FANDOM BRACKETS: Final Seed

[melannen]

Thank you for taking part in the poll, everybody! We ended up with just under 200 votes. To get a final list of 64 I took that voting data, plus total works on AO3 for each fandom, plus total works on AO3 in just the past six months, and then fiddled with, like, logarithms and normalizing and statistics and stuff for each of those three things until I got a result I liked (that's how science works, right?)

I ended up adding in five fandoms that weren't on the poll list - Yuletide, which I missed because it didn't have a fandom tag; X-Files, which I someone missed in the first round even though it was well over the 20000 limit. Then I added Hamilton because it got mentioned in comments and it was the top in the Theater category that wasn't a big umbrella fandom, and IT because it was the top in the movie category that wasn't a big umbrella fandom. And The Old Guard just because so many people mentioned it in comments. Even with a really generous fudge factor for what-the-poll-results-might-have-been, though, I couldn't get IT, Old Guard or Hamilton into the top 64. There was also a little bit of renaming for clarity and I consolidated the Kpop category.

So here's the final list of 64!


Harry Potter
Marvel
Star Wars
Star Trek
Doctor Who
Lord of the Rings and Middle-Earth
Good Omens
Supernatural
Sherlock BBC and Holmesiana
DC
Disney/Pixar Animation
Original Work
Avatar: the Last Airbender Universe
Buffyverse
K-Pop
Game of Thrones and related fandoms
Stargate
Merlin BBC and Arthuriana
Boku no Hero Academia
Teen Wolf
The Witcher
Final Fantasy
Mo Dao Zu Shi and related fandoms
Our Flag Means Death
Minecraft Youtube
Naruto
Stranger Things
Dragon Age
Pokemon
Haikyuu!
Genshin Impact
Hannibal Lecter
Criminal Minds
Shingeki no Kojin (Attack on Titan)
Miraculous Ladybug
Yuri!!! On ICE
No Fandom
Les Miserables
Once Upon a Time
Undertale
Fire Emblem
Bandom
She-Ra
Legend of Zelda
Homestuck
Transformers
Fullmetal Alchemist
Voltron
Glee
Ace Attorney
Law & Order
Hetalia
Percy Jackson
Yuletide
Critical Role
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Dangan Ronpa
The X-Files
One Piece
League of Legends
Bungou Stray Dogs
Steven Universe
Men's Hockey RPF
The Magnus Archives

The numbers I did on the works and poll results actually generated a really good set of seeds, but I think it would have led to a very boring tournament, because all of the really interesting, less-talked-about fandoms would have been handily eliminated in the early rounds, when there will be so many matches there won't be much chance for discussion, and the rest of the tournament would be the same old familiar faces. (Although the Harry Potter vs. Magnus Archives might have been an upset, who knows!) But the goal here is not to come up with the True Fair Winner, it's a) to get people talking about some popular fandoms that maybe aren't talked about as much on DW, and b) to create chaos.

So. Random seed it is! The tournament is going to start with four sets of eight matchups each in the triple-octo-finals. I'll post them two sets a day starting Thursday, and then we'll roll right into the later elimination rounds.

Here are the first round of matchups, as generated by random.org:

DC vs Bungou Stray Dogs	Dragon Age vs K-Pop	Dangan Ronpa vs. The X-Files	Yuri!!! On Ice vs. Star Trek
Critical Role vs. Glee	Harry Potter vs. The Witcher	Mo Dao Zu Shi & related fandoms vs. Supernatural	Minecraft Youtube vs. Steven Universe
Star Wars vs. No Fandom	Our Flag Means Death vs Game of Thrones and related fandoms	The Magnus Archives vs. Lord of the Rings and Middle-Earth	Fullmetal Alchemist vs Sherlock BBC and Holmesiana
One Piece vs. Buffyverse	Original Work vs Voltron	Pokemon vs. Criminal Minds	Genshin Impact vs. Percy Jackson
Miraculous Ladybug vs Avatar: the Last Airbender	Stargate vs Doctor Who	Homestuck vs Hetalia	Merlin BBC and Arthuriana vs Yuletide
Naruto vs Good Omens	Jojo's Bizarre Adventure vs Boku no Hero Academia	Fire Emblem vs Stranger Things	Marvel vs Hannibal Lecter
Shingeki no Kojin (Attack on Titan) vs League of Legends	Final Fantasy vs Undertale	She-Ra vs Men's Hockey RPF	Once Upon a Time vs Ace Attorney
Legend of Zelda vs Teen Wolf	Transformers vs Disney/Pixar Animation	Les Miserables vs Bandom	Haikyuu! vs Law & Order

Here's a fillable PDF of the whole tournament to download! Follow along! (I will probably do HTML of that once we're down to the octo finals but. it is too much.)

