James Potter loves Snape in Japanese fan comics. Any idea why that's so?

[unjapanologist]

My Ph.D research focuses on narrative differences between Japanese fanwork (dojinshi) and English-language fanwork (fanfics). To find out whether there really are significant differences between these two media, content-wise, I did a small-scale test using six fanfics and four dojinshi, all of them James/Snape. I compared only a small number of narrative elements (will be more in the 'real' research) and tried to list them in a nice clean data set. Below I list the narrative elements I looked at, summarize the resulting data, and offer a short first assessment -possible explanations, remarks, and ideas for further inquiry. I'll continue adding to them, and would love to hear any insights or ideas from others. You can view the complete data set in full screen here (please read next paragraph before clicking). If any of this catches your eye, let me know what you think!

Important notes before analyzing fun begins: Please don't link directly to the full-screen version of the data set, as there's no way to include this text there. The summaries of the fanfics and dôjinshi included in the set were written by me for the purpose of contrasting the narratives, and they contain SPOILERS for the stories. The ratings/warnings are the original author's; please pay attention to them before clicking any links, since the stories may contain adult material. If you think I've misrepresented or misinterpreted something, please let me know and I'll correct the information right away. If you're the author of a fanfic/dôjinshi included in the data set and you feel this is cruel and unusual abuse of your work, or you just don't want it mentioned anywhere, drop me a note and I'll remove identifying information from the entry (author name, title, link, summary) or remove the entry altogether.

