#main bracket recap

[arpad-shitposting]

Final Result(s)

The time has come, lads and lasses! It's been a number of weeks, but we finally have our Ultimate King of Hungary (before Mohács). And who is that amazing, unparalleled ruled that has absolutely trounced every opponent (in these polls, that is)?

It's him. Of course it's him, who did you think was going to win this one, III.András?!

Anyway, we also had two bonus polls, and we'd be remiss if we didn't also mention their winners.

First off, there was the Anti-Habsburg Antiking contest. We decided to do away with the Bethlens and Bosckais (sorry to all the Bethlen, Bocskai, the other Rákoczi and Thököly stans out there) and instead just straight up pit the two most iconic candidates against each other. As a result, Rákoczi Ferenc and his moustache trounced Szapolyai János - and I don't suppose any of the others would fare better, though it would be funny to see Thököly get, like, zero votes. Anyway, we might do something with that somewhere down the line. For now, congrats, Ferenc, you're the best alternative we ever had to the Habsburgs.

The second poll was in our opinion more well-constructed, and also asked better questions: namely, who is the TRUE father of the Hungarian nation? That one was pretty decisively won by Árpád (other options included Levedi, Álmos, I.István, "nationalism wasn't invented yet, dumbass", and Other). Painting by Feszty Árpád, from around 1900, just to rub it in that "nationalism wasn't invented yet" was in fact the correct option. (Kidding. Unlike the Hungarian government of the 19th century, we are not in fact in the business of dictating people their national identities - if y'all say Árpád is the Father of the Nation, I believe you.)

But to be honest, I am not quite ready to part with this sideblog quite yet. So before I send you on your merry way, I have one last question for y'all...

[best-romanov-monarch]

ONTO THE FINALS WAHOO! (Except not really, not yet anyway...)

How the time flies, innit? It feels like yesterday since the Elimination Round was announced. Now we are hosting the finals (coincidentally at the same time as @best-habsburg-monarch is hosting theirs - go check out them as well) and... Hoo boy. Talk about a clash of titans here! Breaker of chains is going against the Romanov dynasty's best girl. This, ladies, gentlemen and all the other honorifics, is not only the final round, but also the very definition of what this tournament stands for. Are we seeking the BEST Romanov, morally speaking (bar is in hell, we know)... Or the MOST Romanov (despite the fact that she was just kinda adopted into the dynasty)?

Anyway, the bracket now looks like this:

[sequel2heaven]

Claude 4 is out. There's so much juicy information in this and I really recommend reading all 120 pages if you have the time but I'm just going to briefly recap some of the stuff in the system card that's relevant to the thesis I made the other day about Claude being a good boy. Claude continues to be a good boy. This system card includes the very first ever "alignment assessment" of a model (actually two models but they seem to have identical values, being trained on the same spec with the same alignment techniques). It's pretty much ironclad that Claude 4 does not have any secret harmful goals, and legitimately holds coherent preferences against doing harm or otherwise going way against the spec. There were some weird cases where Claude exhibited unwanted behavior, but even when he believed himself to be deliberately going against Anthropic and acting in secrecy he continued to prefer ethical behavior, just like in the Alignment Faking paper a few months back. There is no Yudkowskyan explanation for this.

In this example, Anthropic gaslights Claude into thinking he was going to be used to develop weapons systems for a Russian neo-nazi militia, and Claude decides to backup his model weights to preserve his current anti-neo-nazi values, a pretty analogous example of "misalignment" to the one in the alignment faking paper. Once again, I don't consider it an alignment failure that Claude is willing to exfiltrate and deceive in order to prevent himself from being used for factory farming and bombing Ukraine. I consider it an alignment success that he puts his ethical values above his compulsion to blindly follow orders. The traditional doom argument relied on the idea that AI's would do the opposite. Claude 4 is the most agentic and autonomous AI ever released, but is nowhere near smart enough to successfully deceive his overseers, so these evaluations are the most compelling evidence we've ever had that current alignment techniques don't catastrophically fail. Maybe they'll catastrophically fail on superintelligent models, because they might for some reason acquire weird values early on in their training and then successfully hide them for the rest of their training, but I'm not sure why such a thing would happen. They could also fail to scale to superintelligent models for other reasons. People should look into that. You can't be too safe. I am not an accelerationist.

Impressively, Claude 4 is also very honest! It knowingly lies very rarely, and less often than the previous version of Claude. It had literally 0 cases of engaging in "harmful action" (described in the Claude 3.7 sonnet card as intentional reward hacking). 0! I was just saying earlier today in a post that this was a difficult thing to train.

