#and that fandom is really bad about conflating 'bottom' with 'sub' and 'top' with 'dom'

[trekkiedean]

I've said this before but I can't find it right now so: the real answer to top/bottom discourse is that they are both vers unless there's a scenario where it would be really funny if one of them is the designated top or bottom.

[bambi-kinos]

people’s arguments about why john has to be a bottom and not paul tend to regurgitate the same critique these people have about paul (“you say he’s a bottom just because he’s feminine!”) by bringing up john’s appearance and more femme attitude after ‘68 and then saying how paul is more masc because of his body / facial hair. i also feel like a lot of people still conflate dom/sub with top/bottom when it comes to mclennon. though i haven’t thought about the societal perception of receiving / giving, i had an ohhh moment when i read that in your post. i personally will always be a fan of service top john paired with a power bottom paul, but john being servicy to me doesn’t mean he’s “submissive” in the typical way. i think he can be dominant and aggressive with paul but that’s because paul allows him to be. like what you said about paul enjoying being john’s second and being put in his place by more domineering and strong men. there’s a lot of power play that goes on in their sexual relationship and it deeply fascinates me!

people’s arguments about why john has to be a bottom and not paul tend to regurgitate the same critique these people have about paul (“you say he’s a bottom just because he’s feminine!”) by bringing up john’s appearance and more femme attitude after ‘68 and then saying how paul is more masc because of his body / facial hair.

Yes, it gets very transparent for exactly those reasons. What makes me roll my eyes about the “you say he’s a bottom just because he’s feminine!” thing is that anyone who bitches about this can only imagine switching the roles and having Paul by a hypermasculine stoic (which breaks characterization) and having John be a hyperfeminine bottom (which is also OOC). I don't think that the original complaints are necessarily a bad thing, there is an iteration problem in McLennon fandom where Paul can sometimes be reduced to a weepy princess, though I haven't heard of any fics coming out in the past 5 years that actually made this mistake. But it does annoy me that fandom can only imagine flipping the script and having John be the weepy bottom princess. It never leads to something more creative or interesting being produced where John and Paul's roles, both self assigned and imposed on them, are discussed especially for the effect it had their relationship.

It would be interesting to explore John's femme qualities but I think that fans are hesitant about going there because they would have to admit that John's passivity in 1968 was induced by his heroin addiction which destroyed his life and his relationships. There's never any appreciating John's femininity when he wasn't on heroin even though 1965 is arguably when John was at the most soft spoken and open minded. I find it a little sad that John's feminine qualities are only appreciated when he was at the peak of his hatefulness and addiction.

i also feel like a lot of people still conflate dom/sub with top/bottom when it comes to mclennon.

A lot of that is wish fulfillment IMO. Especially since Paul fans are usually the ones driving it and it's pretty universal that we want to see him get railed, not really the other way around. We like him because he's so poundable. So it's nice that he has a built in boyfriend who's willing to fuck him until he cries, you know. And it's easy to classify that as top/bottom::dom/sub.

McLennon is very subtle in some ways because of the give and take between John and Paul was so weird and it's just really difficult for us as outsiders to grasp. John and Paul themselves are baffled and confused by it. It makes me wonder if part of their dissolution was the fact that they didn't understand how much power they held over the other one which meant that they couldn't understand why their decisions were having such profound effects on the other person. They seem profoundly frustrated and bewildered by the undercurrents of their relationship where they perfectly fulfill each other in all ways except one, and how deeply unsatisfying their other relationships have been in comparison.

I think @amoralto damaged the fandom for this in some ways because she ended up having a popular blog which meant that her interpretations of John in particular were xeroxed over and over. The problem with this being that I don't think amoralto fully appreciated the power dynamic between John and Paul and her bias against John crept into her opinions which means that they screwed up the fandom discourse. If you go purely by her public posts then amoralto appears to be under the impression that John was a hysteric that was perpetually shitting himself about Paul one upping him. There is some truth to that but it's also not the whole story because Paul's ability to pull the rug out from under John was always a source of pride, fascination, love, and eroticism for John. Yesterday rocked John's world but he was also proud of Paul for being such an incredible artist and he was always pleased about being the one who discovered Paul. He was always aware that Paul had a lot of power over him and John both reveled and despaired in that.

