Aggressive-Submissive

A character who is unusually aggressive and domineering in their relationships and particularly romantic/sexual advances, yet relinquishes all control the moment it comes to actually having sex with their loved one.

This behavior is commonly displayed by Type A Tsunderes. Parallels can be drawn between this and a Faux Action Girl. Indeed, due to a common Double Standard (and because Most Writers Are Male), women in fiction end up on the receiving end of this trope much more often than men (cf. Men Act, Women Are).

An extreme variation, dipping deep into Character Derailment, is often found in fanworks (especially Hentai-Doujinshi) starring a canonically dominant and assertive female character, who remains dominant and assertive right up to the point where the faceless male reader stand-in takes off her clothes.

Note that Tropes Are Not Bad when used appropriately, and even this one can present an interesting dichotomy in a character to explore for drama and Character Development. It only becomes off-putting when perpetrated in fanworks upon characters who you'd reasonably expect to behave in bed the same way they do in canon.

For the male/male case, this is a standard (although somewhat less common) type of Uke in Boys Love Genre works. They're similarly likely to be Tsundere.

Compare Casual Kink, Property of Love, Safe, Sane, and Consensual, Safe Word and All Women are Doms, All Men are Subs.

In real life, this does occur, and is sometimes called "topping from the bottom".

Examples of Aggressive-Submissive include:

Canon examples

Anime And Manga

  • Mio from MM! is a very dominant girl for the entire anime series, but in the first two DVD Extras they have her getting dominated by a cat and another girl respectively. The extras were supposed to be Fan Service, but they felt like Fetish Retardant to those that were hoping for more Mio femdom. Eventually one extra focusing on her sadist side showed up, but only one.
  • Kyouko Oomiya in Futari Ecchi, in her relationship with Matsuzaki, at least in the early phases. On one hand he was The Casanova and she a 30-year-old virgin when they started dating but, on the other hand, she is imposingly bossy and he is actually insecure about himself.
  • Mafuyu from Hentai OVAs Kanojo x Kanojo x Kanojo is a quite interesting example. The first episode has her being a really domineering Emotionless Girl. The second episode has her dominant too, BUT the guy ends turning the tables on her for no real reason (As he never does that to other girls, and he seemed fine with her dominance on episode 1). That's where the series originally ended, but then they announced a third episode, and on it Mafuyu was hit by massive Chickification and became just as cheerfully emotional and non-dominant as the other girls, unfortunate as her dominance and quietness made her popular.
  • Hana no Seikon no Qwaser is a lesbian version. At first we see she's a quite rough girl with others, but soon she gets dominated by Katja and clearly loves it. Then come the second season and she subverts this by showing she can be dominant with other girls, so she probably likes being both sub and dom depending of her partner.
  • Nana to Kaoru: Nana is an angry tsundere until she gets all tied up.
  • Yuno from Mirai Nikki is very direct and aggressive towards Yukiteru, until she finally "becomes one" with him. Then she becomes super-shy and even bottoms! Notably, she goes back to being her usual aggressive self right after they're done.

Comic Books

Film

  • A Rare Male Example: In the original American Pie movie, the guy pursued the band girl (eventually giving up on the sex wager), but she ended up dominant during their sex scene.

Literature

  • Thandi Palane from the Honor Harrington series is described as very sexually submissive, as a respite from her domineering public 'strong' facade. The fact that she's a genetically engineered Heavyworlder Super Soldier who can break most men in half and once crushed a man's skull in with her bare fist has made it hard to find men who aren't afraid of her.
    • At one point she asks newfound boyfriend Victor Cachat, "Did it ever occur to you that a lady weight-lifter might get tired of it?"
    • Victor's morning-after musings also include the line, "Dominating her had been like a mortal dominating a goddess, a feat possible only because the goddess herself willed it."
    • Note that Cachat himself, while repeatedly described in the books as a Death incarnate at certain circumstances, is actually a pretty scrawny and physically non-imposing guy. And a bit of a prude to boot.
  • Mitza Lizalor in one of the later Foundation novels. She's a high-ranking member of the government on a Sex Is Evil and I Am Horny Planet of Hats and is socially dominant with her people and in conversation with the protagonist. She also quite likes sex but is disappointed with the guilt that men on her planet feel about it, so the protagonist uses his supernatural intuition to dominate her in bed.

Video Games

  • In Metal Gear Solid 3, EVA pursues Snake extremely aggressively from almost the moment she's introduced, and he spends much of the game either trying to shove her off him or joylessly enduring her kisses and gropes. While she is the one who initiates the eventual sex and takes the lead in the foreplay, there's a point, a little while before the sex actually commences, where Snake suddenly grabs her, pushes her onto her back and powerfully dominates her. Perhaps justified, because their relationship was so physically one-sided up until then that Snake had to show extreme enthusiasm to establish that their sex scene wasn't just EVA raping him after having broken his spirit with a week-long course of continuous sexual harassment.

Web Original

Visual Novels

  • Akiha Tohno in Tsukihime makes very obvious passes on Shiki (and creeps him out repeatedly) throughout her route, but when it comes to the sex scene, he takes complete control.
  • A similar dynamic occurs with Rin Tohsaka in Fate Stay Night: throughout the route she's an assertive Tsundere and The Tease, but in her sex scene she becomes uncharacteristically shy. Once it's over, however, she goes back to her original state, chewing Shirou out for having been too aggressive in bed! It's worth noting that, both in another route's three-way scene with Saber and the scene in the sequel Fate/hollow ataraxia, she acts more like she normally does. This implies that it has more to do with her inexperience and anxiety over being the focus of Shirou's attention than Character Derailment.

Real Life

  • Truth in Television: Professional dominatrixes say a good portion of their clients tend to be in high-powered, high-status occupations, and they enjoy taking a submissive role because it serves as a contrast to the stress of maintaining control that they face in the rest of their life.

Fan Works examples

Anime and Manga

  • If there's a doujinshi focused on a girl with a dominant personality in canon, not only she won't be dominant, but she'll likely be getting raped or NTRd. Or both.
    • Sometimes there's even a nasty Double Subversion where the girl starts dominant for a few pages to half the doujinshi, then the guy rapes her or something like that. If it's an attempt to pander to both femdom and non-femdom fans it fails, as the former will be angry at the cop-out and the latter have lots more material that caters fully to them.
    • The only notable aversion seems to be Houkago Play doujins, which often keeps the girlfriend assertive at least.[1] Considering there's no anime and it's unlikely you know about the manga unless you're into feet and dominant girls, it's kind of Justified.
    • Inverted by the ocassional doujinshi where a Shrinking Violet or other non-dominant girl becomes a total domme. Note this is much, much rarer than seeing this played straight.

Various Media

Video Games

  • Many fan works featuring Bayonetta fall into this trope. Entertainingly, this was the major complaint the creator had about Rule 34 - not that it existed, but that Bayonetta tended to be in the submissive role, and the fandom actually reacted by making her the dominant one more frequently.
  1. ↑ Unless her club president is involved
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