Who gets pregnant more, Draco or Harry?

[snowgall]

As I was reading fics during the recent harrydracompreg fest, it occurred to me that mpreg!Draco is much more prevalent than mpreg!Harry (indeed, one author actually pointed this out in her A/N!)

Because of all the stats I've been collecting on "Who Tops More" my immediate thought was that mpreg!Draco is more common because bottom!Draco is more common.

But when I suggested this to capitu, she disagreed, and gave me other reasons why Mpreg!Draco would be more common:

I'd say that even in those fics that are mpreg!Draco there's half bottom!draco and half switching. I think it comes down to the very popular trope that Draco being a pure-blood has far more chance to get pregnant, and that weird things happen with Harry, that he's powerful, whathaveyou, and that's why it happens. Of course, that's not the only reason, but it's a very common belief, you know?

I wonder, though, how separate these reasons really are. I can see that powerful!Harry = weird things happening = mpreg!Draco, but I can also be persuaded that powerful!Harry --> bottom!Draco for many people too. So these might go hand in hand. The pure-blood!Draco thing is a bit more separate, though, I admit. But still: mpreg!Draco is compatible with both bottom!Draco and switching, but doesn't work quite so well with bottom!Harry (though I'm sure some writer has pulled it off!)

So, since I'm such a fan of stats, I figured I whip some up for mpreg! I'm including in this dataset all the fics from all the past harrydracompreg fests, as well as the 2007 hd_inspired Mpreg challenge. I know that there are lots more mpreg fics out there, but there's no fast and unbiased way for me to sample those right now. So as always, we turn to the fests!

Notes:

• The mods at harrydracompreg are great, because every fic is tagged with which of the boys is pregnant in that fic, making it SO EASY to collect the data.


• For hd_inspired I had to go through and skim all 33 fics myself, but it's pretty easy to ctrl-F for "pregnant" and see who is referenced :)


• For simplicity's sake, I am not making a distinction between one of them being pregnant in the past (before the fic starts) and being pregnant in the fic. If (say) Draco is known to have been pregnant at any time, then it's an mpreg!Draco fic regardless of when the pregnancy occurs.


• 2011 is notable for including 5 Spanish-language fics in the fest. Not all of these fics were tagged for who was pregnant, however, and I don't read Spanish :( Many thanks to capitu for helping me determine who was pregnant in these fics!

Mpreg Table

Year	preg!Draco	preg!Harry	preg!Both	Total
2015	16	5	1	22
2014	14	3		17
2013	21	17		38
2012	22	17**	4**	43
2011	21	12		34*
2007	23	10		33
Totals	117	64	5	187

*In 2011, 36 fics were actually posted to the fest, but one of them had a pregnant Albus or Scorpius, and another one had past mpreg without clarifying who had carried. So these two fics from 2011 have not been counted in the data.

**In the original post of this data I had miscounted one of the 2012 fics as preg!Harry when it was actually preg!both. It is fixed now. Thanks to cagnurit for double-checking my numbers!


Graph



As you can see, mpreg!Draco is always more common, though in both 2012 and 2013 it wasn't by all that much. Anyone else want to speculate about the reasons for these trends?

Also I'm super curious as to why the 2011 fest included 5 Spanish language fics. I've never seen that in a fest before!

Comments

[eidheann_writes]

To answer the last, mpreg comm used to have monthly reccers (like crackbroom or storyroom) and one of the active reccers (several months) recced a mix of English. Spanish language. I attribute her (and her pimping) to that.

[snowgall]

Ah, interesting! It really just struck me as unique. As you know, I've been collecting data from lots of fests, and so far this is the first one where I've seen this. It's neat how much difference one person can make in these sorts of things!

[kitty_fic]

that's intersting... I'd forgotten that there was a person that recced spanish fics... I wonder if that did influence Jae's suggestion to include spanish fics in the first fest?

[cagnurit.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with capitu for the most frequent reasons of pregnancy: pure-blood!Draco & powerful!Harry. But sometimes I read fics with powerful!Harry = pregnant!Harry, too <3

---------
A little bit off-track, I thought 2012 had 4 fics with preg!Both?
1. The Smallest Things [dragon_charmer]
2. When the sun shines once more [imera]
3. Baby, Baby [enchanted_jae]
4. Take What's Left of Me [Frayach]

And maybe I'm wrong, but I count 23 preg!Draco fics in 2012 :D

[snowgall]

I'm so glad someone is double-checking my numbers! I'm actually about to run out for some errands, but when I get back I'll double-check my numbers too and see if you're right :)

[snowgall]

Fixed!

