#t/b discourse

[hollow-lime-green]

Wait so are you a strict gego, or a switch? No worries either way, not trying to start discourse (it’s usually not bad on tumblr thankfully). I’m just curious bc it’s a whole thing in the fandom and I really like your writing either way

oh, i'm not strict on anything in any fandom. not to impose my value system on others (my therapist is rolling in her grave little couch thing), but I do think this is objectively the right way to do fandom.

(if there was a right way to 'do fandom', which there is not because this is a hobby and it's all about your own happiness. but that nuance doesn't let me feel more big brained than others goddamni-)

everyone has some preferences on what they read , particularly on smut. but i think it's a lot more fun to continually test your preferences as a reader. not just for t/b, but for kinks, genres, etc. I want to see all of your hear me out cakes, or whatever the youths are doing these days. limiting yourself to a dynamic, or to any fixed preference (fluff genre, cis/trans hc, etc.) really robs you of seeing the creativity in fandom spaces.

i've actually written a few goge pieces, though they're not out yet (one for the satosugu seasons zine, and one for tropefest). but soon-ish, if you want, you will be able to see my take on geto getting railed in all its glory.

on FIYM -

dynamics are fixed (sort of) in FIYM because they are actually quite relevant, because that setting is deeply steeped in internalized homophobia. t/b is very much part of the whole thing (for satoru, anyway). A lot of fanfiction these days takes place in what i would call the 'woke gay utopia setting' (complimentary), where everyone is gay and kissing each other. one day we will transcend and people will not subconsciously associate bottoming with submission and topping with dominance. but we are not there yet, and we were a lot less there in the 2010s. and that is one aspect of internalized homophobia that I really like writing about.

this might be cringe and also somehow aging myself (???), but it reminds me of the fanfic of my youth, which dealt a lot more with some of these themes because of the political conditions re:lgbtq rights that most authors were living in. (this is also more of a usamerican take - obviously lgbtq rights are at different stages in different parts of the world). it's a bit cathartic for me, i suppose, and i think some of you guys/fiym readers feel that too.

[pynkhues]

why is bottomstat so important to you people. why are headcanons (bc it’s NEVER confirmed louis tops lestat) and centering lestat’s pleasure more important than confronting your own biases. spend a second with black loustat fans (particularly black louis-centric loustat fans) and you’ll see why bottomstat isn’t popular with us. https://x.com/perllama/status/1897485762792194143?s=46 just look at this conversation that was happening yesterday. it means a lot that he’s a rare black gay man in fiction that subverts racist stereotypes and assumptions, but white/lestat fans dgaf and would rather fulfil antiblack dom top louis fantasies while othering and demonizing black louis fans. idec if you think louis tops occasionally but it gets to a point where it’s ooc and so obviously not what their relationship is/was.

I mean, I could tell you why I like writing bottom!Lestat, because it does go beyond me just thinking that it's hot, but - and I hope you appreciate this at this point - I don't really trust you to engage with me in good faith in that regard, y'know? But anyway, let's do this quickly:

why are headcanons (bc it’s NEVER confirmed louis tops lestat)

By this logic, it's never confirmed Lestat tops Louis either. This show is very rarely explicit about sexual positions, everything is implied, so everything we take from scenes is inferred. The only time a sexual position is explicitly stated is Louis topping Armand ("Face down, ass up in the coffin, you can read it to me while I fuck you.")

Hell, even in the first episode Louis and Lestat's sex scene could be read as non-penetrative if you want to read it that way. For what it's worth, I don't think it is, I do think it's heavily implied Lestat topped then, but similarly, I think it's heavily implied Louis topped in Antoinette's house. I personally read the show to be telling us that they switch, you can disagree with that. I'm not stopping you. Enjoy!

...and centering lestat’s pleasure more important than confronting your own biases.

So....you haven't ever read my fics, I'm taking from this, because I'd say centring Louis' pleasure is a pretty big part of what I write.

Spend a second with black loustat fans (particularly black louis-centric loustat fans) and you’ll see why bottomstat isn’t popular with us. 

