Oddity

[resonant]

I took a strange self-defense class when I was in college. (For a while, anyway. Eventually I dropped out because throwing punches for my partner to block left my entire right forearm covered with one gigantic bruise that didn't have time to heal between one weekly class and the next. Also, I have a panic about being upside-down, which made me useless when my partner needed to practice her throws on somebody.)

The instructor for this class was profoundly odd. He was a beefy, gruff-voiced anglo guy with a manner that raised paranoia to a fine art. I've just realized that it's his voice in my head when I imagine Mad-Eye Moody.

We all hated to be the one he chose to demonstrate a move on, because the first couple of times you'd tap to signal that you'd had enough, he'd ignore you. This was bad when he was demonstrating, say, an arm twist, and very, very bad when he was demonstrating how to use a forearm against the throat to cut off someone's air supply.

He seemed proud of being aggressive and difficult. This move, he'd tell us, was something that also worked on alligators and mad dogs. This other move was something we probably wouldn't learn elsewhere, unless we ever found ourselves in a Turkish prison.

I've been thinking of him lately because, through HP, I've started being exposed to anime [edit: the word I wanted here was yaoi], which I wasn't familiar with before. See, when he divided us into pairs for practice, he told us that the word for the thrower was seme and the word for throw-ee was uke. I still remember my partner, this little tiny girl with glasses and a bad perm, standing over me where she'd tossed me into a crumpled heap on the floor and saying, "I broke my uke!"

I had no idea those words had any other meaning. Now I'm really curious about what else he learned in that Turkish prison.

Comments

[leadensky.livejournal.com]

The words are used through out Japanese based martial arts.

I'm seeing the fringes of anime-style slash, and noticed the same thing about uke. What's surprising me, though, is the assumption that uke is the smaller, weaker, and less-able...participant.

I trained in aikido, and uke had best know what they were doing more so than seme, or else both of them were going to get hurt.

- hossgal

[practical-magic.livejournal.com]

The terms seme and uke are used in both martial arts and as relationship/character personality descriptors in manga/anime for the same reason-- they are based upon the verb forms for attack (semeru) and receive (ukeru) respectively.

This makes perfect sense for the martial arts.

In terms of manga and anime, the terms have come to mean many things, but most especially whether the character is the agressor or the more passive member of the relationship. The seme is the attacker (There's really no such thing as a gentle seme. They want what they want and they are relentless until they get it). And of course the uke is the receiver, usually in a wide-eyed and slightly unwilling way.

The seme is almost universally taller than the uke, so the height of the two characters involved almost always determines who tops, and it's fairly rare for a Japanese-produced doujinshi or even pro manga to venture outside the 'height rule'. Typically characters don't switch off sexual roles (top will always top, and vice versa), which probably says something about Japanese cultural attitudes. Odd but true.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi. um, just to add some comment.

I'm a Japanese living near Tokyo, but having never seen a yaoi piece in my life I'm probably not one to talk... Still, I wanted to say that all you've said here about uke and seme is true, so far as I heard. Especially about the top and bottom being rigidly set with a typical character pattern. Actually that's why I don't like to read yaoi and not even Japanese slash, but anyway.

The "cultural differences" seem to shock the Japanese yaoi fen as much as the other side. On our rec sites for English-written slash fics there's usually a warning, whenever the roles switch within a story, saying, "this piece is 'riba' (short for the yaoi term 'reversible' - sounds like a winter coat, but don't laugh)." That's as big a squick factor as, say, underage pairings or non-con. Maybe bigger, I don't know.

I guess the fixedness of roles has a lot to do with our culture's binding mindset on normalized het relationships, at least on some level. Though, the parent population for yaoi and slash aren't exactly the same so we can't simply say this represents the difference in cultures.

About the height thing, I'm not so sure. It's true that the bigger, stronger, older (an important factor; note that we even have different words for younger and elder brothers), and in general, "maler" one of the pair strongly tends to top. But then that's been said about some of the slash fandoms, hasn't it? It's probably a lot more rigid in yaoi, but what's even more rigid, it seems, is the demand to stick to one pattern of uke/seme for one pair, at least for the duration of one story. I've heard there are different groups of fen who prefer different uke/seme relations for the same pairing, the two oil and water like those decided on which Ray to put Fraser with. Maybe this happens only when the two characters are more or less the same height, maybe not... Sorry, I haven't checked.

I've babbled enough for a passer-by. I'd just like to say that I stumbled on this page looking for something written by Resonant... Your dS stories are *wonderful*!! Thanks for giving us the delight! -Sakana

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

On our rec sites for English-written slash fics there's usually a warning, whenever the roles switch within a story, saying, "this piece is 'riba' (short for the yaoi term 'reversible' - sounds like a winter coat, but don't laugh)." That's as big a squick factor as, say, underage pairings or non-con. Maybe bigger, I don't know.

Oh my god, there's a word for it? Wow. I love this! Here all my life I've thought I was so vanilla, and now it turns out that I'm a pervert in two separate cultures.

And I'm thrilled you liked the DS stories! Thanks so much.

[squidlet.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't know about the martial arts usage of the words uke and seme, but "I broke my uke" just killed me. Of course, you'd have to read yaoi manga to get why it's so funny.

By the way, what anime did you get this reference from?