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Dec. 9th, 2018 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_ragnarokthis concept has been conceived by takiki16 and ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
bemusedlybespectacled, then i squeed about it a bunch with findundergrounddragoutofwater and, well.
so basically the idea is that in the D/s au there's this division - in the original concept it was only a thing for super rich americans, butfindundergrounddragoutofwater and i expanded it to be a general society thing - where subs are divided to upstairs and downstairs subs.
upstairs subs are pretty. they are decorative and highly mannered and presentable. they are status symbols.
downstairs subs take the heavy punishment and do the heavy labor. they are the ones who get shared with other doms/households. they can serve as whipping boys/girls for upstairs subs.
if going for the wider-society thing, one can postulate subs who are sort of "in between", ones that became more common with the rise of the middle class - stairwell subs, who do white collar jobs.
to get fandom-specific, the original idea contained some nice Leverage headcanons, centralizing on downstairs sub Eliot who has strongly internalized the upstairs/downstairs division - of course he's the one who'll take the punishment, would it be better to let some pretty, delicate upstairs sub take it instead of him? and please let us consider: some upstairs sub catching Eliot's eye before he's about to be punished, the upstairs sub looking concerned if not horrified, and Eliot smiling to set them at ease.
other leverage character headcanons include Hardison who believes all subs should be upstairs subs; Parker who often goes undercover as an upstairs sub, but has a lot of experiences with doms treating her like a downstairs sub; and nonsexual mommy dom Sophie. and stairwell sub Nate.
for POI, there is a plethora of possible readings: John of course sees himself as a downstairs sub in a way very similar to Eliot. Harold can be a dom, or a stairwell sub, or made to be an upstairs sub and going slowly insane with boredom. (He can organize parties and pick nice outfits with the best of them!)
another thought we had was - upstairs subs are not supposed to have sex with anyone but their dom, they don't get shared, but they might have nonsexual romance with other upstairs subs and have that treated as cute and nonthreatening. So upstairs sub harold having courtly love with Grace, the upstairs sub from next door - consider john going on hands and knees so Harold can climb over him and kiss Grace through a window.
takiki16 and so basically the idea is that in the D/s au there's this division - in the original concept it was only a thing for super rich americans, but
upstairs subs are pretty. they are decorative and highly mannered and presentable. they are status symbols.
downstairs subs take the heavy punishment and do the heavy labor. they are the ones who get shared with other doms/households. they can serve as whipping boys/girls for upstairs subs.
if going for the wider-society thing, one can postulate subs who are sort of "in between", ones that became more common with the rise of the middle class - stairwell subs, who do white collar jobs.
to get fandom-specific, the original idea contained some nice Leverage headcanons, centralizing on downstairs sub Eliot who has strongly internalized the upstairs/downstairs division - of course he's the one who'll take the punishment, would it be better to let some pretty, delicate upstairs sub take it instead of him? and please let us consider: some upstairs sub catching Eliot's eye before he's about to be punished, the upstairs sub looking concerned if not horrified, and Eliot smiling to set them at ease.
other leverage character headcanons include Hardison who believes all subs should be upstairs subs; Parker who often goes undercover as an upstairs sub, but has a lot of experiences with doms treating her like a downstairs sub; and nonsexual mommy dom Sophie. and stairwell sub Nate.
for POI, there is a plethora of possible readings: John of course sees himself as a downstairs sub in a way very similar to Eliot. Harold can be a dom, or a stairwell sub, or made to be an upstairs sub and going slowly insane with boredom. (He can organize parties and pick nice outfits with the best of them!)
another thought we had was - upstairs subs are not supposed to have sex with anyone but their dom, they don't get shared, but they might have nonsexual romance with other upstairs subs and have that treated as cute and nonthreatening. So upstairs sub harold having courtly love with Grace, the upstairs sub from next door - consider john going on hands and knees so Harold can climb over him and kiss Grace through a window.
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Date: 2018-12-10 06:32 am (UTC)Also, John as the downstairs sub co-doms Harold and Grace decided would make a much better upstairs sub...
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Date: 2018-12-10 07:22 am (UTC)1) Switches are assumed (however unfairly) to default to being upstairs on account of being higher on the ladder relative to subs in general. This obviously ignores the switches who like deeper painplay and punishment and/or service as well as switches who prefer to dom, but all stereotypes ignore people who do not fit them.
2) Switches are pressured to "choose a side" (as they often are in real life!) and belitted by subs and doms alike as not having the strength of character and identity needed to REALLY fit in the usual formula, while switches who HAVE decided to do 24/7 domming or subbing are not considered "as good" as those that are fully dom or sub. Perhaps they might be happiest in [disdainful sniff] lower class relationships where upstairs/downstairs is not as prevalent.
3) Switches inherently blur the upstairs/downstairs binary (as well as the dom/sub binary!) and so any relationship with a switch in it will disrupt the usual formula. They would likely attract folks who also disrupt the usual formula (ex: sadistic subs), but even if they deliberately chose a normative dynamic, they'd still be different from straightforward dom/upstairs/downstairs relationships. For example: ordering an upstairs sub (who might be used to doling out punishment if the dom can't be bothered) to service top them.
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Date: 2018-12-10 08:50 am (UTC)The movie gets kudos at Sundance, maybe wins a GLAAD award. The actress may or may not be a switch herself, and fandom discourse occurs
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Date: 2018-12-10 08:59 am (UTC)At the time not sure I came up with much, but now thinking - so the social organization here doesn't seem to have much space for switches, which makes me think this might be one of the d/s aus that didn't have the concept of switches for a while, didn't recognize this as a thing, etc (the real life bdsm community totally having had and still having some issues with that...)
Possibly this is one of the verses where switches would tend to be classed as subs (basically with a 'if you want sub things at all you're a sub' idea), which might actually contribute more to the skewed dom:sub ratio.
And this leading to various sucky things for various people who were in fact actually switches. Also likely some of them parsing their feelings as desires to be an 'alpha sub' and direct other subs for their dom (both upstairs and downstairs might have things like that, from household organization stuff to workgangs for downstairs subs), or to be an upstairs sub ordering around downstairs subs, and putting it into that.