#this week is semifinals for each group

[weeb-polls-with-pip]

some of these are/were really the smack down of the titans

Yeah fr. We're getting down to the wire, so it'll just keep escalating from here lol.

[nuts-and-dolts-week]

Hi all! I apologize for the delay in posting, I've had some major life stuff come up recently.

Semifinals for prompts are here! I'm giving two weeks for votes, then we'll move on to the finals! Prompt decision making is clarified in the doc but feel free to send an ask if you need clarification.

I've also received several asks about what days NNDWeek will be occuring on, so mark your calendars:

NNDWeek2024 will be occurring from July 7th-14th!

[steviesbicrisis]

MORE STEDDIE EUROVISION BRAINROT LETS GOOOOO (part 2 of this if you will)

Eurovision is chaotic, a million things are happening at the same time, everything is all over the place until you get on stage and do your part. Even so, Eddie finds plenty of time to recall all the moments in which he talked About Stef- Steve when he was around, thinking he wouldn't understand any of it.

After the Turquoise Carpet, Eddie can't look him in the eye anymore, his strong desire to get to know Steve more even through the "language barrier" has been overcome by the embarrassment of his situation.

For better or worse, Corroded Coffin is assigned to perform in the second Semifinal, while Italy (being one of the Big5) is presented during the first but will go straight to the Final, meaning that Eddie only has a chance to see him again if they qualify.

Except that Steve, by giving a little tease to the press of what had been going on between them in the past few weeks, had lightened up a fire hard to extinguish. Even if Eddie hadn't managed to see him after the carpet, he and the rest of the band are asked about him constantly by the press, social media content creators, fans, and even by a few contestants.

In a span of a couple of days, his band got, completely by accident, into a competition for Stefano's heart and Eddie is the least willing participant.

The night of the Second Semifinal arrives and Eddie hasn't really seen Steve in four days, not that he's counting. Maybe seeing Steve before his semifinal would've helped with his nerves, an ideal scenario would include Steve confessing that he actually didn't know English until he met Eddie and he used Duolingo to become fluent just to talk to him (which would mean that Steve is the actual linguistic prodigy but he wouldn't really complain).

For a long second, Eddie thinks that his daydreaming skills must've reached new levels as he imagines Steve walking into the green room, where all the contestants hang how as they wait to perform. Then, with horror, he realizes that there has been no improvement in said skills and that Steve is actually there, walking towards their couch with an Australian flag on his shoulders.

"Hey guys! Thank you for inviting me!" Steve says as he reaches their spot.

"Thank you for coming, I'm sure you're super busy as we all are" Jeff replies, revealing himself as the culprit (aka the one guilty of betraying Eddie by inviting his crush behind his back).

"Oh yeah, these days have been crazy! But I always have time for my favorite contestants" he winks at the group, before sitting in the small space between Eddie and Jeff.

Steve turns around to face Eddie and says “ciao” lower than his previous tone, as if Eddie is the only one meant to hear.

“C-ciao” Eddie replies, still stunned by Steve’s presence.

Steve seems to have the time of his life teasing Eddie “mi sei mancato.”

This one takes a little longer for Eddie to understand. He knows he said something along the lines of “I missed you” but it takes him a couple of seconds more to understand that Steve is talking about the messages and the gifts he stopped sending to his changing room since Sunday.

Eddie could give him a million excuses, come clean about his embarrassment, ask him out on a date on the spot, or even play dummy and change the subject quickly.

Instead, he mutters one of the phrases he remembers learning in the past few days “mi dispiaci.”

His Italian must’ve been better than he thought, judging by the big smile forming on Steve’s face.

“It’s okay” Steve pats his hand on Eddie’s knee and squeezes it for half a second, still smiling at him as if they’ve been sharing a big fat secret just between them. Maybe they have.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur. They keep on playing their game of “who’s Stefano crushing on?” By sitting together in compromising positions (still keeping it family friendly of course) every time the Australian booth is in the frame during the performance breaks, and each time with a different member of the band.

By the time Australia has to perform, the internet is already filled with screenshots of each moment and it’s captioned with “What is going on between Italy and Australia?” Or “Oh to be Italy with 4 beautiful Australian boyfriends”.

