mystery tournament

are you curious if your character idea can win against popular characters? do you want your underappreciated blorbo to have a chance? do you wonder if other people think a character you like is interesting? submit your character to this anonymous tournament!

[mysterytournament]

another mystery character tournament!

after i saw @mysterycharactercontest (who came up with this idea!) and @masqueradetourney (who has an extremely cool theme!), i thought: what if an anonymous character tournament was even more mysterious, as in had even more possible sources and was even less based on popularity? so i decided to host a mystery character tournament of an even more chaotic variety, allowing original characters and picking participants entirely based on description with no concern for the number of nominations.

so, is your favorite character underappreciated? unknown? are you obsessed with a character that only exists in your head? do you have a character idea you're not sure is interesting? do you wonder if your favorite character only wins on name recognition? do you want to submit your blorbo to as many anonymous tournaments as possible?

then i have just the tournament for you!

how does this tournament work?

you submit the characters you like; it can be a character from any media, for example, a character from an epic poem or a song or a game you think you're the only fan of or a popular tv show, your oc or a character you just made up while filling in the form; however, please don't submit real people!

i pick the characters whose descriptions i find interesting (mod tyranny?) and include them in the bracket (i'll try to include as many as possible!); characters that receive one nomination with an interesting description are way more likely to get into the tournament than characters submitted many times but with descriptions like "i just like him"

i post the characters' introduction posts (with the descriptions you provided for them) without revealing their name or source so that everyone may meet our participants

i post the polls, including short descriptions of the characters and links to their intros; you vote for the characters you find more interesting or the characters you like more

after every round, the losers' identities are revealed while the winners move on, still anonymous. i humbly request you DON'T reveal the characters' identities until they lose or win the whole tournament to keep it interesting!

submissions are closed now!

other tournaments i'm a fan of are @the-nobody-tournament @who-do-i-know-this-man @titular-twins-tournament @homoeroticbetrayal and many others :)

[mysterytournament]

Is this still happening? or has this been dropped?

sorry i greatly underestimated the amount of work i’d have. this might start like in july maybe but really i’m not sure if i’ll have the time & willpower. sorry again

[anonymous-character-tournament]

Welcome to the Anonymous Character Tournament!

Have you ever broken down your blorbo to their base components?

Have you ever tried to explain your blorbo to a friend and realised they're really a few cool concepts in a trenchcoat?

Have you ever wondered how many people would like your blorbo if only they knew them?

Taking inspiration from @guess-that-ship, @mysterytournament and @masqueradetourney, and inspired by others like @qpr-competition, @the-ultimate-tournament, @autismswagsummit.

This is a competition to see which blorbo is the most compelling when stripped of their name and their immediately identifying characteristics. As the title says, each participant will be anonymous, and you'll only know a few cool details about them when you vote. The names will be revealed when each character loses, but you're welcome to speculate (I won't confirm anything).

Rules:

Nominations are only through this Google form, which will close on April 26th at 5pm UTC. Any nomination through any other means will be ignored.

OCs and real people are not allowed.

In the form you must provide the character's name and the media they're from.

You must also provide a list of up to five cool characteristics about the character you're submitting (I will pick from here when making the presentations that will appear under every poll). If you include more than five characteristics, I will ignore from the sixth onward.

Characteristics should be captivating and short: bullet points are accepted, short complete phrases are accepted, paragraphs are not accepted.

Characteristics should be vague enough as not to make the character immediately recognisable.

You may include further details about the character you're submitting in the fourth question of the form, without a length limit. Avoid immediately recognisable characteristics and/or accomplishments here also. (While this won't appear on the polls, it will be used as propaganda and linked under every poll.)

Please nominate each character only once, but of course you can nominate as many as you want. Though, only one nomination per form is allowed, otherwise I'll just ignore all of them.

I have no idea how many participants this tournament will end up having. I will have an answer after the submission form closes.

Before the voting starts, we'll have a presentation round like I did for @book-was-better. If you want to see a facsimile of a presentation round post for this tournament, maybe for taking inspiration for the short characteristics, go here. Be advised that the character depicted in the facsimile doesn't actually exist and as such won't be included in the tournament.

