How I'm thinking it's going to work (for now, subject to change):
THIS BRACKET IS NOT ABOUT WHICH CHARACTER IS THE MOST MORALLY GOOD! MORALLY SHITTY CHARACTERS CAN STILL BE WELL-WRITTEN AND INTERESTING, WHICH IS WHAT MAKES A CHARACTER A GOOD CHARACTER. I just want everyone to understand that going in.
I am doing my best to collect every single canon character in this entire series. I will release the full list soon. Having said that, I am only human. It's possible I'll miss someone. If you have an attachment to a very minor character that I happen to miss, send me an ask, either to here, or to my main @dark-night-star-light. Anon asks are always on!
You can only submit canon characters. No OCs allowed, sorry. But you can submit a canon character regardless of how irrelevant or minor they are.
Voter fraud* and bribery** are not allowed. I know, I know, other fandoms allow them. I'm not, because the small-scale size of this fandom means that could actually make a dent in our results. I won't actually know if you do it, but if I find out you did, your vote will be eliminated.
This is meant to be fun! Try not to get too butthurt if your fav gets eliminated in the first round. I know a few of mine will, since they're such minor characters.
The unique tag is #best spirit animals character 2024. So if you want to participate, but don’t follow this blog, you need to be checking that a lot. Everything will be also tagged #spirit animals, #spirit animals books, and #spirit animals series. If you want to campaign, I recommend using the unique tag.
If you have any questions, or disagree with a rule and want to take it up with me, both my asks and DMs are open, both here and on my main.
I am allowing propaganda. I am going to put it to a vote whether to allow anti-propaganda or not. Stay tuned for that.
I have still not created the full list of characters yet. That may take a while. In the mean time, you may start to submit propaganda to me. Ask box is open!
I will accept your propaganda if you make it about a ship (ex: Vote Shane, he’s so in love with Abeke!!!), but I don’t recommend it. In fact, I discourage it. But it’s allowed.
You can submit headcanons about a character as propaganda. Propaganda doesn't have to have any basis in canon (giving the more minor characters a fighting chance).
You are not allowed to submit links to analysis posts (or any kind of post) as propaganda, even if it's yours. Everything submitted needs to be something you wrote specifically for the bracket. If you send me a link to a post, it's an automatic delete.
Other than the above, there are no restrictions on what can be submitted as propaganda. It can be as short or as long as you want and as serious or ridiculous as you want (you could literally submit, like, "Vote for Rollan, he's so funny and he needs a hug" as propaganda and I would accept it, or you can go deep and start talking about his parallels and arc and motifs and backstory and personality and hardcore analysis stuff, and that would also be fine).
If you're unsure what to write, I'm going to release a piece of Shane propaganda I'm writing soon. Hopefully it inspires you. But again, there are no restrictions! Your propaganda doesn't have to resemble mine.
If I allow anti-propaganda, there will definitely be restrictions. More on that later.
If multiple people submit propaganda for the same character, I'm keeping them all. My goal is to have most characters have at least one piece of propaganda, so in the interest of that, as we approach the beginning of the tournament, I'll make a list of every character with how many pieces of propaganda each currently has. This is so that if a character has no propaganda, it would be a warning to everyone that it's your last chance to submit for them.
Propaganda is submitted through asks or DMs! You can submit for as many characters as you want. You will be allowed to be anonymous or not. If you choose not to be anonymous, you're signing up to be tagged in the poll that features the character you submitted for. So be aware of that. I may decide to open up a Google Form if I'm not getting any submissions. But we'll take it as it comes.
You will be allowed to submit propaganda throughout the tournament! If you decide to submit propaganda during the tournament, it will be added in the next round. Unless the character gets eliminated, in which case it won't be added at all.
This isn't really a propaganda thing, but it's propaganda-adjacent: campaigning. Campaigning is 100% allowed. There are no restrictions on campaigning except "Don't be rude". You will be allowed to campaign, and light-heartedly bash your vote's opponent (just make sure it doesn't get out of hand). You're allowed to spam the main tag or the poll with "Vote for [character]!" posts and reblogs. You're allowed to send people asks begging them to vote for [character]. In the end, it's their choice, but you can campaign as hard as you want. In fact, if you go into a poll and don't immediately know who to choose, because you like or dislike both characters equally, I recommend not voting for a while. The campaigners may be able to sway you to one side or the other.
I will submit propaganda for multiple characters. I may or may not choose to credit myself, it all depends! I will definitely be campaigning for some characters. Hopefully, this will encourage other people to campaign, too. That's half the fun of best character brackets.
There may or may not be comeback rounds. It all just depends on where we're at and if I need characters to come back to create an even number. Don't count on them, but don't count them out, either.
It seems some people here haven't read the entire series, but I would still like them to be allowed to participate fully. So, I'm going to put an official description for every character, maybe a sentence or so long. This is meant to be objective, canon, and not propaganda (ex: Rollan is the Amayan Hero of Erdas that summoned Essix the Falcon).
Every poll will last one day, then we'll move onto the next for the next day and so on.
There will be preliminaries, because or else we are just going to have too many polls. The preliminaries will cut out the majority of the characters, probably including mostly minor characters.
I'm going to do my best to save the polls I feel will divide the fandom for last. So we won't see any Rollan vs. Meilin polls right off the bat. This might make the first few polls boring, but it'll get more interesting later on. Trust.
*Voter fraud is enlisting non-fandom mutuals or friends to vote for your fav, or voting from two different accounts. (Like I accidentally did in the interest poll. Whoopsie. I promise it won't happen in the real polls!) If you happen to do this by accident like I did, tell me and I will remove the extra vote(s) and you will not be penalized.
**Bribery is where you go to someone, either within the fandom or not, and offer to draw or write something for them (or do some other favor) if they vote for the character you want.