When it’s time for them to go on stage, Steve whispers a “buona fortuna” to Eddie’s ear and quickly exits the green room.

Corroded Coffin does an amazing performance, Eddie feels giddy and full of energy after spending the whole night with Steve sitting by his side.

If the performing part passed in a blur, the wait for the votes is painfully slow. With no beautiful Italian Greek-sculptured god sitting by his side, Eddie is left to his bad habit of overthinking: “We should’ve done that in a different way” “What if it sucked for the people watching at home?” “If we don’t pass, we won’t be with Steve for the final”.

But alas, he’s put out of his misery by the hosts announcing Australia as one of the finalists. The band and their team jump off of their seat, waving the Australian flag to the camera that is showing their celebrations for the people at home.

Eddie is too caught up in the moment to notice Steve approaching them as the announcements keep going.

He feels someone tapping on his shoulder and he barely has time to turn around before he feels Steve’s lips pressed on his.

It’s a quick peck on the lips but it leaves him stunned nonetheless.

Steve smiles at him mischievously as he says “ci vediamo in finale.”

And he’s off as quick as he came, leaving Eddie to process what just happened.

What a night to remember.

[adolin]

A primer on the UEFA Champions League for the Ted Lasso fandom

In the finale, we’re told several times that Richmond have qualified for the Champions League. If you have only a very vague idea of what that means, this is the post for you.

WHAT IS IT?

The Champions League (UCL) is a club competition among top-league European clubs. It draws clubs from the top leagues of ALL* countries members of UEFA, the governing body of football associations in Europe. (*All countries except Liechtenstein and, currently, Russia)

WHEN IS IT?

The UCL runs alongside the regular season, from September to June. This means that clubs who compete in it play UCL matches on top of regular Premier League matches. Richmond weren’t “promoted” to the Champions League — they remain first and foremost a Premier League club. They also get to play with the rest of Europe’s cool kids.

UCL matches would be mid-week (Tuesday or Wednesday) every 3-ish weeks, and domestic league matches would usually be on weekends. YES this will mean that Richmond will be very busy next season.

WHICH CLUBS ARE IN IT?

The top 4 clubs in the Premier League automatically make it to the main competition for the NEXT round of the UCL. The path is a bit more complicated for most other countries but luckily it doesn’t apply here so we don’t need to go into that.

Richmond finished in second place in the League for the year 21/22 (season 3) so they’d play in the UCL for the 22/23 season. This doesn’t mean they are guranteed to still play in the UCL in the 23/24 season if they can’t end the 22/23 Prem in the Top 4. They need to REMAIN a top national club to qualify again for the Champions League.

HOW DOES IT WORK? 

GROUP STAGE: a round-robin round where 32 teams are divided in 8 groups of 4. Each team in each group plays the other teams in the group twice, once at home (hosting) once away (being hosted) for a total of SIX matches. The top TWO sides in each group advance to the knockout round. This stage takes place from August to December. Richmond would enter directly from this round.

KNOCKOUT ROUND: this round is in double-legged format—this means that each paired sides play each other TWICE, once at home and once away. The round winner is decided by goal difference, so a side can advance to the next round if they lose one of the two matches, provide they win the other by a larger goal difference. If both legs are a draw, there can be extra time and/or a penalty shootout.

In the round of 16 sides from the same country CAN’T play against each other, so for example Richmond couldn’t play Arsenal in that round. In the quarter-final (8 teams) and a semifinal (4 teams) rounds teams from the same country CAN draw each other, so that could happen.

For example, in the current season, AC Milan played Napoli in the quarter-final and then Inter Milan in the semifinals; all three teams are from Italy. The double-legged knockout round takes place from February to May.

FINAL: It’s in June. The two teams who remain standing after the semifinals only play each other ONCE. The location is appointed beforehand and it’s often neutral ground to both teams. The next UCL final will actually be this Saturday (June 10) Man City v. Inter Milan will play in Istanbul.

how many matches in a UCL season?

If you make it to the semifinals, it’s 6 in group stage + 6 in the 3 successive knockout rounds. This is 12 matches, of which 6 are away (and usually abroad) The final is the 13th match.

What does it mean to win the Champions League?

