Who tops more, Draco or Harry?

[snowgall]

Yesterday I was having a discussion with vaysh about who tops more in fanfic, Draco or Harry (link here). I was of the opinion that it seemed fairly balanced, but that was from my perspective of mostly reading recent fic. Vaysh has been reading Drarry fanfiction for much longer than me, however, and she disagreed:

"statistical evidence is very clear: There is in no way a 50:50 balance between top and bottom!Draco fanworks. For many people, bottom!Draco remains the default."

Aha, I thought, a statistical challenge! As it turns out, I have a database of Drarry fics which I can consult, so I am in position to offer an answer to this pressing question. There are nearly 1500 Drarry fics written between 2002 and 2015 for which I have information about who tops or bottoms, and according to this data, we're both right :)

1. Who bottoms more across all fics in all years?
   Answer: Draco, clearly (point vaysh)


2. Has the proportion of bottom!Draco to bottom!Harry begun to balance out more in recent years?
   Answer: Yes, clearly (point snowgall)

Before I get to the fancy chart and graphs, let me explain a bit where my data comes from and how reliable and/or biased it could be.

My list of Drarry fics includes not just fics that I have personally read, but also every fic that capitu has ever recced, as well as every fic ever recced at hd_storyroom, whether I've read them or not. Capitu (at my_drarry_recs) helpfully includes tags indicating who bottoms in a fic (if applicable) so I have that data even for fics I haven't read. I have also included many (but not all) of the fics recced by gracerene, who also includes top/bottom info. The chart below only contains data from fics where I could determine something about who tops or bottoms.

Of course, for fics not recced by capitu or hd-storyroom, which fics get listed in my database will be skewed by my own reading preferences. However, it's important to note that I personally don't care who tops or bottoms, so I don't think that I will have unintentionally skewed the data one way or the other.

The other big issue concerns the date a fic was published. The vast majority of the fics in my database are fics written since 2007, and precious few written before 2005. But I also should point out that if I can't accurately date a fic, then I'm not including it in this dataset. The earlier a fic was written, the harder it can be to find its pub date, so part of the reason there are so few pre-2005 fics is because I can't be sure when they were actually written.

Ok, enough caveats about the data, on to the chart! I hope it is self-explanatory, because I'm not going to waste more words explaining something you can see for yourself :) Just note that I'm including fics from 2015 too, even though we're only 3 months in.

Year	bottom!Draco	bottom!Harry	switching	no penetration	Total
2015	9	8	3	27	47
2014	70	70	26	85	251
2013	97	55	16	64	232
2012	67	57	8	29	161
2011	49	33	15	42	139
2010	54	36	12	32	134
2009	58	26	11	31	126
2008	75	32	7	20	134
2007	54	22	14	16	106
2006	27	11	10	9	57
2005	26	10	14	15	65
2004	11	4	2	4	21
2003	7	3	2	2	14
2002	0	1	0	2	3
Overall	606	368	140	376	1490

 

And now for some pretty pie charts:

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, before 2010 bottom!Draco was much more common than bottom!Harry, but since then the proportion of bottom!Draco fics has gone down, to the point that of the works I've analyzed for 2014, there's a perfect balance between the two!

Is the influence of the dracotops_harry fest part of the reason for this change? It's possible. The DTH fest began in 2011, and my data seems to date the gradual shift to 2010.

It's also true that some of the disparity could be traced to a few big-name authors who tend(ed) to prefer one dynamic over another. Here's just a few examples I know of authors who seemed to prefer bottom!Draco but who haven't written as much in the last few years:

• ladyvader, active approx 2003 - 2010
• jennavere, active approx 2004 - 2006
• pir8fancier, active approx 2004 - 2013
• silentauror, active approx 2005 - 2009

There are many more bottom!Draco authors who are still actively writing HD, among them: enchanted_jae, oldenuf2nb, and samaelthekind.

But interestingly, I can only think of one long-time author who seems to prefer bottom!Harry: megyal.
(Edit: vaysh pointed out that lomonaaeren is also a bottom!Harry author. My bad!)

If you have any insights into this data, disagree about my analysis, or can think of something I missed, please leave a comment!

 

---

 

Edit: Inspired by suggestions in the comments section, I have re-run the numbers using just data from the hd_fan_fair fests. See my write-up here. The data was collected through crowd-sourcing, and we are currently working on building a second crowd-sourced spreadsheet of data from hd_smoochfest too!

