ao3topshipsbracket - Tumblr blog

[ao3topshipsbracket]

Are you planning on doing a pure live action ship tournament, without all the anime/cartoons who normally end up high ranked?

We've been choosing and seeding ships based on AO3 and Tumblr data, neither of which make any distinctions regarding media type, and we have no plans to do so either; part of the fun of it is throwing ships with vastly different audiences against each other, after all!

Regarding our plans for the future: well, first we're going to be taking a nice long break. Partially to let the hubbub die down, but mostly because 2023 has been over for a good while now, and we want to wait for some more current data to work with! That being said, we've already done brackets based on seeding straight from the top ship lists, and we wanted to go with something different for round three. And after the seeing the energy from this bracket, it was a pretty easy decision to make.

So expect us back likely some time after December with the Top Femslash Ships Bracket! We can't wait!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

This time around:

Mod 1: as with last bracket, my main fave was hannigram. this is due to the fact that i am a pretty well-adjusted and normal guy.

Mod 2: the one i was rooting for to begin with was destiel bc i was kind of sad that it lost so early last bracket despite its iconicity, but i was super impressed by sulemiosweep and just glad we made it to second place this time!

Mod 3: Sulemio. Run you gain one, move forward you gain two.

Mod 4: Hualian SWEEP! Everyone read Heaven Official's Blessing now please and thank you

Mod 5: I recently read Homestuck and am currently reading TGCF, and am very fond of davekat and hualian— but I've been a Nimona fan for almost a decade. It was born on tumblr, and grew up so much that it's now an award-winning movie. Ballister and Ambrosius are very, very important to me.

When the tournament is over, will you tell us what ship you were hoping would win?

I could!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

Bonus statistics: the Really Funny Graph Awards

As I've pointed out before, it's often hard to notice voter fraud— even in large quantities— if you can't see, not just how many votes came in, but when and in what patterns. Accusations of fraud don't track fraud, they track controversy; the most fraud often happens in polls that nobody particularly objects to, because nobody was paying attention.

Unless you have a graph in front of you. Fortunately, we do! So here's a brief review of the graphs that made it very, very clear to the mod team group chat that someone was playing silly buggers.

Round 1:

Davekat vs Zolu would almost even look natural, if it weren't for that enormous spike at the day 4 mark. But what a spike! And Akeshu vs Supercorp has those spikes in the middle, but the beginning stages of the graph look maybe fine... if you weren't watching for the first two days, and didn't get to see the progression:

Round 2:

This, on the other hand, couldn't be mistaken for natural by anyone. Look at this nonsense. The stairstep lines! The sharpness of the peaks! The sharpness of the dropoffs, which is how you can tell that this isn't just the poll being reblogged by large accounts, it is one person putting in truly insane amounts of effort! The fraud continuing long after Hualian had a significant lead, apparently just to make sure Buddie couldn't possibly launch a counteroffensive! Isn't it beautiful!

Round 4-5:

And once again, Hualian voters— or, well, some particular Hualian voter— goes nuts. Usually in 1-day polls, the votes come in fast enough that even with a graph it's hard to see if anything's gone wonky. Not so here; that bend in both graphs at around the same time, where I can only assume our frauder stopped for the night and went to bed, is a work of art.

Round 6:

No visible irregularities in the graphs (I assume they were just happy with getting to the semifinals?) but I did see this ask pop up:

I didn't see responses from anyone who took them up on it.

Real talk: This sort of thing is the reason I run poll brackets. This is proof that one person with insane dedication and a lot of time really can be the backbone of a fandom. This is, and I know this is melodramatic but I am being entirely sincere here, a chart of human passion.

Davekat, Akeshu, and especially Hualian— someone loves you very, very much.

[ao3topshipsbracket]

statistics!!

Suletta/Miorine received 53,394 votes, at 65.2% of the vote

Castiel/Dean received 28,519 votes, at 34.8% of the vote

For third place, Bubblegum/Marceline received 8500 votes, at 73.8%

And Hua Cheng/Xie Lian received 3025 votes, at 26.2%.

The final poll had 81,913 votes, more than 10% of all votes cast across the entire tournament. Sulemio received more votes in the final than any other ship received across all rounds combined!

Graphs can, as always, be found at glittering.world, but here they are for both polls this round:

And a graph of the top 25 ships by total vote count:

Thank you all for joining us!!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

Congratulations to Suletta and Miorine on their victory!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

is there a reason you chose that image for your header or did I miss out on something

It's a chart of human passion. Isn't it beautiful?

[ao3topshipsbracket]

i didnt see this anywhere in the pinned but maybe thats mobile's fault? but what does it mean when a ship gets a BYE? i keep seeing it and idk what it means?

To get a bye is to proceed to the next round of a tournament without competing. 96 isn't quite a power of two, so the standard way to do a bracket with 96 entrants is to have the bottom-seeded 64 teams compete in the first round, while the top-seeded 32 get to proceed directly to the second.

[ao3topshipsbracket]

given enough time (idk how many times this poll has been run) will you ever do an all-winners bracket?

