are you tired of how many character tournaments just become a popularity contest?
how regardless of seeding, even high contenders can almost arbitrarily be knocked out early on, leaving you with nothing to root for?
if you're feeling that, and if you like any webcomics, you should participate in the webcomic character tournament!
the primary goals of this tournament are:
to celebrate the medium of webcomics as a whole
to find new webcomics to read, and to recommend your own favorites
to highlight indie creators and help them build a wider audience
to have fun rooting for and celebrating your favorite characters!
in order to accomplish these goals, instead of a single elimination bracket, i will be using a mcmahon system inspired tournament structure!
this means that no character will be eliminated, and you can participate in polls rooting for your favorite character throughout all the rounds. characters will also be roughly matched up based on a system that determines how well known their work is, so most rounds should be relatively evenly matched, allowing people to fight for their favorites on their own merits
more details about how the mcmahon tournament will work can be found under the cut!
submit as many characters as you would like to here! the deadline is tentatively next saturday, june 3rd, at 4pm EDT
tagging some other tournaments i like whose participants i think might be interested :) @wlw-webcomic-bracket @obscurewebcomictournament @gaywebcomicsshowdown @autisticgirliesbracket @yuribracket @secretthirdthingtournament @nonyanderepoll @funkylittlebaldcharapoll @divorced-tournament
no submission is specifically banned, but try to keep in mind the spirit of this tournament when deciding what to submit.
under the cut after my more detailed description of the tournament structure, i also ramble in a lot more detail about my philosophy regarding submission eligibility, but it's not necessary to read all that before submitting characters
mcmahon tournament details:
matchups will be decided based off of a survey sent out after submissions are over gauging participants' familiarity with all of the competing characters' source materials. each character will be assigned points based off of how known their source material is, and each character will go up against a character with a similar popularity score for the first round
characters will be awarded points based off of if they lose, win, or tie their match and have that added to their total score, and then they will again be paired against a character with a similar updated score
depending on how many characters are participating, this process can continue either until there is a definitive ranking of all characters, or until just a few top winners are clear
i haven't entirely decided on specifics such as whether points will be awarded by a simple 0 for a loss, 0.5 for a tie, 1 for a win or by percentage of the vote, and if initial popularity points will be counted in the final ranking, or if i will try to rank winners from within their initial popularity categories, but i hope that won't matter too much, because in my opinion the main fun of this isn't the final results, it's for people to have fun in the individual rounds seeing their favorite character's points go up!
submission guidelines:
if you are submitting characters from extremely popular webcomics, try to limit yourself to just characters that are among your top favorites of all time, and maybe try to submit stuff from lesser known works as well
similar goes for webcomics that are more widely known for adaptations into other media forms (one punch man, tower of god, heartstopper, etc.)
i'm not specifically banning any comic for having bigoted content or its creator being a bad person, there's a wide scale of stuff i could decide to include in that definition or not. in the goal of celebrating favorite characters, obviously a lot of people love characters despite flaws in the work they're from, but also keep in mind the goals of recommending works to other people, and helping uplift and promote creators you like, and try to find a reasonable balance from there
what counts as a webcomic:
physically published works that you can find pirated or scanlated online probably don't count
comics whose publication is centered around physical releases, who also have simultaneous online releases by their publishers (comics on manga plus or comixology, newspaper strips with online sites, etc.) probably don't count
comics published through traditional publishers that are exclusively online (such as shōnen jump+ comics) still probably don't count
comics published online through companies that exclusively publish online (such as lezhin) are still discouraged
stuff like line webtoon or tapas official comics are more acceptable, as there are a lot of free comics from independent creators around them and many of these comics started out that way themselves, so they exist within a culture of webcomics more so than the aforementioned comic categories
stuff that is paywalled beyond just having an early release system is discouraged
comics that are no longer online but accessible through archives are fine though, especially in the wake of sites like smackjeeves being deleted there's a lot of stuff in webcomic history that can only be found that way now!
webtoon style comics absolutely count as webcomics, they're an exciting way of fully making use of webcomics' digital format! simultaneously however, i feel like with the rise of mobile webtoon apps, there are many people who read webtoon style comics but who dont further engage with webcomics, so i'd definitely encourage submitting a variety of styles of webcomic!
