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#also this isn't about the recent preliminary poll
s0fti3w1tch · 1 year
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TMNT POLLS PSA
I've explained this in my reblog tags of this post, please keep the TMNT polls fun and please be sure that the AU/Iteration/Fic creators are actually okay with being part of them.
**Not about polls I've been added in, but polls I've seen, and growing trends me and others have noticed. As always, please don't harass anyone.
Specifically the more popularity-poll-ish ones, ones that teeter on or are straight up serious, it can be discouraging for those who didn't ask for it. Some may fear speaking up about it because other people are having fun despite how they themselves feel about it. Especially when polls specifically put one well-known fanwork over a smaller one. Worse yet when you're dropped into it without awareness from beforehand. Hell, even when the creators have a similar size, it can hurt.
I've recently gotten some anon messages like this. Though I haven't seen that attitude in response to my AU in polls, it's the type of attitude I've seen towards a couple other creators.
Being publicly compared to others by hundreds, sometimes up to thousands, can be anxiety-inducing. As easy as it is to say that "the unpopularity of your work should not discourage you," truth be told, there's truth to the saying "comparison kills creativity."
To have your work being used to put down someone else? Someone who's working just as hard? Who's just trying to share an idea just like you? Or to be dismissed?
As stated by the authors of MMC and OMO, while it may seem like you're uplifting your favorite in this, it's awkward. It can be stressful.
For those with less votes, it's hard not to think that yours is being called "less than." An "I've never heard of the other one lmao" can feel like a punch in the gut.
There's also animosity towards more bigger fanworks because of the pedestal they've been put on.
All that, and not even wanting to be there in there first place.
These things should and can encourage creativity and growth. AUs crossing over, banter, propaganda posts, etc.
Around the time Tumblr first rolled out the poll function, I was included in The Night AU creator's Sep AU polls. Me and the poll creator, Ray, both got last place in 2 respective polls, hence why we call TN!Leo/Green and TD!Leo/Trainee the "Losers Duo." Key part being: there was the awareness that this was simply in good fun. And I enjoyed being included.
Getting to know the creators of The Night, Red Rover, Life Mission, Blood Bath, and SLAU was and still is an amazing experience. The amount of crossover art we've made is evident of how much I've loved its turnout. I'm still planning on making more crossover work in the future.
It was some of the most actual fun I've had in fandom since I was 12. I'm 20 by the end of the year.
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TL;DR
Respect the boundaries of fanwork creators and don't be an asshole for fuck's sake.
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Preliminary Poll
Thane Krios
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Submission reason:
In Mass Effect 2, Thane as introduced as a master assassin, trained since he was a child to be skilled at killing, and he took to the training earnestly. One of the first things he says to you out loud is that he is terminally ill with something similar to cystic fibrosis, and he isn't afraid of death because he doesn't have much time left anyway. You can help him reunite with his estranged son, and you can also romance him; if you do both, he can tell you he's starting to fear dying again because now he has relationships that will be affected by his death. It's also worth noting that Thane was all over the marketing for Mass Effect 2. In the sequel, Mass Effect 3, Thane is in the hospital due to his illness progressing and cannot be interacted with outside of it, even if he's you're love interest. He then reappears later to sacrifice his life to save an NPC being threatened by an assassin. Despite being a sniper, Thane primarily fights this guy in close quarters, and is subsequently stabbed through the stomach. There is no way to prevent this from happening if Thane survived the second game, and there is no way to save him. He later dies of his injuries in the hospital, and the game says a couple of lines about him dying a hero, but then he's barely spoken about again. If he's your love interest, you need to download a DLC in order to have any form of closure to his romance.
Propaganda:
I genuinely feel like most people who romance Thane in ME2 had no issue with romancing a love interest who would die. That's not my issue. My issue is that his death is completely meaningless and there's no way in-game to make it better. No one even really acknowledges it in the rest of the game unless you have the Citadel DLC. I also recently learned that the person who wrote Thane in Mass Effect 2 left BioWare after its release, which makes sense because it feels like the rest of the writer's room forgot Thane existed until the last minute.
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Prelim FAQs, or: Please For The Love of God I Can See You All Complaining In The Tags
I was planning on ignoring people's complaints but it's kind of grating seeing the same comments everywhere, especially when it's something I've already addressed, so:
"Where's x?"/"This is y erasure."
Contenders were almost entirely assembled from submissions, which were open for a whole week. If you missed the submission period, I'm sorry, but it's the nature of these things that more people are seeing the polls than were able to nominate duos. I've also seen this comment for duos that are in other, more specific prelims, and duos that were popular enough to advance straight to the main bracket. Have a look around before complaining. Or, preferably, don't complain about this at all since there's nothing to be done about it at this stage.
"Why don't all of them have images?"
I have a job and hobbies and a social life and I'm not going to track down pictures of 232 duos, most of whom I know nothing about, and then assemble them into nice little images when we're not even at the main bracket yet. There are 35 prelim categories, and a few of those had to be split into multiple parts because you can't have more than 10 options in a poll. For my sanity, and to keep things moving along without further delays, prelims with 5+ competitors didn't get images. There are some smaller prelims that also didn't get images, mostly because it's hard to find pictures of literary & podcast characters without resorting to fanart, and using book covers/podcast logos would be uninteresting, thus defeating the purpose of the image. All main bracket rounds will have images.
Huge thanks to my girlfriend for sourcing most of the pictures I've used in this, and also generally having a greater breadth of media knowledge than myself.
"Putting x in a poll with y isn't fair."
The purpose of these preliminary rounds is to weed out weaker competitors, making for a more interesting tournament. More popular characters getting more votes means it's working as intended. I'm a fan of a lot of relatively obscure media, so I know it's disappointing seeing your faves get curb-stomped, but I'm not intentionally sabotaging anyone, and I've been surprised by some of the results myself. For example, I'd literally never heard of the Malevolent podcast before receiving submissions for it, while I've listened to both Wooden Overcoats and Kane & Feels. I expected the Funns to win the podcast prelim, but it seems the Malevolent guys are going to win it. Am I disappointed? Yeah, a bit. But it's also the reason I decided to run prelims instead of simply choosing my faves from submissions.
Regarding the Due South prelim and the Ray Wars
While I understand the defensiveness of older fandoms that have gone through every argument a thousand times, I genuinely couldn't care less about fandom wank. I thought it'd be fun to have these guys in the tournament because they're a couple of classic duos who aren't very well-known on tumblr nowadays, and because I recently introduced the show to my girlfriend so we'd both like to see it represented. I don't expect them to do well in the main bracket, but that's not the point; it's for fun. That said, I can't put both Rays in the main bracket due to space constraints, and I'm not going to arbitrarily choose one because I like them both, so they got their own prelim by necessity. If I did put them both in, they'd probably end up facing each other anyway, leading to the same comments.
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