This is your post to pre-promote your fandoms at risk of early elimination. And make bets. :D

Comments

[lannamichaels]

Star Wars vs. No Fandom

...well, when I dropped Star Wars the first time, there *was* some amount of time when I had no dominant fandom. So I suppose the winner is No Fandom, but really irl the winner was LOTR.

[melannen]

No Fandom is mostly used for like, meta vids and stuff, I think? I honestly don't have a great handle on why it's so high. But if it ends up being about if SW belongs below No Award that is also very funny.

[lannamichaels]

Mo Dao Zu Shi & related fandoms vs. Supernatural

Ah, the "how many times can your main character come back from the dead" bracket.

[melannen]

That's blatant Stargate erasure!!

[lannamichaels]

Very true. Apologies to Daniel Jackson.

[lannamichaels]

Also, Stargate vs Doctor Who turns it into "how many times can your main character come back to life". Subtle differences ;)

[melannen]

Indeed!

[petra]

Also, the "they are brothers (for local definitions of brother) and we ship it anyway" bracket.

[melannen]

"I would be shipping the angsty brothers who broke up after swearing to be together always, except that one of them fell in love with the grumpy, poorly-socialized celestial guy who tried to rescue him from hell"

"also they hunt ghosts"

[lannamichaels]

In a plot twist, only one of their fathers left on a hunting trip and hasn't been back in a while.

[petra]

Lan Zhan and Castiel, forsooth. I cackled.

[alexseanchai]

had to pit my active fandom against another fandom I like, didn't you 😛 so many fandoms on this list I don't care about, and yet

[melannen]

I did look at that matchup and think, that is both evil and very good.

Look on the bright side, you have a guarantee at least one of them goes to the next round!

[harpers_child]

If anyone has questions about Critical Role, I just watched the Calamity wrap up and am full of fannish feels right now. (I need a CR icon. This WoT one will do for now.)

[wolfish_willow]

I feel like Stranger Things probably won't make it further than this but omg am I excited to see that it made it onto the list at all! I'm not familiar with what it's up against haha.

[melannen]

I don't think many people here know Fire Emblem, so it's got an okay chance! It'll be up against Homestuck in the next round though....

[wolfish_willow]

Ooo, I also don't know what that is although I've seen the name enough to figure it's popular. I have no idea how to tell what would come next tho.

[melannen]

The pdf I linked above has the order of the tournament laid out - if you're not used to reading brackets that way, all the first-round matchups are on the outside edges, and the winner of each of those will get filled in on the next line inward, which gives the next round match. And so on till the final!

I don't know for a fact that Homestuck will move on to round 2 against the winner of the Stranger Things/Fire Emblem bout, Hetalia might do better than I expect, but I think it's pretty likely.

[yuuago]

The fact that Hetalia and Homestuck are opposite each other is cracking me up. What a wanky and ridiculous match made in hell. (I say this with some fondness, as someone in Hetalia fandom.) There was actually a sort-of rivalry between the fandoms at one point, though that was a long time ago.

[shadaras]

+1, I also saw that and started laughing at how appropriate this match-up is.

[melannen]

They have so much in common but never got along! That's definitely the rivalslash pair for Round 1.

[waterfall8484]

I just really want to know who the 7 other MCYT fans are and what part of the vast fandom they're into! :D

Steven Universe is another one of my fandoms and if I were measuring it against Dream SMP (which I guess makes up the majority of the fics on AO3 at this point) it would be an easy win, but Hermitcraft (a much smaller part of MCYT) is my current fandom love and I'm left hoping it's not booted out in the first round.

[schneefink]

...does it count if I only got into DSMP a week ago? It's very shiny!

[waterfall8484]

I'd sure say so, and welcome to the madness! I don't watch DSMP myself but Hermitcraft is fandom-adjacent so I've picked up a good bit.

[melannen]

Me! and schneefink! You should actually be able to see the poll results if you want a list for. any purposes.

