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Uke Versus Seme – Who’s Really on Top?

Christie Gordon 3 Comments
Okay, so we all know in the world of gay men there are the tops and the bottoms, the pitchers and the catchers, the hot dogs and the buns (?)…You get it, I’ll stop there:) In Yaoi or Boys Love anime and manga, it’s referred to as the uke (botton) and the seme(top). Let’s have a little discussion about this, shall we?

The seme is typically what you’d find in your standard romance novel, the confident alpha male who may be famous, runs a business empire, is some type of royalty or otherwise has lots of money and/or high social status. The uke is the shy, nerdy guy who’s usually a college student or just a kid (can you say shota? But this is a topic for another blog). I suppose if you draw lines to tradional romance novels you’d see the uke acting in the traditional woman’s role – girl meets dashing, wealthy asshole who just so happens to have a thing for her, but won’t admit it until well into the story, maybe even the end. But what’s different and maybe so alluring about the uke in a Yaoi story is that because this character is a male, he may be catching in the bedroom, but he surely isn’t always catching outside of it.

How many times have we seen a Yaoi plot where the seme is falling all over the uke, bending to his every whim, just to get him in the bedroom? And how many times do we see the uke manipulating the seme in and out of the bedroom to get what he wants? What about the uke’s pretending not to like sex? Not like sex? A guy? Really??? And so I ask the question, who’s really on top? And more over, why can’t they be switch hitters? *drool*

So in the quest to figure out who’s really on top, I asked Roy Mustang and Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist fame (because I know them best):

Me: So, Edward, would you consider yourself a bottom or a top?
Ed: What?!
Roy: He’s a bottom.
Ed: Shut up, Mustang. Don’t pretend you know what that is.
Roy: Please, just be a good boy and drink your milk.
Ed: *sputters* This isn’t milk, it’s egg nog!
Me: Oh, but there’s milk in it. Sorry…
Ed: *spits all over the table* What the fuck?
Me: Here, let me get some paper towels *gets paper towels and comes back*
Ed: *glares at me and wipes up mess*
Roy: Ahem…the question was top or bottom, right?
Me: Uh, yeah. *watching Ed and keeping far away*
Roy: I’d definitely say that Ed is the bottom and I’m the top. I mean, really…I’m the older one, the bigger one, the one with–
Ed: The one who likes it up the ass!
Roy: *turns red*
Ed: Yeah, I said it. He likes it in the ass. *snickers* that makes him a bottom, right?
Me: I, I guess so…
And so there you have it. Seme or Uke, it’s all good and we love it!
Regards,
Christie
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Who’s Your Favorite Yaoi Pairing?

Christie Gordon 9 Comments
Most of us who love Yaoi love fanfiction. Am I right? I know I found out about Yaoi through such websites as Fanfiction.net, Adult Fanfiction.net and Deviant Art. The first time I read a fanfic, I think it was about Inuyasha and Koga and I was…intrigued. I thought to myself, am I not the only woman on the face of the Earth who found Brokeback Mountain to be about the hottest movie I ever saw (besides Interview with the Vampire)?
And low and behold, I am not! I’ve even found some of my friends who thought they’d never like this sort of thing actually loved it when they read some of my work (not to toot my own horn here).
So the question for today is: Who’s your favorite Yaoi pairing? Personally, my first was Roy Mustang and Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist. I’ve written countless fanfictions about these two, some of which are really bad because, well, I was just getting started and had no idea how to write fiction (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!). If you really care to read these, you can find them here: Animegeik on Fanfiction.net
I have to say, RoyxEd is still my favorite. There’s just something about the dynamic of these two that’s just plain hot – is it the older/younger thing or the calm/hot-headed thing? Or how about the master/servant thing (*.*)?

But then I started watching Gundam Wing, Gundam Seed, Gundam Seed Destiny and Gundam 00. All those hot dudes, lots of angst and always a pair of friends on either side of the war. Perfect for getting the Yaoi fanfiction juices flowing, so to speak. Out of those series, I think my favorites are: DuoxHiro, KiraxAthrun, and LockonxAllelujah. Too bad I can’t seem to find too much of the latter:(

Of course, Death Note is infamously popular with the LxLight(Kira) pair. Again, something about the two heros being on opposing sides makes it that much more hot. I wonder, did the makers of Death Note know that fangirls and boys would forever swoon and write fics about L and Light being handcuffed together? I bet they did and I bet they wrote the story that way for that very fact!

So the question remains: who is your favorite Yaoi pairing?

Regards,

Christie

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What’s up with American Animation?

Christie Gordon 6 Comments
Here’s one of my biggest pet peeves – American animation. It sucks, for the most part.
I mean really, the Japanese get Final Fantasy with its plethora of hot guys and cool motorcycles and long, thick…swords…
And we in America get what? Shrek 🙁
Don’t get me wrong, I do like Shrek. I have all three movies on DVD. I thought it was quite funny.
But I mean, come on people – these are characters you can draw, characters you make up, characters that can be as hot or not as you like, so why not make them hot? Why not give us some eye candy for crying out loud?
Why be happy with this:
When you can have this?:
 And what about the art? Most American animation has only one level of color (for lack of a technical way to describe it) while the Japanese use three. I’m talking about a main color, a shadow and a highlight. The details in the backgrounds on Japanese animation is incredible as well.
Think Family Guy or The Simpson’s versus, well, anything Japanese, Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note and holy cow, Ergo Proxy or Howl’s Moving Castle or Gankutsuou (yep, I’m an AlbertxFranz fan).

Is it just that most American animation is meant to be comical and therefore we just accept crappy cartoons? Many anime are funny as well – how about Fruit’s Basket and what about how many hot guys were in that show?

Bottom line here is, although I do adore The Simpson’s, Family Guy, and all those lovely Pixar movies for their comedic value, I really really really wish the forces that be in America would wake up and give us what the Japanese have gotten all along – truely artistic animation, intriguing storylines (hey, I didn’t even touch on that subject…) and lot and lots of eye candy.

Regards,

Christie

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