Comments

[sophie-french.livejournal.com]

I love this. I mean, I love stats and charts in general, so yeah. :P It's funny because that's exactly the impression I had, that there was much more bottom!Draco than bottom!Harry. Even in the readers' preferences, I find that readers wanting to read only bottom!Draco are more vocal about it than their bottom!Harry counterparts (although it's just an impression, nothing based on any facts).

I am 100% for switching, (well in long fics I will always have them switch) but funnily enough, I realised recently that I tend to write more bottom!Harry than bottom!Draco, even sometimes when Harry's a virgin and Draco's not. In any case, I let the story and the scene guide me through who's going to top/bottom. We all have our conscious and less conscious headcanons too, and that translates differently in fics.

Anyway, gotta run to work, but this is really interesting. And I love having facts like these, so, please continue! :)

[snowgall]

Definitely agree about letting the story and the scene guide you, which is why I usually don't care who tops. Occasionally I'll read a story where it doesn't 'match up' in some way - that the story/characterizations led me to expect one dynamic and I get another. Not sure why that is, but it can feel weird :)

[germankitty]

"In any case, I let the story and the scene guide me through who's going to top/bottom."

THIS. So much!!!

[cagnurit.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued by your statistical analysis every single time :D
Thank you :3

[snowgall]

Thank *you* for your lovely comment ♥

[vaysh]

I am rushing off to work, so I could only skim your post. OMG!!!! I mean, CHARTS!!!!! Color-coded bottom!Harry!!! This is awesome.

One quick addition: lomonaaeren is one long-standing BN author who writes a lot of top!Draco/bottom!Harry.

[snowgall]

Oh yes! I had thought about adding lomonaaeren as a bottom!Harry author, but when I double-checked I found that she had indeed written a few bottom!Draco. Since she's so prolific and I haven't read even close to everything she's written I was afraid that maybe it was just a coincidence that all of the ones I had read by her were bottom!Harry. But if you agree that's her preference, I'll go in and add that too.

[birdsofshore]

You are a marvel. This makes me laugh and also gasp in wonder at your speed and also your dashing way with a pie chart.

You did miss one thing, though. Draco topping Harry is really, really hot (although Harry topping Draco is also really hot... maybe we need a chart for hotness?) ;-)

My personal feeling was that more people are writing top!Draco than top!Harry these days. But that could just be because so many of my FAVOURITE writers write top!Draco.

[snowgall]

Yes very hot! It's so funny because whenever I get done reading a great fic, I'll start to think that I prefer whatever dynamic was in it. Like after I read "Last City" by zeitgeistic, I was all, "Oh yes, bottom!Harry is the best!" but then I'll go and read something like "Don't Think Twice" by firethesound, and I'll be all, "No! bottom!Draco is where it's at!" :)

And your impression was my impression too, until vaysh came along and set me straight :)

[lauren3210.livejournal.com]

Omg, this is so fascinating, and just what I was thinking about while struggling with my recent fic. It's my first time writing for DTH, and I admit that in my darkest writing hour, I kinda cursed the fact that the fest even exists, haha. It took me a while, but I eventually worked out that the problem I was having was the stipulation of the sex. I have always written D/H as switching - although I do tend to lean towards bottom!Draco - and I don't really think about the sex scenes until I get to them. So having that stipulation in the back of my mind was a real stumbling block for me. So yeah, I had been sitting there wondering why DTH was a thing when a HTD type fest isn't, so it's really interesting to learn how that came about.

[eidheann_writes]

There isn't a HTD community, bottom-draco is hp general (that skews h/d because HD is a larger chunk of the fandom) but there was only been 3 (infrequent) fests. Most of the time, it seems mods (other than kitty) burn out doing the fest and disappear, so I think kitty is hesitant to bring in new people and do another fest - though capitu and I have offered to help)

[nia_kantorka]

Ah, more wonderful stats. Love to see that who is topping and bottoming is as much in flow as everything else.

Thank you for putting it all together. <333

[snowgall]

You're so welcome! Vaysh challenged me with statistics and I couldn't resist :)

[eidheann_writes]

Just looking, 2013 has a spike in bottom Draco numbers compared to 12 and 14,ans it matches the most recent of the (infrequent) bottom Draco fests at bottom-draco (which is not h/d specific, but skews that way)

(09 & 10 are the other years of that fest, and 10 seems to be around the start of the numbers evening out. So I don't know! XD)

[snowgall]

Oh what a good observation! I was wondering what might have caused that spike! (Other than just general data flukiness :) I'll have to go back through my list and see if I included a bunch of fics from that fest that year.

