Who comes first?

[campylobacter]

When you read or write fan fiction, does the order of the people listed in the pairing mean anything?

If it's "Mulder/Skinner", does that mean Mulder's topping?

If it's Gandalf/Theoden, does that mean the King of Rohan's the last to come?

If it's "Dubya/Jacko", does it mean the President outranks the King of Pop?

Does it have anything to do with alphabetical order?

Or gender?

Comments

Re:

[cschick.livejournal.com]

I guess the other thing to note is that outside the archive system, it's more commonly gender-based than importance-based. For DSR (Doggett/Scully romance==Scully/Doggett romance) the community's directly counter to the way we do it. Scully/Skinner varies from author to author, while Scully/Krycek authors seem to lean more towards our order.