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! :)

[cagnurit.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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)

[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)

[vaysh]

The bottom_draco fests are about 80% Harry tops Draco fests. ;)

[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 ^^

[capitu]

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

[lauren3210.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see! I didn't even know there was a bottom-Draco fest, and I always kind of assumed that DTH was an oddity in terms of its specificity and didn't think much more about it, other than loving the stories the fest produces. I guess that just goes to show how little I still really know about this fandom!

[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]

bottom_draco is one of the biggest "special interest" communities within HP fandom. :) And their fests were awesome! We all have been pestering kitty to put on another one. :) Those years when there was both a top!Draco and bottom!Draco fest were really cool. :)

[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.

[this-bloody-cat.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this year too! It's posting soon, isn't it? I know your deadline was a few days ago :)

[vaysh]

Posting for the DTH Fest starts traditionally on April 1, and we have awesome submissions in already. :)

[eidheann_writes]

(thread hijack -- because that icon always makes me laugh. loudly. currently in public with a bunch of mums staring at me)

[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 :)

[snowgall]

Thank *you* for your lovely comment ♥

[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.

[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 :)

[snowgall]

I agree! Until I had that discussion with Vaysh, I had no idea why the DTH existed :) I feel like I learned something too. ♥

[snowgall]

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

[vaysh]

Lomona has written bottom!Draco, too, and switching!fic. But I think it's safe to say that the majority of her stories are top!Draco.