Saturday, April 4, 2009

We have a winner of The March Madness Whedonverse Character Tournament!

Sorry for the delay! We wanted to be extra careful to double and even triple check the votes.

Most importantly, we want to thank everyone who participated in March Madness, especially to those who played from the beginning and dealt with the agony of picking between some beloved characters early on. This was a lot of fun! We're trying to figure out the best tournament to do next time. Let us know if you have a suggestion.

And without further ado, we give you the favorite character of the Whedonverse as voted by the fandom (and by the slim margin of 6 votes out of nearly 500)!:


Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Protagonist, Chosen One, (ex)Cheerleader

Final Score - Buffy 241 to Spike 235
Crazy! Spike sure put up a great fight!

And if you'd like to see the bracket of the entire tournament history, click below to enlarge:



29 comments:

Clairetmc said...

WOOT! WOOT!

So glad my girl Buffy won.

All faith in the fandom remains intact.

*Grins like a crazy girl*

Nathaniel Cornstalk said...

6 votes. Wow.

Anonymous said...

Just six votes, eh?

The Spike fans may have loss, but they sure as hell spoke up ;)

Brian Lynch said...

How many write-in votes did Betta George get? None? Carry on then.

Nitpicker said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nitpicker said...

Interesting. Why did Spike's and Buffy's names get removed from the final bracket for the ladder image?

Further, if Buffy won 241-235, how does that add up to more than 500?

Sorry to nitpick. Congrats to Buffy, though she wouldn't have been my first choice.

Veiriti said...

Congratulations for Buffy!! And that’s good question - Why did Spike's and Buffy's names get removed from the final bracket for the ladder image? Please, put them in again! Spike and Buffy are the best! Spuffy forever!

Tara said...

It's funny because from back when before we started this, my blogmates and I all just assumed she'd win it and that could be kind of boring. I said, "What's the point of doing it? It's obvious Buffy'll definitely take it anyway..."

But in the end, she almost got knocked out a couple of times and it was way more exciting that I ever thought it would be! And there was a point of doing it bc it was super fun.

Re: The Final 2 being off the tournament bracket - oh you guys are right! Must have used an earlier file...the one from the last round. fixed.

Iceeh said...

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!
Let's go Buffster! Uh huh! All right! Here we go now! Super glad that she beat Spike. ^^
-throws a party-

Tara said...

Re: Brian Lynch - hee! Well perhaps it'll ease your mind to know that Betta surely would've lasted longer than Kate! Poor girl got her ass beat by a man that wears cheese on his head. That one will stay with me for a while.

zarine said...

I didn't think I'll be but I'm so happy about the result! I had a really stupid grin when I saw the picture because I thought Spike was winning this big time. Not that I don't like Spike, but it's Buffy's show. :)

Anonymous said...

I am shocked. I thought Spike was going to win it, which depressed me a lot. Not to say that I don't like Spike, I do, I just felt Buffy way more deserving. Way to go Buffy!

zooey said...

Nitpicker,

Probably because not everyone voted for one of the two. There is such a thing as a write-in vote. (See Colbert and NASA.)

And they also may have meant 500 comments instead of 500 votes.

Sorry to nitpick your nitpicking.

ben said...

Who knew I would get so into this? But I'm so glad to see that Buffy is the champion. I still have much love for Spike, but as much as he is an integral part of my fandom... it all goes back to Buffy.

elainecleo said...

Congrats to Buffy, but I would love to see it run again where you could only vote one time. I was counting votes several times a day and had Spike winning and I was not the only person counting votes that also had him winning. The outcome does not surprise me, just disappoints me. One person, one vote would be great to see from the get go. It was a lot of fun until it got nasty at the final.

Anonymous said...

In a way, it is fitting that Buffy won, even though I voted for Spike.

But if I'd known it was only gonna be by 6 votes, I'd have voted more than once. ;)

Anonymous said...

Ah, so certain folks have been voting more then once to get Buffy to win.....interesting...

Anonymous said...

it would have been cool to see someone else besides buffy win the favorite buffy character, but still this was a lot of fun.

Tara said...

Re: Nitpicker and Zooey, yes that was silly I meant 500 comments but have since changed it to "nearly 500 votes" (I think the total was 470-something). Thanks for the heads up!

Re: Elaine and Veiriti - I'm not sure what you're insinuating but Spike would certainly be a champion on "this site" if he took in more votes and that would be absolutely fine by me. We have the documents to prove the vote count, but who would be psycho enough to change it? We try to run this site with integrity and neutrality. We have several bloggers here with different opinions...one would never be able to convince the others to fix a tournament. Never. So please don't bash our ethics, with all due respect.

Re: Anyone who is curious - Spike won the first page of comments by a landslide. Buffy really rallied the second page and won that by even more. And the third page was pretty balanced.....And that's how Buffy won, by just a little. Not that we really need to explain ourselves, I just figured it would be best to clear the air for anyone who is skeptic.

And no, we didn't allow any doubles that we knew of. We mentioned it early on. We certainly hope people played fair, and we did our best make sure of that.

Joel said...

Take THAT, Spike.

Anonymous said...

Reply Joel:

Seriously? He only lost by six. It really isn't an overwhelming win.

snowpop said...

this was really fun! grumblers will be grumblers though. i voted for spike but am happy for buffy's win! they were very evenly matched - i don't know of two other characters whose popularity could have been so evenly matched. made for an exciting finale!

i would love to do this again next year - same thing actually! maybe just mix up all the names again and see if the same folks come out tops? maybe if it's still around - throw the dollhouse people in too.

elainecleo said...

Tara, of course people voted more than once, there was nothing keeping them from it. I would love to see another next year and like snowpop said add Dollhouse, but if I could add something, make it no comments, just put in the name or even better have the names listed and just check off who you want, would make it much easier to count. Or if you want comments have in the rules you MUST sign in with a name, NO Anonymous voting. I had a blast with it, but it did get nasty and without a way to be open with the voting, meaning with a name, it will always be in question. If Spike had won it would be the same from Buffy fans.

Tara said...

Good idea, snowpop! We actually thought of doing a "worst character" tourney. We did it once ourselves with Warren winning, but it would be interesting to see if the fandom thought different. Or an episode tourney. Might be less ugly than this was!

Re: Elaine - Thanks, you're suggestions are noted.

Nitpicker said...

Thanks for the clarifications. I never mean to come off as confrontational - I just notice things, and they'll keep bugging me if I don't, in turn, bug other people about them.

Thanks also for running the tournament - this was a lot of fun! I ended up downloading the blank image with the 64 characters lined up in their brackets and filling it out myself, so invested was I in the idea.

Anonymous said...

How about a fav couples one? Spuffy fans would love that!!!

Thanks for running this! It has been grand!

Tara said...

No, it's fine, Nitpicker. I hate when things are incorrect and your nitpicking has been useful :)

Also, filling out a physical bracket is a great idea!

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to say thank you.It was fun to watch and participate in the tourney. I hope you do it again.

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