Who tops more, Draco or Harry? - HD-fan-fair analysis

[snowgall]

It's the time you've all been waiting for, where we learn Who tops more in hd-fan-fair fics, Draco or Harry?

The impetus for this project came from my original "Who Tops More" post, where I looked at nearly 1500 fics from my own personal database. That post generated a ton of feedback in the comments, which made me decide to run the numbers again, this time looking at just the fics written for the hd_fan_fair fest, which has run since 2009, with a gap in 2011.

The results are at the bottom of this post. Before I get to them, I just want to explain FAQ-style how this project came about and how the data was collected and labeled.

Why use data from hd-fan-fair? What's so special about that fest?
The proposal to use data from hd_fan_fair originally came from eidheann_writes in a comment thread on the original "Who Tops More" post:

I don't know much about data sets, but would it be more telling to look at maybe a specific fest over the years (hd_fan_fair for example, which is a prompt (not a gift) fest which is long running but less likely to include people feeling obligated to write topping preferences due to prompts rather than gifts) and then use those stats over the years to draw conclusions?
I mean, smaller sample size but less chance of unintended bias?

And that made a lot of sense to me. And there are several other benefits to using a fest as a data source:

• You don't get WIPs
• The pub date is very clear and traceable
• You get a pool of works that all were written under similar constraints so it's the closest thing to apples-to-apples you can get

And we can do this again with another fest if people are interested. Just let me know!

How did you compile the data?
We crowd-sourced it! If you want more background on how this was done, you can get caught up with these posts:

• Crowd-sourcing Fan-fair Proposal - Spreadsheet link (f-locked)
  
• Progress Report #1
  
• Progress Report #2 - My f-list rocks!
  
• Progress Report #3 - Take a Poll
  
• Progress Report #4 - Poll Results and Spreadsheet Complete!
  

Only the first post with the spreadsheet link is f-locked. If you want the link, just PM me.

Huge thanks once again to (in alpha order) birdsofshore, cabinetcaligari, cagnurit, dicta_contrion, eidheann_writes, gracerene, iwao, khalulu, and vaysh for being awesome and contributing to the spreadsheet. I love you guys! If I left out anyone who contributed, please let me know so I can thank you too!

Are you trying to make some sort of statement about who should top or bottom?
No! This study is meant to be descriptive of what sorts of fics have been written in the Draco/Harry fandom. It is in no way meant to be prescriptive in regards to what sorts of fics should be written. Please feel free to read and write whatever fics you like with whoever you prefer topping, bottoming, switching, or whatever. I am only interested in fanfiction trends because I'm a stats nerd, not because I want to tell you what to do :) (shout-out to vaysh for explaining that so well in a comment on an earlier post)

What about fics where there's no penetration, are you counting those?
In this case, no. In my first "Who Tops More" post, I included a "no penetration" category where I lumped together all the fics I had read that didn't have explicit penetrative sex scenes. However, with this data set, I think that including this category would be problematic.

You see, in order to get the spreadsheet completed as quickly as possible, I didn't bother asking for info on fics rated PG-13 or less. What this means is that if there's a PG-13 fic where it's pretty clearly implied that they do have sex, just offscreen, I wouldn't be able to tell it apart from another PG-13 fic where all they do is hold hands or kiss. And then both of those fics might get lumped together as "no penetration" along with an NC-17 fic where Harry and Draco get up to all sorts of sexual shenanigans but just don't have penetrative sex. And it seems to me that by lumping them all together I'd be potentially implying something about how much sex occurs in HD fanfiction which wouldn't necessarily be accurate.

So in the charts and graphs below I'm just going to stick with bottom!Draco, bottom!Harry, and switching as categories. All the data is still there in the spreadsheet for anyone who wants to see it. It occurs to me that the question of "what sort of sexual activity (if any) goes on in fics if it's non-penetrative" is itself a potentially fascinating question, and one that could maybe be tackled in the future :)

How do I tell whether you've counted a fic as top/bottom or switching?
In the public spreadsheet (get the link in this post, or PM me) the first word in the top/bottom field indicates how I counted the fic. If it says "bottom!Draco (implied)" then that's counted as a bottom!Draco fic. If it says "switching; mostly bottom!Harry" then that's being counted as a switching fic. Etc.

There could be lots of extra information in the top/bottom field that's just there to clarify what went on in the fic and provide as much information as possible to readers, but for the purposes of what got counted as what, only the first word matters.

Results
Harry still tops more :) (i.e. bottom!Draco is more common than bottom!Harry). As we saw last time, the proportion of bottom!Harry fics seems to be increasing with time (with a weird anomaly in 2013), but not to the point of complete parity (in contrast with the earlier data set).

Note that the "Total (top/bottom)" column is only counting the total number of fics which had clear top/bottom/switching action going on. "Total (all fics)" counts all the fics posted to the fest that year.