It's unfortunate that my list is idiosyncratic to me - I wish there was a way to search AO3 for this info, but while some authors will tag for top/bottom, there's still the whole "dating the fic" issue which I ranted about already. So I have to use my data to be sure, and there's always the chance it could be skewed. But your idea makes a lot of sense, so I'll look for that!

[lordhellebore]

That's rather fascinating, thanks for posting it! I confess to still being slightly confused by the importance of all of this, but it's fun to see the statistics ^^

[snowgall]

I'm so glad that even a veteran like yourself is confused by the importance of it all, as I'm a newbie so the fact that I'm confused by it isn't surprising! But learning the history does help it make *some* sort of sense, maybe :)

[capitu]

This is awesome. :D Man, I love your charts and starts and data bases! <333

[snowgall]

Thanks! It's so nice to be able to share them and have people enjoy them too. That way it's not just me by myself feeling like a freak with all my charts :)

[this-bloody-cat.livejournal.com]

I do remember there used to be a vast majority of bottom!Draco fic when I was a lurker first got into fandom (around 2004, maybe?). Perhaps this could have been discouraging for the top!Draco writers? But yes, then DTH came along and fixed that -- interestingly enough, it's one of the few fests that keep on bringing new writers to the fandom every year :) Or at least they're new to me!

I'm not so sure about readers though. I'll admit I'm one of those writers skewed towards bottom!Draco (not in my reading habits, but definitely in my writing ones), and every one of my stories featuring intercourse got at least one comment/email/PM telling me how 'while it works perfectly in this story, I really prefer to read Draco topping'. So, you know. It's perhaps a thing? :)

[vaysh]

interestingly enough, it's one of the few fests that keep on bringing new writers to the fandom every year :)
I think DTH is a fest that caters to a slightly different crowd than the usual H/D shipper. Quite a few of the writers and also the community members don't otherwise engage in H/D fandom. I am not quite sure why that is, but yes, I love that out of every DTH fest so far, some new writers have emerged.

Bottom!Draco

[samaelthekind.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the mention ;-) But I should clarify that I'm hardly exclusive on the subject. I may have started with one of the more dramatically bottom!Draco stories, but there are a few exceptions, notably The Curse and The Heat, while in a few others they happily switch places without any concern over it. Still, at the end of the day, I greatly favor bottom!Draco because I can't help it. I've known too many 'ice queens', disdainful and imperious, angry and isolated beneath a shell of nonchalance and pride. Always beneath that surface lurked someone starving for warmth, aching to surrender to someone they could trust, capable of giving their whole heart once they felt safe enough to dare risking it. Having seen that and experienced it...how could I not see the similarity in Draco?

Re: Bottom!Draco

[snowgall]

Thanks for the clarification! I didn't mean to imply that you (or the other authors) were *exclusively* bottom!Draco, just predominantly (although some of the other authors may indeed be exclusive). Would you like me to edit the post to make that more clear?

And thanks also for your perspective on why you like to write bottom!Draco. It's really interesting to hear from someone with experience. ♥

Wednesday 18th March, 2015.

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User capitu referenced to your post from Wednesday 18th March, 2015. (http://hd-prophet.livejournal.com/529517.html) saying: [...] just H/D] Resources made an interesting post with Statistics about Who tops more, Draco or Harry? [...]

[dicta-contrion.livejournal.com]

Came over from hd_prophet and find this fascinating! Really, really interesting. And hope you won't mind my butting in too terribly, but I do have question, mostly about sampling bias but also about patterns in fandom. Not hypotheses or even suppositions, but questions, possibly of the insoluble variety, which can safely be taken rhetorical musings-out-loud. (Though I am genuinely interested in any and all thoughts!)(And also, these definitely are not anticipating or requesting further data analysis! I'm still amply excited about the one set of graphs.)

