The more I think on it, the more I love this idea too. The problem is scope. A decent sample from each archive would have to cover a lot of fics. ff.net has 7.3k fics that are complete, M-rated, and involve H and D as main characters, so even a 5% sample would be 365 fics.
I wonder if it could be crowd sourced? One person (or group of people) would have to determine the initial sample to make sure it was sound – no duplicates among fics that were posted in more than one archive, removing/replacing fics where H/D are a side pairing and don’t have sex, etc. And there would have to be a clear definition of what constituted topping, bottoming, switching, or other (I think this is doable, but others on this thread seem to think it would be difficult). But then, if we opened it up to the fandom and anyone who wanted to contribute could read as many of the randomly selected fics as they wanted and enter the data themselves…that might be markedly more feasible.
And if we also asked people to collect other data – length, warnings, tags, use of tropes, etc. – I mean, imagine how much analysis would be possible?
(Date would, I think, be trickiest, for reasons snowgall mentions elsewhere, and date is necessary to really chart trends that are more than a couple of years old, but still…still.)
As for impression: I very much wonder how much this has to do with the kind of fic I seek out. I don’t have a preference for who tops and bottoms 90-95% of the time when I’m picking fic to read, but do try to avoid fics that represent H and D in certain (heteronormative) ways, and have a preference for fics that explore the psychological aspects of sex, or that handle sex in novel ways, and also have some preference for short fics, and I wonder if all of that amounts to reading fewer fics with penetration. So I’m completely open to the idea that this observation reflects a personal preference rather than an absolute trend. (This relates to my concern about sampling from rec lists. Reccers may not have overt preferences for who tops or bottoms, but may have other preferences that correlate with topping/bottoming or the presence/absence of penetrative sex.)
no subject
I wonder if it could be crowd sourced? One person (or group of people) would have to determine the initial sample to make sure it was sound – no duplicates among fics that were posted in more than one archive, removing/replacing fics where H/D are a side pairing and don’t have sex, etc. And there would have to be a clear definition of what constituted topping, bottoming, switching, or other (I think this is doable, but others on this thread seem to think it would be difficult). But then, if we opened it up to the fandom and anyone who wanted to contribute could read as many of the randomly selected fics as they wanted and enter the data themselves…that might be markedly more feasible.
And if we also asked people to collect other data – length, warnings, tags, use of tropes, etc. – I mean, imagine how much analysis would be possible?
(Date would, I think, be trickiest, for reasons snowgall mentions elsewhere, and date is necessary to really chart trends that are more than a couple of years old, but still…still.)
As for impression: I very much wonder how much this has to do with the kind of fic I seek out. I don’t have a preference for who tops and bottoms 90-95% of the time when I’m picking fic to read, but do try to avoid fics that represent H and D in certain (heteronormative) ways, and have a preference for fics that explore the psychological aspects of sex, or that handle sex in novel ways, and also have some preference for short fics, and I wonder if all of that amounts to reading fewer fics with penetration. So I’m completely open to the idea that this observation reflects a personal preference rather than an absolute trend.
(This relates to my concern about sampling from rec lists. Reccers may not have overt preferences for who tops or bottoms, but may have other preferences that correlate with topping/bottoming or the presence/absence of penetrative sex.)