The UCL is considered the most prestigious club competition in the world. We see in in the show; Roy having won the UCL with Chelsea in 2012 comes up several times in S1, even though Chelsea also won the Premier League multiple times while Roy was there — but the Champions League is the one people bring up.

Winning the domestic league is obviously a big fucking deal, but winning the UCL is huge. Only a handful of top-league clubs have won it multiple times, and many big clubs have NEVER won it (including Man City, PSG, Arsenal and AS Roma) Then there’s Real Madrid who’ve won it FOURTEEN TIMES

EDIT: Man City have since won their first UCL trophy

[liigapolls]

Before the next one gets fired - who is the hottest head coach in the Finnish Liiga?

This one's purely about looks, not the teams or coaching skills, though you can always try to boost your chosen candidate with some hot competence propaganda. Who doesn't love a capable team dad right?

How the tournament works: The coaches have been divided into four groups. The winner from each group will advance into semifinals, and the final will be between the top 2 candidates in the semifinals. Each poll will run for a week, so plenty of time to convince everyone of the worthiness of your fave dude!

No idea what these people look like? Not to worry; to save you from googling, there's two pictures of each coach under the cut, one official photo (this or previous Liiga season) and one recent-ish unofficial photo.

Ville Mäntymaa

Johan Pennerborn

Marko Tuomainen

Petri Karjalainen

[polls4you]

Found Family Battle

The Found Family or Family by Choice is common trope in the media where a group of friends or strangers becomes a family on its own by shared experiences and connections. It is personally one of my favorite tropes.

In this next championship we will be voting for our favorite group of people that fits this trope. I had assembled a list, adding also your suggestions to it. We will have five rounds of voting, one week per each.

Let’s vote!  

1st Elimination ✅️

2nd Elimination✅️

Quarterfinals ✅️

Semifinals ✅️

Finals✅️

Winner 🏆

[bearterritory]

Bears’ Men Take Aim At NCAA Championships

Cal’s Nine Qualifiers Set For Season Finale

BERKELEY – The 2024 collegiate season will conclude this week for California track & field, with the Golden Bears sending nine male qualifiers across five events to compete at the NCAA Outdoor Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. All of Cal's field event finals, as well as the track event semifinals, will take place on Wednesday; those who qualify for the track finals will race again on Friday evening.   This year's group of qualifiers is tied with the 2014 and 1941 groups for the largest in men's program history. Cal has not had a men's outdoor champion since 2011, when Mike Morrison won the decathlon contest with a school-record 8118 points; its last team title was in 1922, the Bears' first appearance at the championships.   Wednesday's field event action kicks off with the men's hammer throw at 2 p.m., featuring multiple Cal athletes for the first time in program history. Ivar Moisander, who posted a career-best of 69.38m (227-7) last month at the Pac-12 Championships, is competing in his third straight NCAA Outdoor Championships and hopes to add a second All-America honor to close out his collegiate career. Rowan Hamilton posted the NCAA's best mark of the season at the Mt. SAC Relays (77.16m/253-2) - the No. 8 performance in collegiate history -  earned meet records at both the Brutus Hamilton Invitational and the Big Meet, and went undefeated all the way through the Pac-12 Championships. Should either claim the NCAA title, it would be the first by a Cal men's hammer thrower since Jack Merchant, who was also Cal's last shot put champion, in 1922.   Both of Cal's other Pac-12 champions also qualified for their second straight NCAA Outdoor Championships. Shot putter Jeff Duensing earned First-Team All-American status in 2023 with a career-best mark 19.98m (65-6.75) and captured his first career Pac-12 title in May after throwing 19.83m (65-0.75). The Bears' field event group is rounded out by repeat pole vault conference champion Skyler Magula, who tied for the top qualifying result at the NCAA West Preliminary (5.42m/17-9.25) and has a season-best mark of 5.52m (18-1.25), just below his personal record of 5.55m (18-2.5) from 2023. Cal has only had three outdoor pole vault champions in the program's history, with Lawrence Anderson's share of the 1954 title being the most recent.