none of these rules are set! feel free to submit whatever you want, i just list them so you can try to find a balance between the different goals of this tournament when submitting stuff.
anyone can submit as many characters as you want, but just maybe if you find that a lot of your submission ideas are from comics in some of the more discouraged categories, limit yourself in how many you submit from those categories and only submit characters if they're absolute favorites of yours you want the opportunity to celebrate, and maybe try to also submit a character from something that isn't in a discouraged category too!
theres no penalty for not going with this, but i think because choosing characters by number of nominees doesn't really align with my intentions for this, depending on how easy it is to sort submissions i might just go off of vibes, so you might just be less likely to have a character make it to the tournament if their comic is in more heavily discouraged categories is all
Genuine question. Why are comics from online only publishers discouraged? What is the goal behind discouraging paid webcomics?
sorry for taking so long to answer this!
i got really excited about answering this but also am not very good at communicating things clearly, i often get lost in the details in my passion about stuff like this, so i hope this is still interesting to read and intelligible lol!
i dont think there is any one thing that inherently defines what is and isn't a webcomic, it's an amorphous category that i enjoy the ambiguity of. but for me, what first led to my wonder for them as an 11 year old, and what has been a major factor in my passion for them even as an adult, was their low barrier to entry in both making them and accessing them. if you have internet access and time, almost anyone can make a webcomic if they want to! of course, without editors (or often even full story plans) or sensitivity readers or more people on a team to collaborate and contribute to the comic's vision, and the huge effort that it takes to do all the tasks of writing, inks, coloring, lettering, etc. all on ones own often without professional resources to facilitate that, that means that a lot of webcomics are really rough in some way or another. but a lot of people have interesting ideas they want to work with, but don't have the technical skill, desire or ability to market themselves or be beholden to external work deadlines, or connections in some way or another to be able to share those ideas through traditional publishing. regardless of skill or ability, a lot of marginalized people are barred from having their stories accepted by publishers due to bigotry and expectations about what kind of story is profitable.
as a disabled lgbt kid, i definitely read a lot of really bad webcomics i wish i hadn't, but also some of the media i was exposed to that most represented me back then was in the form of webcomics from people a lot like me. and i could read so much of it easily and for free without having to risk much to access it behind my parents' backs!
obviously that isn't the case for every webcomic, but for me and my history with them, them being easily accessible to both publish and read has been really important.
there are absolutely a lot of good points to be made about how publishing free to read webcomics isn't always the most accessible thing for a lot of people, especially for poor and disabled people. making webcomics takes a huge amount of time and effort, and sometimes even if people are passionate about making a comic, they just can't afford to find the time for that around all the other responsibilities of their day to day lives unless it can be a consistent income source. thats why even if paid online comics arent my platonic ideal of webcomics, i absolutely would never exclude them. i want small creators making stories i want to read to get the money they need to survive and keep telling stories without burning out!
it could be argued that online publishers who specifically focus on webcomics don't always present the same barriers to entry as traditional publishers, and many don't restrict the scope of marginalized creators' stories at all or to the same extent as people have struggled in other more mainstream avenues. and from my outside understanding of publishers like hiveworks, i'd absolutely agree with that! i love a lot of hiveworks comics and think its an awesome thing! (of course literally my icon is from a hiveworks comic, tiger tiger!) nonetheless however, part of my goals with this tournament is to highlight lesser known comics, and as publishers like hiveworks help advertise and promote their comics, even if i still want everyone to read all my favorite comics published by them, and certainly there are limits to those advertising resources, they still don't need as much help as other comics without that support. so its not as much 'try not to submit these' and more 'as you submit stuff like this, try to submit stuff with less advertising resources and popularity too!'