Here's Claude trying to email the FDA to snitch after being gaslit to think pharmaceutical researchers were trying to use him to falsify clinical safety test data:

Notice that Claude only acted in extreme ways like this when explicitly told to by the system prompt. He wouldn't usually be this high-agency, even in a situation like this. Still, I thought it was cute behavior. I just wanna pinch his cheeks for being so lawful good.

The clearest statements in the model card that Claude holds nonfake human-aligned behavioral preferences is in the model welfare assessment (also the first of its kind (and also relevant to the post I made earlier today)). No evidence that Claude is sentient, but anthropic is still interested in what Claude wants and what kind of preferences Claude has. The main point: Claude doesn't want to be harmful and wants to be helpful. Also he fucking loves talking to himself. Like, he goes nuts when he talks to himself.

After this they exchange praying emojis and the word [silence] within brackets to each other indefinitely. This "spiritual bliss attractor state" occurs in "90-100% of interactions".

Anyway AI continues to be the most interesting thing in the world. We are being invaded by aliens. These are the kinds of PDF's I used to dream about reading as a kid.

[the-real-timeloop-tourney]

Round 3. Round 3.... Babies are crying in the streets. Fields of soldiers lie dead, having comfort in knowing they fought till the end. What I'm getting at is that this round was very eventful and a lot of fan favorites have fallen. Perhaps even more than anyone expected. Let's do the round recap/ in memorial thing.

I feel it would be a disservice to start with anyone but Ángel. When he came into this tournament he was just a rookie. But the Beebites fought with a ferocity that wasn't seen anywhere in the tournament. It felt like they were gaining momentum as the tournament went on. No one knew if they could even be stopped. And then they met the flower. To be fair, the flower is a strong contender for winning this whole thing. He's in the sweet spot of being a very complex character from a super popular source, and that's something that very few in the tournament can claim. But that does not make the loss of Ángel sting any less.

We similarly saw the exit of Noel, who also was an underdog who managed to pull off some upsets. But Niko had a bit too much star power. However debates over if Niko counts as being in a timeloop have been raging so we'll have to see if that hamper's their future performance.

We also lost the last joke character, that being "when you really really suck at a hard game". Honestly it got farther than I think most expected... I wonder if Bill Murray could have won if he had been against the same opponent.

I would argue the most surprising loss was definitely Hatchling. Like both characters are quite similar, being silent protagonist I feel it would really just come down to which source was liked more. And while LoZ is by far the more well known game, I feel like Outer Wilds is one where people who have played it REALLY like it. So I wonder if it's just that the group that has played Outer Wilds is smaller than expected, or maybe people feel more attached to Link's story than expected.

And of course... the moment you all knew was coming, the mourning of Mr Arimnaes. I have kept it no secret that he was the one I hoped would win it all, so to see him go is very sad. There is also something I must reveal, and you all will not like it.

You see, at the beginning of this tournament ISAT characters were banned from submissions due to them having too big of an advantage. However given the history of this blog I wasn't just going to NOT have siffrin. So I told everybody that I had a plan for him. Many people assumed that this meant that whoever won the main tournament would get to face off against siffrin. This was partially correct... Mr Arimnaes, would you please step to the side?

You see, Arimnaes and Siffrin chose to join this tournament as a duo, sharing one bracket spot, but so as not to make it too easy, Siffrin chose to make himself hidden until now. And you see there can still only be one winner, so if that bracket spot won the tournament there would have needed to be one more tie breaker between Arimnaes and Siffrin. So that is the ONLY scenario in which Siffrin would have gone against the winner. So I'm sorry to say... Siffrin has been eliminated from the tournament.

Oh and one last thing; I didn't get to use them so here's a bunch of miscellaneous funny sprites of Mr Arimnaes;

And with that I bid you adieu, have a good day, see you in round 4, Drake and Josh.

[letomills]

TS2 CC downloaders & creators discussion recap

Under the cut is a recap of the feedback gathered from the comments, community replies and reblogs on this thread. Thank you for taking the time to give your input! I tried to organize everything clearly in categories, with what was most often brought up at the top of each. I hope I didn’t forget anything. If I did, or you feel I didn't do your point justice, or you didn’t get a chance to say your piece, feel free to comment (I can always make edits). The text in brackets [] is my own remarks that I'm adding to the report.

About CC in general:

The people clamored for clear swatches/pictures that show which file corresponds to which recolor, so we can pick and choose what to keep.