The Bears will also make appearances in two track events, with each competitor making their NCAA Outdoor Championships debut and hoping to claim the program's first title in either race. The 4x100m relay squad, consisting of Chase Williams, George Monroe, Mason Mangum and David Foster (with Christian Trapps as an alternate) blazed to a time of 39.28 – second fastest in program history – at the NCAA West Preliminary to become Cal's first 4x100m relay team to qualify since 1977, adding another highlight to a standout season that included a Big Meet record in the event. Foster, a 2024 Indoor Second-Team All-American, also qualified in the 100m with a wind-aided time of 9.91 at the West Preliminary, becoming the first Bear in history to join the sub-10-second club and becoming the first male sprinter to advance for the Blue & Gold in the event since Willie White in 1960.   All competitions will be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks, with Wednesday's and Friday's track events scheduled on ESPN2 and the field events on ESPN+.

[wrestlingisfake]

G1 Climax night 1 preview

This is the opening night of New Japan's annual heavyweight singles tournament. This year's format involves twenty men, divided into two blocks of ten. Over the next month, each participant will have one match against each of the other nine men in his block. The goal is to have the best win-loss record among your block.

The top three in each block advance to a knockout stage on July 15 and 17. This is a pretty big change that I'm excited about, because it means more wrestlers will be mathematically alive much later in the block stage. Basically it'll be #2 vs. #3, for the right to face #1, to decide the block winner. Finally, on July 18, the winner of A Block meets the winner of B Block, with the winner earning a trophy, a flag, and the right to challenge the IWGP world champion on January 4, at Wrestle Kingdom in the Tokyo Dome.

A Block: Tetsuya Naito vs. Shingo Takagi - Naito regained the IWGP world title a couple of weeks ago in New York; the title is not at stake throughout the tournament. If Naito wins the G1, he'd earn the right to choose the challenger for Wrestle Kingdom, but I don't expect that to happen. On the other hand, if anyone beats Naito during the tournament, they'll likely get a title shot within the next couple of months, and I definitely see that happening.

Naito won the tournament in 2013, 2017, and 2023. Takagi's personal best is 7-2-1, which would probably be good enough to get out of the blocks this year. This is only the second time these two have met one-on-one; Naito won their last encounter.

Star power aside, the big draw here is that Naito and Shingo are members of the same faction, Los Ingobernables de Japon. I don't expect any dissension in the ranks, but they're also not going to go easy on each other. Takagi's whole style is to clobber the fuck out of dudes, which is a problem when Naito has been visibly banged up for years. The most exciting finish would be for Shingo to score a bit of an upset over his leader, the world champion. But I can't really see them running this match back in September, so I'm picking Naito to win.

B Block: Yota Tsuji vs. Konosuke Takeshita - This is Tsuji's second trip to the G1; last year he debuted with a 3-3-1 record that I found somewhat disappointing given all the hype around him. Takeshita is new to the tournament. He's been affiliated with DDT for years, and his big claim to fame is AEW, but if he's representing any group it's probably the Don Callis Family. Not counting crossover shows like Forbidden Door and All Together, I think this is his first time stepping onto New Japan's cerulean blue canvas.

I like that Tsuji is second from the top because he's one of the guys they need to elevate, and quickly. I don't know that I'd pick him to win the tournament, but I would definitely give him a a lot of key wins, and probably finish in the top three. But he's got a tough draw tonight, because this is a must-win situation for Takeshita.

I think Takeshita will probably end up in the middle of the pack, maybe finishing around 4-5. Newcomers and outsiders tend to only do so well in the G1, and he's both at once. But in light of that, New Japan knows he needs a strong start, and Tsuji is the kind of guy they can feed to someone who needs a strong start.

A Block: EVIL vs. Gabe Kidd - Evil reached the semifinals last year, mostly to tease what a debacle it would be if he won the whole thing, without actually doing it. I can't imagine they'll take it that far again this year. Kidd, the STRONG men's champion, debuted last year with a 2-4-1 record, because he's more concerned with hurting people and freaking out than figuring out how to win. That's a good character for him to play, but this tournament is about results, not tantrums, so he's probably not going to be competitive in the G1 for a couple more years.

