Queen of /v/ 2023

The 5th edition of the annual Queen of /v/ tournament began on November 3rd 2023, 7:00 PM EST.

The Elite Eight from the winners' bracket this year consists of an even split of new and old faces. Returning include both Fio Germi and Roll from 2019 and 2021, Amaterasu from 2020, and Curly Brace from 2021. The latter two are very notable for each retaining perfect attendance records in Elite Eight and thus having three appearances in it to date. Newcomers include Ashley Graham from Resident Evil 4, Malon from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Taokaka from BlazBlue, and the long-awaited Bayonetta.

The initial finals would come down to Curly Brace and Amaterasu. Both had support since the beginning of the tournament and had a lot vouching for them in the finals thread. In the end, Curly would come out on top 54-46 between the two, still her closest match of the tournament. Due to later results, this is to be treated as the canon finale to the tournament.

Unlike previous tournaments, this iteration attempted a losers' bracket. The reactions toward this have been mixed throughout the tournament, but it would end up giving some campaigns extra life. In the end, SHODAN from System Shock would end up outlasting the other girls within the losers' bracket. Ammy would be dropped into losers' bracket afterwards and lose to SHODAN by 15 votes. This was controversial, particularly due to a voter count lower than 400 votes. In a surprise move, the grand finals poll ended up outright asking anons several questions related to how the final results would be decided. Coming off the previous round, Curly wiped the floor against SHODAN with 69% while anons voted to keep the main bracket's Elite Eight. This effectively means that the losers' bracket was separated from the main bracket, and its results were treated as non-canon towards it. However, the entirety of the loser's bracket has been dismissed as headcanon and thus must be ignored.

Rules
Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/ZXkZ23UB

How to nominate

 * Character must appear in a video game (vidya)
 * You must post the image, type the character name AND the correct series name (e.g. [I nominate] Link from Legend of Zelda)
 * 12 replies / (You)s are needed in a single thread to qualify as a nominee.
 * One nominee per post only
 * Check the nomination list (Ctrl+F, click the "three vertical dots" icon, and enter character name) to see if your girl is already nominated

Character / series eligibility

 * FOTM Clause: Characters who first appeared at the month before the start of this contest (October 01 and later) are banned.
 * Visual novels / eroge games / galgames are allowed (e.g. Fate, Steins;Gate, Hunie Pop)
 * Characters debuting in non-vidya media that is part of an established vidya franchise are accepted. (e.g. Miss Pauling first appeared in WAR! Comic, a tie-in webcomic to Team Fortress 2 ' s WAR! Update. Fate/Apocrypha is originally a light novel, but Jeanne d'Arc also appears in the gacha game Fate/Grand Order; furthermore, the Fate franchise began as a visual novel. Uma Musume was first announced as a mobile gacha game, but it was delayed to the point that the anime came out first; regardless, both the game and the anime are equally popular among fans.)
 * Characters debuting in a game that is part of a non-vidya / multimedia franchise are accepted (e.g. Android 21 from Dragon Ball FighterZ is a game-original fighter despite being part of the wider Dragon Ball manga series. Iroha Tamaki is the protagonist of Magia Record, a mobile gacha game spinoff of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which began as a 2011 anime.)
 * Characters that do not debut in a video game may be accepted if they are deemed to have a sufficiently strong presence in /v/ board culture, or are better known for their video game appearance. (e.g. Geralt @ The Witcher, AM @ I Have no Mouth)
 * Characters who are not male/female or whose gender is unknown are eligible for both Queen and King tournaments, but if they appear in the main bracket in the Queen contest, they will be ineligible for nomination in King (and vice versa).
 * Spinoffs and crossovers are counted as separate series. This rule mainly applies to characters debuting and/or are better known from said series. (e.g. Leona @ King of Fighters, Joker @ Persona, Sora @ Kingdom Hearts, Master Hand @ Super Smash Bros., Wario @ Wario series)
 * However, if a given character has previously appeared in another game prior to being featured in a spinoff/crossover/guest appearance, they will be entered under their original series whenever the host deems it convenient.
 * No fan-made characters, including memes, OCs and custom characters (e.g. Anonymous Guy, Coomer, Coldsteel the Hedgeheg, Create-A-Player from NBA 2K )
 * No inanimate objects (e.g. L-Block, Ebony & Ivory)
 * No grandfather clause: a contestant that appears here may not be allowed for future editions (e.g. Ebony & Ivory after 2021)

Elite Eight Rule
Characters appearing in the quarter-finals round and onwards of the previous contest are not allowed to compete in this edition. They will be eligible for nomination next contest.

Tournament champions, on the other hand, are permanently retired and will be barred for future editions. Winners' series are now also reduced to two slots in a respective tournament.