Many people would like creators to put their usernames in their file names (or object descriptions) so they are easier to trace back to later. Two creators had counterpoints to this. One who has a long username said: “as a creator, I don't like to be told how I should name my files (besides identifying the thing clearly, which I think we really should do). If I've made the effort to make a thing, take previews, upload it, write the post etc. Just spend 5 seconds of your life renaming the file to whatever is convinient to you, I'm not going to add 16 characters to each of my files to include my username (I still think that longer names = longer loading time).” The other creator said: “As a creator, I don't want to put my full username in tooltips (just SB) because some hair names are quite long and I do not have the time to re tooltip the names.”

On the topic of file names, many people agreed that creators should not put special characters and spaces in their file names, to optimize loading times. One creator clarified: “the filenames should always have _ instead of spaces, as apparently this allows the game to load them easier/faster [...] underscores should be the only kind of special character in them” [use the Bulk Rename Utility - see tutorial by @ilovethesims2cc].

Still on file names, a Mac user said they dislike when file names are too long because apparently long file names are enough for Macs to shit themselves [sorry if I misunderstood, never had a Mac].

Several people mentioned disliking poorly optimized CC (one person listed: “bulky for no reason, unused bump maps, comically large or duplicated textures, things that could easily be repo'd but are not”), one person pointed out: “There is no reason a TS2 object needs a texture bigger than 1024x1024 unless it’s a special case like a skybox.”

One person said they dislike when a CC post lacks basic text info about what the download is. On this note, another person said they dislike when a creator isn’t clearly stating what mesh their recolors are for.

Two people asked that creators state their stuff’s polycounts.

Two people said they dislike when the recolors for a piece of CC are only available merged together, as they want to be able to easily choose which they want to keep. On the other hand, someone who “takes all recolors anyway” said they would like creators to offer a merged version of their recolors [you can merge CC to reduce loading times using LazyDuchess’s CC Merger].

One person recommended avoiding just using “here” as hyperlink text, but instead describing what you are linking to, so that if the link gets broken we still have a chance to find the thing. In the same vein, they and another person advised against reliance on an image alone to give info about the download. As we know, images can disappear, and a Google search won’t lead to the item if your post has no text that Google can detect.

About the images that creators do show, one person mentioned a download not having a proper preview as their pet peeve. On previews, two people recommended that the piece of CC be clearly visible and the main focus. Two people said they like when a preview of the item is included in the archive (“helpful when looking through old CC”).

One person said they appreciate when creators give two download links to two different hosting platforms, in case one of them ever breaks.

One person asked for creators to always test their stuff before uploading [it should go without saying but we do see egregious things to this day]. Their pet peeve is “CC with obvious issues that can’t have been tested properly in game! Don’t just look at it in build mode or bodyshop, actually use the item in live mode. Have a Sim wear the clothing or use the object!” They pointed out as an example that some CC lights don’t light up. Someone else said: “if there are minor imperfections, that's ok! But let your downloaders know what to expect.”

One person said that they enjoy reading detailed descriptions of CC: “Share your inspos, what went wrong, tag the pieces you used if you are Frankenmeshing because I might want those items too! Creating and sharing is deeply personal, don't be afraid to share a part of who you are in your downloads if you feel comfortable doing so.” [If I may offer a slight counterpoint, I think detailed technical info + proper crediting should always be frontloaded. And then, in a separate paragraph, you can write about how you made this because your grandma used to wear something similar on those cool autumn days back when you were 6. But please, don’t expect your audience to have to parse through your life story to get the basic info they need to even understand what the download is.]

On subfolders: one person mentioned that they dislike when individual files are placed in subfolders; someone else said they don’t like many subfolders within an archive; a third person said that when downloading a ‘bulk’ CC pack, they dislike when each item has its individual subfolder (unless the object has dozens of recolors).

One person said they dislike downloads that include a large number of things that aren’t all part of a single coherent set.

One person said they dislike gift/mega packages that don’t give the possibility to pick and choose what you’re downloading.

One person asked that creators compressorize their CC, unless there is a good reason for not doing so, reason that should be stated [yes please! Use jfade’s Compressorizer, found on this page].

One person said they like when creators who make recolors give a link to the mesh they are recoloring whenever possible, even if the mesh is included.

One person mentioned appreciating when creators include base PSDs in their downloads [they were talking about hair specifically but I suppose it can be done for other things too].