This relates to the top/bottom::dom/sub thing because this dynamic would naturally play out in an erotic relationship between John and Paul. There's the surface layer where John is railing Paul but then there's the additional layer where Paul is the one enticing John to do it by showing his ass off (like really, who do you think those tight cut trousers are for?) and inviting John to put his cock inside Paul. And then there's the part where John's butch attitude and even some of his violence was egged on and encouraged by Paul who was most likely turned on by John punching people out. Paul was not the slightest bit put off by John being a violent person or else he would have bailed within a year of knowing him. When Julia died, Paul is the only one who had patience with John who was getting drunk and getting into fights…meanwhile there's a femmeboi in the background making soothing noises and cleaning him up so that he's fit for company. Really makes the your mind run wild with possibilities huh? Who is to say Paul didn't say "c'mon Johnny, just put it in me mouth and I'll fix you up." Or something!

The point is Paul is ultimately in control of the situation. This is supposed to be what dom/sub set ups are supposed to be anyway, subs are the ones who dictate the conditions in the bedroom. But considering how John built Paul up in his mind, it seems clear that Paul had a lot of overt power over John too. They don't fit neatly into the dom/sub set up either.

They switched power positions constantly and they got a lot of pleasure out of dominating but also being dominated. Paul liked being on top and being on bottom and John liked it when he got to be on top of Paul and when Paul crushed him. The pleasure was in the struggle itself, not necessarily the positions in of themselves.

though i haven’t thought about the societal perception of receiving / giving, i had an ohhh moment when i read that in your post.

It's not nearly as prevelent now though it still lingers. But heteronormativity really dictated the nature of a lot of relationships in the past.

i personally will always be a fan of service top john paired with a power bottom paul, but john being servicy to me doesn’t mean he’s “submissive” in the typical way. i think he can be dominant and aggressive with paul but that’s because paul allows him to be.

IMO there's a lot of truth to this! @zilabee has a really nice post about how John and Paul could afford to be gentle with one another and wrote love songs together. I think that a service top john/power bottom paul really fits this dynamic because it allowed John and Paul to express themselves to each other which solidified their mutual trust and their bond.

In a lot of ways Paul was an ideal partner for John in that he was someone John could have sex with that didn't have consequences (such as pregnancy) while Paul also had the feminine beauty that John really loved. (There's a quote from Yoko I think that John claimed if he fell in love with another man then that man would have to be extremely beautiful. Handsome is not enough.) John could probably be a lot rougher with Paul who could stand up to being tossed around a bit if needed but was beautiful enough for John to fuck tenderly too. Paul wasn't afraid of John's rough side and even encouraged it and decided to love it. In some ways John being a service top lets him express that roughness sexually with someone who won't break in half from being treated like a sack of potatoes. And there wouldn't be judgment from Paul either because he is still a man and experienced the same puberty and testosterone that John did including the same struggles with temper, the bodily changes, etc. He knows where John is coming from whereas a 1960s woman would not. (The transwomen, crossdressers, and homosexuals in Hamburg may have been John's first explicit taste of this. People who were familiar with what growing up as a male would be like so they didn't judge John for his proclivities and interests.)

In other words, John could express himself sexually with Paul in a way that he probably couldn't with women. Paul was fine with it judging from that photo of John's nutsack against his back and it fulfilled his needs as well!

like what you said about paul enjoying being john’s second and being put in his place by more domineering and strong men. there’s a lot of power play that goes on in their sexual relationship and it deeply fascinates me!

