Of Ducks and Supersluts

Part I: Imprinting (Why a duck?)

Yes, that kind of imprinting. The thing that baby ducks do when first hatched. They see another duck (usually. If they're lucky) and that sets the pattern of what they identify with and how they behave for the rest of their lives. They see a cat or a scientist, and they imprint on that, and have identity crises for the rest of their lives. So simple.

Well, fans do it too. We all know the effect of your first yaoi passion. Those with the gene for yaoi (that innate unexplained predisposition to find m/m hot) will imprint on the first example of it they see after the latency phase. Oh yes. Fans have latency phases. You may be middle-aged before the predisposition to yaoi kicks in: known any number of gay guys, been a fan of any amount of anime, even had innumerable sexual fantasies with never a twinge. And then one day- KERBLAM. The lightning strikes, the trigger trips, and you wake into a homoerotic subuniverse seething with erotic energy. That's the point at which you get imprinted.

The actual process is really very simple. Who did you see doing it first? That's what determines whether your passion will be for guys with silver hair to their bums, or guys with one eye, or guys with bloated steroidal muscles, or whatever. And from then on you'll have an inherent weakness for silver-haired guys, however apish (Bastard's DS, RG's Tai), or one-eyed men however blocked and passive (Papuwa's Servis, Basara's Ageha), or guys who would give Schwarzenegger an inferiority complex (anybody in Dragonball.) It gets even worse. Your imprinted type skews your view of the world. Once imprinted on a Tai, you can't seriously consider any kind of seme but the psychotic sadist (you lucky lucky person, you, because you'll never lack for series.) Once imprinted on a Servis, you'll find yourself defending all the self-absorbed navelgazers of the world, even Mercedes Lackey's Vanyel. Once imprinted on a Vejita, any man with ordinary proportions will strike you as a fragile bishounen you could break with one finger. Once imprinted on Kouji Nanjo, you become incapable of rational thinking. (These are all theoretical examples, of course.)

Nothing quite matches that first imprinting thrill, the moment you saw Kurama kiss Hiei and knew this was what heaven is about. Little did you know you'd been imprinted on a redhaired seme, which means- no choice- you must belong to the (redhaired) Sakuragi x (black-haired) Rukawa faction of Slam Dunk, doomed to war eternally with the RukawaxSakuragi fans. They were all imprinted, in their turn, on Kizuna (black-haired Enjouji x red-haired Ranmaru) and think red-haired semes are a crime against nature, on a par with screwing your sister. (The risk of some day being dragged into the civil war in Kosov-- sorry, Slam Dunk fan feuds is a good reason right there for avoiding Kizuna, in this author's humble opinion.)

But there are less traumatic forms of imprinting. Maybe it's a position you imprint on. 'I don't care who it is so long as he's bending over and I can see his bum' 'lying on his back gracefully pointing his feet in the air' 'bouncing up and down on his seme's cock with bubbles coming from his mouth and tears pouring down his face.' (The last one, rare over here, has a devoted following in Japan.)

The debate still continues as to whether preferred genre of yaoi is innate or if it too comes from imprinting. One school has it that if you were a romantic wuss in your latency days, you'll be allergic to raping semes and prefer the ones who bring flowers and ask their ukes to marry them. Conversely, if you've carried a heavy load of hostility through your latency period, yaoi rapes or (even better) shota-con rapes will scratch that itch beautifully once you find them. The opposite school leans more to the Freudian notion of the primal scene. If your first yaoi screw was a seme rape (as in that popular doorway to yaoi, Zetsuai), it brands your soul forever as the one true form of yaoi sex. And if it was two cute guys with big eyes holding hands (as in virtually all the early nonspecific BeBoy stuff), ever after you'll seek out the sweet stuff and think the amount of yaoi violence is unnecessary.

But though the first time is the best, imprinting is a process that can happen any time in your fannish life. Just recently I was reviewing a bunch of my sister's tapes from two and three years back, and wandered into my first viewing of Escaflowne. And there, by god, was a character that rang a loud Pavlovian 'slut alert' bell in my head. No, not Van, for heaven's sake; or even Folken. Dryden, obviously, the one the Escaflowne fanbook called 'the unexpectedly popular male character because of his masculinity and dry sophistication.' I don't know what did it for the original fans, but what did it for me was his voice actor. Kosugi Jirouta did Akio the King of Cats/Sluts/Irresistible Sleaze in Utena. Without even noticing, I'd been imprinted on Kosugi's voice which will ever after be for me the voice of Unfettered Seductiveness.

Go to Part II