REPOST: Pink Unicorns Made Them Do It

[vaysh]

Title: Pink Unicorns Made Them Do It
Pairing: Draco/Harry
Summary: Er ... pink unicorns made them do it?
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: a bit more than 1K
Author's Notes: This is my second attempt at comment pr0n, written for marguerite_26's Make Them Do It Fest. Original post is here. ♥

Comments

[snowgall]

A statistical challenge!

Ok, I went through my database (I have top/bottom info on 988 HD fics. I have more fics in my database, but the others are either switching or no top/bottom made clear). So you're absolutely right about overall. In total, I have 616 works with bottom!Draco and 372 with bottom!Harry. So definitely bottom!Draco is more prevalent.

But! When I limited the data to just 2014 (141 fics out of 988) then it turns out that it's exactly evenly split! 71 fics with bottom!Draco and 70 with bottom!Harry.

Now, this could be due to my bias about which fics I put in my database (I usually include all my favorite authors, plus all of capitu's recs and all recs from hd-storyroom as well as others that just strike my fancy). But I personally don't care who tops, so I don't think that I would have unintentionally biased the dataset in that way.

I'd love to see other data on this, since regardless of my bias, my data is only a small subset of what's out there. Do you have more info?

And P.S. I'm still glad that the disparity led to the DTH fest, which is one of my favorites! I'm not trying to say the fest isn't necessary, because it is!

[vaysh]

How long a period of time does your database cover overall? :)

There are so-called top!Draco and bottom!Draco save-lists of fest that you can find in dracotops_harry and bottom_draco, respectively. If you sort out all the PG-13 and lower rated fic, you should get more statistical data on topping and bottoming. I made save-lists for a while but it is very time-consuming because it's not always possible to say who tops and who bottoms just from a casual skim of a fic. And then, well, I am not that invested in proofing something that is pretty obvious to me. :)

The DTH Fest is somewhat an odd ball in the round of H/D fests. DTH is a different crowd than the usual H/D shipper. And while I don't think the preferred sexual position has anything to do with characterisation and personality, there is a bit of a different characterisation of Harry and Draco in the fanworks created for the DTH fest. I love that about it. :)

[snowgall]

I've got fics going back to 2002, but certainly it's true that I have far more fics from recent years than from earlier ones. I do trust your judgment on this, as your experience far outweighs mine. But because I'm a numbers person, this discussion has inspired me to work this up a bit more formally and do a post about it, probably in the next day or two.

Is it OK with you if I reference your comments here when I write up the post? I won't do so if you don't want me to.

[vaysh]

You may reference whatever I said here, no problem.

If you do a post on the statistics of topping and bottoming, prepare for a lively discussion. People still have strong feelings about it.

[vaysh]

(Also, it's always interesting to add stats about how much anal sex gay men actually have (and had in earlier decades. :) Not that fanfiction should emulate real life but part of the predominance of anal sex in slash fanfic clearly has to do with the writers drawing from their mostly heterosexual experience with penetrative intercourse.

[snowgall]

Oh absolutely. I think it's really fascinating how it's mostly women who write fanfic about mostly men, and seem to use anal sex as a stand-in for vaginal sex. At least, it seems that way to me - I have no statistics on this!

If I can find real-life stats I may add them, but I don't think I want to get into gender/sexuality politics or issues about what topping/bottoming 'means' or 'signifies' if I can possibly help it. Frankly, I'm not qualified to address those issues. I'll try to keep it to just the statistical facts of who-penetrates-who without getting into the 'why' of it. I'll leave that for the commenters if they want to go crazy :)

So now I'm worried I'm gonna get crucified. I'll be doubly careful to dot my i's and cross my t's for this :)

[vaysh]

*grins* As I said, I don't think slash should represent RL gay sex, so I am not bothered that there is loads of anal sex because straight women writers draw from their own sexual experiences. I am only bothered if people go on to claim that this is what gay (and/or lesbian) sex is like in RL.

It's probably very wise to not get into gender/sexuality discussions. :) But don't worry about getting crucified. Stats are great. And people love to talk about topping/bottoming preferences (if only to state that we all see H/D switching, anyway. I don't. Draco tops. Period. :))