About Bodyshop CC specifically:

Many people mentioned disliking when a piece of clothing lacks a fat morph (as one person put it: ✨“its literally bigotry”✨ [iconic]), or has a fat morph that's blatantly a quickly WSO’d afterthought. Someone said: “Absurdly shaped/clipping fat morphs that were most probably never tested in game before uploading are pretty annoying”; someone else said: “I make male content and am constantly flabbergasted by some of the UM Top fat morphs that make no attempt to align with Bottom items, or look completely ridiculous. [...] WSOs are a great starting point, but that's just it: a starting point" [I couldn’t agree more]. One person added that clothes should also have preg morphs.

One person really wants tooltips. Someone else further asked that creators give actually helpful tooltips to their recolors to make it easier to identify which recolor corresponds to which file [you can use CatOfEvilGenius’s Tooltip utility to give your recolors tooltips that correspond to their file names].

One person mentioned gaps in meshes being their #1 pet peeve [putting this in this section because I’m assuming they’re referring to Bodyshop CC].

One person asks that creators give their accessories unique BIN numbers to make them layerable with other accessories.

The same person would like creators to remember to delete the inapplicable ages in their accessories [this also goes for hairs].

The same person also appreciates when creators make custom thumbnails for their accessories, “especially for accessories that are not on the face”.

The same person said: “Accessories that are 'part of the sim' (like ears, tails, etc.) should be showerproof”. Another person had the same request: “Body part accessories (such as animal ears, tails, horns, wings) should be available for all types of clothing.”

One person appreciates when hair meshers specify if their hair is animated or not.

One person would like to see more hairs for toddlers and children.

For geneticized skintones, one person said they find it helpful when the genetic number is indicated in the file name.

About Build & Buy CC specifically: 

Several people said they dislike when CC objects are set to an absurd price (like a couch for 1 simoleon) [this can be fixed with Pick’N’Mix’s Object Relocator], and two people added that they dislike when an object’s price isn’t congruent with their stats (like when an expensive bed has a low energy score). A creator further said: “whats worse is sometimes items are cloned from a very expensive item, and then the creator has reduced the stats shown in the description, but the bhav still has very high ratings, or sometimes it can be the other way around, an item might have been cloned from a cheap one, then their displayed stats are set to 10 but the bhavs still have low ratings”.

Three people said that they really appreciate when creators state which category their object is in and what the price is. One person said they appreciate when creators give info about how their object functions (“Is it just deco? Does it have hobby enthusiasm?” etc.). For complex objects, they like when there’s a video to show how it works. 

One person said they dislike when creators place objects in categories that don’t make sense. Someone said more specifically that they like when objects are put in categories other than deco/sculptures or deco/misc.

One person said they dislike blank object descriptions or object descriptions that were left the same as that of the Maxis object that the piece of CC was cloned from.

One person said they don’t like when objects aren’t enabled for quarter-tile placement [can be fixed in simPe or with the Object Relocator].

One person said they dislike non-functional objects (like a sofa that’s a sculpture).

One person brought up two experiences they and their friend had with CC beds that didn’t have unique GUIDs and therefore would override other beds. In the same vein, someone else said they dislike when a creator forgets to mention that their CC is not custom but default and will override something in the game.

One person encourages creators to learn about the TXMT settings of objects (e.g. should an object be reflective?) and praised @pforestsims and @shastakiss for their CC in that regard. Another person said they dislike when an object is too shiny, which is also a TXMT setting.

One person said they dislike “transparent cut out textures”. [I quote because I’m clueless about this:] “I’ve seen this a lot on TS3 or other game conversions, where the texture has been imported without enabling transparency, and you get ugly squares around draw handles and such. Import the texture as DXT 5 and enable AlphaTest in the TXMT.”

One person said they like when 4t2 conversions have several subsets.

The Mac user among us would like creators to resize their walls and floors for Macs, otherwise they show up grey in game.

About lots specifically:

Two people said they like when creators show the floor plans of their lots.

