Curly Brace

Curly Brace is a character from the platformer game Cave Story, who serves as the game's third boss and later a major ally of player character Quote. She is a female robot who is capable of generating a shield that blocks projectiles and is able to withstand substantial amounts of damage. Curly appears as a blonde, young-looking humanoid who wears a red tank top and baggy pants. Because of her attractive design, she is commonly drawn in fan art as a thick, hot-ass blonde "coomer" bot. (Seriously, just search her name in Google Images and you will find out.) Due to this, her likable personality, and role in Cave Story ' s story, Curly Brace has persisted as a beloved character among many in the video game community.

Cave Story is created entirely by independent developer Daisuke Amaya (known by his pseudonym Pixel), and is widely considered as the "quintessential indie game" because of its quality comparable to "AAA games" (developed by major video game companies). Its pioneering success also influenced other future independent games that would also become famous in their own right.

Tournament History
Curly is a well-liked character on /v/ board and a classic vidya waifu because of her attractiveness and for being a character from one of the most acclaimed indie games. As a result, she is expected to perform fairly well in the board's Queen of /v/ tournaments, and has appeared in every eligible contest since the inaugural 2019 edition.

In the tournament's early years however, Curly struggled to meet these expectations as she lost to Princess Zelda twice: in 2019's second round, and in 2020's third round (by 16 votes). The robot finally made her breakthrough in the 2021 contest where she was seeded 12th, and comfortably reached the Elite Eight by defeating Risky, Kat, The Boss, and the displaced Ashley in her bracket. Unfortunately, her tournament run ended in the quarter-finals when she faced Touhou's Marisa Kirisame, whom she narrowly lost by 23 votes. She ultimately finished 6th behind Black Souls' Alice, and ahead of former Elite 8's Fio Germi and Shantae.

Curly would once again qualify in Queen of /v/ 2023 with a fair amount of hype behind her return. It's worth noting that this tournament was set up to use a double elimination format complete with a simultaneous losers' bracket. Curly ending up being surprisingly potent on her part of the bracket, continually winning with fair ease even against a couple strong campaigns for Hex Maniac and Palutena. This would bring her back into the Elite Eight for a second time. Her streak would continue into the quarterfinals, where she along with the other three semi-finalists (Roll, Amaterasu, and Bayonetta) would all win by strong margins. This gave the semi-finals two strong thematic matches, with Curly herself up against Roll in a battle of two classic robot girls. (There's even a point to argue that Curly herself was even largely inspired by Roll.) Despite vocal support for both girls, in the end Curly would advance to the finals and face off against Amaterasu. Both of their active campaigns would peek at this point, with Curly in particular getting several pieces in support of her including an animation, a short ROM hack, and even a simple game programmed by one anon. Many saw this as a close match between two board and tournament favorites, with some even feeling quite confident in Ammy being victorious. Considering the events of the following paragraph, this is largely remembered as the tournament's canon finale.

The answer would soon come in a less-than-ideal fashion as one of the hosts, BallsAnon, was caught in shared confusion among other hosts about how the tournament's ongoing losers' bracket would merge back with the winners' bracket. Muddled, he would first post the next round's form depicting Amaterasu going up against SHODAN for a chance to face Curly in a grand finals. Instead of proper results, anons would slowly pick out that Curly had actually won the match off this in the most anti-climatic fashion possible. Both the extra rounds and the general results reveal would end up under significant flack. Many anons were already ready to crown Curly as Queen by this point, to the point where this was the general consensus among many after the fact. The losers' finals in general was contentious among tourneygoers for various reasons. While SHODAN would advance by a narrow margin to face Curly, the general nature of the threads led hosts to simply let anons decide how results would be recorded. In the end, it would be voted that the losers' bracket results would mostly be ignored aside from small honors while the overall results defaulted back to the main bracket's final three rounds. As for Curly herself, she was voted to formally be crowned by a massive margin of 69-31, which while skewed and effectively non-canon does technically make it the biggest champion round win margin to date.

Overall, Curly Brace has already gone on to largely be seen as a worthy Queen by the majority of anons. People have praised both the character and Cave Story having a tournament win to their names. While some anons were dissatisfied with the way some of her supporters and general tourneygoers (presumably moreso the second) were pushing her as a must to win the grand finals for meta purposes, this has not been held much against the character herself and has mostly been buried. Overall, it is likely that she will continue to hold up as a strong winner even with the tournament itself's share of drama. As a result of her victory, Curly is here forth banned from participating in future Queen of /v/ tournaments.