• Ship (based on anecdotal evidence)
  Data: The ship/kappuringu of James Potter and Severus Snape appears to be relatively common in dôjinshi, while it occurs only very infrequently (a “rarepair”) in fanfic.
  In HP canon, the idea of this pair of characters being in a romantic relationship is unthinkable. Are fanfic writers less inclined than dôjinshika to tackle a kappuringu/ship they know is a flagrant violation of HP canon? Are there more of these “strange” kappuringu/ships in dôjinshi than in fanfic?
• Dominant/submissive partner
  Data: A constant in all fanfics and dôjinshi is that James is the dominant and Snape the submissive partner.i
  In canon, James and his friends bully Snape while they attend school,casting Snape as a victim during his acquaintance with James. However, as an adult Snape becomes a powerful figure of authority and is cast as the dominant partner in many fanfics featuring him in another “ship”. Anecdotal evidence suggest that in dôjinshi, he continues to be cast as the submissive partner as an adult, far more often than in fanfic. Are dominant-submissive roles in dôjinshi really that much stricter than in fanfic (once submissive, always submissive)?
• Narrator
  Data: James is narrator in all dôjinshi, with Snape taking over in only a few scenes. Snape is narrator in all fanfics while James narrates only a handful of times there.
  There is little canon information about James, who died a decade before the chronological starting point of the HP series. Do dôjinshika feel more comfortable than fanfic writers in fleshing out a minor character that is almost a blank sheet? Why do they consistently prefer this narrator over Snape, a character with a distinctive voice in canon?
• Initial relationship
  Data: James and Snape start out from some form of enmity in five out of six fanfics, while all four dôjinshi have them start out on neutral or friendly terms.
  Four out of six fanfics begin with mention of a scene from canon, reminding readers of the bad blood between the characters. None of the dôjinshi start out by referencing a canon element (though one does in the middle of the story). Do dôjinshi use fewer elements from canon such as key incidents or locations in order to situate characters? Why?
• Outcome of relationship
  Data: Three out of four dôjinshi end with Snape and James in a (budding) relationship. A fourth dôjinshi depicts them apart but still acting in a protective manner towards one another. None of the six fanfics have a happy ending. In one fanfic, Snape loves James, but both die; in two fanfics, they terminate a purely sexual relationship; three fanfics end with James forcing Snape into non-consensual sex and thus deepening the hatred between them.
  Only one fanfic even makes mention of “love”, while three out of four dôjinshi do. Are dôjinshi writers more keen to write relationships involving affection, in spite of the fact that such sentiments have no basis whatsoever in canon?
• Presence of canon love interest
  Data: In the dôjinshi examined, the canon girlfriend/later wife of James Potter, Lily, is simply nonexistent while James happily woos Snape. In the fanfics, she plays a significant (off-screen) role in five out of six fanfics, always in a context of James being involved with her or choosing her over Snape.
  Do dôjinshika ignore Lily because they see little value in sticking close to canon, or because women almost never feature in yaoi stories? Most of the characters Snape is paired with in fanwork have canon love interests. Do all of these women simply disappear in dôjinshi?ii
• Sexual acts
  Data: Three out of four dôjinshi feature no more than some kissing and groping, while five out of six fanfics show explicit scenes involving penetration
  These dôjinshi do not confirm the medium's general reputation for sexual explicitness. Other HP dôjinshi I have perused seem, mostly, equally lacking in explicit scenes. Is this characteristic of this particular kappuringu, of HP dôjinshi in general, or of women-authored dôjinshi?
• Consent during sex
  Data: In dôjinshi, the sexual activity between the two main characters is obviously consensual in three out of four cases; only one dôjinshi has the two in a sexual situation that involves a hint of dubious consent. In the fanfics there is clear mutual consent in three cases, one case of extremely dubious consent, and two sexual situations that are clearly non-consensual.
  Are there really comparatively few depictions of non-consensual sex in dôjinshi (made by and for women)? Why? (Note: fanfics tend to make it quite clear whether a sexual encounter is “dub-con” or “non-con”. However, in dôjinshi it is extremely common during sex scenes that “submissive” partners, male or female, utter exclamations such as “stop” or “no” throughout the proceedings, and such lines are not taken to indicate a lack of consent from the submissive partner, making it hard to determine whether a dôjinshi sex scene is “dub-con”.)
• Adherence to canon (based on anecdotal evidence)
  Data: Dôjinshi deviate far more radically from the canon of the source work than fanfics.
  Fanfic writers tend to be praised for adhering closely to canon.iv Concern with adhering to an established factual canon seems much less marked in dôjinshi. What is the relationship between dôjinshika and source work authors in Japan? Do dôjinshika actively dislike adhering to canon?
• Appearance of characters
  Data: In all four dôjinshi, both characters are drawn to appear attractive. Five out of six fanfics make some negatively worded reference to Snape's appearance, while no fanfic describes him as good-looking. James is described as handsome in two fanfics, while four do not mention his appearance.
  In the original HP books, James is said to be a handsome young man while Snape is described as physically unattractive. In dôjinshi, Snape acquires all the hallmarks of a bishônen -the androgynous “beautiful boy” figure that has been a staple of Japanese media throughout centuries. His most conspicuous facial feature in canon, an overlarge hooked nose, is nowhere to be seen in dôjinshi. Why do dôjinshika try so hard to prettify Snape?

Check out the data here.

Comments

[mithen.livejournal.com]

I was pointed here by ithiliana because I'm interested in studying Japanese fandom and have been stumbling over consent issues a bit. This looks like a very interesting point of departure, to look at pairings from each culture and explore how they're constructed! I'm especially intrigued by the way the seme/uke dynamic stays the same in the doujinshi but the power relationships seem to shift quite often in the Western fanfics. There seems to be more enjoyment of deliberately tilting the power differential in Western fic. I'm also fascinated by the doujinshi ignoring what the fanfic take as a mandatory moment in canon to explore (I assume it's the flashback scene of James bullying Snape?) I wonder if in part that's because bullying is more likely to be taken for granted in Japan and perhaps the event seen as less deeply traumatizing to Snape...but here I'm on thin ice and speculation.

Anyway--very interesting!

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

Praise be thin ice and speculation, that's exactly what I'm looking for here ;) Better get all the possibilities on the table first, and later we can try and see which are most likely to be true. I studied seme/uke dynamics for my masters thesis about three years ago and am pretty glad to be getting back to the topic -it's fascinating. Where have you been stumbling, exactly?