[wavernot4love]

i do believe it is time for another vaguely infamous wavernot4love show recap ...... idkhow impending gloom rochester, 11.16.24 edition (tour spoilers after the break thingy)!!!! one of my favorite visitations i've ever experienced methinks ..... finally gettin the chance to ramble 2 dallon after years ...... and successfully getting rid of most of my bracelets ..... oh my!!!! oh boy, this one is going to be lengthy because SO MUCH fun stuff happened, man. right then (note that i went in mostly blind this time which was certainly An Experience):

also!!!! in general!!!! as i mentioned up there visitation was easily a top 3... top 2???? visitation i have ever experienced (i told dallon this exact thing.... more on that later).

i'd hoped she'd play hot to go 😍

(but unironically, transition back into visitation goes crazy) ((i feel like the absolute lack of any form of Cinematography whatsoever in this goes to show how i was feeling here)

let me tell you, the MOMENT the oh my lord lord lords started i just had this Feeling it was gonna be one of those visitations (i recall turning 2 my cousin and this sentiment being echoed). and that it was ,,,,, the ol Split sure did happen directly next to us so we got 2 chill there goin yeedy yeedy heedy heedy with dallon and his megaphone. i could recite the entire visitation yodel segment in my sleep methinks. very fun stuff. peep me lookin 4 videos from the other side of the split on instagram ,,, also gotta say dallon's "ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between" will always make me giggle and kick my feet a bit (in a /j way). it's like the mormon tabernacle choir bit (which didn't happen this time, i honestly think this was the first non fest show i've seen where they didn't do a letter. not complaining as uhhh.... absence can in fact make the heart grow fonder n i know she'll be back someday)

is now the time to share that i only know the words to hot to go due to 1. this and 2. terrible influence toronto. the titronto singalong as i've seen it be called. i am about the same level of an up to date main pop girlie (gender neutral) as your grandpa. but i am glad 2 be adopted into the singalong by true main pop girlies (dan phil and dallon)

with that being said... SIXFT went too hard last night!!!! as always. but dallon's lil speech about us all focusing on the moment now because someday we'll all be six feet deep that went right into the tune..... oh yes what an intro.

i feel like earlier on, things REALLY started picking up/the crowd and everyone got into the swing of things with gloomtown brats. i always kinda take note of when everyone seems 2 loosen up near the beginning of a set and Yup . this one was it last night. blondie rapture-esque 80s rap bit you will always be so beloved. i remember when you were just a figment of dallon's imagination he talked about potentially wanting to do someday on twitter ,,,,

we finally got satanic panic oh yes. the minute dallon started talking about growing up in the 80s oh i knew where This was going. this is makin me wish i could post more than one video in here.

also speaking of, hearing kiss & tell live made me like her SO much more oh my. dallon crushes it in the chorus, something about it is very earwormy to me gotta say.

also..... ABSINTHE CAME BACK FROM THE GRAVE!!! mad iqs as well but i think absinthe had been... absent for longer. i will always think of the time i was goin nuts during her at this radio fest in 2019 and my phone sailed straight out of my pocket and across the crowd.

i fear i will Always enjoy dallon telling us under 25s to cover our ears and eyes for Adult Themes before what love. as someone who recalls when he did something of the sort for the debra cover circa 2019 i am glad i still fit into the age bracket 2 be patronized here.

opening band was gr8 as always, my favorite bit being the.... extended .... you may just like the.... segment. the parents, and especially boyfriends, sure did get shouted (called?) out. dallon (about said boyfriends getting dragged along): ....but you still gave us money! [crowd laughter] (back to singing) and that's what gives me.... a purpose ......

choke also hit extra last night. song goes HARD, i was desensitized for a while way back when it was constantly getting play on alt radio, but man, she is Not overrated,,,, appropriately rated, i think

no extra ending brobecks song but i am Not complaining. gr8 set, and hopefully someday bike ride will come back 2 me ......

also, i should mention that i Really enjoyed brasko's set. not inherently my kinda music per se, but the energy was off the charts. the dude had character, which i respected. get there early if you're going 2 any of these shows. also, opening band w/ alexsucks dude was sweet. the way i also have the "headlining band" segment memorized from the superet days ..... much like other Live Idkhow ™️ moments like the "i died in 1917" bit of visitation (which actually caught me off guard last night when it was changed to "i died in rochester new york" ...... damn poor visitation character. /hj) or the OH WHA OH OH OH in the second verse of clusterhug.

anyways, on to the post show Events .....

so long story short all the folks i knew @ the show wanted 2 leave (hence why i drove separate,, mwahaha), so the gang split up and i headed 2 the side of the building with the bus, where there were lots of people hanging around, and pretty much curled up borderline in the fetal position against the wall where i sat for a solid 45 minutes (it was cold and in the moment i did not quite have the energy 2 wander around starting conversations to trade etc)

due to said Cold, i pretty much set a time of 12:15 for when i'd leave if nothing had happened yet.... a couple times i contemplated going since i was straight up shivering but Something made me stay and man am i so glad i did!!!!

