Characters who haunt the narrative! Characters who aren't present but influence the plot! Submissions are closed and the tournament ended already! (Run by two mods)
question: do you have any tips for hosting tournaments/polls like this? asking because you're inspiring me here ngl 👀
Sure! I'm not sure how applicable this will be for all tournaments, but here:
Don't feel bad for tagging other polls blogs to promo yours! That's how you'll get most of your submissions!
You will get a lot of submissions unless your poll is pretty niche. Like, expect several hundred submissions depending on who you tag/how far it spreads. This is my second poll tournament, and within about a week my first poll got ~580 submissions, and this poll got nearly 550!!
It's a good thing to get a lot of submissions, but please be aware that sorting through it will take a while (personally I did a lot of sorting while submissions were ongoing, which helped to catch things like alternate character name spellings (which will happen a lot more than you'd expect) and alternate names for source material)
There's lots of ways to sort through submissions but my go-to is to copy the names/sources onto a separate spreadsheet and alphabetize them there, which makes them a little easier to sort and count up. I'm sure there's more automated ways to copy the names onto another sheet if you're more spreadsheet savvy than I am.
Don't overload yourself with work! If you need to spread out polls, do that!!!
Based on observing other polls asking their followers if they prefer 1 day or 1 week long polls, it's maybe 60/40 split for 1 week over 1 day. Yes I'm saying this while this poll is having 1 day polls (we'll switch to 1 week later in the tournament)
This is a little obvious, but block people. Seriously, if people are shitty to you or other people over a poll, block them.
I don't have any bracketing tips, but you'd be surprised how popular something you've literally NEVER heard of will be. Also, when people go "NOOOOOO MY BLORBO IS GOING TO DIE" sometimes they're wrong, don't get scared that your bracketing was too bad. Unfair matchups are inevitable sometimes (and some people prefer unfair matchups sometimes in order for the later matchups to be exciting) but try your best to do bracketing (or do it randomly) and things will hopefully work out okay!!!
Oh no, I meant I had ALREADY put it into sheets using that button, and I was just copying it to another sheet in order to do additional sorting without having to deal with the date submitted/extra comments/etc
But yes that button is EXTRAORDINARILY HELPFUL. If you're not making the sheet from your form you will suffer. Just... don't count submissions by hand from that sheet, because that will STILL be a lot of work
question: do you have any tips for hosting tournaments/polls like this? asking because you're inspiring me here ngl 👀
Sure! I'm not sure how applicable this will be for all tournaments, but here:
Don't feel bad for tagging other polls blogs to promo yours! That's how you'll get most of your submissions!
You will get a lot of submissions unless your poll is pretty niche. Like, expect several hundred submissions depending on who you tag/how far it spreads. This is my second poll tournament, and within about a week my first poll got ~580 submissions, and this poll got nearly 550!!
It's a good thing to get a lot of submissions, but please be aware that sorting through it will take a while (personally I did a lot of sorting while submissions were ongoing, which helped to catch things like alternate character name spellings (which will happen a lot more than you'd expect) and alternate names for source material)
There's lots of ways to sort through submissions but my go-to is to alphabetize the character names and fandoms on a spreadsheet, which makes them a little easier to sort and count up!
Don't overload yourself with work! If you need to spread out polls, do that!!!
Based on observing other polls asking their followers if they prefer 1 day or 1 week long polls, it's maybe 60/40 split for 1 week over 1 day. Yes I'm saying this while this poll is having 1 day polls (we'll switch to 1 week later in the tournament)
This is a little obvious, but block people. Seriously, if people are shitty to you or other people over a poll, block them.
I don't have any bracketing tips, but you'd be surprised how popular something you've literally NEVER heard of will be. Also, when people go "NOOOOOO MY BLORBO IS GOING TO DIE" sometimes they're wrong, don't get scared that your bracketing was too bad. Unfair matchups are inevitable sometimes (and some people prefer unfair matchups sometimes in order for the later matchups to be exciting) but try your best to do bracketing (or do it randomly) and things will hopefully work out okay!!!
Hi everyone! We will be announcing the character roster tonight!! Before that though, we wanted to outline some things to note!
Please note that a lot of characters who haunt the narrative are SPOILERS!! We will be posting a list of the media that are in this tournament where the characters might be spoilers shortly before the roster so you can block tags accordingly.
As a general courtesy, please be kind to us. So far, everyone has been really nice but we know that people can be rude to poll runners! We're doing our best!
