February Poll Results

Alright! First, I rarely post twice in a single day, and I don't want you to miss the Halfway Broken release. So, you know, don't do that :-p.

With that out of the way, I finally got the results of the belated story poll for this month tabulated. That was a headache and a half, since I accidentally left it wide open to all tiers for a couple of hours and had to weed out a lot of votes that shouldn't have been there as a result. Then I had to very carefully count everything, because unholy waffles was this one close. The fact that a lot of people split their votes this time just made it more complicated to make sure I had it right! Take a look at the results:

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Stripper with a System: 125 + 30% = 162.5

Harry Potter: Pandora's Box: 124.08 + 30% = 161.304

My Hero Automata: 82.25 + 20% = 98.7

A Very Confused Pokemon Adventure: 84.75

Why Was There No Truck?!: 86.42

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Point nine two. Literally less than a single vote before boosts. If even one or two people hadn't split their votes, or had split them differently, it would have came up Pandora's Box. As it is, Stripper with a System won by a fingernail. Before you ask, by the by, I recounted twice because it was so insanely close. Which is part of why this wasn't out last night.

In an effort at total transparency I, myself, did in fact vote for Stripper With a System. I don't actually always vote at all, and when I do I give myself exactly the same number of votes as one other individual who gets a bonus for all their help spotting typos. A grand total of twenty votes. Ironically, that individual (honestly, it should be obvious who it is, but I'm not going to single them out without permission :-p) voted opposite to me. So we ended up canceling each other out this time.

As for why I voted that way, it was honestly purely because I want Stripper With a System to hit the threshold I set for posting stories to other sites. I do not post stories anywhere but here until they hit 30,000 words. Which, technically, Stripper With a System has already done. But half of that word count would be locked in Early Access until the next update, so it didn't qualify. Updating it this month gives it the chance to get pushed out to Questionable Questing, Fanfiction.net, and Scribblehub. It getting a proper public release gives it the chance to develop fans and a fairer shake in the voting because of that :-).

All of that said, frankly, all of the stories did amazingly well this month in the voting. As always, the bonuses will change up for next month, which will give Pandora's Box and Automata the best chances of winning, though Confused Pokemon Adventure can't be discounted either, as it will be getting it's first bonus since December. That story has honestly been the one with the most consistent support from the higher voting tiers, so it has a pretty solid chance against the other two.

On a final note, I may try to sneak in a small update for Automata. That story is so close to finishing that I'd really like to get it done and out of the poll to make the poll a bit less hectic. Given how short February is, and how many other things I have on my plate for this month, I have no idea if I can pull that off. Particularly as I have two small snippets of stories that just won't leave me alone that I've been writing bits of. Neither of those are things I'm planning to publish as more than extras/teasers right now, as I just flat out have too many stories going as is.

The only reason I'm putting any time at all into them (and not very much at that) is that such snippers are good for breaking down writers block. At least for me. The more complicated any given story gets, the more prone to getting mentally stuck in a quagmire of planning/research/detail juggling I get, so I often use little snippets of other things as I way to clear my head, as it were. That is, in fact, actually how Why Was There No Truck?! started. It just reached a threshold where I went ahead and posted it as an extra, and got an unexpectedly overwhelming response that made me add it to the poll.