Another year, another survey. This time we have a single survey for multiple FF communities, with respondents noting which they belong to.

Link to survey: Link

Link to results: Link

Last year's survey: Link

There will be a second survey to follow which covers more serious questions of canon opinions etc. And believe me, it's a doozy...

 

Doing god’s work, @Skeletaure. Thank you for letting me know that Susan Bones is in fact curvy.

 

Almost all male respondents, wow.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how much consensus there can be on completely uncanonical things like Susan's bust, Daphne's body type and hair colour, etc.

Meanwhile, the canonically "willowy" Fleur has greater disagreement as to her body type than Daphne.

 

Jesus it's that time again already?

 

We're a month or so early but I got bored. Also there is going to be a second survey covering the more serious questions of magical theory etc so this survey is more memey fanon questions.

 

Have you seen any clear shifting trends over the surveys?

For example:
Tonks as favourite het pairing for Harry isnt a thing now, but I assume it was some years ago.
We had the whole discussion about age gap and how Honks is iffy nowadays.
Would be neat to know if the shift was gradual, as people grew older, of if it was a sudden thing etc.

While I can't find it I believe you discussed the results for at least one of the previous surveys.

 

Yeah Honks used to a really popular pairing back in the day but barely anyone writes it anymore. Even the fleur fics have gone down in popularity. Funnily enough Haphne pairing has become the no 1 most popular pairing now when barely anyone used to write it back then. Even the Hermione fics have gone down hell it used to have whole seperate site called portkey. It's nowhere anywhere as popular as it used to be.

 

The aging fanbase would be my main suspect. Personally age gap stuff was more acceptable to me when I was younger...because I identified with the younger party. Landing a hot older partner from that point of view has a certain appeal. But like, I'm in my 30s man. If one member of a relationship is an adult and the other is not--I'm going to have more in common with the adult. And from that perspective it loses a lot of the charm.

 

@Skeletaure when are you posting on Reddit?

 

I posted at the same time as posting here but I am stuck in the moderation queue and despite messaging the mods, they don't seem to be in a hurry to approve it.

 

Right, I haven't even realised there's a moderation queue. So weird considering how much discourse previous surveys generated.

 

You know @Skeletaure I'd add a How many girls could Harry satisfy in one go? question concerning the amount of harem fics out there.

 

r/hpfanfiction has no moderation queue I'm pretty sure. Is there somewhere else that you're posting?

 

There is a mod queue for new accounts, which mine was, created especially to post the survey. If you have a new account, r/HPfanfiction automatically requires manual approval of the post.

Anyway, after sitting in limbo for 2 days, it looks like the r/HPfanfiction mods have decided to delete it. Without any response to my messages. So no Reddit survey this year (or any years after), just DLP and various Discords.

Thread was here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/13o6adf/hpfanfiction_survey_2023/

 

The Honks thread is like 80% shitpost over bad arguments, not really reflective of fanfic preferences.

 

Most people still saying no to gay protagonists in 2023 is an interesting result. Does it just come down to the fact that most HP slash fanfic is written by women and comes across as a female fantasy, with limited appeal if you’re not looking for that?

 

It says DLP is mostly men, and that we still don't like reading gay sex, and our opinions haven't changed since Lightning on the Wave.

 

Reddit is also mostly men. I have heard that fanfiction in general is mostly women, but idk if that applies to Potter fiction, which might be male-heavy vs other fandoms. I do know that reddit skewing male is sometimes taken to explain the unpopuarity of HP slash on reddit vs on ao3.

Re reddit: I guess you could wait for your account there to age for a while before posting?

Truthfully I didn't find most of the survey that interesting, no offense intended. Particularly I don't care at all about the Rowling books, so the whole concept of canon doesn't mean anything to me. Similarly for headcanon: mostly I'll go along with whatever the author says in a story, so I don't mind Daphne being skinny in one story and curvy in another, or whatever. It hadn't even occurred to me to ponder stuff like that. I do think Draco is enough of a git to call into question the good sense of authors who treat him otherwise, but that's just because Draco ship stories are so common.

 

I said I wouldn’t read a story with a gay main character, as I don’t like reading stories with a strong relationship thread in it generally. And if you go to the trouble of making The MC gay, it’s probably for a reason.

So it’s not so much I wouldn’t read a story with a gay main character. It’s that I don’t want any pairing, and I imagine the amount of stories with a gay mostly asexual character is nearly zero.

That’s for HPFF, other fiction work is mostly open anything.