Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

So, now that our 2018 March Madness SF&F character playoff are over, any thoughts for next year while it's still fresh in your minds?

Should we do a tournament of characters again, return to the tournament of novels, or try some other categories (e.g. settings), some other concepts ?

Divide the brackets differently?

Any characters not in this years' brackets that were major oversights or snubs?

Did the voting mechanics work?

Any other comments about how it might be done next year?

I really enjoyed participating. I'd suggest having more categories. One of the reasons I'm a part of Goodreads is to discover new books but there is no way a new character could win against a classic. I'd include new characters from books printed in say the last 10 years separately. If you do add more categories I also think it would bee fun to have a "Grand Prize" winner.

Great point, Catherine.

G33z3r, I'm still like, don't include King Arthur or Merlin just because of the reason you stated during the contest, which Merlin are people even responding to?

I thought it was a lot of fun.

Since... I don't think the forums are very searchable, so choosing characters or categories or books by number of mentions/popularity would be impossible... perhaps have a nomination thread open all year, or at least for a longer period of time so things we think of in the early months aren't forgotten.

Is there a way to create a document that all could add to to save one person from having to sort through so much to compile a list?

Cindy wrote: "perhaps have a nomination thread open all year, or at least for a longer period of time so things we think of in the early months aren't forgotten"

In the end, having more nominations doesn't mean that characters won't be left out, since there's a limit of 64. Even with the quick list we put together not all nominated characters got into the game. Collecting a year's worth would just leave more out :)

Though in retrospect, Babylon 5 is my favorite TV SF series but I forgot to nominate any of the characters since there were already so many good ones...

Bobby wrote: "G33z3r, I'm still like, don't include King Arthur or Merlin just because of the reason you stated during the contest, which Merlin are people even responding to?"

In my mind, it's whatever the voter envisioned. I like Merlin as a character in many of his incarnations and I can't necessarily remember exactly what he was like in Camelot vs Excalibur vs Merlin vs Monty Python's The Holy Grail (I'm not even sure he's in all of those) vs all the books I've read with him in it. They've all melded together. The problem with being too exact is that maybe someone nominated "Camelot" Merlin but what if I didn't see that movie, I only saw "Excalibur"?

This would make characters that show up in many incarnations hard for people to vote on if they didn't see that exact incarnation. This would affect pretty much all the superheroes, Star Trek (the original had the TV series, an animated series and the movies including the newest movies with young Kirk which is different from old admiral Kirk, etc), and many others where movies got a reboot (new actors/directors can change the feel of a character like the original Buffy movie was really a spoof/parody but the series took things more seriously).

And a bit silly to end up with Merlin 1 vs Merlin 2 and Merlin 3 vs Merlin4 in the brackets :)

I thought the voting mechanism worked well though even though we went through three different survey site.

But I think I'd like to do books next year, it does solve the multiple incarnation issue anyway, and I missed the other March Madness years :)

Catherine wrote: "I'd suggest having more categories. One of the reasons I'm a part of Goodreads is to discover new books but there is no way a new character could win against a classic..."

A separate bracket for the last decade or 21st century might work, as well (Locus Magazine breaks works down by century in their popularity polls.) Newer characters will always be a a disadvantage, because fewer people will have encountered them. We could call it the rookie bracket.

What do others think on a newcomer bracket? (i don't want to proliferate too many brackets, that dilutes the competition. Pretty soon we'd be a bad as the NBA playoffs.

Cindy wrote: "Perhaps have a nomination thread open all year, or at least for a longer period of time so things we think of in the early months aren't forgotten...."

Andrea wrote: "In the end, having more nominations doesn't mean that characters won't be left out, since there's a limit of 64. Even with the quick list we put together not all nominated characters got into the game. Collecting a year's worth would just leave more out :)..."

Yes, it would make a longer list for consideration, but it might also catch a few characters we should have included and didn't because they didn't occur to anyone in that one-week.

If you think of a character that should be included next year, you can always add hir to this topic, which will will still be here next February. (I'm assuming we'll explicitly solicit nominations a few weeks before the tourney starts next year, but this is a decent "scratch pad". (I included "oversights & snubs" in my request for comments. :)

Andrea wrote: "I thought the voting mechanism worked well though even though we went through three different survey site...."

The different survey sites have different limits on their freebie accounts (and creating 64 individual polls on Goodreads is absurdly tedious.) I picked the one I thought most suitable to the round. Who knows, maybe next year I'll spring for a paid account. Depends on the value of my Bitcoins :)

Andrea wrote: "And a bit silly to end up with Merlin 1 vs Merlin 2 and Merlin 3 vs Merlin4 in the brackets :)..."

I was actually thinking along those lines, especially for characters with so many incarnations.
Merlin (2008, Colin Morgan) vs Merlin (1998, Sam Neill) vs Merlin (1981, Nicol Williamson) in the TV/Movie category and Merlin (The Crystal Cave) vs. Merlin (Mists of Avalon) vs. Merlyn (The Once and Future King). ) After all, these characters are amazingly different from one another, despite a common origin. (By the way, the correct answer is: 1981, Nicol Williamson. :)

Andrea wrote: "But I think I'd like to do books next year, it does solve the multiple incarnation issue anyway, and I missed the other March Madness years :) ..."

What do others think for next year?

Books rather than characters? (Something else? The only other that came to my mind was Setting: Would you rather live in Middle Earth or Westeros ? In the Expanse, or on Barsoom?)

If books, separate fantasy & scifi brackets, as in previous years? (I didn't do that to avoid having to make the judgement on some hybrid works.) Or a books bracket and a movies/TV show bracket?

Books is great, I think.

Setting could be really interesting as well. Many times the setting is what makes us remember the book itself and sometimes a mediocre book or series has a fantastic setting.

Another idea would be to do a bracket of stand alone novels and a bracket of series or maybe do books but only the first novel of a series qualifies (if it is part of one.)

G33z3r wrote: "Andrea wrote: "And a bit silly to end up with Merlin 1 vs Merlin 2 and Merlin 3 vs Merlin4 in the brackets :)..."

I was actually thinking along those lines, especially for characters with so many ..."

For literary don't forget the young Merlin from T A Barron's series :)

Maybe have an all Merlin bracket...or if not enough Merlins there's almost certainly enough Dracula's :)

G33z3r wrote: "Books rather than characters? (Something else? The only other that came to my mind was Setting: Would you rather live in Middle Earth or Westeros ? In the Expanse, or on Barsoom?)"

I was thinking about that yesterday. My first thought it was too limited, but then realized that it's not really the case. For books we'd be probably going more series based than specific books anyway (e.g. would we really do Fellowship vs Towers?) which maps to one world. Plus they don't need to be alien worlds, was thinking of Harry Potter's version of Earth should count.

Can't think of much else...creature maybe? Pernese Dragon vs Arrakis Sandworm? The Last Unicorn unicorn vs Watership Down rabbit?

Bobby wrote: "Books is great, I think."

Words to live by.