hello :3 no, it's not a bother, however i do apologize for the long time replying ><

so i needed to sit on this a little bc when this came in, ngl, i was a bit pissed. i've been in fandoms spaces long enough to have seen this topic rise countless times. it is getting incredibly old. and frustrating.

what's wrong with this type of mentality? lots of things.

technically, there's nothing wrong in thinking in absolutes when it pertains to your personal tastes. aka, it's fine to think blue is the ugliest color ever and you wouldn't want to wear clothes in that color. similarly, it's okay to think one half of a ship is strictly a top and the other strictly a bottom because that's your own personal favorite flavor for said ship and you feel no need to switch it up.

now in fandoms, you may encounter a variety of people from all walks of life with similar, vastly different or in between tastes. you can definitely meet like-minded people who prefer strictly that pairing the same way you do, some who don't mind things switched up once in a while and people who see that pairing's bedroom dynamics entirely the other way around from you. all of those are fine and valid. there is no right or wrong except in the rare case where the canon material does mention or showcases the characters' preferences (and even then, tbh, because the point of fandom is to have fun, notably by bending and sometimes even breaking canon) in that specific context.

some cultures have adopted a way of differentiating who tops and who bottoms by combining a ship name in two different ways. if i recall the correct order, the top's name is first and the bottom after.
[n.b.: it's something i noticed from being in fandoms about mangas/animes that i've also seen replicated in danmei/manwha/webtoon and in thai BLs spheres, notably in the og language of the media. in the case that concerns us, rps/rpf, it is something i've also seen from kr fans/fanartists/fic writers. as someone who's not from any of the media previously cited cultures, it's only something i noticed enough and can vaguely suppose it is culture related. i have never encountered this type of practice in western fandoms say like m/c/u for example.]

now, from what i gathered, op was talking in the context of a fandom with fictional characters. which, fine have your own preferences, curate your fandom experience, all fine by me. the main problems with op's stance are that: 1) a character's personality informs you of who tops and who bottoms and 2) that fic authors who do not tag who tops or bottoms shouldn't be writing at all. which are... very extreme takes, and awfully bad ones at that.

thing is, most of the time, people don't belong to just one fandom. and they often transpose that mentality to all their other fandoms.

now, in a fandom with fictional characters it's already a problematic mentality: it's basically the same as saying "this is the right way to write x, y and z ships" (this is an exaggeration for the sake of brevity but it is what it ultimately boils down to) and point 2) is literally a creativity killer.

the problem gets worse when applied to our specific situation: rps/rpf fandoms are about real people and while we do write them as characters, applying such a mentality to what we see of our boys is a slippery slope.

the point op was making is that how a character present themselves, how they behave informs and plays a role in the fact that said character tops or bottoms. aka a big muscley man cannot bottom or the dark, broody, emotionally constipated character cannot bottom. or the other way around.

sadly, most of those are rooted in (depending on the character and/or ship) heteronormativity, misogyny and other shitty stuff of that sort.

now, even though we're writing and creating content of these boys as characters, some people still view them, the real people, through that lense.

it's incredibly reductive to see chn or chngbn in whatever they do and use their personality, the way their body is shaped (naturally or by their own work) inherently make them a top or a bottom and nothing else. im sure you can see why this is wrong.

having preferences in ships and their bedroom dynamocs is fine, curating your fandom experience to fit those preferences is fine and actually very much encouraged! believing that one specific trait/set of traits in a character's personality and/or physic is a sure sign of the way they engage in bedroom dynamics, even more so if said character is based on a real person, is all kinds of wrong.

i hope this is worded well enough because i sure as heck spent time on this one and i feel like my brain is all wrung lol i also hope this helped you understand anon and thanks for you question ~♡