I do spend time with Black Loustat fans! And I am reminded over and over again that 'Black Loustat fans' are not a monolith, and to act like you are, and to try and speak for everyone like this is rude at best, and disrespectful, strawmanning and silencing at worst.

https://x.com/perllama/status/1897485762792194143?s=46 just look at this conversation that was happening yesterday.

I don't doubt that there are corners of this fandom that draw and write Louis in ways that are racist, but I think there is a large conflation happening that relies on heteronormative, and frankly homophobic stereotypes too. Someone topping doesn't make them a hypermasculine brute, just as someone bottoming doesn't make them a femme househusband. Writing Louis as a Dom - something he explicitly, canonically is for 77 years - doesn't negate his softer, gentler qualities, and the desire to curb any exploration of his sexuality where he's not bottoming by deciding that it's anti-Black is inherently bad faith, and usually results in strawman arguments, which is what a lot of the comments in that thread are given nobody is pointing to actual posts but rather an idea of a type of post.

it means a lot that he’s a rare black gay man in fiction that subverts racist stereotypes and assumptions.

I agree!

but white/lestat fans dgaf and would rather fulfil antiblack dom top louis fantasies while othering and demonizing black louis fans.

....and you've lost me again, anon. I mean, for one, I do care a lot about Louis. I spend a lot of time engaging and exploring his character. All my fics so far are from his POV, and sex is usually only a small part of that. I try to explore his humanity and his connection both to himself and the world around him, and sure, it involves a bit of kink, but we're talking about fanfiction, a lot of it does. Also you do realise that your bottom!Louis fantasies are fantasies too, right? You do realise that engaging in fanworks is fantasy fulfilment? You're bringing your own Stuff to all of this just like everyone else is.

And I'm not demonising Black Louis fans. I'm sorry that you feel I'm a part of a subset of this fandom that is doing that, it's certainly not something I want to be a part of. I've tried to be very clear in every, single post I've made about this topic that I am 'live and let live' when it comes to this topic. We read characters differently because we bring different contexts to them, and I think that should be something that's exciting, but when it's not, it should be okay to say 'good for you, not for me.'

If you don't like bottom!Lestat, that's okay! Don't read it. Nobody is forcing you to engage with things you don't want to.

idec if you think louis tops occasionally but it gets to a point where it’s ooc and so obviously not what their relationship is/was.

I mean, anon, you obviously do care. A lot. And in a way that kind of baffles me too honestly, because 75% of what's created in this fandom is for you. Bottom!Louis is far and away the most popular iteration of his character in fanart and fanfic, and the fact that you won't allow space for the 25% that isn't directly catering to your interpretation says a lot about you. I'm not out there putting myself in other people's inboxes or attaching myself to other people's posts. I rarely stray from my blog, and when I do, it's usually to post something on ao3. You're the one who's pushing into my space by sending asks like this - and on anon no less, where you can eschew both responsibility and accountability - and if you don't want to see posts about bottom!Lestat, you're more than welcome to block me.

I don't think it's OOC though, and I don't think it's 'so obviously not what their relationship is/was', which I've talked about plenty on this blog. It's fine that you don't agree, I don't mind, honestly. Again, go have fun with people who do - there's plenty of them! You just linked me to a twitter thread full of them. Enjoy your space, and let others enjoy theirs.

[sooperlative]

The top/bottom only became an issue when people started seeing/writing more b!eddie.

it did! very annoying discourse. b!eddie is just as neat as b!buck and i don’t think the b!buck truthers need to feel threatened because the bulk of what’s being posted is still b!buck or buddie as switches.

i’m newer to the fandom, but i have it on good authority that the b!eddie content that WAS there prior to the surge mainly revolved around eddie needing therapy to even be able to take it up the ass, or treating bottoming almost as a form of self-punishment. it’s a good thing that authors feel freer in writing a b!eddie who just likes receiving without getting all stuck in his head about it.

though one can look at why, exactly, they vastly prefer one or the other (be it personal sexual preference regarding the actors/characters, or subconscious biases), it’s just smut—not a morality contest.