[cagnurit.livejournal.com]

Ooops dear :'>

Now Mpreg 2015 has revealed, I just found out that this year only has 5 preg!Harry (the total fics are 22).

[snowgall]

Oh yeah, I forgot that one of the mpreg!Harry fics had been deleted. It posted on May 22, and I made a note of it as mpreg!Harry, but then it was removed by the request of the author, so there's no record of it. So...I wasn't *exactly* wrong about that :)

[cagnurit.livejournal.com]

I didn't even aware of that O____o.

[snowgall]

Yeah, it was deleted pretty quickly after it was posted, so I'm sure many people missed it. I just forgot to cross it off of my list! Since it's not part of the official reveals list, I'll fix this post, but it'll take a little while because I have to re-do the graphic as well :(

But it's great that you're double-checking my numbers, I really do appreciate it!

[snowgall]

Fixed!

[cagnurit.livejournal.com]

Cool (^__^)b

[birdsofshore]

I always thought it was just that a lot of people like to write a stereotypically 'female' or camp Draco? Harry is often characterised as more stereotypically masculine, don't you think?

I feel like the current crop of active H/D writers on Lj don't follow that stereotype as much as elsewhere on the net, though. Maybe I'm deluded. There can arise different cultures and head-canons for different fannish spaces, I think.

[gracerene]

I always thought it was just that a lot of people like to write a stereotypically 'female' or camp Draco? Harry is often characterised as more stereotypically masculine, don't you think? <--This.

I know capitu mentioned the pure-blood reason to me awhile ago when we were discussing MPREG, and I know she's much more knowledgeable on the subject that I am, but to me, the stereotypical reason always felt like the root of it.

TBH, I think people use the "pure-blood" reason as a way to sort of justify the preference. Because you could just as easily say that Harry being so magically powerful is why he is the only one can get pregnant.

[snowgall]

Oh yeah, I think you're both on to something here. There's definitely a common trope of Draco being more feminized than Harry. I mean, not just that Harry will more often top or Draco will more often get pregnant, or even that (I think) Harry is more likely to be bisexual than Draco is. Because even when we do get bottom!Harry or preg!Harry, he doesn't usually get portrayed as 'female' to the same extent that Draco does.

And I admit that sometimes I eat it up with a spoon. I mean, for example I love Tessa Crowley's fics, and her Draco is usually pretty feminized (although never 'weak') and her Harry hyper-masculine. So I get it, and I don't automatically condemn it. But it is rather interesting that I can't think of too many examples with a feminized Harry, other than this one ABO fic by becstar7 (which I also love, so I'm equal-opportunity in my fanfic choices :) And I'm also fine with neither of them being feminized, of course.

And I agree with birds that the LJ authors I follow don't tend to use this stereotype as much (Tessa Crowley is on tumblr, not LJ, for example). Maybe there's some form of peer pressure from whichever authors you hang out with to write (or not write) characters in certain ways? I dunno.

[gracerene]

Oh yeah, I mean, enough people obviously like it for it to be a thing. I probably notice it particularly, because that femization is something I generally don't enjoy reading for either Draco or Harry (though it's much rarer to find it with Harry). Though, there are always exceptions. I really liked Desperately Seeking Someone by alaana-fair, which has Draco with some more feminine characteristics.

I def think that there is peer pressure to see things a certain way, whether explicit or sort of implied, based on the group you're in. IDK that peer pressure is necessarily the best word for it, but you get the idea of it I think.

[birdsofshore]

I don't think it's so much peer pressure, which I view as a negative thing, as hive mind and communal head canons. I think we all influence one another's thoughts/beliefs about the series just by hanging around together a lot. Human beings are awfully tribal, social people and being influenced by one's peers is a well-adjusted habit to some extent, )

I also don't mean to imply that people who do write pregnant!Draco all write feminised!Draco, or that I don't like it when people do!

[snowgall]

So I've been thinking about this, and what I wondering is how to tell correlation from causation. That is, capitu suggests that pure-blood --> preg!Draco, and you suggest that stereotypically female Draco --> preg!Draco. But what if pure-blood --> stereotypically female --> preg? and so maybe you're both right?

