Terminology

This article contains a list of terms and concepts commonly used by anons specifically within tournament threads. Official rules and terms such as the Elite Eight, Series Limit, etc will not be listed and can instead be found in the official tournament rules pastebins.

Asterisk (*)
An Asterisk (*) is a symbol unofficially given to a character denoting a win or deep run that is considered controversial. Any character run that can be called invalid either because of rigging, off-site brigading, or general strictly illicit methods are sometimes given an * by anon's. Examples would include Spinel's controversial Ms. /co/ 2019 win, who was revealed a year later to have been brigaded by a facebook group, and Shirley's final's run in Ms. /co/ 2022, who was known to have been rigged earlier in the tournament.

Campaigning
Campaigning is a major tournament concept, in which anons create posts to bolster a character's thread presence and convince others to vote for their character, often in the forms of Original Content (such as art, writing and music), discussion about their character, and roleplay. Campaigning is seen as a major factor in a character's success, with less traditionally popular characters being able to make it big due to strong campaigning. The Batter's and Wuya's tournament victories are seen as notable examples of the importance campaigning can offer a character.

DTVA
Characters of animated series produced by Disney Television Animation. In /co/ tournaments, it often exclusively refers to The Ghost and Molly McGee, Amphibia and The Owl House and their respective characters and posters. They are a main victim of spitevoting because of questionable shitposting and controversial albeit popular presence on the board, and general hatred against nu-Disney.

Falseflagging
Falseflagging refers to the act of posing as a supporter of a certain contestant while creating posts that paint said character or/and its genuine supporters in a negative light, either in an attempt to get the character to lose or simply for the sake of trolling. Examples of common tactics used by falseflaggers include spamming fat fetish or otherwise unpleasant art, "campaigning" with AI generated images, attempting to frame the character as being trans, and generally being a nuisance in the threads in the name of their target. It can be synonymous with the common phrase psyops (psychological operations).

Metagaming
Metagaming, also known as Strategic Voting, is a concept in which anons will vote to manipulate the bracket rather than for who they actually prefer, typically in the hopes of eliminating perceived strong characters in their main's bracket in favor of weaker picks for a better chance of their main's success. This can also be done to try and force a "fitting" match-up. A commonly referred to example of metagaming is Ms. /co/ 2021, in which many anons found the Elite Eight of that tournament to be underwhelming due to their favorites having been strategically voted out by rampant metagaming.

Pityvoting
Pityvoting is the scenario in which a character receives votes from anons specifically due to an unfortunate and recent meta event related to him or her, usually the cancelation of a series or the death of a voice actor. This is often a point of contention for these characters, as arguments break out over whether or not their success is founded primarily on sympathy for the character's series/VA rather than the character's actual merit. The major example of this arguably is Dr. Mrs. The Monarch in Ms. /co/ 2020, who through the cancellation of her show got a handful of votes in her favor that contributed to her victory.

Silent Majority
Under its general usage, the Silent Majority is an unspecified large group of people in a country or group who do not express their opinions publicly, a term popularized by U.S. presidents Calvin Coolidge and Richard Nixon during their political campaigns. In the context of 4chan character tournaments, the term is commonly used for the large majority of anons from Brazil who vote without participating or directly interacting with the tournament threads, where all the discussion and campaigning takes place. Silent Majority picks are defined by having massive success despite often having no thread presence to speak of; while this is an indication of a character's innate popularity among the board, the Silent Majority is viewed unfavorably by some and its association with it to be the sign of an uninteresting pick undeserving of its tournament success. With sometimes more than a thousand votes going into the round polls, debates between silent and meta/campaigner approaches to the tourney' often arise. Recent tournaments have had official measures by the hosts to discourage Silent Majority voting, with the voting forms moved to the OC anchor rather than the top of the thread to encourage anons to interact with the thread rather than simply voting from the catalogue and never visiting the thread itself.

Spitevoting
Spitevoting refers to voting for a character for no other reason than to vote against the other character in the matchup. Reasons for spitevoting tend to either be a case of metagaming, hatred for a specific character/series, or simply an anon seething over his main losing to the character in question during a previous round.

The Plunderers
"The Plunderers" or also known as The Plunderers of the /co/ast, is the name to a team of three characters composed by Ruber, John Silver and Zorak. They have made themselves known thanks to Zorak's victory in Mr. /co/ 2022. This was later followed by Ruber becoming runner-up in the first Villains of /co/ tournament in August, 2023. The team originated back in 2021 through Chris McLean and it was composed of four characters until he was booted out after his poster's involvement with rigging Tag-Team Tournament 2021.

Team F.A.R.T.S.
"FARTS" is an acronym used in Ms. /co/ to refer to the characters Frankie Foster, Azula, Raven, Toph, and Shego, grouping them together under the reasoning of these characters being the most prevalent heavy hitters that consistently seed and perform well due to their high popularity, and having all returned in the year 2021 when the term first gained widespread use. The term is frequently used within the Ms. /co/ tournaments, with some criticizing the acronym as ruining the chances of these characters of actually winning due to creating a stigma of being seen as boring anti-underdog picks. The term has also been used in comparison to refer to characters other than the girls named in F.A.R.T.S who share the same qualities of being perceived heavy hitters.