When the polls start, please don’t be mean about the characters. People may get passionate about these types of things, but this is, ultimately, just a silly Tumblr poll and if I think you’re being overly mean, I WILL block you. This includes saying things like “why would anyone vote for x” or “you’re homophobic if you vote for y”. A lot of these characters mean a lot to people, so it can be hurtful to say these types of things, even in jest. There are ways to convince others to vote for your character without putting the other characters down!
Please note that if you ask us questions in the replies, we won't respond since this is a side blog. If you have any questions, please ask them through the ask box.
When the polls start, if you have any propaganda you’d like us to reblog, please tag this blog. It's harder for us to see propaganda without being tagged!
Please don’t send us asks about why a character didn’t get in. We had over 500 submissions and there were only 64 spots! However, I will list some possible reasons:
The reasoning didn’t provide enough information
The reasoning provided information that made us believe that the character doesn’t fit the tournament
There was another character from that series that we thought fit the tournament more, and we tried to minimize the number of characters from the same series in the tournament
They had less submissions so they were only considered later when there were fewer spots
Thank you for reading this! We’ll be trying our best to release the brackets and polls in a timely manner :)
At long last, the bracket! This was made after round 1 was completed, partially through taking into account the number of votes each character got in round 1.
As before, here is the list of media in the tournament, just in case! And here were the match-ups from round 1 if you want to see who's unlisted here!
Match-ups for round 2 will be posted 8 polls at a time, with side A on July 29th at 1 pm EST, and side B two days later on July 31st at the same time!
Round 2 match-ups listed under the cut!
SIDE A:
Andrey Nikolayevich Bolkonsky (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812) vs Sliver of Straw (Rain World)
Caleb Wittebane (The Owl House) vs Tadashi Hamada (Big Hero 6)
Doug Rattmann (Portal) vs Zack Fair (Final Fantasy VII)
The Pale King (Hollow Knight) vs The Snail (Zero Escape)
Hikaru Indou (The Summer Hikaru Died) vs Kite (Hunter x Hunter)
Alice (Alice Isn't Dead) vs Saki Momose (Kamen Rider Ex-Aid)
August (A3! Act Addict Actors) vs Lacie Baskerville (Pandora Hearts)
Ayano Tateyama (Kagerou Project) vs Falin Touden (Dungeon Meshi)
SIDE B:
Chara/The Fallen Human (Undertale) vs Trisha Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
Mari (Omori) vs Shen Jiu/Original Shen Qingqiu (The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System)
Lup (The Adventure Zone: Balance) vs Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond (Steven Universe)
Jason Todd/Red Hood (Batman) vs Summer Rose (RWBY)
Jackie Taylor (Yellowjackets) vs Rose Thorburn Sr. (Pact: Devils and Details, by J.C. McCrae)
Hinawa (Mother 3) vs Joe Tazuna (Your Turn to Die)
Cassandra "Andi" Brand (Glass Onion) vs Laura Palmer (Twin Peaks)
Beatrice Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events) vs Rebecca de Winter (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier)
Here's how this is going to work: we'll be making a proper structured bracket starting round 2. For round 1, you won't know who anyone will go up against next!
We tried our best with the match-ups based on what we know about each character's popularity and the type of media it is, and the idea starting round 2 is to use round 1's results to make the brackets.
As before, here is the list of media in the tournament, in case you want to avoid spoilers for any of the media involved!
Polls will start tomorrow on July 8th at 1PM EST!! They will be in a randomized order, and 8 polls will be posted per day, every other day!
Edit after the polls have ended: Winners are now bolded and italicized!
Day 1
Andrey Nikolayevich Bolkonsky (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812) vs. Connor Murphy (Dear Evan Hansen)
Carmen (Lobotomy Corporation) vs. The Pale King (Hollow Knight)
Chara/The Fallen Human (Undertale) vs. December “Dess” Holiday (Deltarune)
Doug Rattmann (Portal) vs. Professor Sada/Professor Turo (Pokémon Scarlet & Violet)
I went ahead and bolded and italicized all the winners of round 1 in case you want to remind yourself who was in round 1 before we post the bracket (which will be soon I think)!!
Just as an update, we're continuing to make match ups and brackets, but one of the mods (the one writing this) got super busy so it's taking longer than I'd like it to! But it's still happening and hopefully in a few days we should be able to post the bracket and round 2 match ups!