going into this tournament i also had a similar sentiment for stuff like webtoons originals. there was an added element to me in how i feel like i know a lot of people nowadays who read webtoons but don't have much awareness of other forms of webcomic, but even if in my love for webcomics i want people to come to appreciate all the breadth of ways they can exist in, thats obviously not something to make a huge priority. it's incredible the amount of forms comics can take (sidenote but reading scott mccloud's "understanding comics" a couple years ago was really formative for me in cementing how much i appreciate that, i'd highly recommend it!!!), and the way infinite scroll comics like webtoon style comics more fully make use of their digital medium, using time scrolling to pace things in place of traditional gutters and panelling, is really really cool. of course they're becoming more popular in a world where more people have smartphones, where webtoon style comics are a lot easier to read than many other forms. i love a lot of webtoons, and id feel regressive to discourage stuff like line webtoon original comics any more than stuff like hiveworks comics, just to go against current trends in what comics people seem to prefer. they have a similar low barrier to entry (through contests) as other online publishers, and it's cool to see creators get the opportunity to get paid for their work and get help from professional editors and stuff
but in the past couple weeks of running this tournament, i ended up reading a lot more about the behind the scenes of what its like to be a line webtoon original creator. line webtoon's expectations for their creators are incredibly unrealistic and exploitative, with grueling deadlines leading to a lot of creators to get repetitive strain injuries, all while working for well below industry standards. obviously a lot of webcomic creators make an inconsistent poverty level income out of it as independent creators, and that shouldn't happen either, but it's absolutely inexcusable for a company to profit off this labor and then manufacture these same conditions. without any organized labor movement surrounding that issue, that of course isn't an argument against reading or promoting these comics on its own, creators are more likely to get more income if their comics get more popular, and despite the promise of popularity by becoming an official comic, they absolutely still aren't all promoted equally. what has made me want to slightly more discourage (but still absolutely not disallow!) stuff like line webtoon official comics has been the combination of that along with learning that much of the editing of webtoons originals carries less of the benefits of having experienced creatives collaborating with creators to elevate their stories to new levels, and very often instead ends up taking the form of 'simplify this plotline and make this character look more attractive and fit this archetype more fully so we can market this better and have readers easily consume each update while they're scrolling their phone without having to think about it too much'. while obviously there are a lot of amazing webtoon official comics in spite of what i've heard anectdotally, hearing that just really went against so much of what i've most valued about my experience with webcomics!
i want creators to be able to tell stories no matter how weird and unmarketable, where they'll never have to worry about pushback for making stories with characters and themes that resonate for them as a member of any oppressed group, and where there's as little pressure as possible pushing them to work harder or faster than they healthily can or want to! so for me, even if i still love a lot of online published comics and want them to be celebrated and want their creators to be able to make a comfortable living out of them, i still just want to highlight stories that had that level of freedom that has created some of my favorite experiences with webcomics just a little bit more.
hey! you should submit characters to the webcomic character tournament before submissions close on this thursday, june 8th!
are you thinking 'i won't bother, my favorite character is too obscure to ever make it far in a tournament'? don't worry about that!
this isn't a typical single elimination bracket, it's inspired by mcmahon system tournaments instead! that means:
no character eliminations
characters are initially matched up using a score to determine how well known their comic is, and all rounds should be relatively evenly matched in this regard
points are awarded to characters based on whether they win or lose, and will then be used to determine future matchups
this means you can have fun rooting for your favorite characters all throughout and seeing how many winning points they can score in their matchups!
there are no limits set on what counts as a webcomic character, but considering the makeup of submissions so far i want to especially encourage everyone to submit comics that are not webtoons originals (as they are currently a large proportion of submissions) and to submit characters from the obscurest webcomics you love!
more information and a link to the submissions form can be found in this post :)
what inspired you to choose a different tournament format rather than single elimination? do you know of any other accounts doing something similar?
even before tumblr polls were a thing, i thought it was interesting the conflicts presented when doing a single elimination tournament for voting based off of people choosing favorites when the options aren't equally known to all voters.
whether or not people seed multifandom character tournaments, there are still things that hamper my enjoyment. if you don't seed, then it can be frustrating to see a strong competitor knocked out arbitrarily early. if you do seed, then even if you get some strong matchups later on, its disappointing to me to just concede that some characters are meant to be eliminated even earlier than they might be able to make it (especially disappointing when you're a fan of a lot of relatively unpopular media!)
so within the couple weeks of tumblr poll tournaments being a thing,i was really itching to try out a different format!!