[10thmusemoon]

I wish I could transmigrate into the PIDW forums just to know what the binggmo girlies were cooking up

Imagine the depravity we are missing out on 😔

[kiisaes]

Are you a BKDK or a DKBK?

i guess i'm both ? or neither ? hell if i know i just ship them together. i don't care about this fandom's t/b discourse, they barely even kiss in my art

(though this is mostly a skill issue on my end. i can't draw kissing)

[hollow-lime-green]

hi, anon from "t/b discourse is dumb" ask here 👋 this conversation actually is really interesting and i wanna add a little more if thats okay. (how long is the average anon ask? im not new to fandom but i am relatively new to tumblr and its etiquette... so sorry if this is too long. ive done my best to condense it 😭 there's just too much to say and im a rambler)

i hope i didn't come off as blaming anybody for their response to harassment and such, i don't want to contribute to that. my ire is only pointed toward people who make it their business to hurt others over innocuous fandom happenings, those people who leave dickish comments on fics and send anonhate and mass qrt on twitter. but like i said, expecting those kinds of people to go away any time soon is not really something i have hope for at this point. you put it well: people get so emotionally invested --- and i too Love getting emotionally invested when it comes to fiction --- that logic stops being a factor. people all over the internet also tend to struggle with simply disliking something and leaving it there. you're allowed to dislike/disagree with something without turning it into a moral failure when it's all down to preference and the characters involved are not Real

i just wish more people saw the value in Healthy™ discourse. hell, even if someone's opinion ticks you off, that doesn't mean you can't engage in an open minded discussion with them, if you want to. but people can't do that even outside of niche online fanbases.

i would love to share my own opinions on t/b dynamics for satosugu and to learn why others may feel differently. actually, stsg is the first yaoi ship ive been this invested in, though it's been a while now, and reading fics for them has opened up a Lot of doors of thought for me that i wanna talk to someone about. but there's such hostility around the topic that opening that discussion up to the general fandom public hardly feels worth the risk, as much as i want to. that kinda leaves one floating out at sea here. so i have these conversations where i can, but i'll also block people over simple things. not because i think they're evil or their opinions are invalid, but because i really do just want to have fun, and previous fandom experiences have exhausted me with how much of the same repetitive venom i can personally handle at once

welcome back anon, and feel free to ramble away. honestly this has been a nice side quest for me during the thesis-ing, believe it or not.

if you want to have discussions/share takes on stsg (or fandom meta), then feel free to keep sending them anon, and i am happy to host that discussion in our friendly little corner. i haven't gotten anything nasty in my inbox, and i think everyone commenting and engaging with the posts on my blog is pretty friendly and level headed :)

i think it's possible that some people could get offended by your previous ask? but it's very obvious, to me, anyway, that what you are saying with "t/b discourse is dumb" is "this drama is dumb why are we doing this why can't we just have fun". you can twist the words, but that's the clear sentiment that I think 99% of us are trying to get across here.

and that also does not conflict with empathizing with and supporting people who have been targeted by this harassment. in fact, i would say out of anyone, they are probably most securely in the camp of "this drama is dumb please let's stop".

as @fushiglow pointed out, part of the reason fandom can get so vicious is due to depersonalization. none of these people would be acting so fuckin foolish in person. but across the screen, it is a lot safer and easier to be an absolute asshole than when you have to look someone in the face as you tell them that they are literal scum for your opinions on dick in ass, or something.

over the past few months i have been struggling with this in reverse, actually. one of my gaming group members almost definitely voted for trump (white women... we need to talk). i get so worked up when i think about it, because i hate her for it, especially her reasons for it (she is antichoice). and yet, when I see her in person, when we hang out, it is so easy to remember that she is my friend and she held my hair back when I was puking after my other gamer friends gave me too many free beers (blue moon isn't worth it guys).

