Top/bottom Sexual Dynamics and My Preferences

[lauren3210]

I’ve been thinking about writing a post about this for quite a while, mainly because every time I sign myself up to a gift fic fest such as hd_erised, I am never entirely sure what I want to say when it comes to my preferences. I mean, if anyone were to ask me which I prefer, I would say Top!Harry/bottom!Draco, however, some of my favourite H/D fics ever

Comments

[gracerene]

Interesting! I totally had this "discussion" with myself a few years ago, when I was trying to figure out if I had a pattern to my preferences. Because I read widely in multiple fandom, and while I enjoy switching a bunch, I also almost always have a preference for who tops, sort of a push-comes-to-shove, what would I prefer to read. For me, I've realized that almost exclusively my preference tends to line up with the more morally ambiguous/evil of the pairing being the one fucking the good one. In some cases, it's pretty obvious, like with Draco/Harry and Loki/Thor, and in some cases it's a lot subtler and maybe influenced more by how I view the characters, like with Spock/Kirk (While definitely not evil at all, Spock is colder and more logical) and Adam/Ronan (Again, nobody's evil, but even though Ronan's more abrasive, it's totally hiding a cuddly heart, and Adam is more ambitious etc).

[oceaxe]

OOooooh, interesting! That would explain my pref for Draco topping Harry, Eames topping Arthur and Bane topping Blake. I must meditate further on this!

[gracerene]

Haha, same! When I finally figured out what it was that linked all my preferences together, it was just like a lightbulb going off! It all made so much sense! :D

[lauren3210]

sort of a push-comes-to-shove, what would I prefer to read. -- yes, this exactly. I will absolutely read both, and you're never going to find me back-clicking due to who's fucking who, but yes, when push comes to shove, which is my fave, kind of thing.

And your preferences are super interesting, with the morality scale! And funny you bring up Loki/Thor, because they are a perfect example of my preferences - Thor being pretty much the embodiment of physical strength, while Loki's strength comes from his 'silver tongue', so obviously I prefer the opposite to you. (Although the hottest Thoki fic I ever read was a bottom!Thor, which I think you recced btw, so again, it doesn't always follow!)

[capitu]

LOL I love that you're thinking about this stuff. I won't even say you should be writing. :D

I had never tried to rationalise why I like one way better than the other, but something you said sort of ran true with me:

I prefer the mouthy guy in the relationship to be the bottom.

Is that why I had my bottom!Draco preference? I'm not sure, but I do like that sort of dynamic VERY much. :D

I obviously love reading both b!H and b!D, but I was just telling Grace how I've been missing more bottom!Draco this year, because with the absence of smooch fest, it kind of feels top!Draco has dominated my reading time - not a bad thing, just, yeah, as preferences go, what can I say, I have a spot for bottom!Draco all right. ;)

[lauren3210]

(I absolutely opened up my erised doc... and then logged onto GR to read some reviews. I am terrible, please feel free to throw things at me...)

I have been thinking about this forever, because my H/D preferences really bug me sometimes because I can't give a definitive answer, so I was trying to work out why. I do very much love a sarcastic Draco turning non-verbal as he's getting fucked into the mattress though...

And yeah, I feel you on the absence of smoochfest - I think because it's based on romance, maybe those stories tend to make Draco a bit softer around the edges than in other tropes, which is why we get more bottom!Draco there? I don't know, I'll have to think about it... after I've finished writing, obviously! :D

[capitu]

You know, I hadn't really noticed that smooch has more bottom!Draco at all. I wasn't referring to that, but more in the sense that, since smoochfest is not a fest devoted to one way or the other, there are equal chances to read any, and even if one dynamic gets more written than the other, it's not focused on that, you know? Whereas in a fest like DTH, well! LOL it goes without saying. :D

[lauren3210]

Ahh right, yes, DTH does tend to flood the timeline with top!Draco, which can make it seem like there's an imbalance. I'm sure one of snowgall's statistic posts said once that smoochfest tends to bring out more bottom!Draco fics though. I could be completely wrong about that however!

[oceaxe]

I loved this post. I think about this stuff all the time. And I share your preferences/attraction to mouthy, brainy dudes being the "bottom" (or physically submissive no matter the actual penetrative act position) and the muscly/more grounded dude being the "top" (or sexually aggressive) - with the exception of H/D.

I used to prefer Draco to be the more passive partner but now I vastly prefer him to be the more aggressive, active partner. In my case, it's definitely because I identify with Draco and have lately been more attuned to my own sexually dominant orientation. But I also identify more with Arthur than Eames, and more with John Blake than Bane, so why would I continue to see those characters as being sexually more passive? I dunno.

I'm just inarticulately echoing what you've said here because it resonated with me, I'm not sure I have much to add, haha!

[lauren3210]

These kinds of things are absolutely the best things to think about when you're procrastinating, LOL! (And 'physically submissive' is a much better term than 'bottom', because it infers a wider range of sexual acts other than penetration, so thank you for that!)

I think when it comes to H/D, the characterisation is the most important thing for me as to whom I'd prefer to top and/or bottom. Like, is Draco a self assured ministry worker? Or is he a drama-queen wedding planner? Is Harry the Head Auror? Or has he hidden himself away on a dirigible plum farm? Other factors are of course important - maybe having to appear self-assured in meetings means that Draco really wants to come home and have someone else in charge for a while, for example - but when it comes to H/D, I really think that it's the story and how the characterisations help tell that story that dictate my preferences, turning them into a case-by-case basis. Which is simultaneously annoying and an incredibly awesome facet of this ship, haha!

[ldydark1]

I am very relaxed about who tops and bottoms. It can be either Harry or Draco. Sometimes I generalize Harry being a bottom, because he is shorter than Draco. But seriously, I don't mind or have a preference who tops or bottoms. As long as it fits the fiction being written by the author. ****** I do have a hard time, when the author writes that Draco is shorter than Harry. I find that in older H/ D fictions, especially over at fanfiction.com, which I rarely frequent anymore. ***** That is hard for me to visualize and accept. Throughout the fiction, my mind keeps protesting and telling me that Draco is taller than Harry. *****

[lauren3210]

Interesting! I have to say I agree with Draco being taller than Harry in my head (although not by too much, maybe a couple of inches, vaguely), although that doesn't ever factor in to thinking of them as either a Top or a bottom. That could be because as a 5ft 10 woman, being roughly as tall as my male sexual partners has kind of canceled that out for me (although my husband is actually 6 inches taller than me, I don't really notice it or think about it due to my own height compared to other people).

And it's not that I mind, really, because I don't, it's just, you know, if I had to choose one, which would I pick? And thinking about the why of my answer was interesting.

(I never read m/m fics on FF. I have yet to find one that was well written tbh, LOL)

[ldydark1]

Oh, I agree with you. ' Although not by too much, maybe a couple of inches, vaguely' , that is how I 'see' Draco in height. **** I was a newbie when I discovered fanfiction.com, then I left it for the site called ' Restricted Section' , back in 2007, I think. Then I discovered that a ton of writers who wrote at Restricted Section, had their bases at Live Journal, which I joined eagerly.