Disclaimer: As I won't vet any of the submissions (except for if they follow the rules or not) and you won't know who you're voting for, you may end up voting for a character you hate or one from a media you hate. I don't take any responsibility for the distress it may cause.

[mysterytournament]

my original plan was to make introduction posts for each character (with the description submitted for them posted unedited save for removing the name if it was used) and use shorter descriptions with links to the character tags in the posts themselves (so you could but weren't obligated to read the longer description) but there have been other suggestions so i'm opening this to the public (see the discussion here and here and here)

what do you think i should do?

make intro posts for each character + include shorter descriptions in the polls

include full descriptions in the polls no matter how long + skip intros

skip intros put short description in the poll + long description under cut

skip intros & only put short descriptions in the polls

other?

Voting ended onApr 7, 2023

[mysterytournament]

i think you should do something like what @book-was-better did, where there's a presentation round with full descriptions (and maybe some propaganda too if people can figure out who someone is? or at least if people like certain descriptions they can talk about why they like things and maybe entice more people? idk the propaganda part is harder ig you could leave that out) and then the polls have links to those full posts like "would you like to find out more about [x]? click here"

yeah that was actually my plan! (although as i'm doing mystery characters, a short description would still be provided in the poll itself). also i'm going to make a poll about this in a minute.

btw i have a propaganda plan too (which is a google form; you have to tell me who you think a character is and if you're right i'll publish your propaganda (...unless i think it's not vague enough))

[mysterytournament]

imo I think you should just put the introductions in the poll posts, maybe under a read more if it gets too long. it'd save time, with not having to make separate intro posts before the actual tournament, and it'd be more convenient for the voters if all the information is in one place and we don't have to go jumping from post to post to see what each contestant is like

i've gotten suggestions like this in the comments of this poll as well (@clockworkspider @howlintherain @thewatchingblue @sherbetstudios hiii! and thank you for your input!) and... my initial plan was to post the introductions for each character with the descriptions more or less unedited (as in i'd only remove the names if they're still in the description somewhere, but otherwise the introduction post = whatever description for the character got submitted pretty much) and then have shorter descriptions in the polls themselves

this would serve two purposes: 1) the people who wanted to read a long description would be able to do so and 2) the people who super didn't want to read a long description wouldn't just pick the option with the shorter description (but of course every character would still be described in the poll post). also the poll posts would not be terribly long AND details about the characters would not be lost

however, it does complicate the posting of characters + you would have to click around to see more information about the character if you wanted to, i agree. (plus like. there's a nonzero chance -i- will end up being the person making the shorter descriptions for the characters that didn't have a tl;dr)

i'll make a poll asking about this! eventually. i'm sorry, the stuff i actually have to do sort of exploded in my face so i'm a little @_@ right now

[mysterytournament]

i. greatly overestimated the amount of time i would have. sorry about that. the tournament will start at some point during this week. while you’re waiting a poll

what should i do (NOTE i am not going to post all intros the same day)

post 32 introductions then first round polls between em then more intros

post 64 introductions then first round polls between em then more intros

post all intros however many there are then start the first round

have a full tournament of 32 then another etc until you run out of submissions

have a full tournament of 64 then another etc until you run out of submissions

other

Voting ended onApr 4, 2023

[mysterytournament]

submissions will close in roughly ten hours :)

[mysterytournament]

submissions will close in roughly an hour! :)

[mysterytournament]

last warning: the form closes in a minute :)

[mysterytournament]

submissions will close in roughly ten hours :)

[mysterytournament]

submissions will close in roughly an hour! :)

[the-ultimate-tournament]

hello and welcome to

The Tournament

no I didn't forget a word, yes I know the url does say ultimate but I like the alliteration. anyways.

in The Tournament we are going to vote for who or what is going to be

The Winner

and who or what qualifies to be The Winner? EVERYONE. EVERYTHING. that's right, in this tournament we are going to pit the baddest bitches against each other, whoever (or whatever) they might be. characters, real people, movies, podcasts, places, flags, colors, creatures, objects, emoticons, words, songs, ANYTHING.