Back in the day, whenever two Bullet Club guys faced off in a tournament, they'd do a comedy routine about how one of them is willing to lay down for the other, but then they'd have second thoughts and end up having an actual match. Nowadays, though, they don't even bother to act like collusion is possible--the War Dogs (such as Kidd) are too belligerent, and everybody in House of Torture (like Evil) is too devious. My guess is that Kidd will come out swinging, and Evil will hit a low blow (or get someone else to do it) to level the playing field. Evil should probably win here, although I don't expect him to be a major factor late in the tournament.

B Block: David Finlay vs. Yuya Uemura - Finlay is the IWGP global champion, and he was one of the quarterfinalists in last year's G1. Uemura returned from excursion last fall, so this is his first trip to the big dance. Typically when Young Lions graduate to full-time wrestlers and qualify for the G1, they do very poorly in the first year, so it'll be a moral victory for Yuya to secure even one win. But he's definitely not going to pick up that win here. I expect Finlay to start very strong and then stumble in the home stretch. This is going to be a mugging.

A Block: SANADA vs. Jake Lee - Sanada won the 2020 tournament; last year he went 7-0 in block matches, so you'd have to figure he's a heavy favorite. Lee, coming in from Pro Wrestling NOAH, is appearing in the tournament for the first time.

The big story is that, on July 13, Lee disbanded NOAH's Good Looking Guys stable, turned on his ex-partners, aligned with New Japan's War Dogs, and declared his exit from NOAH altogether. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but this will be our first glimpse of Lee and whatever repackaging he'll undergo for this new direction.

Sanada is an easy pick to win the G1, simply because he lost the world title at the last Wrestle Kingdom, and it'd be straightforward to tell a story about him getting it back one year later. But the easiest story to tell for Sanada in this tournament is if he stumbles early and has to climb out of a hole. So Lee is my pick to win here.

B Block: Jeff Cobb vs. Hirooki Goto - Cobb, the NJPW World television champion, went 8-1 in the 2021 tournament, so he's got what it takes. Goto has won the whole thing, but that was waaaay back in 2008; even his big second-place finish in 2016 feels like a lifetime ago. Much has been made of the way this year's tournament excluded aging mainstays like Hiroshi Tanahashi, Tomohiro Ishii, and KENTA; the fact Goto made the cut suggests they have a purpose for him here. But I suspect that purpose is to finish 2-7 so he can put over a bunch of guys like Cobb.

A Block: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Great-O-Khan - Sabre was a quarterfinalist last year. Khan (the KOPW champion, for whatever that's worth) has never scored better than 4 wins and 5 losses. Throughout 2024, Sabre has been acting like he knows big things are awaiting him on the horizon, and he's repeatedly commented that he needs to win the G1 this year. He sounds like someone who's been told he's getting a big push. Now, I don't know why he would telegraph that to the audience in such a blatant fashion. So I could be totally off the mark, or he could be feeding us a red herring.

Regardless, I think Sabre will finish in the top 3 for the block. To create suspense about that, though, he should give up some wins against weaker opponents, and I think Khan fits the bill nicely.

B Block: HENARE vs. El Phantasmo - Henare only won one match in his first G1, and only two in his second, and that really pissed me off. I'm always pulling for this guy and being bitterly disappointed. Hopefully that's going to change after he recently won the NEVER championship in the biggest match of his career so far. Phantasmo's personal best isn't much better--three wins, three losses--but I'm not as worried about him finding ways to get ahead.

In 2023 Phantasmo was turfed out of Bullet Club, and he went into last year's G1 feeling incredibly isolated until the Guerillas of Destiny invited him into their stable. In 2024, all the Tongans in GOD have left to join the Bloodline in WWE, so Phantasmo is headed into this year's G1 feeling even more isolated. Will Jado still be by his side? Will he introduce a new look or something? Will he just be a sad sack devoid of motivation? This match will answer those questions. I just hope ELP protects his neck, or Henare will run him down like a truck.

A Block: Shota Umino vs. Callum Newman - You'd think Umino would be pushed as the future of the company, but his G1 debut last year with a 2-3-2 record suggests otherwise. He needs to post a higher score, and it'd be pretty hard not to. Newman is a newcomer, and I wouldn't have expected him to make the cut in 2024 except that he won a six-man tournament to qualify, scoring upset wins over the likes of Kenta and YOSHI-HASHI.

