Homestuck Community Survey 2020: Results and Analysis

Homestuck Community Survey 2020: Results and Analysis
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What is this?

This is an independent analysis of the Homestuck Community Survey 2020, run by the team @hscommsurvey lead by Muse from July 10th to August 10th 2020, and claiming to be a successor to the official 2019 survey, later clarified to be unofficial itself. The survey received 9854 responses.

Four months passed. An anonymous party reached out to me in the interest of finally getting all this data out to the Homestuck fandom, and I accepted. Unfortunately, I was negligent, and it's taken me three months to get around to it. Better late than never, I suppose.

Epistemic Status

I'm not a statistician, though as an engineer I work with statistical data all the time, and I believe I'm reasonably certified to analyze the kind of basic data you're going to see below (as well as add some snarky commentary). Nonetheless, take it with a grain of salt.

Beware of selection bias—this was originally posted on Twitter, then Tumblr, then Discord and Reddit, then other communities, with a proportional amount of attention in that order. Sadly, there wasn't a question simply entitled "Where did you see this survey link?" which would have allowed me to control for it. Something to keep in mind for future editions.

I have avoided any analysis related to race or more detailed sexual identity. The original survey did come with enough data, but I saw a significant amount of criticism regarding the way it was handled that I can't really trust it, and it rubs me the wrong way to confidently state things like "asian fans are more likely to enjoy Hiveswap", because the world does not work like that.

I have also intentionally ignored almost anything that could serve as market research (i.e. the infamous "How much money do your parents earn" question). What Pumpkin already forces writers to do PR work for free—I'm not going to be their unwitting marketing specialist, and I think the last section of the analysis will be telling of what people want already. Don't expect many money/purchase related answers.

And finally, another important bias that this analysis doesn't take into account is survivorship. Fans who don't like the current state of the franchise have likely left already. This is a fandom on life support, and the statistics will reflect that.

Results and Analysis

A big screen or landscape mode is strongly recommended.

Fan Census

This section of the analysis focuses on Homestuck fans' personal data, like age, gender, etc.

Fanworks and Communities

This section focuses on the fans' relationship to each other. Where they find their content, where they meet each other, and what types of fanwork they enjoy the most.

Best Fanwork

Homestuck Community Survey 2020: Best Fanworks
Full results here

Fan Favorites

This section focuses on favorite characters, favorite official stories, and any opinions regarding Homestuck material that already came out.

Feedback to the Creators

This section features opinions on the next steps of the Homestuck franchise, as well as specific approval ratings of parties involved in the making of Homestuck.

Conclusion and acknowledgements

The results aren't very surprising, but they're quite depressing. The fandom continues to shrink. On the bright side, there is a ton of new excellently made fanworks to make up for it. Also, wow, I really should have tested Tableau for mobile readability before using it.

I can't promise anything yet, but I'll probably be running a new fandom survey next year, one which attempts to fix the issues of this one. Hopefully by then we'll have recovered. I've got a good feeling about 2021.

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