After reading what you said kurahi this morning I want share my view about them too don’t get mad at me for saying this but I prefer kurama x hiei than hiei x kurama because of their lovely chemistry of course hiei seme would be good but I prefer hiei as uke because of his unusual way of taking back to his seme which makes want to see more no matter how strong his seme could be hiei is never submissive and stubborn kurama is shown having a manly side rather than being feminine so I love kurah

bizarrolord:

yyh-revival:

Of course that’s valid 🙂 I wouldn’t get mad at someone’s preference! And I like some redhead Kurama topping Hiei sometimes, too. But I don’t like conflating “bottoming” with femininity. I don’t like Kurama on the bottom because he’s “feminine.” I think there’s a huge backlash against Kurama being on the bottom because early fandom, when the m/m fandom was still being born and we still had yaoi with lemons and limes, people would often characterize Kurama as too feminine, almost turning him into a woman, both in how he was portrayed in writing and in art. 

But I feel like we’ve moved past that. At least, I and my personal circle mostly had. To me, things such as level of femininity or masculinity have nothing to do with the top/bottom dynamic, if there even is one. In early fandom especially, there was somewhat of a love/hate relationship with m/m in general, and “gay” relationships were just portrayed completely unrealistically, including sex.

This is actually a great chance to discuss something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while.

This is mostly speculation and my limited observations, so please don’t take any offense to it. Long winded informal discussion, rant, meta??? of yaoi, femininity, uke/seme, all that, below. 

Keep reading

You also tend to forget that there are a significant amount of gay/bi men who aren’t primarily into anal or penetration, that the most common m/m sex act is oral sex, and that a lot of the genre’s focus on anal is basically a substitute for PIV for the female readership.

And even if you do include penetrative sex, there is such a thing as “topping from the bottom” with the partner being penetrated being the one in control of the situation. (This goes for women in hetero pairings for conventional PIV sex as well.)

^ Great addition! I could have been clearer (I did say it was rambling, haha!) but the idea of anal being a substitute for f/m sex is what I was trying to get at, and that there isn’t always a clear “top” or “bottom” in same sex relationships because not everyone engaged in penetrative sex. 

But this is yet another great example of why the yaoi genre was never primarily concerned with m/m relationships, but f/m, with one men acting as a proxy for the woman. Though, as bizarrolord mentioned, even women can be “in control.” 

Overall, I find the whole uke/seme dynamic old fashioned, the same way I find men always paying for dinner or being the ones to ask for the first date a bit old fashioned. 

– Mod Lola

I’m glad that you didn’t take what I said seriously even I don’t mind hiei as seme sometimes but only if kurama is the uke if it is between kurama and yusuke or yusuke and hiei I definetely prefer yusuke as the seme in both the cases becausekurama is a good as seme only if hiei is the uke I can’t imagine him as seme when he is paired with other characters of the show

Of course 🙂 We all have our preferences, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any way we choose to ship. I hope people who like the examples I showed aren’t upset, either. It was just a perfect segway into talking about what I’ve been noticing in the fandom for a while, in the case of feminiziation and designation of uke/seme and the strict rules (sometimes even gender rules) that the labels sometimes force onto the characters.

– Mod Lola