Yes! John overwhelms and dominates Paul but it's because Paul wants it to happen. He relied on John's intuition and discernment and ultimately his trust in John to carry it through. John has a partner who can't get pregnant when he climaxes inside him and then can take it on the chin when John is rough and/or degrading. All while he's sharply aware of how much Paul likes it which itself feeds into John's eros, and so on and on…

[petefromarma]

okay wrt that other ask asking abt bottom pete

i also find it interesting that despite a lot of people suddenly preferring bottom pete, there's still a lot of recent bottom patrick fics coming out.... but ig not everyone reads or writes fic so idk. actually thinking abt it, im not even sure why it's become so popular?? /gen

another iteration that comes to mind is petekey, like especially on tiktok 😭

and also i want to ask abt the tags bc what is your interpretation of patrick as a bottom then...

ok thats all thank u for letting me ramble and like i read your blog like the morning paper everyday 💜

aw anon you're so sweet thank you 🥺❤️ thank you for the ask and it means a lot that you like MY ramblings lol

so in terms of the preferred dynamics of the pairing changing, i think this shift probably happened sometime in the last five years; imo it was sort of a slow crawl and then the emergence of smfs sped things up because fob gained a lot of new fans and also attracted old fans who were still around but maybe not creating anything during the gap between mania and smfs, whether it was art or fic. primarily i think it has to do with the fandom's general perception of pete and patrick having changed since the 2013-2019 era

the fact that they've grown and changed as people over the last decade (and when speaking about fob in its entirety, the last two decades) has in part something to do with this; fandoms are inherently predisposed to tropes, imo, which can often lead to characters (this term i think is appropriate since we are talking about fiction written about real people and to a lesser degree the people as they actually exist themselves) being shoehorned into fitting the confines of a specific archetype based on surface level aspects of their personality or physical attributes. patrick and pete for a significant amount of the band's history were perceived as sort of a wallflower and bad boy combo; this wasn't entirely incorrect, and imo most fic authors wrote them with a degree of nuance rather than purely relying on archetype, but you could usually find some form of that interpretation of their characters in most fic or fandom discussion relating to their personalities and relationship with each other. because of this and the fact that it was common in the 2000s/2010s to work within a context of assigning arbitrary personality traits to sex positions, such as 'bottoms are shy/tops are outgoing' (and with bottom always referring to sub bottom and top always referring to dom top), this lead to total bottom patrick cultural victory etc (obviously i agree with the outcome here but i don't completely agree with the journey it took to get there lol)

in part patrick and pete both had a hand in this perception of themselves; patrick mostly during the 2010s and pete mostly during the 2000s. like i said i think these are both actual aspects of their personalities rather than what some people claim, especially in regards to patrick (that the sweater paws era was all an act), but the choice to exacerbate this image of themselves was definitely for PR purposes. imo they both still kind of do this but in different ways; the intent is the same but the form is different. i don't mean to be cynical and i do think they are happy and settled and that their expressions of self are mostly genuine but they are still celebrities and i think they're both relieved to be considered by a majority of fans, who are largely unwilling to talk about their (p2's) flaws, as 'soft' and non-threatening

ig the dark haired top/light haired bottom thing could have also played a part in the popularity of bottom patrick but i don't really think that's the case here because of. the inherent way that they are lol. i feel like some people would argue that the popularity of patrick as specifically a sub bottom during 2013-2019 can in part be attributed to his whiteness and the conflation of whiteness with femininity and bottoming as an inherently feminine and therefore submissive act, which i think probably has merit enough to be acknowledged in any discussion of an interracial ship especially irt to m/m and f/f, but i don't think it's particularly relevant to peterick because i do not buy that patrick has an especially domineering presence that is being subverted in order to incorrectly portray him as submissive, which is something that does happen in a number of ships where one character is white and the other character is black or brown. i think there ARE domineering parts of patrick's personality, and that he craves control, especially wrt his art and his creative process, but we also know that he often gives in to pete's suggestions and that pete's instincts are usually correct whereas patrick's are usually wrong. this doesn't scream hypercompetent in control dom top to me and it doesn't scream service top either