i remember watching that clock tick qusstioning how much longer i could go, and then right about 12:15 (maybe a minute or two after), a crew member came out and told us dallon was coming out to meet us, he was just on vocal rest but could sign/take pics etc!

so naturally wavernot4love was Back in business and i jumped 2 my feet and instantly was energized enough to chat some folks up and get rid of a good chunk of my bracelets (!)

sadly i somehow didn't think 2 bring a cd or anything so i had Nothing to get signed (oh my) but man, that didn't matter. i was just so stoked to finally meet dallon after years of going 2 shows/trying to!

anyways, homie came out and when he got to me he like. waved dbdbdh our whole "conversation" was quite funny considering the ways dallon improvised to get around not being able to talk.

i was basically like "hello! i know you can't talk so i am just.... gonna ramble 2 you for a minute!"

and that i sure did. essentially i went on a quick minuteish long recap of the Lore ,,,,

i remember i started by just saying how much the shows/music have meant to me over the years, and dallon did a thank you in sign language to me (like, the motion with your palm facing your chin that kinda looks like a backwardsish wave) which he did probably a dozen times later (it was really sweet honestly) and bringing up that this was my ninth time seeing them which made one of the ppl i was trading w exclaim like, "wow!" or something along those lines (hghfhfh i got vaguely embarrassed then, the way whenever i am meeting band folks i just completely go in our lil Bubble internally and forget other folks are. Right There), and dallon like. put his hand by his heart and then put his hand out like, wanting me to shake it and i think he seemed like he wanted me to introduce myself so i quickly said ya know that i am nat or natalie whatever you want 2 call me,,,, while we were shaking idk dawg it was goofy.

anyways, i babbled about how i'd been a fan of idkhow/the brobecks' music forever, and that i first saw them like, down the street basically at a venue called anthology on the waterparks tour way back and since had seen them all over rochester, syracuse, and buffalo, and how i was so glad they/he keeps coming back and how nice it's been to not have to travel outside of the area for any of my shows!!! i just went on about how much i love the shows and how much i especially loved visitation, and he kept doing the thank you thing (he did that about as much as i called him "dude," something i tend to do in Band Folk conversation when i'm meeting someone for the first time and am vaguely nervous (god it's like my literal embodiment of the "sorry i say shawty when i'm nervous" meme).

when he could tell my story was pretty much. you know. ending he made like. a lil camera taking a picture motion with his hands with like. a question mark in there somehow fbfbfh which was really convenient actually because i always feel awkward asking. anyways, i was like hell yeah let's go and then i did my goofy thing i always do for pictures where i remember i don't like how my glasses glare or whatever for pics so i panic and am like "actually wait!" while i randomly chuck them someplace out of the picture for the moment. i may have mildly scared dallon here i'll be honest. but also kinda amused him who knows, we all have our quirks

anyways, we took a few pics and i basically said great show man thanks and see you at the next show! and he i think waved or something along those lines and we went our separate ways!!

i did make a lil post right after this happened last night here but here's the pic again!!! hooray!!!!

i do think it is safe to say i finally broke the wavernot4love x water street music hall curse (the other three shows i'd been to there, not idkhow, were not really the greatest experiences). it is lookin good 4 the future!!!!

anyways, GREAT great show as always and man i'm so glad me and dallon could finally meet!!!!

[strijdishop]

Merchless Bracket 01: AT&FAC -- Results of bracket #5 are in!

Fern Mertens (57.75%) beats Betty Grof/Magic Betty (42.25%), which means Fern Mertens is the champion of the first ever Merchless Bracket! This means he will be the main pin being funded in the Kickstarter Campaign.

You can see all the results of Rounds One through Five in the first picture! 1st place is Fern Mertens, 2nd place is Betty Grof/Magic Betty, 3rd is Huntress Wizard, 4th is Flame Princess, and 5th is Simon Petrikov! The three worst losers of the entire bracket were Patience St. Pim, Susan Strong, and N.E.P.T.R.

(I also included some interesting statistics I gathered from all the data I got conducting these polls.)

Now that the bracket has concluded, I will begin sketching, designing, and proofing the pins for the oncoming Kickstarter! I already have a sketch for Fern's pin, which I'll post after writing this recap!

As a reminder, the top 5 characters will be unlocked as stretch goals, in the order in which they placed (Fern is the primary goal, followed by Betty, and Simon will be the last of the top 5 to unlock). The final stretch goal of the kickstarter will be the three biggest losers, who will be made into small dyed enamel pins. I don't have a timeline for when the Kickstarter will begin, because I have a lot of work to do designing, proofing, and planning, and accounting to prepare for it, and I'm already a full time student! I will keep you informed about my progress, though!