Umino ran into some trouble a month ago when he suffered hip and back injuries in a routine AEW match. I was real curious if he'd even make it to the G1, and he didn't confirm so until this past Monday. I doubt they would rebook the tournament to give him more losses on account of that. But if he's still hurting, this could be a particularly grueling tournament for him. I don't expect Shota to get out of the block, but he could surprise me. As for Newman, he's at the "just happy to be here" level where a 0-9 record is very possible; he's the heavy underdog in all of his matches, including this one.

B Block: Ren Narita vs. Oleg Boltin - Narita debuted in the G1 last year with an anemic 3-4 record. Boltin is entering for the first time, following a six-man qualifying tournament where he knocked Toru Yano, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Taichi out of the field.

Boltin was a Young Lion when he, Tanahashi, and Toru Yano captured the NEVER trios title a few months ago. I expected that to effectively "graudate" him out of the Young Lions system, and he'd get to pick out custom gear and have his own entrance music. But so far, he's had none of that--even when he qualified for this spot, he was wearing the plain black trunks and they played the generic curtain jerker theme. So maybe this match will be his big coming out moment. Or maybe he just doesn't give a crap, I don't know.

If any other Young Lion made it into the G1 like this, I'd expect him to lose every match. But Oleg is 265 pounds of solid muscle, and they've given him Brock Lesnar's finisher. They have big plans for this guy. Big enough to get past the chicanery Ren Narita brings to the table? Well, we'll see. I think this one could go either way.

[thebeatlesbattle]

Welcome to The Beatles Battle!

Together we're going to decide Tumblr's favorite Beatles song via the ultimate polls battle.

When:

Polls will be posted on Saturdays beginning July 8 and will run for one week each.

Round 1: July 8 - July 14 [polls , bracket] Round 2: July 15 - July 21 [polls , bracket] Round 3: July 22 - July 28 [polls , bracket] Round 4: July 29 - August 4 [polls , bracket] Semi-finals: August 5 - August 11 [polls, bracket] Finals: August 12 - August 18 [polls, bracket]

How:

216 songs are in the running. The catalogue has been divided into 4 groups of 54 songs and we will be voting on our favorites in polls of 3 songs each until we get to a winner for each group. The group winners will then face off in a semifinal and then final round to determine the ultimate winner!

This post will be updated each week with links to the polls and the current brackets so you will be able to see where each song stands.

Due to the size of the catalogue there will be quite a few polls to vote on so remember to stay safe and have fun! Asks are open for any feedback or questions.

Fine print about song selection and brackets:

213 songs are from The Beatles main catalogue (released 1962 - 1970) and 3 additional releases were chosen from Anthology: Inspite of All The Danger, Free As A Bird, and Real Love. The additional songs were included to make the math easier and to ensure that an even number of songs advances each round. To make the brackets the songs were sorted alphabetically and assigned a number from 1 to 216. A random number generator was then used to assign each song a position in the bracket.

[sabraeal]

1000 Followers Celebration Part 5

Week 1: The Man of Progress [melvik] Week 2: to all the ghosts still standing in this room [soolili] Week 3: Gojo/Marin [My Dress Up Darling] Week 4: Nanami Kento/Bakery Girl [Jujutsu Kaisen]

With all of January accounted for, it's time to turn our attention to February, which is the month for AnS. The first two weeks will dedicated to in-progress obiyuki fics-- specifically, the ones you all so helpfully provided me! Instead of just choosing in a straight up poll, this selection has a little twist:

That's right: we will be doing March Madness style! Tonight we will be voting down to the final four, and when we reach the semifinal, each of those will become the fic for one week in February. And the winner will have additional guaranteed update in the first half of this year! Since tumblr doesn't allow MULTIPLE polls on the same post, there's gonna be 4 of these, the additional 3 I'll link below:

Group 2 | Group 3 | Group 4

[perioddramapolls]

Can you keep the polls open for two or three days?

Ive only managed to vote in one group because they are usually closed before I see the :(

Hi! I would love to do that but tumblr only gives the option of making the polls last 1 week or 1 day, what I do is posting the rounds 3&4 that last only a day on weekends, while rounds 1 & 2 and the semifinals & finals last a week. In this post there's a tutorial for turning on the notifications from my blog, but also it could help more to do it with each comp's bracket (you have them linked at the start of this blog)

[superhero-smackdown]

Superhero Smackdown has begun!