anyway. i think patrick's change in fashion and aesthetics played a not insignificant part in this shift in dynamics; pete's self expression has always been relatively androgynous, but that isn't inherently connected to his gender or his personality. i don't think he's ever done or said anything to imply that he's anything other than a cis man who sometimes likes to wear skirts. which, i mean, there's a not insignificant discussion to be had about his relationship with gender as a biracial black man but this answer is already too long and i don't want to get into that now lol. so patrick grows a beard, pete bleaches his hair and grows it out, oh they're masc and femme now, patrick is a bear (despite being straight?), masc = top and femme = bottom, etc. some people will argue that this has always been the case (patrick being masc and pete being femme) but i'm going to be honest, i think pete and patrick both leaned toward androgyny in self expression until around futct and even then i don't consider patrick's street wear as being super butch or whatever

people also like to discuss patrick's weight as a factor in the perception of him as either a top or a bottom but i've seen too many claims that there's an epidemic of fat men being portrayed as sub bottoms simply because they're fat and i have literally no idea where this came from and i really don't want to lend any legitimacy to that argument because i think it's ridiculous so i'm not going to get into it. but just know i think it's silly and cope

so i think partially the change in dynamics has come from the manner in which they present themselves within the public sphere; patrick reads now as more masculine and outgoing and pete reads as more shy and feminine

i do think that the interpretation of them as characters by people who prefer bottom pete and write fic is more nuanced than people who don't write fic and are just kind of going with the flow (same with people who were around in 2013-2019 when bottom patrick was more popular); i still don't agree with the majority of their analysis but considering they're creating actual art there's generally more critical thought involved than just following a fandom trend imo

fob is also not really a fic based fandom, honestly; fanart tends to get more interaction and fandoms that skew younger don't seem to write fic as much. this is kind of a sidebar but i am actually genuinely worried about the use of chatgpt and what it means for the writing and critical reasoning skills of young people in the west (i don't know if this is as big of a problem in nonwestern countries) and imo the manner in which it's wormed its way into all aspects of academic and creative life, whether professional or amateur, is frightening. but anyway i think a lot of the authors who write or prefer bottom patrick have been around a lot longer (just, like, in life, but also in the fandom lol) and since the younger fans aren't really interested in writing fic, it makes sense that there's still an even split on ao3 despite bottom pete seeming to be more popular with the greater fandom

anyway like i said in that other ask i do think there are situations in which pete would bottom; like, he is not topping andy hurley, lol, and probably not travie, but i just don't see him bottoming as realistic, long term, or as a constant, in his relationship with patrick. the time at which pete came into patrick's life means he was both an authority figure and peer to him; he guided patrick professionally and, at times, personally. pete viewed him as his responsibility, and he was protective of patrick in a way that he wasn't with joe (i've spoken about this before, and while i do think that maybe this has to do with pete maturing somewhat from twenty to twenty-two/twenty-three, there is a world of difference between what pete allowed his friends to do to joe and the way pete spoke of patrick with reverence and protected him, to the point that patrick's release the bats skit was him drinking garlic butter). and while i don't know if i would say the same currently lol i think pete was once a highly competent and successful businessman; he deeply understood the culture of the 2000s/early 2010s and for all the stress and heartache it brought him, i think there were aspects of fame and that feeling of being on top of the world that he very much enjoyed. i think he likes control, but in contrast to patrick, he's far more competent and adept at gaining and keeping himself in a position that affords him that control

has their relationship evolved to the point that they're on more equal footing? yeah i think so, but i also think that your dynamic when you meet someone is going to remain, in part, a constant, even as your relationship evolves and changes. so there's that, for me, that push-and-pull power dynamic where pete is almost always the one who comes out on top (lol), and while i understand the appeal in subverting this wrt peterick, in an abstract sense, i just don't see the evidence in their relationship that that would realistically happen or that pete would want it to happen

