Of Ducks and Supersluts

The Superslut Triumphant

And while we're talking about Akio...

Since Seiya, any good 5-boy-series, and a few others, has had its designated slut in the fandom. In Seiya it's Hyoga, in Shurato it's Gai, in Troopers it's Touma, in GW Quatre, and in Yuuyuu it's Kurama, to name only a few. No doubt Tsubasa and Cyberformula have their own examples. The designated slut is usually the series' reversible, practically by definition. If I was being a purist, I'd say the DS should be paired with more than two characters to qualify. Hyoga qualifies handily, being paired with everyone but Shiryu among his immediate buddies and with a few Gold Saints as well. Kurama gets paired with Hiei in both seme and uke roles, and as uke to Yuusuke, Karasu and Yomi. (The question of Kurama is complicated by the presence of youko Kurama, a superslut in his own right.) My own fandom of Papuwa must be some highmark of mathematical combination, because its DS, Servis, manages to- well, service- everyone in the series. (Maybe helped by the fact that the pointedly sexual meaning of his name- in Japanese as well as English- is mentioned in the canon itself.)

But one constant of the Superslut is the all-embracing nature of his sexuality. Compare him with the series' designated semes to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Sex for the seme is a mode of operation, part of being a manly man. It's the thing he does, not the thing he is. For the DSl, he is sex and sex is him. This is in line with traditional male thinking about women: since women are the objects of male sexual attraction, sex is seen as our most important role in society. Equally, since the DSl is the object of everyone's sexual attention, sex becomes his defining characteristic. In his way, the designated slut is even more defined by his sexual role than the designated uke. For the DU, like the Designated Seme, ukedom can be just a sexual role he takes when he's not doing something else. Think of WuFei, the DU in GW, who exists to do other things than be raped by Treize, Quatre, or whoever. Contrast him with Quatre who never does anything that I can see but angst over Trowa, get screwed by his men (individually and sequentially) and play sexual games with Duo. (This is Japanese yaoi, not English fanfic. In English I gather Duo is the slut.) Quatre gets cast more in erotic stereotypes- the leather master, the 'exotically sexual' Arab. And he's the natural for anyone with shota-con leanings.

As I say, DSl's are usually reversible. They're most often uke, but usually an Inviting Uke, one who gently leads his seme around by the nose. As semes, they're more seductive than violent. In neither role do they have anything that remotely resembles the male authority of the Designated Seme. Their authority is that of unbridled and many-faceted sexuality, and it's certainly powerful. But it's a different and less 'manly' authority than that of the Designated Seme, whose power usually manifests in coercive and impersonal sex. Compare and contrast the technique of Tai vs Ash's, or Ikki's vs Hyouga's, to get an idea of the differences.

Now consider Akio. It looks like a Designated Slut, it acts like a DSl, it makes noises like a DSl... He hits on everything. His power is blatantly based on his seductiveness. He doesn't rape. (No spoilers here, but even the situation a westerner will automatically want to consider rape isn't: it's made clear very early on that it's a seduction, and a nasty one at that. Emotional abuse, certainly, but not physical coercion.) He isn't a raping seme at all. But unlike any other series I can think of, in Utena the Designated Slut is at the top of the pile. No-one tops him. It's a world based on a completely different (dare I say 'feminine'?) standard of sexual importance: ultimate power goes to the sexually seductive. At the bottom of the heap is the series' version of the male dweeb, Saionji. In this world, macho violence puts you in last place in the male pecking order. And in between comes Touga, who's very seductive in his way, but disqualified from being alpha male by some early examples of 'masculine' behaviour. Akio gets his own way through seduction: making people want to do what he wants them to. The process of seducing is to him as important as the end goal. Touga has the end goal in sight always, and his seduction is only a means of attaining it. His feelings aren't pure, and so in the end he gets topped by the 100% sincere (and 100% demented) Akio. It's a fascinating reversal of the usual power structures of yaoi-- and made even more fascinating by Utena and the director's rejection, in the end, of both the masculine and feminine structures in favour of the simply human. But boy is Akio's world fun- and in its way exhilarating- while it lasts.