- What is the influence of sampling from rec lists? You, capitu, and gracerene are all very well read, and I would wager more broadly read than many, and all read both top!Harry and top!Draco, so - as you say - I don't expect that your own preferences, as such, influences the data pool. But there are many fic writers out there who don't get recced (or read, or kudo'd - there's a tumblr post out there that's escaping me atm that shows that either a plurality or majority of fics have <5 kudos and very few hits). Is it safe to assume that what ends up on rec lists is reflective of what doesn't?
- Relatedly, is the sample as large as it would seem to be? Your spreadsheet of capitu's rec list shows 1293 stories, but those are from only ("only") 444 unique authors, who may (or may not) have patterns in their writing that are less statistically significant than those of the very prolific writers you mention, but may still have some impact, especially if there's any sort of effect in the aggregate.
- Is there a bias in which older fics were preserved and/or are still read? Are people who are reading and reccing now able to capture the zeitgeist of the community as it was then, since it included many works that are no longer readily accessible?
- Would the results be different if based on a ratio instead of a percentage? As in, comparing the number of top!Harry to number of bottom!Harry stories, and number of top!Draco to bottom!Draco stories? A quick search of AO3 tags (which are not a good sample - tiny, inconsistently applied, not sorted by year - but is what's available quickly rn) shows that the ratio of top!harry to bottom harry is 1:1.2, but the ratio of top!draco to bottom!draco is 1:2.
- Because there's potential for unknown sources of bias, random sampling is generally the safest bet, but is that meaningfully possible in a community that's spread over multiple platforms?
- Is the shift over time reflective of more top!draco, or of more non-penetrative sexual activity? Is Draco topping more, or is topping increasingly irrelevant b/c of a shift towards frottage, wanking, oral, etc.?

[snowgall]

Oh my god I love your questions! I don't know if I can do justice to all of them in a comment thread! I'll do my best, but you've given me essays worth of material here :)

1) You're right that many many authors and fics don't get read a lot, and sampling from rec lists will probably be biased towards already popular fics. But! Kudos on AO3 are not always a good meter of popularity, especially for older fics. (The example I always trot out here is annafugazzi's Bond, which dates from 2006 but which the author only uploaded to AO3 in 2014. However, when she uploaded it there was a months-long gap involving technical difficulties, and she didn't add many tags or a rating, which hurts its visibility. Right now this fic has only 216 kudos on AO3, which as you and I know, is not at ALL indicative of its wider popularity in the fandom or of its true quality).

Still, 216 kudos ain't nothing :) Not like the <5 you mentioned.

So I went and looked at my data again to see if I could give you some more info. Of the 1490 fics I looked at, 911 are available on AO3 (that I know of). As it turns out, I made a note of how many kudos each of those fics had on AO3 at the time I read it or added it to my database. For really popular fics, this number will change dramatically over time. But for less popular fics that have been on AO3 for a while, their kudo numbers stay pretty stable. If we ignore fics published in 2015 (because their kudo numbers will still be highly changeable) I now have 880 fics on AO3 that I can say something about.

Of those, I have 3 fics recced by capitu on my list which have less than 5 kudos on AO3 as of today:
archiveofourown.org/works/1950570 (4 kudos, bottom!Draco)
archiveofourown.org/works/1157336 (5 kudos, bottom!Harry)
archiveofourown.org/works/0301315 (5 kudos, switching)

If you go as high as 20 kudos, I've got lots more fics on my list (and even a few more with <5 that weren't recced by capitu but that I added myself because they struck my fancy)

So while I absolutely agree with you that my list is not going to contain that many unpopular fics, it still may be true that I have a representative sample anyway. And it's also not always clear how to (objectively) determine how popular a fic is anyway.

I know that's not a complete answer, and you asked many more things, but I'll post this part and answer more of your questions subsequently :)

[torino10154]

I saw this linked two different places and was intrigued. I'm only peripherally in the H/D corner of fandom, in that I write them sometimes but don't read a whole lot. As a writer, I think I default to top!Harry but I just did an mpreg fic where it was Harry pregnant. *shrugs* I'm one of those that lets the story lead me and don't have a strong preference going in. Oh, and I do like to imply switching even if in the fic itself only includes one act of penetration.

From this position, I'd say that I would have assumed there would be more bottom!Draco over all but that yes, things are evening out. Not equal, no, but not as lopsided. I think the fact that there *is* a Draco Tops Harry fest should tell you, though, that there was a market for something that wasn't the norm. Meaning if there was a Harry Tops Draco fest, wouldn't people find that unnecessary? Maybe there will come a day when the pendulum swings far enough that's the case, but as the stats seem to indicate, top!Harry is still the majority.

