Het!Reid vs. Slashy!Reid

[poeticpathetic.livejournal.com]

We had a great discussion going on here about Reid as written in slash fics.  Some people touched on Reid written in het fics as well and I was hoping to explore that a little more.   I know het isn't as popular amongst fandoms as slash is (and this is across the board), but I've seen two distinct variations of Reid in het fics, and I'm new to the genre.  There's the confident, self-assured Reid who's clearly aware of what he's doing, and then there's the Reid who is a total fumble and fail and lets whoever he's with sort of take over.  What do you think is more accurate and why do you think we see two ends of the spectrum?  What episodic evidence do we have when it comes to formulating Reid's sex-life, if any, and how do you interpret it?

Comments

[benitle.livejournal.com]

Then some perfectly gendered writer comes along and wipes those things away to place my beloveds into a sexualized little box. For example, I don't believe for ONE second that Spencer Reid would be a bottom. EVER. It's not in his personality to give up that much control. And yet every Morgan/Reid fic out there has him as some weak little thing. He's not weak.

I have a few thoughts on these statements.

First, I wholeheartedly agree on some writers wrongly applying gender roles to m/m fiction. It's one of my pet peeves. I'm a slasher at heart and I'm a woman. What I enjoy most about slash fiction (and the main reason why het doesn't attract me as much as slash does) is the fact that gender dynamics work differently in m/m fic than in m/f fic. This is not to say that in m/f the female will never be emancipated or the dominant partner in a relationship, it's simply a fact that - most of the time - two men are different together from a man and a woman. It does turn me off when an author turns one of the males in slash into "a girl" and forces m/f dynamics onto a m/m fic. I'd like to think that most of the time the reason for this is simply poor writing.

I also agree with you when you say that Reid is not a weak character and that he's perfectly able of taking care of himself and also - in my personal off-screen canon - of taking charge in bed, no matter whether he's with a male or female.

What I don't agree with is your statement about him never bottoming. Bottoming doesn't always equal giving up control. If you think about the position of the bottom riding the top, it's still pretty much the bottom who dictates the speed, rhythm, angle and how deeply he allows the top to penetrate him. Even though the bottom is the one being penetrated, he is still in control. I think the idea of bottom = weak = girl comes from old gender stereotypes with women being penetrated during sex and being more passive.

That said, I'd love to read a fic where Reid refuses to bottom because he simply doesn't enjoy it. Not because he thinks it makes him weak/girly.


Oooops, sorry for the tl;dr comment.

[bbt-criminal.livejournal.com]

In BDSM, that is referred to as "topping from the bottom," which is more or less when you've got a manipulative sub who controls the scene by putting too many restrictions on what the "master" is allowed to do. It doesn't make for a good scene, or for good fic.

[benitle.livejournal.com]

But I wasn't even talking about BDSM. I was merely talking about two men with equal power/dominance in bed where the bottom enjoys taking charge. It doesn't have anything to do with one partner being a manipulative sub or not making a great scene/story. The point I was trying to make was that bottoming doesn't automatically mean losing control during sex.

[bbt-criminal.livejournal.com]

I'm going to disagree with you on that one. In our culture, penis=power. Therefore, any time there's penetration going on, there's a power imbalance. I know it's not polite to say it, and a lot of people are going to jump down my throat for it, but there it is. (Also, equal power makes for no sizzle. That would be why there aren't more Hotch/Morgan shippers. They're equals and it would be dull.)

On the other hand, we're going off-topic.