It's great to see feedback on the survey. I was aware some of the questions were skewed the moment we got out the door, but by that point there was nothing more that I could do than apologize. I do plan on doing another one of these after Pesterquest ends but before next 4/13, so I'll try to use less biased language then.
Moving on, less talk about the numbers.
The thing that stood out the most to me was how balanced the answers were. There was hardly any severe skew in the answers, and were surprisingly positive.
As for the first question, the answers we got were roughly what I had expected: Most people think that cannon
could be an interesting way to further the story, but it has yet to reach that point. As it stands, the term cannon is kinda meaningless, there's no weight behind it, not as in cannon doesn't mean anything, which is the point the authors have been trying and failing to hammer home, but more like how the characters are doing all this wanking about over cannon despite the fact that it feels hollow. I don't feel like we're actually doing anything with it, which sucks, as the concept does have some serious potential, and the majority of the community recognizes that as such.
Question 2: Not much to talk about here, but I'm surprised how many people thought positively about the current update system.
Questions 3&4: Most people seem to think as the current writing as good, or at the very least, not awful. But I still don't think that I can say the writing is "good" when a whole fifth of the community thinks the writing is straight up
bad. What were getting now is decent content, but the team has got a long way to go if they want to compete with Homestuck 1. (Feels weird to be calling Homestuck 2009-2016 "Homestuck 1.") Also of note, the good score for Pesterquest went up by about 5% in the days following Aradia's/Tavros' route.
Question 5: This one actually surprised me in how negative it was. About half of all readers think that no updates should be locked behind paywalls, and while I understand that the authors gotta eat, I'm inclined to agree. Especially when people may not be following the patreon for other reasons, and all "cannon" Homestuck content has been free from 2009-2018.
Question 6: Expected more people to say that they should be more active on other social media platforms. Also wish I specified what "They should do something else" meant.
Q7: This is by far the question I got the most flak for, and for good reason, but regardless, I think it's interesting just how many people were put off by the twitter rants. I don't even wanna get into all this mess of trans stuff and accusations of "bi-erasure" being tossed around, but I will say that that if you want the fans to trust you to write and give you money to write, you can't keep pushing stuff the fans find unpalatable into the story to suit yourself.
Q8:
I don't even wanna get into all this mess of trans stuff
Just let the numbers speak for themselves. I only covered it because it's a hot button topic in the community.
Question 9: See: conclusion
Q10/11: The score for Homestuck 1 wasn't that surprising, but what amazed me is just how balanced the score for Homestuck 2 was. It was only a smidge positive, and was cut almost directly down the centre on people who think it is good and people who think it is bad.
Conclusion:
It amazed me just how dead split the community was on so many topics. Going back to question 9, there was such an amazing and self contradictory mess of answers of what people wanted from Homestuck in the future. Even the beforan trolls, one of the most universally hated aspects of the story had some die-hard fans who wanted to know more about them, who wanted
their stories to continue. But generally speaking this is what people want from Homestuck:
-More info on the origins/inner workings of SBURB: A common want is for SBURB to become a more prevalent element in the story, more video gamey stuff like in acts 1-5.
-More new characters/character interactions: People want new characters and interactions not yet seen. While the cast of Homestuck 1 is nice, we've been hearing about them for up to 10 years now: It's time to retire them for younger blood, or at the very least, new twists on tired character dynamics.
-More time stuff: Time stuff is cool.
-But generally, people just want Homestuck to be good. Just don't make it shit. Please.