EDIT: Info about entering your faves that were eliminated into the redemption round here!!!

Now that we have gotten started, here's a little intro post with some important links

My main is @electric-starburst so that's what you'll see when I respond to posts

We start with two group rounds, where all matchups are generated randomly, and the final 4 from each group will make it to the final bracket, but the polls will continue until each group has a winner for seeding purposes

Each poll will last 24 hours until the semifinals in the main bracket, which will last a week

Propaganda is allowed! Tag it with (#superhero smackdown) to make sure I can see it and reblog it!

Speaking of reblogs, make sure to reblog the polls if you want your fave to win!

Around halfway through the main bracket, we'll have a redemption round of some snubbed contestants that will get to enter the main competition

Asks are open for questions, concerns, or just wanting to talk about the tournament!! If you think you're bugging me, you're definitely not the attention here gives me serotonin

Important Tags:

#superhero smackdown - anything relating to the main tournament

#polls - all the polls you can vote in

#masterlist - the masterlists for each round, which you can also find here

#asks - me answering any asks

#op rambles - any posts about me making the tournament, talking about what happened, or just my rambling

#other competitions - I like to reblog other competitions to signal boost, so I tag them here in case the clutter bothers you

#announcements - i try to tag any big announcements with this tag, but i really dont make too many

#propaganda - anything that i deem "persuasive" that might sway votes, even my own posts! i love seeing propaganda lmao

Masterlists:

Group Announcement

Group Round 1

Group Round 2

Seeding Round

Bracket Announcement

Bracket Round 1

[usstateflagstournament]

I’m a bit confused about something. I noticed that you’re starting new rounds when the polls for the first round aren’t all finished. Are you just using the results after a few days and going straight to the next round rather than waiting for the week to finish?

For round 1, I posted five matches per day, and with how the tournament is organized these five groups don't interact until the semifinals (round 5) so I'm moving forward with each group as soon as their set of polls are finished. The groups might make more sense looking at the actual bracket.

[andiessoccerblog]

Group Stage

The tournament starts in the Group stage, pictured below. Groups are determined semi-randomly: First all 32 teams are split into pools based on their FIFA rankings. The top 8 teams are divided into each of the 8 groups, then the next 8, and so on. Each team is guaranteed to play three games total, one against each team in their group. The two teams with the best records in each group advance to the round of 16. Then, the tournament enters the “knockout stage” and becomes single elimination, ending with a championship final and a consolation game for the losing teams from the semifinals. 

Most groups have two obvious teams that will move on to the knockout stage, because of the way the groups are structured. In the next two weeks before the world cup, I will be posting a breakdown of each group, talking about each country’s chances, players, and past World Cup performance.

[artificialkids-2k23-official]

With that going, a look at the timeline for the next few days:

Tomorrow the next round of losers brackets for groups 1 and 2 will drop, with the groups 3 and 4 round dropping Thursday.

The quarterfinals will drop all at once on Friday. These will be the final matches for their groups, and the winner of each group will move on to the semifinals.

The semifinals will drop Saturday and run for one week. I'm leaving to visit my family a couple days after that, so this will cover most of the time that I'm away. The timeline for the finals will be determined when we get closer to the semifinals end, but they will also run for a week.

During the week of the semifinals, we'll finish off the losers bracket as well.

[liigapolls]

Before the next one gets fired - who is the hottest head coach in the Finnish Liiga?

This one's purely about looks, not the teams or coaching skills, though you can always try to boost your chosen candidate with some hot competence propaganda. Who doesn't love a capable team dad right?

How the tournament works: The coaches have been divided into four groups. The winner from each group will advance into semifinals, and the final will be between the top 2 candidates in the semifinals. Each poll will run for a week, so plenty of time to convince everyone of the worthiness of your fave dude!

No idea what these people look like? Not to worry; to save you from googling, there's two pictures of each coach under the cut, one official photo (this or previous Liiga season) and one recent-ish unofficial photo.

Tommi Niemelä

Rikard Grönborg

Mikko Manner

Juhamatti Yli-Junnila