one other thing i would like to add, and part of why i'm so happy to post this ask, is that conversations are not sentences. you get to clarify. you get to add. you get to change your mind. real 'discourse' (note: this word has lost all meaning in the year of our lord 2025) or debate is an exchange of ideas, whether it's about dick in ass or how we react socially in the situation of being attacked for dick in ass. keeping the conversation going to clarify these things, like your intent with the last ask, is important and necessary! it's what keeps us from being xitter/bluesky. we don't need to live as zingers and soundbytes on a text-based forum. we have the space to express ourselves fully, as many times as that takes. and i think that helps build back the empathy that is lost with the lack of face-to-face, voice-to-voice communication in online spaces.

so in the words of the great philosophers re: t/b discourse:

any hole's a goal

[borrelia]

"now now now, you must be patient and kind with every single person, even people who come out of the woodwork, ignorant, to attempt to correct you. it doesn't matter that you want to discourage dangerous misinformation, or that resources are easy to find for anyone who wants a polite explanation. YOU, yes you, every single person, must meet my standards for civility at all times if you want me to consider your perspective." do you see why that sentiment would make someone want to bash your head in with a rock

[pynkhues]

Lestat is sitting on a pillow in the next shot. I mean, come on!

Anon!!!! I have watched this scene 1,200 times and still somehow never noticed that they straight up have him lower back / butt supported on a bolster cushion. I've lightened a screencap to share, and:

Yeah, haha.

[chronicyappper]

getting out of your bubble and seeing top!Logan content is so weird I thought we all agreed he's a bottom???????

[torchickentacos]

The pokemon anime subreddit fascinates and frustrates me on equally deep levels

[whiteowl-18]

Look, I'm asexual, and maybe that's why the daddy/mommy kink doesn't do anything for me. I don't like it and I have no desire to engage in it. That being said, I have absolutely no problem with other people, queer or not, engaging in it. As long as it's consensual and no one is getting hurt, you do you. I'll never judge. My problem with the "daddy issues" joke wasn't that the joke was made, it's the context in which it was made. Buck was in a very vulnerable moment, trying to open up about childhood trauma after his father figure almost died. And T thought that was the right time to make that joke. Instead of, I don't know, showing some empathy and comforting him, he thought that was the most appropriate thing to say. And that is the problem here.

This show has made jokes about kinks in the past that landed better than this. In Season 6, there was a joke about Buck and cock rings. In Season 5, we saw Bobby and Athena roleplaying. At some point (I don't remember the exact season), we saw a couple having sex on top of the fire engine, and that was only portrayed as a bad thing because they endagered their own lives while doing it. All of these jokes were funny because they were done in the right context.

At this point, i'm hoping that they're making T this unlikeable on purpose. Because if they're not, then I'm honestly baffled at to what they consider a likeable person.

[kiisaes]

I wish people portrayed more competitive and sporty Izuku in those no quirks high school bkdk AUs because he's almost always made to be just this docile nerdy sweater wearing fanboy and that's it. Like I love his nerdy personality but they make it as if he's not part of extracurriculars like Bakugo is.

Bonus points if he's a virgin while bakugo sleeps with anything that moves.

yea I agree, I haven't read that many hs au fics but the ones I have seen are more or less nerd x jock/popular. it's probably cus everyone instinctually goes off of what they're like in canon without quirks, and without quirks deku didn't have much of any reason to be sporty or competitive. and also bc nerd x jock/popular is like, the stripped down bare bones archetypes for their characters that everyone can agree on

but in some alternate universe where mha doesn't have quirks and they go to normal high school I imagine deku would try at least one sport, if nothing else just to stay healthy! I'm sure hs au fics with sporty deku exist out there, u might just have to look a little harder

[aizawapilled]

yall ever have incredibly strong opinions about fictional things and want to share them but can’t because it’s not that serious and you don’t want to get into an argument or is that just me?

[sawtraptommy]

anyways i'm really happy for the whole fandom taking all their separate wins right now and i hope you're all having fun. but seriously stop putting bashing in each other's tags i am TIRED.

