to have say, four sex scenes and there's no switching it up I will probably get bored.

And if I'm looking for smut and see a certain character bottom in every single fic I come across, the next time I see that character bottoming I'm just going to stop reading and give up looking for smut altogether.

I've been in fandoms where I honestly preferred one character bottoming, but eventually I saw so much of it that I reached a point where I never wanted to read it again.

Maybe I'm just weird.

Nah, I get like that too. Even when it's a character I LIKE bottoming, if they're always bottoming in every damn scene and in every fic, I just stop enjoying it. When sex scenes plays out roughly the same in a fic, it feels like there's no experimentation? I think that's the word I'm looking for.

I've read fics that I absolutely love because they're well-characterized and well-paced and yada yada, but when it came down to the smut, it always felt like the same thing after a couple of times.

Totally get you. Sometimes I skip sex scenes entirely because of this; I'll read everything but the smut. (Which sucks because I really love smut, but it's easy to fall into repetition with it.)

But it isn't just smut that I'm like that with, so I guess it's just variety in general? For example, I ADORE Steve/Bucky, but there came a time when all the fic was starting to blend together for me. Even the good stuff didn't stand out enough that I was interested anymore, so I had to break from the fandom.

Maybe it's the fandom jumper in me, but in my experience if you stick with a fandom long enough, things are eventually going to feel samey.

There was that big kerfluffle in Sherlock fandom recently that, as far as I can tell, boiled down to two camps of Sherlock/John shippers who had opposing views on who ehould top and all I could think was "what a stupid thing to argue about!"

I get having a preference (if I have a preference at all, it's that they switch, and also do a lot of stuff where no one really can be said to be "topping," but that's neither here nor there) and I get writing the characters as having preferences, but it's still stupid to feel so strongly about it that it becomes an actual argument.

Wow, I never would've expected that kind of wank in Sherlock fandom. (I know that bottom Sherlock was very prevalent back when I was in fandom, but I never saw people argue over it.)

I do understand preferences (everyone has them), but arguing over something like this (Which is very subjective) is silly. At most I'll stop reading a fic, but I'm not going to harass authors and/or other fans or ask them what they see in this thing.

I remember hearing Teen Wolf and Sterek fandom went through this a while back, but I haven't been in that fandom since season three; I missed it.

Some people are intensely militant about that though. The most hilarious flame I ever received was one where I was called every insult imaginable just for writing a certain pairing as a switch rather than the way this reader wanted. I swear this person must have been literally foaming at the mouth when they ranted at me, they were just so damn angry.

While personally IDGAF about their rant because I love a) switching in general, and b) that particular pairing in the 'incorrect' formation (because I think it's actually much more IC than the alternative), but I can also see why some people just wouldn't want to deal with the shitstorm that would come their way if they dared step outside the boundaries of convention.

What the shit is wrong with people?! Jesus.

It is perfectly okay to not like something, but flaming an author for writing something you don't is stupid and juvenile. Don't read it for sure, but if you get to the point where you leave an angry rant on their fic you care too much and need to take a step back.

Hearing this makes me kind of sad though, because there are plenty of fandoms I got tired of reading smut in (for the aforementioned reasons); I would've loved to see something different in those (Maybe I wouldn't have tired of fic so easily?). Plus... It's just plain rude. Have some manners, jeez.

Ah, that particular flame was entertaining for a whole array of reasons, so I remember it fondly (which I doubt was the intention), but it certainly brought it home to me just how entrenched some people are in the "right" way to smut up a pairing.

Admittedly this was a fandom where virtually 95% of the shippers shipped the preferred way exclusively (height rule, don'tcha know? Must be true.) so I knew it wasn't popular in the first place. But yep, very clearly labelled and tagged, so I have no idea what else they expected.

"I would've loved to see something different in those (Maybe I wouldn't have tired of fic so easily?)"

I think that's definitely possible. One of the reasons I like switching in the first place is that it affords two very different set of dynamics, different ways of interpreting certain canon exchanges and so on. It allows for the same act to go down two completely different routes, which can only be more interesting from a characterization standpoint.

Yeah, I've come across a lot of reviews like that. A few years, I remember reading some long Kakashi/Iruka fic (yeah, I jumped on that bandwagon back in the day...) and this one person got PISSED at the author because there was finally a sex scene like 20,000 words into the fic and Iruka was on top. They called the writer all sorts of names and then blamed them for "tricking" them into reading so much of the fic and wasting their time without "warning" them that Kakashi wouldn't be on top during sex. It was wild

This is me.
If I see a character always put on the bottom, I start wanting them to top. And then I have nothing to read.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3064 ]

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