I'm going to do a more detailed comparison of references to canon scenes in fics and dj, but I did get the impression from this that there's more of that in in fic than in djs. Actually, the event referenced most often in fic was Snape nearly getting killed by the werewolf through the fault of James' friends (which never happens onscreen in canon). James saved Snape's life then, although it didn't change their bitter enmity. Perhaps fic writers, apparently more preoccupied with linking things to canon, like to latch onto that moment because it's the only known interaction between Snape and James that might possibly be construed as non-hostile (and thus a starting point for JP/SS)?

Very interesting point about the bullying scene. I do wonder what makes dojinshika able to portray James as an all-round 'good guy' (at least in the twenty or so JP/SS djs I've looked at), when James' signature scene in canon is indeed one that shows him humiliating a fellow student. It's a pretty hideous scene, not the garden variety I'll-turn-your-hair-blue kind of schoolboy bullying. Maybe it's partly because being depicted as a bully isn't quite so damning for a character in Japan? I'll have to look into whether Japanese fans are more likely to expect Snape not to take too much offense at being bullied. It might explain quite a bit about his apparent lack of serious negative feelings towards James in djs.

Actually, fic writers don't seem to use the bullying scene much either -at least in JP/SS fics, I've seen it in other fics plenty of times. Fic writers might want to ignore the bullying scene when writing JP/SS because it's such a painful incident that any vaguely non-hostile relationship between James and Snape sounds impossible afterwards. The werewolf scene leaves some doors open for a JP/SS relationship, but the bullying scene shuts and bolts them all. Fic writers can be pretty good at ignoring canon too :)

[mithen.livejournal.com]

Ah, the rescue scene! It tells you something about my reaction to the idea of James/Severus that I totally forgot it. :) I do suspect that a certain amount of "hazing" is considered more acceptable in Japanese fandom, although I don't have any proof for that--I can just fairly easily tilt my imagination and see what James is doing as a sort of "teaching you manners for your own good" kind of behavior, although it would fit the mold better if he were older than Snape.

My stumbling when studying has mostly been in issues of privacy--I have a couple of Japanese friends in fandom and they're fiercely, fiercely protective of their privacy and being "studied" at all from what I've seen. Despite the doujinshi market and the existence of semi-mainstream yaoi, there are still a lot of repercussions for people discovered as creating art for fandom. The culture here seems to be that you're free to do what you like in your private time as long as there is no hint of it in your public life at all. One of my friends recently took down her entire art gallery because it was linked to on metafandom, and she considered that a pretty serious violation. Japanese fans online tend to try and make themselves pretty hard to find unless you're "in the know," and academic analysis that gives them away at all would be kind of risky for my relationships with them. Studying doujinshi actually seems somewhat safer than studying online fandom in some ways...

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

One of the things I'm most interested in is how much of a 'mold' there still is in the uke/seme scheme. The general pattern seems to stay the same, but four or five years ago when I was really into that particular subject, I came across exceptions to the uke/seme rules (like the one about age) very often even without consciously looking for them. Often enough to make me wonder if the uke/seme thing is really as rigid as people think it is. Of course more research is necessary here, but I suspect that European and American fans have preconceptions about how a given pairing should look that are just as 'fixed' as uke/seme (should make that seme/uke, probably). Maybe the preconceptions of Japanese fans are just more 'organized' than those in Western fandom. Does that make any sense at all? :)

Ah, I'm stuck on pretty much the same problem with regards to interacting with Japanese fans. One of the most important things for me, research-wise, is involving others (fans, academics, whoever's interested) as much as possible instead of spending four years just turning my own little theories around in my head. I feel quite comfortable asking people on LJ or IJ what they think, and when I do a final big writeup of the research and ask around whether I'm allowed to quote people, I'm confident that a majority won't mind.

