Labels, Tags, and Warnings - Oh My!

            Let me elucidate, for your edification, the proper usage of certain terms when referring to participants engaging in consensual (or not) physical adult behaviors.

            In a yaoi, or boy's love relationship, there is usually a dominant partner and a submissive one.  Stories that involve erotica normally conform to the formula of the seme (top or attacker) in pursuit of the uke (bottom or receiver).

            Without getting into the history of how these terms came about – which is fascinating by the way – the use of seme and uke in fan fiction or art labels, tags, and warnings are there to help the reader either find pairings they enjoy or avoid the ones they don't.

            Improperly using these tags will oftentimes permanently chase off your readers or viewers.  Unfortunately, I have noticed that a lot of authors and artists don't truly understand how to accurately identify pairings.

            The seme in a pairing is the dominant partner.  This is normally the more aggressive character of the pair, the one who pursues the object of their interest.  The uke is the submissive, submitting, or receptive character.  The role of uke is not necessarily consensual.

            When identifying your character's roles, the aggressive partner – the top – should be listed first.  The submissive partner – the bottom – is listed second.

            Because the use of the "/" character is used to separate the top and bottom, yaoi is often called 'slash'.  The seme goes above the "/" because they are on top and the uke goes under the slash because they are on the bottom.

            Hence, if you are portraying a sexual relationship between an aggressive Raphael and a submissive Donatello your pairing label would read Raphael/Donatello.

            Many people have chosen to use the "x" in place of the "/" when identifying pairings, although the "x" usually signifies a non-slash coupling.  The character placement is still the same and would be shown as RaphaelxDonatello.

            Now we come to the situations where the partners are basically equals in a relationship.  Sometimes the top becomes the bottom.  When conveying those types of partnerships, they should be written as, for instance: Raph/Leo/Raph.

            This is also an excellent way to label groups of stories or pictures, where one piece may concentrate on Raph/Leo and another might be Leo/Raph.

            While this system of labeling came about primarily to identify the tops and bottoms in yaoi, it is advantageous to use it uniformly because it is a good way to relay who is in a story or picture and that a particular relationship is the focus.

            With that in mind if the focus is on a het couple, such as Casey and April, and they are engaged in a romantic relationship then the same formula can be used. Casey/April or CaseyxApril.

            Of course that is assuming that Casey is the dominant partner.  If April drugs and has her way with him, please do label it April/Casey!

            Another thing that you might see is a label, tag, or warning declaring "uke!insertname".  This is done most often with characters that are not normally depicted as bottoms.  It is a courtesy because most people subscribe to the idea that this particular character is much too aggressive and alpha and dominant to ever bottom.

            For example – "uke!Raph".

            Lastly there are the fictions and pictures that depict polyamory – a term applied to the practice or lifestyle of being open to the possibility of people having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time, with full knowledge and consent by all partners involved.

            Labels for those types of depictions run the gamut from "threesome" "foursome" "pairings-multiple", etc.  In the TMNT world it is written as "OT3" or "OT4", then the characters involved are listed.

            "Warning: TCest" "Warning: Turtlecest"

            For those who don't know, turtlecest is exactly what it says – Turtle Incest.  Brother loving brother in a sexual relationship.  It should be added to warnings, labels, tags, or summaries because many people do not care for it and find it morally unacceptable.  Those who write TCest are not trying to corrupt anyone and certainly do not wish for anyone who finds it objectionable to accidently stumble across it.

            Likewise, death fics should have warnings also.  If you don't think accidently reading a TMNT death fic is upsetting, look at how many fans cried (and still cry) when viewing the episode "Same As It Never Was".

            I hope this was helpful.  Please do comment if there was anything I missed or misrepresented.  Please do not comment if all you intend to do is vent vitriolic hate for the subject of this post.  This was merely intended as a way to clarify proper labeling techniques, not as a recruitment tool.

            Peace!