Death Eater Cest Drabble-A-Thon stats

[swissmarg]

The Death Eater Cest End-of-the-year Drabbleathon is over. The master list has been posted, giving me more fodder for my incessant list-making.

Fest community: deatheatercest 
Fest type: Open prompting and open responses
Premise: Incest* involving at least one Death Eater (*Note that 'incest' is defined as being within a family, and in-laws count)
Ratings restrictions: None
Length restrictions: 100-500 words
Creation period: Up to 1 month

There were 33 drabbles written for the fest. Interestingly, there were only 13 authors, meaning, obviously, several authors wrote more than one drabble.

Most prolific drabble writers:

forsanethaec - 8 drabbles
hpfangirl71 - 5 drabbles
leigh_adams, xohxmyxjonas - 4 drabbles each
a_shadow_there, scarysnapey, thepretender501 - 2 drabbles each

By rating:

G - 0
PG - 3
PG-13 - 7
R - 18
NC-17 - 5

By length:
The drabbles ranged in length from 284 - 710 words.

100-200 - 0
200-300 - 2
300-400 - 7
400-500 - 11
500-600 - 11
600-700 - 1
700+ - 1

Most popular characters:

Draco - 13
Sirius - 11
Lucius - 10
Bellatrix, Regulus - 9 each
Narcissa - 8
Astoria, Rodolphus - 3 each
Andromeda - 2

By family:

Blackcest - 15
Malfoycest - 8
Lestrangecest - 1
Mix (Black/Malfoy, Black/Lestrange, Malfoy/Lestrange) - 7
None - 1

Most popular pairings:

Regulus/Sirius - 6
Draco/Lucius - 5
Astoria/Lucius - 3
Bellatrix/Draco, Bellatrix/Narcissa, Bellatrix/Sirius, Narcissa/Regulus- 2 each

Most promiscuous characters:
(number of different partners)

Draco - 7
Narcissa - 6
Bellatrix - 5
Lucius - 4
Rodolphus - 4
Sirius - 4
Andromeda - 2
Regulus - 2

By pairing alignment:

Slash - 14
Het - 13
Femslash - 3

Het threesome (M/M/F and F/F/M) - 2
Slash threesome - 1

By degree of incest:

Siblings - 11
Parent/child - 8
In-laws - 7
Aunt/nephew, Cousins - 4 each
Grandparent/Grandchild, Spouses, and None - 1 each

Some thoughts: It seems that the degree of success this fest had was due in large part to the efforts of those authors who completed multiple drabbles. The whole idea of incest, and Black!cest in particular, seems to fuel some people's imaginations very well.

It surprised me that there were actually several low-rated drabbles. I wouldn't have thought that Death Eater incest could be rated PG, but 9% of the entries managed it. I was also surprised that there weren't more NC-17 ratings. Although 70% of the drabbles were rated R or higher, only 15% were rated NC-17.

The lengths were also interesting, in that no one ended up in the lowest range, and in fact nearly all of the drabbles (94%) were over 300 words. Also interesting was the fact that over a third of the entries were over 500 words, and thus actually too long according to the fest rules, but I suppose the mods were happier about the participation than being fussy over word counts.

The most popular characters were not surprising. The Blacks and Malfoys -- and especially Draco, Sirius, and Lucius -- are popular characters in fandom anyway. I did find it interesting that almost every drabble involved either a Black or a Malfoy. Even the couple of drabbles involving the Lestrange brothers could really be seen as an extension of the Black-Malfoy clan.

However, this wasn't supposed to be a Blackcest or Malfoycest fest. There are lots of other Death Eaters, even ones with relatives (i.e. potential incest partners) mentioned in canon: the Carrow siblings; Voldemort and his father, Tom Riddle; Snape and his parents, Tobias and Eileen; Nott and his son, Theo; and so on. Not a single author picked up on any of these. I suppose this reflects the above-mentioned popularity of certain characters, such as Draco and Sirius. Still, I think it was a missed opportunity for exploring some of the lesser-known characters and their interactions.

There was one (side) pairing that wasn't incestuous at all, namely Draco/Severus. There was also, just to say, one main pairing that didn't involve a Death Eater: Andromeda/Sirius. But maybe it was 'allowed' under the umbrella of all the other Blackcest going on.

The fact that the order of characters changes when we look at their 'promiscuity' (= number of different characters with whom they are paired) indicates that certain characters were paired more often with the same partner. For example, Sirius, the second most popular character, featuring in 11 drabbles, was only the sixth most promiscuous character, being paired with just 4 different partners. The large number of Sirius/Regulus drabbles explains the difference. Narcissa, on the other hand, was only the 6th most popular character, appearing in 8 drabbles, but was the second most promiscuous, being paired with 6 different characters. She was only paired more than once with Bellatrix and Regulus.

Slash and het were quite evenly balanced, although slash did manage to edge out het for the most popular pairing alignment with 42% to 39%. If you add in the threesomes, however, then het and slash end up exactly even, with 45% each. As usual, femslash was a distant also-ran.

First-degree incest (siblings or parent/child) was the most popular, making up 57% of the entries. The second most popular was in-law incest with 21%. I have to say that I don't personally find in-law relationships incestuous, although perhaps immoral, especially if one or the other person is still married. Still, I can see the 'ick' factor in getting it on with one's brother-in-law. I think that's why there was something of an outcry in fandom when Rowling revealed in an interview that she imagined Angelina and George ending up together (although Fred and Angelina were never actually depicted as more than friends in canon).