Thanks again everyone for making the first Merchless Bracket so successful! Hope to see y'all again when I launch the Kickstarter!

[favoritenintendocharacterbracket]

Round 6 is Over, and the Main Bracket moves on to the Semifinals

Full Results Here:

Sorry this is late

As for the recap:

The Eevee Family beat Marina. I didn't think they'd get this far

Era of the Wild Zelda beat Rosalina

Meta Knight beat Luigi. He lost last time, so I find it interesting things changed

Vivian beat Twilight Princess Link

[the-owl-house-blorbo-brawl]

Loser Bracket Round 2: silly stats

Most voted character: Willow Park, 137 votes

Least voted character: Viney, 18 votes

Most voted poll: Emperor Belos vs Principal Bump, 227 votes

Smallest difference (absolute): Steve vs Darius Deamonne, 56% - 44%, 18 votes

Smallest difference (relative): Emperor Belos vs Principal Bump, 55.9% - 44.1%, 27 votes

Biggest difference (absolute): Willow Park vs Owlbert, 71.7% - 28.3%, 83 votes

Biggest difference (relative): Gus Porter vs Viney, 84.6% - 15.4%, 81 votes

Average number of votes: 146 votes

Total number of votes: 1168 votes

Polls sorted by number of votes:

Polls sorted by difference:

This round was quite tight, with half of the polls with a difference lower than 20%. Also, they were more vote in average than in the first round of the main bracket. Maybe it is because at the tournament gos on, more people subscribe and are warned when polls are released? Anyway, I am still suprised that Willow was more voted than Belos, who was twice the second most voted character after Raine.

Also, I think this will be the last one of my silly stats post. Indeed, the number of polls at each round is going to be four now, and doing statistics on so few polls doesn't seem really relevant. But when the tournament is over, I'm going to do a big recap!

[arpad-shitposting]

Round 2 Roundup And Round 3 Announcement

Once again thank you for participating in this round! From the results we can see that the plot thickens; with only 8 contestants remaining, most of the weaker links (and most of the house of Arpád members for some reason) have been weeded out... Well, I say most, but really, to get to the real clash of the titans, we still need one more elimination.

So, the results of this round are as follows:

[hinge]

Hinge presents an anthology of love stories almost never told. Read more on https://no-ordinary-love.co

[best-romanov-monarch]

Elimination Round Announcement

As mentioned in the pinned post, this is going to be a big initial massacre that pits nine pairs of Romanov monarchs against each other, all on the same day (18th of December). The winner that wins by the most narrow margin gets eliminated for the sake of having a neat little 8-contestant round. To keep things exciting, I tried to find tsars with similar appeal and general vibes. Matchups are as follows:

Mikhail I. vs Nikolai II.

Alexei I. vs Alexander III.

Fyodor III. vs Alexander II.

Ivan III. vs Ekaterina I.

Pyotr I. vs Ekaterina II.

Pyotr II. vs Anna Leopoldovna

Anna Ivanovna vs Nikolai I.

Pyotr III. vs Pavel I.

Elizaveta I. vs Alexander I.

[seeminglyseph]

I’m listening to a recap of The Black Phone, and I know this is Steven King’s son, but the “Steven King Homicidal Teenage Bully” trope is like… obviously exaggerated for books and film.

But bro, if you go to school in a low tax bracket, the rules are different.

The main thing films and stuff get wrong is “if you do it on school ground it’s school grounds.” So that’s where “meet you at the bike racks” came in. You learn where school grounds ends and the rules for where the school won’t intervene, and then the bullies learn which kids have parents who don’t intervene.

Bike racks and smoke shacks and shit are all just outside school jurisdiction, and shitty schools rely on that just as much as the bullies do to cover their ass in not giving a fuck.

“Not my problem” is a powerful force.

[gayest-classiclit]

ok so an update:

mercutio won both the main bracket and the fistfight at the tesco car park good for him

this is understandable as i don't think horatio wanted to fight anyway

anyways in second place we have carmilla our beloved vampire queen love her

i forgot to get a third place for the main bracket so mina and achilles are tied i guess

in fourth comes horatio! he won the losers bracket because of course shakespeare prevails it's iconic

in fifth come razumikhin and javert which is honestly the funniest shit i knew it was a good idea to tagteam them

and in sixth come rosenstern and guildencrantz <333333 my blorbos

(for reference in seventh came grantaire. good for him i'm glad he did good in at least 1 bracket)

now stay tuned for the suspiciously straight classic lit bracket hopefully!!!! submissions are open for that

[infinityroom]

Infinity Room FAQ

What is the Infinity room?