I started just playing the game but then you recommended me into Shamblecraft and then they started linking to dsmp stuff and then I had to figure out what this MCC thing the vods kept referencing was, but at least, I thought, I am not into Hermitcraft, but then you, dastardly, started a dw comm for it, and as a result I'm currently obsessed with Double Life.

Anyway. I also love Steven Universe but I hope mcyt gets a chance! At the ver6u least, the fandom actually seems less toxic than SU got? (Which is kind of shocking, actually, given, you know, technically eSports. But Minecraft is special!)

[waterfall8484]

Oh yay! I'd say sorry, but I'm not at all XD In fact, I should totally add a Double Life discussion post to the comm.

At the ver6u least, the fandom actually seems less toxic than SU got?
I'm guessing you haven't been in the tags on Twitter - from what I can tell, that's where all the toxicity is these days. I'm not sure if it's reached SU proportions at any point, but there's regular upsets. I don't go there, so I only know about wank secondhand.

Did you end up getting into MCC btw? I'm wildly looking forward to watching Scar and Cubfan finally teaming together next time!

[melannen]

I haven't been speaking up in the comm because the only Hermitcraft I've really watched is in the vids that have been posted on the comm. but I'd probably be all over Double Life discussion! (Assuming I was caught up anyway, I'm behind on Week 4, though I've watched a couple POVs so I know the main outline.)

I did! I watched a bunch, but I was simultaneously watching DSMP the slow way at the same time, and their MCC streams started having spoilers for SMP lore I hadn't gotten to yet, so I stopped until I got farther in watching the SMP and backwatched Minecraft Monday instead. But I just realized that now that I care too much about the 3rd life people too, I can watch *their* POVs and not get spoiled, so I watched the recent Pride special with Grian and Scott teamed, and after Double Life ends I'll probably go back and start on old MCCs again.

And yeah, not being on Twitter helps a lot with missing fandom toxicity in general. :D I have seen hints of some pretty toxic stuff especially around Dream's corner. But I think actually a huge part of the work the big streaming content creators do is in actively managing their fans - in a way even hip modern shows like SU don't - and most of the MCYT big names are really good at it? So you don't seem to get the same 'a few bad apples take over' effect I saw happening toward the end of Steven Universe. (Or maybe I'm just missing the cues because I don't know gaming fandom dynamics as well.)

[melannen]

Also DSMP is not just the vast majority of mcyt fic, it's like fifth overall for fics posted in the last six months? Only MCU, Kpop, Harry Potter and BNHA beat it, even without other Minecraft fandoms added. And that after it's slowed down some, and with its tagging issues. I knew it was big but it's *big*.

[waterfall8484]

Wow! I'm actually not that surprised that there's that many fics because the fandom pretty much exploded in like a year or so, but I am surprised that it's still one of the biggest now.

[melannen]

Right? But I think it's one of the fandoms that is big enough to be self-sustaining for a good while (and also tbf, people put non-rpf fic about the DSMP CCs under that tag even if it's mostly not about that SMP.) And there are rumours the SMP is going to get busy again later this year.

[eve_n_furter]

Reads carefully...
...Harry Potter vs The Witcher...Our Flag Means Death vs Game of Thrones...Fullmetal Alchemist vs Sherlock Holmes...Stargate vs Dr. Who...Marvel vs Hannibal...
...
sings like broken Aerosmith

OH NO, OH NO, OH NONONONONONO!

[melannen]

*evil laugh*

[arcanetrivia]

Our Flag Means Death vs Game of Thrones and related fandoms

Ah, silly gay pirates vs everything means death...

Should we only vote when we have opinions on both fandoms in a match? I hope not because otherwise I'd only be able to vote on like two of these.

[melannen]

The criteria for voting is "Which fandom do you most want to see move to the next round". So if you have an opinion on that, vote!

There are definitely going to be some in this round where I don't know enough about *either* fandom to care, though. (And some where I only know one fandom, but I know I *don't* want to see it move up.)

[highlander_ii]

the 'No Fandom' fandom tag is.... weird. it's a mishmash of random things, plus some original stuff gets dumped in there and meta probably lives there. i honestly have no idea what all gets dropped there - since it wasn't really meant to be used as a 'fandom' - but ppl gonna ppl. *insert giant shrug emoji*

[pedanther]

as generated by random.org

[obligatory rendition of the Random Dot Org jingle]