Hear me out :) Pure-bloods (and Draco in particular) are often depicted as overly concerned about appearance, especially in comparison to Harry who seems to ngaf. They're also generally 'refined' where Harry is more 'salt of the earth', and probably more things that I'm forgetting (and these are canon, not just fanon). I'm not saying that these are legitimately female characteristics, but I think that they are often *perceived* as female characteristics.

For me it's like cats and dogs. I always tend to imagine cats as anthropomorphically feminine and dogs as masculine. And I know that's idiotic, but I can't help it. It's the whole scruffiness vs. refined attitude thing.

Anyway, don't know if that made enough sense, but there you go :)

[gracerene]

Yeah, but I would necessarily say that the refined/grooming thing is so much a pure-blood characteristic as maybe a Malfoy one. I meant, we've also seen the Gaunts/Crabbes/Goyles in canon as pure-bloods that follow the pure-blood doctrine, but I'd defintiely say that we wouldn't give them feminine characteristics.

I'd say, and again, I could be wrong, but I'd say the stereotype would exist even if Draco was, say a half-blood, but stil essentially himself. I do agree that the characteristics you listed above apply to the Malfoy family, and can be perceived as more feminine, I just don't know that I'd say that they are so much characteristics of pure-bloods in general- more Malfoy/Draco specific. I think that if Draco *wasn't* a pure-blood, there'd probably be some other theory created as to why he's more likely to get pregnant.

Though, I'll admit that I really dislike the whole "only pure-blood can get pregnant/have an easier time getting pregnant" reasoning, because I feel like the entire HP series was all about how pure-blood doesn't matter and doesn't make you a better wizard/more magical etc. So it sort of rubs me the wrong way when people sort of ignore that super central HP theme. But *shrugs*

[kitty_fic]

Thanks for this! Very awesome!

I can tell you that including the Spanish speaking fics in the fest in 2011 was all the idea of enchanted_jae! I thought it was a very cool idea and we were happy to do it that year. Would have liked to have continued it, but it really did bring up some problems we weren't equipped to handle being that none of us spoke or read spanish ourselves. But still it was a fun thing to do for that first year :)

Also, I am inclined to agree with your assessment that bottom!draco and mpreg!Draco go together.

[snowgall]

Thanks for explaining how the Spanish fics got included in 2011. It's nice to have a record for posterity :)

Glad you agree about the bottom!Draco thing ♥

[carowren.livejournal.com]

I'm a few days late to this discussion but from the fics I've read, I think the powerful!harry rationale is used (almost) as frequently to explain preg!Harry as it is used to explain preg!Draco.

I'd agree with the comments that perceptions of who is more feminine or masculine may (unconsciously?) influence who ends up pregnant. But then, there's lots of authors who like to turn that on it's head which might be why we don't have a massive gap in the numbers.

I think these sorts of perceptions affect all of fandom mpreg, not just Drarry. I've read mpregs for other pairings which involve Harry and he seems to be pregnant more often when paired with either Snape or Lucius or Charlie. (Though I don't have any stats to back this up and have not read nearly as much Snarry, Lucius/Harry, Harry/Charlie as I have Drarry). It could be related to the age gap, but I also think that he is (sometimes) perceived as being the more feminine man in these pairings.

[snowgall]

Oh, this is interesting! I hadn't really thought about how Harry would be perceived in different pairings.

I don't have any stats on this either, but my gut agrees with you that the younger of a crossgen pairing like Snarry or Lucius/Harry would be more likely to get pregnant. And as for Charlie/Harry, for all that we barely meet Charlie in the books, fandom has pretty well decided that he's buff and hyper masculine, so yeah, I would bet that compared to him, Harry would be perceived as being the more feminine.

So many factors to consider :) And yeah, some authors deliberately try to subvert the paradigm, and the statistical differences aren't crazy-big, so these tendencies are just that: tendencies.

Thanks for the input!

[tblu-2326.livejournal.com]

I would have to agree that for the two sources you picked, the information seems legit. :) Beyond that, I would say that Harry is FAR more likely to be the one pregnant (like 1 mpreg Draco = 5 mpreg Harry) on other sites. Also, the chances of their being switching in those stories (mpreg Harry) is less likely than mpreg Draco. Unless they are both pregnant...?

One of the main sites that has more bottom Harry then anything, and therefore Mpreg Harry, is fanfiction.net. On that site, once something is perceived as popular then another thing, it shows up much more frequently. No matter if it gets really, really, repetitive at some point. :/