Since Renju lost in the first round, and he’s what inspired you guys to make the tournament, does that mean he’s now haunting the tournament’s narrative?
EVERY character who lost is now honored by haunting the tournament's narrative, but Renju especially. He will be missed (by me ESPECIALLY)
I know it’s probably too late, but can I still make a last-minute pitch to have Mia Fey be the Ace Attorney narrative-haunter representative instead of Gregory Edgeworth? She just fits the trope so much better:
- She is quoted in basically every Ace Attorney game (“always believe in your client”)
- Her beloved plant, which she bought when she got her first office, sits in the corner of the office in every game, and most characters will mention her if you click on it
- Her actions and rivalries are the driving force for the entire plot of Trials and Tribulations, so much so that they needed to do a flashback to when she was still alive for the plot to make sense
- SHE LITERALLY HAUNTS THE NARRATIVE THROUGH SPIRIT CHANNELING
Gregory Edgeworth is great and all, but he was relevant for like, three games, two of which are spin-offs. If you’re gonna have an Ace Attoney character who haunts the narrative, it should 100% be Mia instead.
Thoughts?
Okay, I considered answering this when the other mod is awake to discuss my response with, but I think I'm the more qualified one to answer (having played AAI2, where Gregory makes his one and only true appearance) so I'm going for it alone. If the other mod wakes up, reads this, and wants to reconsider Mia that's fine, but we have discussed Ace Attorney's inclusion in this tournament, so I'm pretty sure I'm good to go in that respect.
Tl;dr: We will not be replacing Gregory Edgeworth, and have (unfortunately) long since disqualified Mia, despite her getting more submissions than Gregory did. See this post here.
As for my PERSONAL and over-long opinion. Ace Attorney Investigations 2 spoilers are kept as vague as I possibly can, but full spoilers for the first game:
Like we said in the post about it linked above, Mia is LITERALLY haunting the games, but she's not haunting THE NARRATIVE as much as Gregory is. I love her dearly, obviously, and her shadow falls over Phoenix and Maya especially, but she's also literally there as a ghost, which is not what this tournament is about. Yes, I'm aware she's an edge case like some others we accepted (for better or for worse, as we're only human) but her PRESENCE the narrative is there.
(In addition, the narrative doesn't give her weight as much depth, BECAUSE spirit channeling is a thing. I don't think this is a bad thing, but regardless, I personally see it as taking away from her influence on The Narrative.)
Gregory, on the other hand? He's NOT here. His death was the catalyst for the ENTIRE FIRST GAME, and it caused Misty to leave which rippled through the Fey family, eventually causing MIA'S death, and of course everything that happened to Miles Edgeworth after Gregory's death being caused by von Karma's hatred for Gregory.
Mia's flashbacks in T&T are significant, obviously, but she's a ghost, and gets to give her advice right here and now!!
Meanwhile in AAI2, we get a significant flashback case involving Gregory and get to play from his point of view, but the real meat of the case is in the present day over a decade later, dealing with what he left behind. That's HAUNTING THE NARRATIVE very directly since he's still affecting his son, the person he mentored, and more. I don't think brushing off AAI2 as "just a spinoff" is good when Gregory has such a strong influence on both AA1 and AAI2, but also I'm a huge AAI2 fan so take my opinion here with a grain of salt. I'm aware most people haven't actually PLAYED AAI2, so they might brush off Gregory's influence, which is fine tbh, I'll live as long as they're nice about it.
As for your arguments about her being mentioned, that isn't very strong to me, I'm sorry... I think someone needs a more important influence on the plot other than being just mentioned, though the thematic through-line of "always believe in your client" IS haunting the narrative imo, so you have me there. But Mia's real influence is limited to the 3 trilogy games even if she's mentioned afterwards, and Gregory's to AA1 and AAI2 (I'm not sure if you think he has some influence on the first Investigations game, because he doesn't really, unless his son being the protagonist counts?) which is only one number off from each other.
So in my opinion, though Mia may be an edge case who could've gotten in with other circumstances, her being a literal ghost for 3/3 of the games she's important for disqualifies her compared to Gregory, whose influence and death is HUGELY important for two games.
(Also shout out to all the other AA characters who got submitted, especially the ones like Thalassa who we also disqualified ^^ I love them all but obviously spots were limited lol)
Hi everyone! We will be announcing the character roster tonight!! Before that though, we wanted to outline some things to note!
