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

[raisin-gal.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. ::Does the dogeza bow::

You know what, you're way more of an insider of the culture than me then. Probably to the point where your intuition is much sharper than mine (at least definitely about BL, of which I know next to nothing, and maybe even about dojins too). I'm really sorry for the patronizing tone I took with you! I kind of tend to knee-jerk about these things and... Yeah. Not going to make excuses, but I'm very sorry, and want to thank you for your lighthearted response.

Re: the canon scene thing, I've been thinking, and one thing that's more relevant might be the medium. With manga, fannish originality is harder to maintain, because in fic a quote is a quote and that's obvious, but with manga-style dojin work that's not based in a visual-medium canon(*), it's hard to try not to duplicate other people's idea, composition, frame angle, etc., of a popular scene by accident. ((*) Movie-based dojins seem a slightly different matter, and there we do get people depicting the same prominent scene over and over -- e.g. I've seen lots of PoA-related Snarry dojins that depict the map confiscation scene in the corridor, either the way it was or, more frequently, in parody form.)

Or so I think. I'm not really sure as I don't draw at all... But I do see a lot of artists worrying about their ideas not being original enough to make theirs a unique picture.

Or maybe, another relevant thing is that the dojins you have tend to be less "canonically" (?) kichiku-ish. I can't really tell because I also tend to gravitate away from kichiku-zemes...

Anyway, now I'm really intrigued with your research. Please let me know of your publications when you make them, if that's all right! And sure, friend away (though I'll warn you my LJ usually consists of examining HP canon in an extremely harsh light) and you might like to join fujoshi, too, if you want to meet more fen in Japanese-speaking waters. There's quite a few HP people I think, although I don't know if any of them go for James/Snape.

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

*bows back* No, that's okay. I'm really not an insider when it comes to dojinshi, I've only researched commercial boys' love manga and I've never studied or been actively involved in Japanese fandom. And in the unlikely event that I am more of an insider than you (whatever it is we mean by 'insider'), that really doesn't matter a thing. With most of the people I've talked with online, I have no clue whether they've been studying fandom for three decades or just heard of dojinshi last week, and it doesn't matter, because it certainly doesn't seem to make their observations any less or more valid or interesting. While insiders may be better at making educated guesses, they can lack information, misinterpret it, or just plain screw up. They do so all the bloody time. 'Outsiders' are just as capable of finding holes in arguments as 'insiders', maybe better at spotting promising connections or possibilities from left field, and know if not more, then certainly different things about the topic at hand. And I'm not an insider as far as dojinshi go, though aiming to rectify that, of course.

So thanks again for commenting. When people say they smell stupid, there usually is some actual stupid somewhere, in the content or the presentation or both. I am tackling this too much from the fanfic perspective and not considering yaoi-based possible explanations enough. I've read way more fic than yaoi manga/dojinshi during the last couple of years, and my yaoi intuition -such as it is- obviously isn't as keen as it used to be. The nasty seme thing just didn't jump to mind at all, and it should've. *headdesk* I'm going to re-read all those things about yaoi that I thought I knew by now, and then add some more questions/speculation.

Re: the canon scene thing, I've been thinking, and one thing that's more relevant might be the medium. With manga, fannish originality is harder to maintain, because in fic a quote is a quote and that's obvious, but with manga-style dojin work that's not based in a visual-medium canon(*), it's hard to try not to duplicate other people's idea, composition, frame angle, etc., of a popular scene by accident.

That sounds like a likely explanation. So maybe it's all right to draw a scene that was in the movies pretty much the way it looked on screen, because it's obvious where the 'quote'/inspiration came from, but drawing something that's overly reminiscent of another fan's work isn't nearly as acceptable. It's ever so much easier to spot resemblances between two pictures than two texts. (I don't draw much, but I do have to make a conscious effort to let other pics inspire me but still make my version of the characters different. Wouldn't want to be accused of copying someone else's Snape or Harry. It never occurred to me before now, but I never had this problem of actively having to avoid copying back when I still wrote fic.) A shame the underpants scene was so different in the movie, that rather complicates judging fans' interpretation of it. English-language fanwork seems to be uniformly ignoring the movie as far as that scene is concerned, but maybe that's different with djs. I'm going to look for djs that do reference it.

I've been wondering how to distinguish between movieverse and bookverse fanwork. It seems like a very significant distinction to make, particularly for dojinshi, but I'm not sure if it would be practically doable. Unless the djka actually says somewhere that it's bookverse or movieverse (some do and some don't, it seems), I doubt I'd ever be one hundred percent sure one way or another. Oh well. Trying to figure it out won't hurt.

Or maybe, another relevant thing is that the dojins you have tend to be less "canonically" (?) kichiku-ish.

Sorry, could you maybe phrase that differently? I'm not sure I follow :)

Also, very sorry for the late reply. Innate slowness and evil translation deadlines. I'm definitely joining fujoshi, though I'll lurk for a while first. It's tempting to jump in now, but I'm going to do that yaoi refresher course first.

[raisin-gal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And sorry, by that line I just meant, if your collection happens to consist mainly of non-kichiku!James stories, it's understandable why that kichiku-ish scene wouldn't be depicted in them. True, in English-speaking fanfic waters the challenge tends to lie exactly in explaining those pivotal canon scenes away... but then, not necessarily so, when you think of certain circles of ficcers. (There are specific shippers, for instance, who prefer to ignore certain canon pairings rather than explain them away every time they start a new story.)

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. I choose those four djs out of a pool of approximately twenty JP/SS djs I had at my disposal, and which I'd pulled off a shelf in a dj store completely at random (this was before I'd even thought of making them into a research project) without looking at the contents first. One of the four has kichiku!James, and I wondered whether or not to include that one because the very large majority of stories in those twenty -more than three fourths- had him being really lovey-dovey. Twenty is no statistically relevant sample by any definition, but I've got a shipment of a couple of hundred Snape djs coming in (yay). I'll definitely let you know what sort of James pops up the most.

Maybe it's just the very popular ships in which canon pairings are often just ignored instead of explained away? If a story is advertised as Snarry, we all know that 95% of the time, the story is going to end with Snape and Harry either shagging or more or less happily in love, and Ginny out of the picture. Nobody is going to blame the author if she decides to skip the removing-Ginny part. Everyone and their mum has already written a story explaining the myriad ways in which Ginny might be moved aside to make room for Snarry. But if we read a story in which, say, Lily leaves James for Sirius, we want some sort of justification with that because Lily-leaving-James isn't a concept we're very familiar with. And 'familiar with' equals 'more accepting of', I think, in the case of shipping. (I haven't read many Lily-and-Sirius stories, at least not stories that involved a longtime relationship rather than a one-off. Sorry if they're out there, I missed them, and this is a bad example. There was some Lily-leaving-James-for-Snape revisionism after DH, though, I suspect because canon had given us a very obvious rival for James and a lot of people like Snape ever so much more than James anyway.)