[hollow-lime-green]

the t/b discourse is so dumb. is it not embarrassing for people to get genuinely heated over which fictional man they think takes it in the ass ? this is supposed to be For Fun, isn't it ?? idk, i like to have fun !!

fandom discourse in general reminds me of what it was like working with young children. certain kids would always get into arguments over nothing and we can try to fix it but at some point it's like... you guys don't Have to talk to each other......

people in fandom spaces need to learn this lesson. preferences are preferences, not laws, and it's 100% your responsibility to cultivate your experience around those preferences. no one else's. filtering, blocking, SCROLLING, are all features of tumblr and ao3 for a reason

but this would be asking fandom members to be Rational,, and ive long since given up hope in that respect

it is gigadumb. but, for what it's worth, i think it's actually worse than that.

i care about dick in ass; I love writing dick in ass; there's so much you can do with dick in ass. as a dick in ass expert, i would bet these people don't really care about dick in ass. what I think they do care about is fandom wank. fandom can turn fine wine into lead water with a proficiency even jesus christ would be awed by.

more under the cut, but the short version:

it's more emotional than logical. if you tried to explain to a normie why so many people ostensibly care about mlm dick in ass, they would either send you to a sanitorium or put you on the shortlist for translators needed when the aliens invade

yeah, these people are children (many such cases). and to be honest, i think this is fairly age appropriate behavior. not good, not real appropriate, but expected. teens are fucking assholes.

you are extremely right about curation, anon. fujos have fought and died (maybe) for curation features like tags/filtering, blocking, and yaoi titty mousepads. use them, folks.

so, discourse meta thoughts (wow this got longer than I meant it to) -

it is a time-honored fandom tradition to create heated, vitriolic discourse out of… fucking nothing, really. you might not go in having a stance on t/b dynamics (and a thousand other things in other fandoms - aroace hcs, race hcs, neurodivergence hcs spring to mind but there are many). but if you then get a stance fed to you, and then that stance is portrayed as correct, either analytically (characterization, textual support) or morally (rabbit hole I won't go down today), then you may get emotionally attached to that stance. and you may also get emotionally attached to arguing about it.

this is one of those things where the social activism brainrot of social media (particularly twitter/tumblr) really drives things. and I'm not saying this isn't the space for that. it is. even though it can be extremely toxic, I think there is still some long-term benefit to having a space where people spew nuclear grade radioactive bullshit takes, that eventually, when looked at from a bird's eye view, can add some context to larger discussions of social issues, how people feel and how their personal context affects that. one example i would give for that is fandom puritanism in general. it's wacky and absolutely regressive, but it's interesting to see and note the shift, and to think about why that is happening to late genz/gen alpha, what societal factors have promoted the backswing, etc. (again, I am just extremely Interested in Trends)

but tumblr/fandom is not just a forum. as a social media site/social community, you can actually grade the politics and wanks with numbers and clout, and there is an incentive to Say the Right Thing to get your little tamagotchi numbers reward. the act of Saying the Right Thing (which actually presents as being a self-righteous asshole online) then carries its own little serotonin boost. wank can be extremely addictive, and with fandom wank in general, we like to conflate what should be non-issue content preferences (like t/b) to our identities and politics. and that's not shocking. fandom is a queer space therefore it is also a political space (not because lgbtq+ identities should be political, obviously, but because a lot of conservative assholes are forcing it to be)

anyway, you can see where all of the heat comes from. this is an opinion, but it is a pretty well-informed one. because you will never not catch me with a strangeaeons/contrapoints/sarah zed deep dive video essay into fandom wank in the background. i find these phenomena extremely interesting. fandom drama is my dentist office fish tank.

when i was in high school, i was an extremely militant atheist, online and offline. i am a stem girlie (and i have issues), so to me, it was important that i was Right and everyone knew i was Right. i was also in the south, gay marriage was not yet legal, and the westboro baptist church was in the news all of the time. so freedom of/from religion was a pretty salient topic, but I was still a dick about it. and i did it because the debates and the memes and the Being Right of it all really recharged me in a way that was very toxic when you look at it objectively. i was transmuting negative emotions into positive feedback, but hurting others and working myself up in the process.

