Character Suggestions: Short Poll or None at All?
Added 2022-03-27 14:28:30 +0000 UTCJust a short poll to decide whether I should continue these Character Suggestion periods I've held at the end of recent months via short polls or just stop them altogether. More details past the dotted line. If uninterested, just skip to the choices at the bottom.
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I appreciate the people who take the time to participate in these suggestion periods I've held at the end of the month, but I'm wondering if it's a pointless endeavor. Aside from the low participation, I'm admittedly set in my ways in terms of what characters interest me and I feel what I've been doing has put even more of a distance between some of my patrons than there already is.
Most of the time, I don't even need to think about whether I'm gonna pick a character suggestion the moment I see them and there aren't many that pique my interest. This month was especially bad in that, while there were a few that I had a passing interest in, because the poll for next month is filled with characters that are notoriously popular among my audience (so much so that some people sent me picture ideas already), I doubt anyone other than myself would come up with ideas for those suggested characters, let alone vote for them.
So, since I'm going to hold a short poll to fill out the remaining nine slots, I'm wondering if I should just keep doing this from here on. It's a lot less effort for people to participate in and I feel wouldn't distance anyone as much. Or, I could just choose all 18 (which I'd probably reduce to 15) characters for every poll from here on out. I don't mind either option.
Comments
Oh, there was more, lol. So yeah, fun fact: you have it a little backwards. While you're not wrong about popular characters being a shoo-in to win (which is the exact reason why I'm not sure who else to add with the nine characters I've pre-picked this time), most of the time, people don't vote for the series that I particularly like. Perfect example is how most of the suggestions that didn't make it past the prelims this month were all ones that I made. I actually regret throwing people a bone and putting Pokemon girls in the poll. And outside of the miracle in September, Symphogear characters, which are my favorite above all else, almost never make it to the finals. So basically, a majority of my audience don't like the same things that I do, outside of whatever's super mainstream. It's why I've had to limit things to this extent so that I can enjoy what I'm drawing, regardless of the outcome.
Oxdarock
2022-03-27 18:25:14 +0000 UTCThat's unfortunate. And yeah, that was weird. Only reason I kept them was because the body proportions were just different enough to warrant it. Only time I don't is when two people ask for the exact same thing, which I've had before. As for the number of suggestions, while I can't help if 3 people ask for similar things and they all make it past prelims, I at least want to cut down the number of suggestions where people have to vote via comments from 30 to 20.
Oxdarock
2022-03-27 18:17:21 +0000 UTCI think, one issue I've had that has led me to, either ignore or just be fine with whatever, is that you wind up with a set of amount of characters, and then multiple suggestions for each one? Which means the divide between votes gets spread out super far. The last poll felt like, you know, there's 30 options, but the first five were "Hikage with a big ass" "Hikage with a fat ass and boob hourglass" "Hikage with an hourglass and a snake tf", and my mind goes 'well that's all the same character regardless but I dunno which option I prefer, even if I want art of this character specifically.' And that leads me to not voting for anything. Or when it comes to suggesting characters, even, I kind of stopped doing that just because it was clear my tastes weren't always lining up with the popular opinion anyway. I know there was a tweet recently about, if a patron puts up a poll for 'Himiko Toga' vs "Random 90s blue haired anime girl" Toga's gonna get 99% of the votes. If I see that someone from RWBY, or Fairy Tail, or one of the other series I know you like anyway, then I definitely go 'ah, one of those is gonna win probably'. And it's not like I'm *annoyed* by that, but it does make me go 'well no sense putting in an option that 3 people will vote for.'
BioYuGi
2022-03-27 18:03:24 +0000 UTCIt may seem interesting, but the problem is that people are gonna gravitate towards what's popular every time, both when it comes to voting and making suggestions at all. I've seen both happen a lot over the last few months. Case-in-point, most of the suggestions that didn't make it past the preliminary round last month were almost entirely ones I made in order to give everyone who didn't have a suggestion representation.
Oxdarock
2022-03-27 14:53:16 +0000 UTCI’m curious how April’s polls will play out. I feel 9 characters of your choice and 9 of fan choice could be a good shake up. Maybe forcing a split could bring more variety or just make things worse.
Emmitt Cleveland
2022-03-27 14:39:38 +0000 UTC