Table

Year	bottom!Draco	bottom!Harry	switching	Total (top/bottom)	Total (all fics)
2009	24 (67%)	07 (19%)	05 (14%)	36	72
2010	10 (56%)	04 (22%)	04 (22%)	18	50
2012	14 (64%)	07 (32%)	01 (04%)	22	38
2013	08 (80%)	02 (20%)	00 (00%)	10	34
2014	06 (50%)	04 (33%)	02 (17%)	12	37
Overall	62 (63%)	24 (25%)	12 (12%)	98	231

Graph
Sorry for the absence of year labels for 2009 and 2013. Google docs created this graph for me but was being picky about how it wanted to label things.

What does it all mean?
Well, that's a little bit above my pay grade - I do math people, not sociology :)

Still, it's pretty clear that no matter how you slice it, Harry tops more. And I think it's reasonably clear that Draco is beginning to catch up more as the years go on, though the actual rate of change is not quite as clear. (Seriously, what is going on with 2013?) Actually, what I think is going on is that numbers from each year are a bit too small to draw large sweeping conclusions from, especially 2013, which only included 10 top/bottom fics. I'd actually be very interested in collecting data from more and more fests and running the numbers again. Am I crazy?

Please do let me know what it all means to you in the comments :)

Comments

[khalulu]

I wasn't thinking of cliches and tropes, those might or might not be about sex, but DTH, or kink-fest, or something.

I still read plenty of R and NC-17! But I enjoy not feeling like I have to write a sex scene if I don't feel like it or don't think the story needs it. So I'd hesitate to commit to a fest where I felt obligated to write a certain kind of sex. Though it looks like a few of the DTH entries last year were lower rated?

[snowgall]

Oh of course! I always think it's best if the sex scenes (if any) feel organic to the story, so you certainly shouldn't feel like you have to write them or force them in - that's no good! ♥

And I do still read PG-13 and lower rated fics, but usually only if I've read and enjoyed that author before or if the fic is highly recced by others I trust. And most of the time even when I've enjoyed a PG fic, I still think, "But why wasn't there any sex?" :) So I'm pretty shallow, I guess :/

But those rare times when I read a PG fic and don't even miss the sex at all, then I know I've read a keeper. I've recced several that were awesome and didn't need any sex. Here's a few I read and loved:

astardanced77's A Fountain of Unspoken Words
curiouslyfic's An Inconvenient View
firethesound's Blue Sheets

And you know, I would have also assumed that entries to the DTH fest would all be R or NC-17 rated, but yeah, there were a couple of PG fics as well last year which confused me too :) Though at least one of the PG fics was really good anyway, so I guess it's all fine in the end.

[vaysh]

Ah. I don't think of DTH as a fest focused on sex but you may be right that it has more R and NC-17-rated fic than other fests. But I couldn't actually say. (WE NEED STATS.) ;) And Kinkfest is such a different kind of fest that I couldn't say whether it has any impact on the explicitness of H/D stories in other fests.

I think none of the stories I've written for DTH had a sex scene. ;)

[khalulu]

That's interesting, maybe I've misunderstood that fest (DTH). So what makes a story one in which Draco tops Harry if there's no sex?

[vaysh]

I think it's more that the readers don't have to fear that a story suddenly goes bottom!Draco on them. :) An entire fest for top!Draco lovers - that's the general idea, no matter that some stories don't even feature penetrative sex. (It has been pretty much the same in the bottom_draco Fests tjat also includes below R-rated entries)

In the DTH community and fest rules we define bottoming and topping as sexual practice only. It is interesting, though, that the overall characterisation of Draco and Harry is a bit different from the usual H/D stories, too (this is a somewhat broad generalisation). But we get more often an unredeemed, tough or just in general a more assertive Draco. Interestingly enough, Harry in the DTH fest I find is not whiny or feminine, but less (sexually and emotionally) uptight and more prone to enjoy life. Again, sweeping generalisations. :)

[khalulu]

Okay, so it's more a "Draco won't bottom here" fest. Didn't know that. Thanks!

[snowgall]

I was going to answer this, but I'm glad Vaysh did so first, because I was just going to speculate :)

Just to add to the points Vaysh brought up, I know that when people have compiled top/bottom save lists from fests in the past (not just DTH fest, but any fests), they will often include fics where neither of them top because that fic is "unobjectionable" to readers who prefer one dynamic over the other. Like if I was going to list all of the top!Draco fics from hd-smoochfest 2010, I might include the PG-rated fics as well, just because Harry *doesn't* top.

So yeah, probably makes sense to think of it as "Draco won't bottom" rather than "Draco will definitely top"

[vaysh]

Yes, that's a good way to describe it. :)

If you check out today's art that just posted, you can see, too, what I mean about characterisation. The art is G-rated, and yet there is no doubt that Draco is a "top" here. :)