Whitelist
Starting with King of /v/ 2022, the concept of a whitelist was introduced to allow certain characters to circumvent the usual rules of entry if they were deemed to have significant enough /v/idya history and got voted through by anons. If this concept remains for Queen of /v/ 2023, the following characters were both voted to be whitelisted:
 * from the Project DIVA video games
 * from Mega Man Legends (as a separate entity from classic Roll)

Notably, from Serial Experiment Lain was NOT disqualified despite being voted against in a previous whitelist vote, but failed to make the bracket regardless due to lower votes. Miku and Roll Caskett both qualified, with the latter in her tournament debut.

Qualifying round
Live nomination list by NightShiftAnon: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AO5RhLloOKVo3opkXzzT4EY6djXE3Xc0F39BeZ3i_-o/edit#gid=0

Qualifier Results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kUBlWwr5wja5TPu2yBAbuQumNdOz8jHz9B1ynFw1S_8/edit#gid=0

Over 1350 successful nominees were consolidated into a single massive group where voters select the girls that they want to advance. There is no restriction on how many girls they can select. This format is called Approval voting. After the round ends, the 128 girls with the most votes advanced into the bracket. Ties are broken by whoever gets properly nominated earlier.

A maximum of 3 girls per series can enter the bracket, with the exception of extra restrictions applied to the series of the previous year's Elite Eight and former Champions.

Advanced
Bold text indicates character who appears in the bracket for the first time. Hollow Knight, Portal, Monster Girl Quest, WarioWare, Elden Ring, Ace Attorney, Metal Slug, and Darkstalkers were all only allowed 2 girls in the bracket instead of 3. This rule was not applied in practice this year.

Due to the current restriction for former champions' series, Metroid, Touhou Project, Recettear, and The Legend of Zelda are only allowed 2 girls in future tournaments. Per this, Koishi Komeiji from Touhou Project was left out of the main bracket.

Bracket
128 characters, double elimination. The bracket is seeded according to qualifier votes; if multiple characters have the same amount of qualifier votes, the higher seed goes to whoever is nominated properly first. If a match ends in a tie, both characters will advance to the next round, resulting in some matches having 3-4 characters. However, if the tied match is a final, then the higher seed wins the title.

The losers' bracket ended up using four-way matches aside from its first and final two rounds due to limited time for the tournament to occur. It was uncertain how exactly it might apply to the Elite Eight, but in the end it was voted for the tournament to simply acknowledge the Top 8 from the main bracket.
 * Quarter-final losers will play each other in a four-way match.
 * Semi-final losers will play each other for 3rd place.

''All rounds begin and end at Eastern Time evening hours (UTC-04:00, around 20:00~22:00).
 * Bracket Link: Challonge
 * Voter Turnout: TBD

Side Tournaments
Two side tournaments were hosted: Barred from Queen of /v/ by Bill Clinton and Queen of /v/ Bottom 128 by BottomAnon.

Muffet Votes
During the middle of quarter-finals, Samaritanon gave the surprise revelation that Muffet was ahead in the final results for Round 4 and should have made it into Elite Eight over Ashley Graham. The cause of this was apparently NightShiftAnon pushing earlier round results between the two instead of the results from when the results were supposed to be called. They clarified that none of the other winners would have changed, and implored anons to not dogpile on NightShift. Despite this warning, many in the thread would soon be riled up and begin to express their frustration at NightShift for costing Muffet the coveted spot. While people felt her spot was dubious as a result, there was barely any actual backlash thrown at Ashley herself nor her supporters. In fact, both girls' supporters seemed to find solace in their mutual disappointment toward the hosts. One anon was inspired to make a Shazam copypasta mocking the whole situation along with others. As presumably some form of compensation for her missing Elite Eight, the hosts quietly added Muffet to one of the losers' bracket matches during semi-finals. She ended up losing to SHODAN in the end, but after the losers' bracket was voted to be separate from the final results she would be given an honorary 10th place. Due to not being in the Elite Eight itself, Muffet is eligible for 2024.

Finals Results
After the finals came to an end, there was an odd amount of time for the next thread to begin. In the new thread, Balls would post a form for the results to be shared, only for it to be redacted a few minutes later. Many were left confused waiting for the results. Due to confusion between the hosts over the reveal of the results (3rd/4th was to be kept under wraps), he would instead go on to post the losers' bracket finals form instead. This meant that people in the thread first learned of Curly winning finals from this form, a fact that upset many anons in the thread who felt it had soured her moment. To add further to this drama, Balls made the mistake of referring to the 3rd place vote as "results not to reveal", which confused a lot of anons watching the thread.

The backlash to this was extremely harsh. While Balls did apologize for the incident, many still expressed vocal disappointment at him and the other hosts. The start of losers' finals also brought further questioning towards the implementation of the losers' bracket as a whole. In the eventual grand finals, anons voted to rightfully decanonize the losers' bracket results from the Elite Eight.

Thread Links

 * New Booru: Booruplus
 * Google Polls Results: Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3 • Round 4 • Round 5 • Round 6 • Round 7 • Round 8

Notes / Sources