moving on to patrick, the reason i said his stroke game is mid is because obviously he does top he's straight but i don't think he's particularly good at it; he fumbles through a lot of life (that doesn't involve his art) and i think this translates to his sexual expression. more realistically, i could see him as a dom bottom because of how bossy he is; this i think would be something pete would enjoy because he does desire submission somewhat but it doesn't involve penetration, which i believe he considers a degrading act, at least to some degree. tbh i don't really think pete's dick game is bomb or whatever lol but i think he's better than patrick. and i know this is a matter of contention because of the specific way in which patrick's misogyny manifests and how defensive he was about not being gay, but i think he's too autistic to really give a shit about bottoming; maybe he could even be convinced to take the strap because he would just get to lie there and not do anything like the way elisa cooks all his food for him. i think this could actually also be argued with pete potentially but it would be more difficult to bring him around to it lol

i have more to say but i think i should cut myself off now 😭 i do want to say though re the thing about petekey; i was actually just telling a friend how petekey is similar to bottom pete because they're both so popular and yet the amount of fanworks doesn't seem to match their supposed popularity

[genuflecting]

I've had a bunch of things circling around my head for days and they don't seem to want to leave on their own, so I'm going to try writing them out in a long post that no one had to read, but if you're nosy like me you're welcome to and I promise the bad vibes can't past it past the readmore, you can check them at the door

the guy I like wasn't at the party I went to last weekend and no one there even had his contact info (I got brave and asked the person who I thought knew him but it turned out to be a dead end) so now I have to wait for the group's every other month party and hope he turns up to that, which will probably be a Halloween party so that'll be an interesting extra element. I've just been so hung up on it cause my attraction to people in real life is so incredibly rare and I want to act on this, but it feels so out of my control and if I'm this sad at not seeing him for two months I'm gonna be REALLY really sad if four months later I still don't see him. I wish my taste in people was broader so I could just. not feel so lonely!

I think the loneliness/striking out has mutated alongside dysphoria into me feeling extremely dysmorphic and sad lately, which I like a lot less than my hopeful new outlook I had for the few months before that

I'm feeling very tired of being misgendered absolutely constantly in public, and especially of feeling like my mom just sees me as "woman lite". I almost wish she just saw me as a man, but I specifically don't identify with a binary gender because I don't want people to lug in all their gendered baggage and assumptions and bury me in them, so instead I'm stuck with not being seen as a man at all.

The dysphoria seems to have been fanned by not seeing that guy at the party and feeling insecure about that, but especially by the interaction at said event where (someone who is also nonbinary) made weird and gross biologically essentialist comments (cited in another post, man I wish tumblr had citations honestly, I know I'm a fucking nerd but how fun would that be, anyway). I went through a period of feeling way more confident in my body and how my gender (and sex, frankly) are congruous with my identity and that I can be a gay guy who isn't questioned or dissonant, and that just felt so regressed by that interaction and my doubts of how people perceive me and, by extension of anxiety, how the guy I like might see me.

Seeing a post where someone in the comments conflated dom/sub with top/bottom and also made the most "clearly hasn't had sex, doesn't know what they're talking about" reference to being a "top in real life, bottom in bed" and vice versa and I just wish I could make people stop using all of those terms if they don't know what they mean. oh, you're anally receptive in your daily non-sexual life? No wonder being on tumblr set me back with my understanding of sex and relationships, people just talk about it with zero grounding in reality

Then seeing a guy refer to "transition scars" in a piece of art's replies (where the cis male artist gave a character very tired vine patterns in place of top surgery scars) and then I went to the commenter's blog and his bio said that he's distrustful of fandoms predominantly made up of women fetishizing m/m ships, ie all of them, and I'm just like Man, way to do one of the worst things you can do for trans men while claiming the most superficial support. the way I still have to reassure myself that that's not what I'm doing when I experience attraction to another man as a man, because of fear mongering arguments like that.