I really want to contact the authors of the djs I use and ask for their opinions (on the off chance they'd volunteer some :) At least, I want them to know I've used their stuff -there's no legal obligation for me to inform them or anything, it just seems like the polite and respectful thing to do, particularly in a fannish context. However, things like the situation you describe make me wonder if it would really be a good idea to contact them. If they asked me to remove all mention of their dj from my research, I'd oblige them, but that wouldn't be very methodologically sound.

Maybe it would be best to stick to the djs and not involve the authors at all. Basically, no problem, since my first and foremost goal is to examine what the content of dojinshi is; speculations about author motivations come second. But I'd feel kind of bad going out of my way to directly involve ficcers on the one hand and totally ignoring djka on the other. At the moment, I don't have any contacts among djka (well, one, but I haven't talked with her about this yet). How do you believe people would react if I contacted them to point out I'm using their dj for research? Would they ask me to withdraw the material?

*roots around in bookmarks* Reminds me of these two articles about online anonimity in Japan:
http://clast.diamondagency.jp/en/?p=129
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/09/26/business/AS-TEC-Japan-Shy-Internet.php

[mithen.livejournal.com]

Oh, those two articles are fascinating, thank you! Just the kind of thing I'm interested in.

I'd love it if you found evidence that seme/uke weren't so set in stone in Japan! I haven't seen much evidence against it in my corner of fandom (my Japanese friend likes Batman/Superman and had to find Western fandom to get her fix as Japanese fandom is nearly all Superman/Batman; in the Western fandom I'm not sure most people even know there's a difference!) but I'd like it to be so. :) I do like that your doujinshi aren't terribly explicit--we tend to assume they're all super-explicit, but in my experience they're not (the explicit ones do stand out mentally, however!)

I think there's a moderately good chance your djka might request you not to use their material, which would be a real shame! Are there enough doujinshis out there that you could keep trying until you had a good number? Though then there's some built-in sampling error in that I'd suspect the djka who saw their work as more "Western-compliant" would be more likely to give permission, hmmm. I'd definitely ask the person you know what they'd think, and I'd be really interested in the answer. It would be a shame to have so much more extensive feedback from the Western fans than Asian, but...that might well be part of what you talk about, that there just isn't a culture of talking about these issues as a community in Japan.

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

I was a bit suprised at not finding many really explicit dojinshi among my samples. Of course this was a very tiny little test, done just to see if the topic would be interesting to pursue further, so the margin for error is huge. I might just have grabbed the wrong dojinshi off the shelf. But I do get the impression that there's far more comedy and non-sexual stuff in dojinshi than you'd guess from the dojinshi news available in English.

There's more Harry Potter djs out there than I could ever examine, so number-wise, it would be perfectly doable to leave some out if the authors requested it. It's more of a methodological problem. Choosing samples so that they're pretty much representative of the entirety of dojinshi produced is a fuzzy enough science as it is. Dropping samples en masse for no reason other than that the authors requested it could really skew results, if a lot of authors do this...

Indeed, this probably should be one of the things I discuss in more detail. I can already see it's going to be an interesting and hugely annoying issue :) (Right now I'm also brainstorming on how to narrow down about a billion gazillion Harry Potter fanfics to a few hundred representative samples. In a few weeks I'll scream if you utter the phrase 'built-in sampling error' at me again, I'm sure.)

Aw, hell. Feeling very torn between fandom loyalty and academic rigor right now. I'm going to discuss this with my supervisors too... One of them is a Japanese professor who knows more dojinshi people than I do, maybe she can pull a rabbit out of a hat on this. I'll let you know if she has any good ideas as per communication with Japanese djka.

[mithen.livejournal.com]

"BUILT-IN SAMPLING ERROR!" Muahaha! Oh, phrases that haunt an academic's nightmares...

I hear you about the fandom loyalty versus the academic rigor. The only published essays I wrote on fandom I wrote before I became an active fan, and they make me cringe now. Once I started to truly be part of fandom (I learned about fandom and slash from my classes, kind of the reverse of how most people would go about it!) I stopped being able to write about it, although I still see everything in it with an academic's eye...