Elsanna fandom survey

Hi everyone!

Remember when we did a survey and never got around to sharing the results?

Well, we’ve gotten back to it, sort of (a year late…). We’re be keen to do another survey but we really don’t want to leave it hanging like we did this one. So, we figured the first step is to actually, like. Give you the results of the previous one.

Results are under the cut. If you wish to skip them and head straight to the next survey, you can go here. Thanks!

So, first of all – and likely the most interesting (at least to us): the demographics of our fandom.

As of last year, the fandom was pretty even with its gender ratio, though about 16% of answers where from non-cisgender people (including transgender, genderfluid, and intersex, to name a few). People could choose their answers from a checklist, and were able to select more than one option, which may affect the results somewhat.

The age is a little more consistent. Almost half the participants were between 21 and 30 years of age. Only 13.6% were over the age of 31 (15 people!). No one under the age of 12 answered the survey.

The next results were also interesting because the question was, “Do you have an Elsanna blog”. Almost 40% (44 responses) said they didn’t have one, nor did they want one. That being said, the three ‘runners up’ were all in the positive; they either had one as a main blog (15.2% and 12 responses), no, they didn’t but they wanted one (16.1% and 18 responses), or they did, and it was their main blog with other stuff too (17% and 19 responses).

Now, we kind of messed up a little with the country and language spoken. Because we had no idea of the responses we would get, we set it so people could type their answer. Well, their answer looks like this:

The two tallest bars in the first question are both 'USA’, and predictably, the most spoken language is English. In the next survey, we’re going to update this to make it easier to read. That being said, we got some fun responses – there were a few from Spain, Mexico, Italy, and Poland, one from China, one from Japan, and two from France. Perhaps surprisingly, there were only two responses from the UK.

Now, onto the metrics.

Most people (97/112) read fanfiction. Most people (94/112) view fanart. And a number of people (32/112) watch fanvids. However, there is a significant drop when it comes to creation: only 52 people said they wrote, and only 20 created artwork. Out of 112 people, only 4 created fanvids. This doesn’t mean all that much when you remember that only 112 people participated in this survey, out of a fandom of hundreds, however it gives an interesting look into the supply and demand of fanworks in fandom. And, for obvious reasons, it takes far less time to read a story than it does to write it – and the same goes for artwork (perhaps even doubly so) and fan videos.

We ran into the same problem with the next few metrics as with the countries and languages – we made it short answer, and thus, it was harder to read. However, there is very definitely a favouring of Modern AU content, along with STP, Canon, and Fantasy. That’s not to say others weren’t mentioned – a couple of people mentioned knight!AUs, along with sci-fi and dystopian/post-apocalyptic. There seems to be more of a universal “we like this” with certain genres.

The same can’t really be said of people’s lest favourite. A number of people put 'none’, though that can’t be a guarantee that they would read/view everything, regardless of the genre. Several people actually put smut as their least favourite, along with things such as highschool!aus, crossovers, g!p/futa, and, actually, Modern!AUs.

When asked about favourite stories, the answers were somewhat predictable. Stolen Ice and r9k Elsa is Suffering popped up a few times, alongside other fandom favourites such as Golden Snowflake, A Formal Arrangement and Searching for a Perfect Day. It was fun seeing a few “lesser” known fics pop up, though. Tesselate, Meeting My Reflection, The Legend of Elsa, and Love Me, Love Me Not all made at least one appearance.

There are very few ways to tell whether or not a story will become popular, but, simply by looking at the ones that are mentioned, it isn’t a stretch to infer that likely word of mouth plays a huge role. If an author you already like, or a friend you respect, mentions a fic, you’re more likely to go and check it out. The first stories mentioned are often listed as 'required reading’ for the fandom, and thus, people do often read them first.

The final questions really were asking people’s opinions on the EPP – who they think we are, what we do, etc – and feedback questions regarding the survey itself. The ideas given have been implemented in the next survey, and, hopefully, we’ll get a good number to compare these to. It would be interesting to do a survey every year to track changes in the fandom :)

Anyway. Thank you – a belated thank you, but one nonetheless – to everyone who participated in the survey :) It would be great if you could also do this one, but we understand if you can’t Hopefully the slightly more streamlined layout will convince you to give it a go :)

So, here it is. Another survey, if you like :) We promise we’ll be better at posting the results this time. And plus, comparisons are always more interesting ;)