Lastly in the vein of maybe I should stop opening the notes of posts at all, is seeing someone claim that the "mauraders fandom" is a "totally separate" fandom from the hateful wizard books and not related, thus they shouldn't be accused of promoting transphobic work, and someone had to break down for them exactly how stupid that argument is. The fact that they're apparently telling themselves that explains why the acquaintance I know who I already wasn't comfortable being friends with because she still goes to Catholic church with her family was comfortable referencing reading mauraders fanfiction while knowing she was in front of a trans person. It was just so much to realize the fact that this is just a continuation of the same bullshit people have been spewing for years about death of the author, in front of my trans literature major ass who has actually read roland barthes and knows that's not even kinda what the essay is about.

Anyways I'm tired, trans, and angry, and I would just like some critical thought, gender affirmation, and gay sex as a treat.

[heterophobicpride]

The jokes are usually fine, it’s when someone’s serious about it that there starts to be problems. Making a joke like “haha bottoms keysmash when they text” is kinda funny as long as you don’t actually take it seriously and stereotype a group of people (which is only loosely a group based on their actions during sex!) or believe that this group MUST act a certain way or that they WILL act a certain way due to their membership in the group.

the main problem is when people start acting like top/bottom is an inherent identity that will predict behavior outside of sex. top/bottom/vers is ONLY a label for what someone would like to do during sex and has NOTHING to do with their behavior at any other time.

another problem is people conflating top/bottom with dom/sub and acting like a bottom must or will be submissive, which is just based on harmful stereotypes (that the fact of being penetrated is shameful somehow) and also implying that the position you take during sex has literally anything to say about your personality, which it obviously doesn’t.

when you factor heterosexual gender roles into it, it becomes even worse, like the whole stupid “so who’s the man in the relationship?” question that a lot of gay people get. The top is assumed to be “the man”, which again just conflates a SEX POSITION with personality and/or gender roles. you can be a top or bottom and have whatever gender role or gender presentation you want, and the two do not have to connect at all unless you want them to.

long story short, i made this post because i do actually see a lot of people (including gay people) conflating a sex position with a personality trait or gender role. it pisses me off for the above reasons. usually the jokes are harmless UNTIL they get so widespread and widely used that people actually take them seriously and start to headcanon their favorite character as a bottom because he has a certain personality trait or whatever. it’s a problem because this type of thing just helps spread stereotypes about gay people and gay people can buy into them if theyre not careful and actually start to believe that they have to act a certain way because theyre a bottom or that they have to be a bottom because they act a certain way. its harmful to baby gays who dont know a ton about the gay community or sex in general and could potentially get trapped in this way of thinking.

youre right that the jokes arent meant to be taken seriously, so the jokes are fine until they get super widespread and people start to take them seriously. this is why i hate cishets making jokes about the lgbt community (although like i said gays also can buy into the harmful stereotypes and perpetuate this kind of nonsense).

these types of jokes are tricky because theyre based on a marginalized identity (being gay) and revolve around a highly stigmatized topic (gay sex). you have to really be careful with these jokes because its really easy to spread harmful stereotypes, even if you dont MEAN any harm with it. thats why i recommend not making these jokes, or at least just making these jokes around friends who know what you’re talking about and not strangers that could definitely interpret them in a bad way.

my original post was mainly talking about the fandom tendency to decide that this or that character is a top or bottom based on a random personality trait that is in no way connected to sex, which pisses me off because top/bottom ONLY refers to what you like or do IN CONNECTION WITH SEX. i wasnt really talking about the silly jokes gay people will make about being a top or bottom, because some of those are actually funny. so yeah, often those jokes are fine when not taken seriously, but my original post wasnt really talking about those jokes, i was more referring to people buying into harmful stereotypes about what gay sex is or should be.

hopefully this is somewhat coherent and makes sense to you. my original post was a very short way of talking about a phenomenon that pisses me off, and i didnt really bother to explain it in depth what i was talking about, so hopefully this clears that up.

anyways, welcome to the gay community! i hope you are able to find joy in your life and potentially experience the healing powers of gay sex if thats something youre into.

top/bottom discourse is just the new version of “so who’s the man in the relationaship?” send tweet