the reason i fell out of it was not that i magically started listening to religious people, someone changed my mind with a good argument, and gained a new respect for them. it was because i got bored. i had gone through the people in my real life that I could have the debate with, and the internet memes started getting repetitive. i was weaned off of my serotonin boost (also gay marriage was legalized and the vibes of the time were getting better, so i could put down my sword).

my point with this is that if you actually want to end this discourse, you have to stop feeding the beast.

curation is key. if you curate your feed, like I have probably done unintentionally, then you can largely step away from this bullshit. and when you do get the bullshit, the best thing to do is not engage and move on, because you will deny the rage machine its essential fuel - interaction. but walking away is extremely difficult to do, because the thing is - that little serotonin boost and righteousness - it goes both ways.

i'm not going to blame people for biting back when they get cyberbullied. it's natural and human and it is good for the community to stand together and fight back against vitriol. and it is also unfair to tone check those responses, especially when they are direct responses to direct emotional attacks. but i will point out that it's probably not the most effective way to end the discourse, if that is your goal.

because ultimately, they're not going to feel chagrined when you call out an anon post, they're going to feel a bump from the attention. they're not going to be impacted by a victim statement or some show of the harm they are causing; because they feel in a way that it is healing them. people aren't sending hate because they want to deeply, critically engage in a debate and their minds could be swayed by the right words; they're doing it because they're having fun.

[pynkhues]

“If floating is sexual pleasure, then stabbing is a metaphor of penetration, and Louis stabs and bites Lestat at Antoinette's house, so I guess that means he tops there.”

tbh I don’t agree with the original anon but I don’t think these are the same, stabbing can just be stabbing, whereas he doesn’t randomly float, he doesn’t even have the cloud gift - I don’t know what the point of that is other than to signify sexual pleasure/orgasming. but it’s still a fair interpretation, one I might agree with. Louis was clearly more dominant at Antoinette’s but I don’t think we have enough info to assume who topped/bottomed, I do think they���re verse overall though.

(x)

You're more than welcome to disagree, anon, but stabbing as a metaphor for penetrative sex is literally foundational to Western literary and theatrical canon, and I'd argue has a far vaster history than the floating = orgasm metaphor.

Not to dust off my lit major / history minor hat again, but stabbing has been a euphemism/slang for penetrative sex in the West since the 1500s. Green's Dictionary of Slang has a good, concise etymological history of it here if you're interested in noted historic uses, but Shakespeare largely popularised it explicitly in theatrical dialogue as a winking euphemism for getting dicked down in Henry IV Part II around 1597 which the Royal Shakespeare Company has a post about here. This translated to the way he wrote the actors using blades and knives broadly though even outside of dialogue i.e. Juliet stabbing herself with Romeo's dagger is largely regarded to symbolically be the sexual consumation of their marriage, thus tying sex, marriage and death together thematically in another foundation-setting trope, the references to Tarquin's blade during The Rape of Lucrece foreshadows Lucrece's rape, Macbeth stabbing Duncan in the chest is also regarded as homosexual subtext, etc.

This ties, of course, to the even older symbolic understanding of blades/knives/swords as a phallus, ultimately representing (in the West, it's different in the East) masculine power, sexuality, virility, and death. Stabbing's historically in literature/theatre/film also mark exchanges of power in that sense, and I do tend to also read that in the scene given Louis breaks the record Lestat has given him in order to create a blade to stab him, insinuating that the power is ultimately still something Lestat gives to him, which is in conversation thematically with the finale when Louis kills Lestat with his own knife, ergo his own phallus ergo his own power (and I think there's a lot to be read in the fact that Louis' blade is concealed in the cane - a loaded metaphor of his emasculation by white society and the fact that he has to conceal and contain his true power/nature, which is more or less his narrative arc).

But yeah, stabbing as both a sexual act and an exchange of power is a foundational (and very common) symbolic trope and has been a part of Western canon since the late 1500s. Sometimes stabbing might just be stabbing, sure, but this entire set is full of theatre kids, so I don't think in this case that it is.