rules:

no minecraft youtube (but minecraft is fine)

no harry potter

don't submit the same thing more than once but submit as many things as you want

I can add rules at any time as I see fit

submissions through this google form only.

they will be open until April 16th 2023.

by the way, this was inspired by @character-of-all-time

[mysterytournament]

submissions will close in roughly ten hours :)

[mysterytournament]

If I submit 2 ocs from the same universe (and they're siblings) should I submit them as a duo or can I submit them separately? (also sorry if this question has been asked before but can you submit duos?)

yes, you can submit duos; if your characters are a do-not-separate kind of duo / are easier to imagine together than apart, you can submit them together. however, there would be no problem in you submitting two characters from the same setting separately & if you think they’re interesting as independent characters you should probably submit them separately.

(that being said. at least the way i see it now, if two characters from the same setting end up on the tournament, the connection between them will not be stated in their description (e.g. A and B are siblings and B is mentioned in A’s description — the description of A that i post will contain a mention of their sibling but not the fact that it’s B). hope this makes sense and didn’t make it More confusing)

[mysterytournament]

how many submissions have you gotten so far :0

273 as of now :)

[mysterytournament]

what would you prefer the contestants' aliases to be?

random numbers (contestant 1 etc)

words or phrases related to the character description

entirely random words or phrases

random words but on a theme (e.g. every contestant gets a random color)

emoji related to the description

emoji unrelated to the description

random letters

i don’t know but it shouldn’t be connected to the description

i don’t know but it should be connected to the description

other

Voting ended onMar 31, 2023

please tell me what you think! i was thinking of using the "contestant something" format regardless (e.g. contestant A or contestant blue or contestant 🔥 or something) but i can be swayed on that as well (also as for letters i'm not sure it's a great idea bc we'll definitely have more than 26 contestants and while i would have fun using letters from multiple alphabets i'm not sure how user-friendly that would be)

[guess-that-ship]

Guess That Ship Tournament

So, using a similar concept to @mysterytournament and @mysterycharactercontest, I want to do one focused on relationships instead of characters.

The basic concept is this, you describe your ship* to me, I pick 32 pairs which I find compelling without revealing who they are, people vote on them, and when they get eliminated I reveal who they are.

Submission Guidelines

*Relationships does not have to be romantic in nature. I'm sometimes going to use "ship" as a shorthand, just know I mean "relationships" in general.

In fact, please describe the nature of the relationship as they're presented in canon. You don't have to clarify if they're romantic or not if the canon is deliberately vague on it, but if they call each other "old friends" don't summarize them as lovers.

Relationship can be between any number of characters.

Real people are accepted if 1) they've been dead for more than 200 years and 2) they have at least one published biographical fiction based on them.

OCs are accepted. I'll have at most 50% OCs in the bracket.

Selection Process

I'm going to read through the list of descriptions submitted starting with the shortest ones, and pick the most compelling entries...

without looking at the names.

If I can immediately guess who they are without relying on first-hand canon knowledge, they're out.

So basically, being concise helps, but you want it to convey enough information to be compelling. If your ship is from a very popular & distinct canon, you're gonna have to be more vague with your description. (Saying "they're ninjas" would really narrow things down, for example.)

Notes

I will not vet the ships/pairings for problematic content.

If you participate in this tournament, know that you run the risk of unintentionally voting for your nOTP. The mod does not take any responsibility for any distress that may cause you.

Submission will open until I have at least 64 entries, from which I will select 32.

Submit your ship here:

Guess That Ship Submission Form

You describe your ship* without any identifying information, I'll read the descriptions and pick out 32 compelling ones. People vote on them

[mysterytournament]

before answering this poll, consider this: i will make an introduction post for every character that gets in (and the amount of characters included will lengthen the introduction process — i can’t just dump 100 characters on you in a day). now that you've imagined this scenario,

provided i get enough submissions, how many characters do you think this tournament should have?

64

128

256

512

1024???

2048??????????

more?????

less than 64 actually

Voting ended onMar 31, 2023

[mysterytournament]

just in case: please submit your characters through the form, not my askbox! i am not going to do any askbox-to-form transfer myself :P