Bringing a bit of insight from Severus/Harry, where I do spend my time, there is a bottom!Snape community precisely because he usually tops. People interested in bottom!Harry don't have to do anything to find it. And, unlike H/D, I think that's still the norm. Perhaps because of the age difference (and common assumption that older=top).

tl;dr ramble LOL Thanks for the interesting stats!

[snowgall]

You're welcome, and thanks for the information about the Harry/Snape dynamic, which I knew nothing about!
Assumptions about who should top or bottom based on canon characteristics always make me laugh, though, because canonically they're both straight! I mean, I like my fanfic characters to be depicted as close to canon as possible, but I don't pretend that this says anything definitive about who would top :) And I'd imagine that if someone liked to bottom, that wouldn't necessarily change as they got older!
(This is not a complaint against you at all; I know you were just speculating on what other people may be thinking. I'm just musing aloud and rambling too :)
Oh, and there is a bottom-draco fest, although it's not HD specific.

H/D Fan Fair: top!Draco and bottom!Draco save-lists over the years

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User vaysh referenced to your post from H/D Fan Fair: top!Draco and bottom!Draco save-lists over the years (http://hd-fan-fair.livejournal.com/95542.html) saying: [...] Because of a discussion about statistics for topping and bottoming preferences in H/D [...]

[kohaku-imaki55.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to me a long time reader that stories with no penetration are on the rise with the sole exception of 2012. I of late have preferred non-graphic sex to the extreme graphic. To the point that I skim over that part of the story and stop reading in the middle of ones that are PWP with out being labeled so. Because plot is my main interest most of the time.

[snowgall]

Interesting. I do think that the data on the "no penetration" in fics is possibly skewed, however. That is, I generally didn't include too many G or PG rated fics in my data set because they wouldn't have any penetration and so wouldn't say much to the question of who tops more. But if you're just talking about NC-17 fics, maybe it does say something. To be sure, I'd want to really focus on that data in my analysis. Right now it's mostly an afterthought, not a bit of data that I paid as much careful attention to. But I'm glad it is of interest to you!

[peachdancer82.livejournal.com]

I love this! Very interesting information that you've gathered. I must say I've been in the Fandom since pre HBP about 2001 and I have definitely noticed a gradual shift in the Fandom to preferences on who bottoms and tops and while my preference is Top Harry based on your analysis as well as my own personal information I think the tide is just shifting with the new wave of shippers. Once was a dominated bottom!Draco ship since about 2009/10 I've noticed there has been more and more bottom!HARRY Yes, I back peddle quickly out of a story sometimes When it's not bottom!Draco but I think that's just habit after all these years. I have also notices that most of the people I was in the Fandom with 10+ years ago have moved on, even myself included most of the time, so it's been my observation that the bottom!Draco authorship just isn't as prolific as before. so with that being said, the banner is being carried by new, and just as amazing authors who have different preferences and have been "guided" so to speak in a different direction than yesteryear, lol. I miss my old Fandom yes but it's still alive so I can't ask for anything more and your stats have actually validated my recent thoughts on the topic so I thank you for wrapping it up so neatly. :)

[snowgall]

Thanks for your insight! It's always so interesting to hear from people who've been involved in the fandom for so much longer than me, and it's nice to know that these findings match up with your impressions. I'm glad you enjoyed the analysis ♥

[metanewsmods.livejournal.com]

May we link this and your entry at http://snowgall.livejournal.com/12010.html in metanews? We also post on DreamWidth and Tumblr.

[snowgall]

Sure thing, thanks so much!

[cremebunny.livejournal.com]

Woahhhhh this is super interesting! I always knew bottom!Draco was more popular (i tend to strictly read that only) but damn the charts are so amazing and well detailed.
Thanks so much for sharing!

[snowgall]

You're so welcome! And as a newer reader to the fandom, it was actually news to me that bottom!Draco was so much more popular :) I had the naive idea that it was more balanced. So collecting the data was also about figuring it out for myself!

[ravenna-c-tan.livejournal.com]

I've been following links (I think I started out at the HDS Beltane stats post...) and ended up here. Fascinating! I also felt like bottom!harry was almost considered some kind of sacrilege when I first started writing H/D (2006-2008) but that attitude has gradually mellowed. I've always written both, and some fics with switching, as well.

[dolphin5596.livejournal.com]

I was wondering what do you prefer a bottom Harry or Draco I was just wondering who would top and who would bottom in Drarry since people have a lot of different opinions thanks 🐭🐭🐭