Role Reversal Stories

After reading one of the stories suggested here I realised that there are two distinct things, the roles and the power relationship. Sometimes the roles are directly related to the power relationship in the traditional way and sometimes reversed.

Actually in "reversal themes" there is another: my favorite, AGE reversal. The reason I didn't offer any suggestions for my stuff was precisely because the OP asked for "role" reversal and his examples supported that distinction. My pieces are age-reversals. An age reversal has an implied reversal because of the societal assumption that an older person either knows better or is ostensibly more mature than a younger one. However, an older person can be clearly in their proper "role" as a submissive. So, a reversal of sorts, but not one of role, except as traditionally viewed by society.

It's a tricky-sticky web.

kdpierre
Yeah, age-reversals can be identical to role reversals, or adjacent for the reasons you've stated. It all depends on the culture and context within the story. In some traditional cultures, age affords a certain status by default, i.e."respect your elders." So even if the roles are linear, like say a sorority big sister and an older freshman, the age reversal makes it so that within that story, the older spankee feels the embarrassment of being spanked by a younger woman as soon as she thinks of her as anything other than her senior within the sorority.

For contrast, a contemporary BDSM relationship can have an age reversal, but modern sensibilities and the consensual nature take it outside of the dynamic of a role reversal story.

Patron

What's even more confounding, besides the excellent distinctions you make, is that even within the last example you can have the two involved parties each seeing their relationship as either proper or 'reversed'. I can speak from experience that in my case, I am, and have often been, in situations where a younger, or even SUBSTANTIALLY younger person has a disciplinary/authoritarian edge over me. In nearly all these cases, when asked, the younger dominant always sees this as nothing more than an "as it should be" acceptance of roles, and yet, I, perhaps as the older party, or maybe because a good portion of my life was lived when age DID have a sort of automatic assumption of authority, see it as a reversal.

Heck, I imagine there are some traditionalists even now who would see a plain old Femdom dynamic as inherently "reversed" from "who SHOULD be" the leader/head/boss/dominant. In fact, over the past decades, I have seen power dynamics treated very differently just based on the traditional view (even biblically espoused ) that the male should be the HOH. Whereas a very forward-thinking person might take either F/M or M/F as two flipped sides of equally acceptable preferences, I have experienced firsthand the thinly veiled disdain a very traditional person feels about a submissive male. (though this is dying out over time)

Well, from the perspective of the enslaved woman's teenage daughter (Sabrina), this story involved a 'role reversal' of sorts, since her mother (Cheryl) was the main authority figure (although originally a rather ineffectual one) to her. Surprisingly seeing Cheryl being so severely butt-blistered by her owner (Teri), who was none other than the girl's own teacher, like a naughty ten-year-old, that had to be stunning for her, who had known nothing about that owner-slave relationship.

Also in a sense, Sabrina was spanked by Teri for Cheryl's failure to bring her up properly, which led to her (Sabrina) cheating in her class. Cheryl clearly understood that Teri would hold her primarily accountable for her daughter's misconduct, and indeed the slave was punished first and far worse than the girl.

Then at the story's conclusion Cheryl was back in her maternal disciplinary position, and performing it much more strictly, so from Sabrina's point of view her mother's role had 'reversed back' at the account's end.

So to me there was a 'role reversal' and then a 'reverse back' in this story, albeit it was only in terms of the teenager's personal perspective on her mother's status... --C.K.

There's something interesting and intriguing about role reversal and age reversal stories. There are some very good ones out there. My favorites tend toward f/m and f/f.

CrimsonKidCK All of the power dynamics in that story still flow from the top to the bottom. Everyone still has their assigned station. There's a *revelation* of status, but not a reversal of status.

This may be veering off topic, but role play/age play situations can add a lot. I've done it in real life.
I did a dive into the LSF archives and found some stories and series by Rachel Gordon.