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):
Like in your typical Yoai, at first they’re at odds with each other and tell anyone who’ll listen how much they hate the other one. Then of course there is the hot kiss followed by lots of angst and you know the rest;) I’m really not trying to spoil it for anyone.
So my question is, what is it about the bad boy seme and the cute little uke that we (I’m talking about women here, but gay men can speak up, too) love so much about this pair? How is it that it seems so universal? This show was made in Spain, I think – please someone help me here, and Yoai started in Japan, so the concept does seem to cross cultural borders. Are we, as women, putting ourselves in the place of the sweet little uke? Which means, all us Yaoi and M/M Romance loving females can’t get enough of the bad boys? I know I prefer them, LOL. Yep, the longer the hair, the more piercings and tattoos, the better. But I digress…
Just someone answer the question – why do you love this pairing?
You can watch it on YouTube here: Max and Iago – Love Story
Regards,
Christie