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!
( Our Competitors )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