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:

Comments

[eidheann_writes]

I don't know much about data sets, but would it be more telling to look at maybe a specific fest over the years (hd_fan_fair for example, which is a prompt (not a gift) fest which is long running but less likely to include people feeling obligated to write topping preferences due to prompts rather than gifts) and then use those stats over the years to draw conclusions?

I mean, smaller sample size but less chance of unintended bias?

[snowgall]

That's definitely another way to go about it. I have a number of fics from fan-fair in my database but not all. I happen to know that between 2010 and 2014 there were 157 fics posted to the fan-fair fests, but I only have top/bottom info for 78 of them (the ones capitu recced and/or I read). So that still leaves 79 fics that somebody will have to skim/read to find out the info for, unless somebody somewhere already has it? And my to-read list even without those fics already has humdreds of fics on it, so I don't have enough time to read 79 more :(

So that's what it all boils down to in the end. It could be that one set of data would be more representative or fairly balanced than another, but unless someone takes the time to extract the data (by reading each fic) then there's no way to do an analysis.

There are too many freaking fics! But really, this is a good problem to have in a fandom :)

[dicta_contrion]

Now debating whether I'm actually that curious. Especially since one would just have to read the smutty bits.

ETA: Didn't actually mean that in a salacious way! But in a "hey, that's less reading to do" kind of way.

[snowgall]

If you truly want to do this, then I will happily set up a google spreadsheet for us to share and input all the data I currently have from fan-fair and let you input the rest. Then we can do a joint report on it. What do you think?

[dicta_contrion]

I think I truly do, actually. I’m *very* curious now. But I won’t be able to do it until after my semester is over, so mid-May at the earliest, and if you don’t want to wait on that, I totally understand.

Also getting curious about the possibility of crowd-sourcing - more below.

[snowgall]

Yes to crowd-sourcing!

[vaysh]

I love this idea. And maybe you could correlate your data about Fanfair stories with the save-lists at dracotops_harry and bottom_draco.

I couldn't help looking for them:

H/D Book Fair 2013
bottom!Draco Savelist

H/D Career Fair 2012
top!Draco Savelist Week 1
top!Draco Savelist Week 2
top!Draco Savelist Week 3
top!Draco Savelist Week 4
top!Draco Savelist Week 5
bottom!Draco Savelist complete (with links)

H/D Travel Fair 2010
top!Draco Savelist #1
top!Draco Savelist #2
bottom!Draco Savelist (with links)

H/D Career Fair 2009
top!Draco Savelist
bottom!Draco Savelist

And in case you ever want to check this out:
bottom!Draco Savelist for the entire H/D Bookshelf 2007-2010

I'll totally create a top!Draco Savelist for H/D Career Fair 2014.

[dicta_contrion]

Actually, rather than using this to correlate a new investigation, do you think these could stand in for going through all the fics? Or do you think we would run into definitional issues around what constitutes topping or bottoming, or with the in/exclusion of switching?

Also, bookmarking the hell out of this. How useful! <3

[vaysh]

The thing about the top!Draco and bottom!Draco savelists is that they are very clear-cut about what constitutes topping and bottoming (because they are made for communities who very much care about this ;)). Even mention of (switched) topping/bottoming in a fic is usually made note of, as some people won't go for that. So yes, I think these lists could be used without definitional problems.

[snowgall]

While you're right about these lists being careful to mention if there's even a hint of switching, some of these lists also contain stories where there's no penetration at all (because the lister knows the story won't bother the fans of bottom!so-and-so either way). And I'm not always sure if it's made clear when a fic is included on these lists because it's "non-offensive" rather than really "top!person"

Did that make sense? So I'm just imagining that if you went by these lists that depending on how the lister chose to interpret it that you would over-represent one dynamic over another.

Unless I'm wrong about that, which I might be :)

[vaysh]

We would definitely have to remove all fics from the data where there is no penetration. That is a given, considering that we are asking who tops and who bottoms (sexually, as a sexual position in anal intercourse), no? So I thought to combine the bottom and top savelists and "distill" all the fics that feature actual penetration.

Does this make sense? :)

[snowgall]

Yes it does. Also, the benefit of having a public spreadsheet will be that if there are any errors or debatable judgment calls on the top/bottom issue then people can fix it or suggest a change and hopefully there will be consensus. Hopefully :)

[dicta_contrion]

Oooh, fascinating!! This sounds smart to me on several dimensions. Hadn't thought of doing it like that, but it makes some sense.

(I do wonder if there's a difference between authors who participate in fests and those who don't, and can speculate about what it might be, but I don't think there's anything clear enough there to be convincing. So this sounds to me like by far the best mix of representative and doable.)