This is our second bracket, and we have tentative plans for a third at some point. If we ever get to four, it's not out of the question!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

If this becomes a yearly thing going forward, I assume that the winning ship will be removed from competition to open the field for a fresh victor? Because I'm pretty sure I saw Spirk on the end ofnthe year ship list, but it wasn't in competition this year.

We don't have concrete plans for everything, but currently we are disqualifying previous winners and plan to continue doing so, yes. It's fun to have one ship murder everyone the first time; less so the second.

[ETA] To everyone in the tags: You might want to wait and see the next bracket's entry pool before deciding which ship to back! The contestants may not be what you expect ;)

[ao3topshipsbracket]

hi! first I wanted to say thank you guys for all your work setting up the poll.

second, there's been a couple of claims of botting in the notes. I know you guys said botting is fine and I'm not trying to accuse anyone of anything, but do you know if that's true?

We've seen that discussion too! It's a reasonable assumption to make, since this poll has over 75 thousand votes and in previous rounds our most voted-in polls hovered at around 10k, but as far as we can tell looking at the graphs, there is no significant amount of fraud, botted or manual. The unusual vote count is in part because this round is a full week while previous rounds have been 24-hour polls, but it's mostly because this poll has hit Korean and Japanese twitter and Gundam fans from all over the world are pouring in to vote. (How cool is that!!)

Remember also that voter fraud isn't an accusation! It's allowed in this bracket, a tactic the same as any other— you wouldn't say "there's accusations of campaigning," right? In a contest of passion, making eight hundred accounts just to vote isn't cheating, it's exactly what's being measured. And even if it was cheating, cheating is awesome, we love cheating here.

[ao3topshipsbracket]

More so aimed at the community but since the latest poll is popping off I feel like this the perfect time to expand horizons and watch the shows featured here to expand your horizons. Someone better then me at organizing can make a queer media club or something to really push people to try things they normally wouldn’t.

Here's a confession: the reason I accidentally misspelled Miorine's name in the finals (twice! two different ways! much ashamed u_u) is because I drafted those polls in the middle of running a Heaven Official's Blessing book club meeting. So yes, big vouch as to organizing fun little media clubs where you read/watch things with friends!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

hey, polite request for y’all participating in the sulemio vs. destiel vote.

please keep hate on the ship out of their main tags. both sides are guilty of this. it’s getting tiring.

i personally had no idea there were polls going on, so seeing what was from my perspective unwarranted nastiness about my comfort ship in its main tag was confusing as hell, and i ended up blocking people that i shouldn’t have had to block because it kept popping up.

so please. respectfully. stow your shit, and if you’re gonna be a dick, don’t tag it with the ship’s tags.

Thank you for sending this in, we endorse this message! Remember this is, at the end of the day, a meaningless collection of fun buttons on the internet. Your hate posts about the other ship could always be love posts about your own ship instead.

[ao3topshipsbracket]

Hello Mods!

What's your take of the current situation of Sulemio vs Destiel? There have been plenty of arguments on "fandom (and therefore Tumblr) history". And did you have any ships you thought would make it to the finals? Thanks for your work as well.

As I type this, it has just overtaken last bracket's Stucky vs Blackbonnet in total votes, and we've still got almost five days to go. I think I speak for the entire team when I say that I am very impressed, a little bit scared, glad that the spotlight of tumblr this week is on us and not somebody less prepared, and incredibly grateful to my past self for making sure this poll wouldn't be ongoing when I got on a plane.

The fandom history discussions have been very interesting, as have the splits in people's reasons for voting— are you voting for the ship that's the best? That's the most impactful on tumblr culture? That's the most impactful on fandom history broadly? That represents what you think tumblr is? That represents what you think tumblr should be? That has the less obnoxious fanbase? That has the more obnoxious fanbase? We've seen all those and more! As for predictions, one of the fun things about this bracket is its upsets; every round has had matches I looked at and didn't even have a guess as to how they'd go. There were ships I thought would get close, but I genuinely didn't have much of an expectation about our final two!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

as round 2 heats up, reminder that there is a line between being annoying (honorable, joyous, part of fandom's legacy) and just being an asshole. mobilize your followers, write propaganda meta in defense of your ship, bribe people to vote how you want with drabbles or doodles, make twelve accounts and vote on all of them— but don't send anon hate.

[ao3topshipsbracket]

To all the people coming in from twitter to vote: Welcome! We hope you enjoy taking part in this tumblr cultural rite, and would be happy to have you stick around.

[ao3topshipsbracket]

Out of curiosity, how surprising is the Sulemio Sweep?

It definitely surprised us a bit in the first round! However, considering that Sulemio has a popular blog campaigning for them, plus the fact that people love to vote for female characters even if they don't know them (the "Yuri Duty" phenomenon), it's definitely not as surprising as it could be. We're curious to see what the landscape will be like when we eventually run the femslash-only bracket and the latter point is no longer a factor!

[ao3topshipsbracket]

hi mods thank you for your work on this whole thing just wanted to say that you misspelled "Miorine" in the finals poll and its ticking me off sorry idk if it can be fixed

I did notice that u_u Unfortunately, polls can't be edited after they're posted, and restarting it just to fix a typo feels unfair. Hope you can forgive us for the oversight!