Please note that a lot of characters who haunt the narrative are SPOILERS!! We will be posting a list of the media that are in this tournament where the characters might be spoilers shortly before the roster so you can block tags accordingly.
As a general courtesy, please be kind to us. So far, everyone has been really nice but we know that people can be rude to poll runners! We're doing our best!
When the polls start, please don’t be mean about the characters. People may get passionate about these types of things, but this is, ultimately, just a silly Tumblr poll and if I think you’re being overly mean, I WILL block you. This includes saying things like “why would anyone vote for x” or “you’re homophobic if you vote for y”. A lot of these characters mean a lot to people, so it can be hurtful to say these types of things, even in jest. There are ways to convince others to vote for your character without putting the other characters down!
Please note that if you ask us questions in the replies, we won't respond since this is a side blog. If you have any questions, please ask them through the ask box.
When the polls start, if you have any propaganda you’d like us to reblog, please tag this blog. It's harder for us to see propaganda without being tagged!
Please don’t send us asks about why a character didn’t get in. We had over 500 submissions and there were only 64 spots! However, I will list some possible reasons:
The reasoning didn’t provide enough information
The reasoning provided information that made us believe that the character doesn’t fit the tournament
There was another character from that series that we thought fit the tournament more, and we tried to minimize the number of characters from the same series in the tournament
They had less submissions so they were only considered later when there were fewer spots
Thank you for reading this! We’ll be trying our best to release the brackets and polls in a timely manner :)
I really appreciate the care you took in matching characters up! A lot of these polls just throw random characters against each other, but it looks like you considered their source and how they would match against their opponent. Thank you!
Thank you for the kind words! We tried our best. I understand why other poll runners choose to do random match ups, but (personally) I think it's funner when effort is put into it, I'm glad the effort is appreciated!!
Here's how this is going to work: we'll be making a proper structured bracket starting round 2. For round 1, you won't know who anyone will go up against next!
We tried our best with the match-ups based on what we know about each character's popularity and the type of media it is, and the idea starting round 2 is to use round 1's results to make the brackets.
As before, here is the list of media in the tournament, in case you want to avoid spoilers for any of the media involved!
Polls will start tomorrow on July 8th at 1PM EST!! They will be in a randomized order, and 8 polls will be posted per day, every other day!
Edit after the polls have ended: Winners are now bolded and italicized!
Day 1
Andrey Nikolayevich Bolkonsky (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812) vs. Connor Murphy (Dear Evan Hansen)
Carmen (Lobotomy Corporation) vs. The Pale King (Hollow Knight)
Chara/The Fallen Human (Undertale) vs. December “Dess” Holiday (Deltarune)
Doug Rattmann (Portal) vs. Professor Sada/Professor Turo (Pokémon Scarlet & Violet)
Thank you for your patience while we sorted the submissions, and thank you to everyone who submitted! Here’s the final character roster for our tournament!!
The roster is currently in alphabetical order by character name for your convenience; we haven't made the brackets yet! Please check out this media list first if you want to know the media without potential spoilers, and keep these things in mind going forward!
Ai Hoshino (Oshi no Ko)
Alice (Alice Isn’t Dead)
Altan Trengsin (The Poppy War Trilogy by R. F. Kuang)
Andrey Nokolayewich Bolkonsky (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812)
August (A3! Act! Addict! Actors!)
Ava Ferin (Just Roll With It: Riptide)
Avator Roku (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
Ayano Tateyama (Kagerou Project)
Beatrice Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
Caleb Wittebane (The Owl House)
Carmen (Lobotomy Corporation)
Cassandra “Andi” Brand (Glass Onion)
Chara/The Fallen Human (Undertale)
Connor Murphy (Dear Evan Hansen)
December “Dess” Holiday (Deltarune)
Doug Rattmann (Portal)
Dr. Casper Darling (Control)
Falin Touden (Dungeon Meshi)
Gertrude Robinson (The Magnus Archives)
Godot (Waiting for Godot)
Goto’s Girlfriend (Samurai Flamenco)
Gregory Edgeworth (Ace Attorney)
Hinawa (Mother 3)
Indou Hikaru (The Summer Hikaru Died)
Iphigenia (The Iliad)
Jackie Taylor (Yellowjackets)
Jason Todd/Red Hood (Batman)
Joe Tazuna (Your Turn to Die)
Jordie Rietveld (Six of Crows Duology by Leigh Bardugo)