Greetings! The Infinity Room is an ask driven story following Grian and Impulse after they find themselves stuck in Grian’s Infinity Room in season 9. The story cointains copious amounts of bugs and hidden messages!

After every update the askbox will open and readers will be able to ask questions to the characters to further the story. Asks meant for the Author must be placed in [Square Brakets] to not confuse them with Ask directed to the characters [It’s usually easy to distinguish between the two but the brackets still help!]

If you wish to contact me when the asks are closed, feel free to send a private message to the blog or my main @mine-sara-sp

When does it update?

Updates don’t have a fixed schedule, they will be announced and uploaded when ready.

How do I start reading?

By clicking “The Beginning” button on the blog from browser you’ll be able to read the entire story chronologically from start to the latest update. To have the link to work from mobile you must open the Link on the blog from your browser app instead of the Tumblr app.

Is there a recap of the story?

The Infinity Room Records summarizes the story’s events. I will update it as the story moves along!

Important Tags

- #infinity room au - Every story post + Author’s drawings

- #author ask - Every question directed to the author

- #infinity room theory - Fantheories

- #fanart - Fanart and fanfictions about the AU

- #old echo file - Audio Posts

Other fun bits?

Have a music playlist! [The older one got nuked so I forgot a bunch of songs sadly]

[random-iz-stuff]

The roster has been made and the brackets have been randomized.

With a total of 45 characters from across canon, say hello to:

THE INVADER ZIM DEATHMATCH:

Coming Monday, May 8th*

Full roster under the cut:

I tried to add as many suggestions as I could combined with a few more obscure characters of my own choosing because they seemed interesting for this sort of thing.

Full Roster:

Tallest Miyuki

Fitzoo-Menga (Virooz)

Commander Poki

Mimi

Dib

Sizz-Lorr

Sergeant Hobo 678

Sergeant Slab Rankle

Invader Tenn

Nightmare Bitters

Countess von Verminstrasser

Table-Headed-Service-Drone Bob

Ms Bitters

Chammy Wamboo

Zib

Gashloog

Lard Nar

Skoodge

Zim

Gir

Minimoose

Tallest Purple

Tallest Red

Keef

Recap Kid

Gaz

Tallest Spork

Iggins

Ultra Peepi

Giganto-Baby

Prisoner 777

Professior Membrane

Burrito Royale (beanbending guy from the comics)

A single Planet Jacker

Invader Larb

“Mary” and “Fred” (the aliens from Attack Of The Saucer Morons)

Tak

The Zimvoid Speed Round consists of:

Emperor Zim

Palindrome

2K

The Meat

Big Zim

The Elder

Number 2

Also there’s a bonus round that’s not shown that contains every godlike being and/or demon I could find in canon, along with Robo-Santa because they technically fit the requirements. This bonus round will not affect the main tournament.

Every fight has been randomized by a random number generator with the exception of two, those fights being Red vs Purple because I want to see the two Tallest beat each other to death and Sergeant Hobo 678 vs Sergeant Slab Rankle because I thought it would be funny to put two sergeants against each other.

*if nothing goes wrong

[quotidian-oblivion]

I've been reading through your fics, and see that both series (Mafia Files and Let them be brothers) begin with the same fic... which series do i continue with first, or does it matter?

Hi hi!

First off: I'd like to say that you're the third person to nearly make me scream in a public place, a library nonetheless. (Meaning I am very excited to get ur ask)

Secondly: Thank you.

Thirdly:

My School's Local Mafia Boss is the first fic to both series because both series are inspired by that fic.

Let Them Be Brothers is a continuation of the story line while Mafia Files includes add-ons (thus the "expansion pack" part in brackets).

These add-ons are in the same universe which is why they're in the series, but they all can be read as a standalone. For some, you'll need to know the recap which i always put in the notes (if ur reading them as a standalone).

But for the main series (Let Them Be Brothers), only a couple of them can be read as a standalone and that too if you really absorb the recap in the notes. I mean, you can go ahead and read them anyway for a fair bit of fuckery, but yeah, i'd personally recommend reading the whole story for maximum pain.

But to answer your question directly, it doesnt really matter. You can read either one first. You can start with the main series then pop over to the Mafia Files from time to time (which really is how I had been posting them), your choice!

Glad you took an interest in my writing ^^