#unfortunately '17 bits in a trench coat' is more accurate of a commentary on myself than it has any right to be

[essektheylyss]

World Wizard Entertainment: After Hours

I did want to write a little thing now that I am done making a vicious mockery of Vince McSam, because this was really a WILD week and I do love a debrief.

Honestly, when I sat down to make a bracket last week, I was not committed to posting it, I was not going to make any graphics, and I definitely was not planning to run a tournament.

....Obviously that changed, but you already know that.

Really I just wanted to figure out how hard it would be to properly seed a tournament in fandom. I've already talked about that elsewhere so I won't get into it, but when you're building a tournament, you want it seeded for intrigue in later rounds, even if round one match-ups are very lopsided.

But once I had it, I was thinking about how different polls have gone in the past. Specifically, I had written a post during some earlier polls with Laerryn and Essek competing that was commenting, you know, if we're talking duel, Essek loses, 100%. He'd have a prayer in hell of winning, and there are no gods here or whatever. And the poll in which Laerryn and Essek were matched up, which Aabria made a very funny joke about, wasn't even a wizard poll! It was just sexiest character or something. But the thing is, a lot of polls have been really vague about what criteria to vote on, and there's a reason for that! A lot of polls like that are going to have an obvious winner. And because of how these spread, you are going to have a lot of people voting purely on popularity or name recognition, including plenty of people who are not super engaged in fandom since there are lots of lurkers (and we love them! hi, lurkers!), and also random people outside the fandom who just vote on any poll, so you have to account for that.

But we have polls now, and fandom is fun and chaotic, so I wondered... could you game it for an unexpected result?

I cannot turn down a challenge once I've come up with it for myself, so at that point, I actually built a tournament.

For a lot of the week, in all but the most meaningless and random of situations, I thought the answer was no! We got Ludinus kicked in the first round, which I mostly did to stir up a little drama, because round one was pretty calm and quiet.

By the quarterfinals, it got tougher. At that point there were more folks engaging, but a lot of the tags were, "Didn't we already decide this?" and I was like, well, no one is watching March Madness year after year going, "Well, Gonzaga* is the best and that's decided I guess," (except maybe Gonzaga fans, but knowing some of them, they are really serious about their basketball). They're there because there's chance involved. A great team can lose to an underdog in an early upset. Also, there's always the bracket contest, which is another layer of gamification that adds some interest. (Sidebar, can you tell yet that I wrote a paper on gamification when applying to grad school? Lulz.) But like I've mentioned, fandom polls are highly stacked to be popularity contests. How do you introduce some chance and intrigue?

As it turns out, you call the Veth stans, which I sure wouldn't have guessed, so I'm glad they turned up anyway.

But in all seriousness, with a poll like this, it's really not about deciding who is The Wizard. (For the record, with my url fully visible, the answer is absolutely Laerryn Coramar-Seelie. She is seeded first for a reason!) It's about seeing if you can be weird and wacky enough, or maybe just heartfelt and sincere enough, to turn the tide of what's expected. But it's only fun if it's collaborative.

And here's where I say it all comes back to collaborative narrative and storytelling, because when does it not with me, but seriously—I seeded Veth pretty high because she was a PC, but wasn't sure if she was going to hold that far through the polls. By the time she was, I wasn't asking, "Why is Veth beating Yussa, the most no-brain cell wizard in the northern Exandrian hemisphere, with one wizard level?" It was clear that the Veth fans had decided to make this their mission.

So I do hope the takeaway, based on everyone making content and giving speeches and doing a fun kayfabe, is that you can make a really interesting and fun tournament by committing to the bit. You have to get ridiculous and you have to stick with it, but that's... really what fandom is. It's really not about "is my fave gonna win," and it's honestly not even about who wins (you may have noticed that the winner section of my results post is... small, which is intentional), it's about building a little story together.

And I'm really glad we all did that. I feel like I need to go around and do a virtual 'good game' high five to the Veth stans, and the Caleb stans, and Aabria herself, and everyone who wrote in defense of someone and put on a kayfabe and ran with a bit, because it really was a fun roller coaster of a tournament.

And if you didn't join in this week, but kind of wanted to, I hope the next time someone runs a tournament you just go for it! I was also a lot more timid about fandom participation as a teen, but honestly, if you are really excited about, I don't know, Realmseer Eskil (who is super cool by the way), don't take it too seriously and write an overwrought defense of them! Make a funny meme! Be sporting about it, come up with the most ridiculous reason you can name to vote for them, and run with it.

(Also, my other takeaway is that it is really easy to ape the overblown wrestling host voice. Please do it, it's literally so funny.)