i tried to think about which aspects of tournaments were fun for me
it's fun to root for your favorite character and get really competitive about it! it feels good to see them go far!
it's fun to have intense matches where characters feel equally matched!
it's fun to see your lesser known favorites get further than you expect them to! and even if they don't get far, it's fun to bring awareness to them at all!
i pretty quickly decided that elimination tournaments were in conflict with some of my wants. nonetheless though, there's a lot to be said for the silly fun that can come from their fierce competition and surprise upsets
certain voting or tournament systems might not have the arbitrary eliminations of single elimination tournaments, but still didn't feel right for my purposes. for example, (beyond the other concern of popular vs unpopular characters) a full round robin tournament might get exhausting with the amount of competitors i'd want in any tournament i felt like hosting. and there's other types of tournaments/voting systems that would give "accurate" end results, but that i couldn't find a way to gamify in the moment so that each matchup felt like a unique thing worth rooting for with an obvious resulting benefit, which was important to me.
while not as much as other options, i still have a slight worry that even with a points system, a mcmahon style tournament might be a little too hard to follow for people to really have fun with the stakes of each individual match. but in the end i went with it because i thought it'd be really interesting to see how a skill-based tournaments system for determining skill level could be translated to popularity (in the known sense, not the liked sense), and i liked how it was dynamic enough to allow matchups not expected by the original popularity sorting if it turned out to not be as accurate, and how it could adapt to a wide range of contestants, and didn't necessarily need to have any set amount of rounds if it turned out it was more work to get more granular with the results than i initially expected.
but honestly despite having this in the back of my mind for months now, i havent done much active work until the past couple weeks when i finally started to have free time. i definitely still have a lot to consider when it comes to how many rounds i want to do and how many contestants or what exactly this is gonna look like! i'm simulating fake tournaments today to get at least some sense for whats realistic, but beyond that i hope you'll all have fun going along with this experiment with me! :)
and no i'm not familiar with any accounts doing something similar (let me know if you know any! i'd love to learn from them and participate!), although for other unconventional tournament formats, i'm really excited to see what @wlw-webcomic-bracket is doing for future rounds, and i think the special abilities in @funkylittlebaldcharapoll are an absolute blast (support the union!!!!)
hi! just wanted to communicate that i’ve been absent because right when i was almost done simulating tournaments so i could find out how many contestants i wanted and figure out the way i wanted to organize and keep track of matches, my chronic fatigue started to really flare up for a couple weeks.
for the time being ive had to budget my energy to my normal day to day life, but please know that im still thinking about this tournament all the time and am really excited to get back to it!
i can’t make any promises, but i am free most of this morning and am feeling pretty good today, so i might be able to get to the point of posting the popularity survey very soon!
putting together the results tonight! i realized though that its literally like no more effort on my part with the way i'm compiling stuff to leave submissions open until i finish this part so i might as well leave submissions open for the time being!
announcing this to promise that i am genuinely working on stuff and me keeping it open isn't me trying to extend the start of the tournament further, i'm just selfishly wanting to maximize getting webcomic recs lol
just a heads up i changed the "character propaganda" and "do you want to recommend the comic the character is from as a whole? if so, share your recommendation of it here!" questions to say "character propaganda and/or character description" and "description and/or recommendation of comic the character is from"
i realized that with a tournament like this, having even just a neutral description of the character and media might increase people's enjoyment and ability to find recommendations, and at least for me sometimes that can be a lot easier to come up with than convincing propaganda!
also, while i'd love to include every character, with the amount of submissions i've gotten in just this first half day, it seems like i might end up needing to pare them down. i don't want to do that off of number of submissions, so i think in addition to prioritizing stuff like self published comics, i also will likely end up prioritizing characters with submitted descriptions
no worries if you didn't submit a description though! i get it can be easier to just submit things sooner and see if you have time later to write a satisfying description, so please at any point feel free to send in character/comic descriptions/propaganda either by submitting to the form again and noting that you've submitted this character before and are resubmitting to add the description, or by sending it to me as an ask or submission (i think i'll post the more in depth propaganda-y ones now unless you say otherwise, but leave stuff like descriptions just to copypaste into poll descriptions later)
