Hermione_Smut Stats

[swissmarg]

The hermione_smut exchange is all wrapped up with a pretty little bow, and has posted its master list. Let's open it up and see what wondrous statistics are in store!

Fest community: hermione_smut 
Fest type: Anonymous prompt exchange, fic only
Theme: Smut involving Hermione and any other character(s)
Rating restrictions: R and NC-17 only
Length restrictions: Minimum 1000 words, no maximum
Creation period: 2 and a half months

There were 23 gift fics created for this exchange.

By rating:

R - 2
Hard R - 1
NC-17 - 20

By pairing alignment:

Het twosome - 17
Femslash twosome - 2
Het  threesome (Hermione/M/M) - 4

Most popular partners:

Blaise, Draco - 4
Charlie, Cormac, Rabastan, Ron - 2

By generation of partner(s):
I am assuming that Lucius, Rabastan, and Rodolphus were generally of the same generation as the Marauders, even if they may have been a couple of years older or younger.

Hermione's generation (includes older students at Hogwarts at the same time as Hermione, e.g. Oliver, Cormac) - 14
Marauders generation - 5
Mid-generation (Bill and Charlie) - 2
Founders generation - 1
Unknown generation (Sam Winchester from Supernatural) - 1

By House of partner(s):
I am assuming that Rabastan and Rodolphus were in Slytherin, although it is never explicitly stated. Also, each partner in a threesome is counted individually, so the total adds up to more than 23.

Gryffindor - 15
Slytherin - 11
Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw - 0
Unknown (Sam Winchester) - 1

By word count:

The shortest fic was 1,006 words long. The longest fic was 18,835 words long.

1-2K - iii
2-3K - iiii
3-4K - ii
4-5K - iiii
5-6K - iii
6-7K - i
7-8K - i
8-9K - i
10-11K - ii
16-17K - i
18K+ - i

There was a total of 131,000 words written for this fest.
Mean (average fic length): 5,039 words
Median (half longer, half shorter): 4,500 words
Mode (most frequent fic length): 2-3K and 4-5K

Some thoughts: The ratings are a given, really, as this was specifically a smut-centric fest. Het twosomes were the most popular by far, which is generally how Hermione is seen in the fandom at large as well, so again no surprises there. However, it's nice that there were also 2 femslash gifts, to round things out.

The first surprise I had came when I looked at the characters Hermione was partnered with. There was no Snape or Harry! Two of the most popular Hermione pairings were completely shut out. Draco and Ron, two other very popular Hermione shipping partners, were well represented, though. Going along with this was the large number of rare Hermione pairings, such as Rabastan, Rodolphus, Oliver, and Salazar. There was even a crossover with Supernatural, pairing her with Sam Winchester. I have seen an upswing in rare pairings in general in the past couple of years, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and propose that at this point, a couple of years after the last book came out, people are looking further afield and trying out new pairings to get more interest and spice in their fan fiction. Someone posted some screencaps from DH1 of Hermione in the forest with Scabior recently, and there was quite a bit of squeeing and speculation on a new Hermione ship being established among dark-ficcers. On the other hand, we need only look as far as the sshg_exchange  to see that the more established fandom pairings are by no means losing steam.

Looking at the generations of Hermione's partners in this fest, most of them were of the same general age as her. There were also several older men, although none older than the Marauders generation. There were also no next generation characters represented. I feel this reflects how Hermione is often portrayed in fics, especially smut fics, as secretly wanting to be subordinate to her partner. Pairing her with a much younger character would turn the inherent power relationship around, although it would of course still be possible to write her as subordinate to a younger character. Or, indeed, to make her the dominant person in the relationship. Those fics just seem to be less popular from what I've seen.

Looking at the Houses of her partners, there were only Gryffindors and Slytherins. That's not too surprising, given that most of the better-known characters are from those two Houses, but it might have been nice to have at least a Hermione/Luna or Hermione/Tonks fic, or another rare male from another House such as Terry Boot or Justin Finch-Fletchley.

In terms of the word counts, they were generally short, mostly one-shots. 70% of the fics were shorter than 6,000 words. There was really a definite drop-off after 6,000 words, if you look at the distribution. Sure, there were a couple of longer, chaptered fics, but compared to some other fests with similar writing periods (2 and a half months) like the hd_fan_fair or, again, the sshg_exchange, the fics for this fest were noticeably shorter. I think that's because this was really billed as a smut fest, and so most writers felt satisfied with a single scene, and didn't see a need to build up a longer story around it.