Oh, god, I'm back at plato's cave and the reflections on the wall as interpreted by different authors. Yes, in a sense, there is a generic "dom/sub" universe that both stories take their information from, just as Anne Rice and, wow, Gor stories, used that same world in their creation. As milliefiori brought up, it's like using the Civil War era American South--there is an uber setting that authors use in many different ways.