May Story Poll Results
Added 2025-04-28 04:44:57 +0000 UTCAlright folks! Time for the poll results for next month's story. Honestly, they are about what I expected. Sort of.
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Mass Effect - Eridium Dreams: 69.2 + 180% Boost = 193.76
One Piece: Halfway Broken: 120
Harry Potter - Pandora's Box: 67.7 + 30% Boost = 88.01
A Very Confused Pokémon Adventure = 69.2
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So...the boost on Mass Effect - Eridium Dreams had just gotten stupidly high. So much so that, if not for a strong rally last month by Pokémon Adventure, it would have won for an update in April. As such, unless there was a major surge of support for Halfway Broken...this result was virtually locked in. Since Halfway Broken actually dropped pretty majorly in support, that was only more true.
However!
I'm fully aware how popular Halfway Broken is, and that I might be lynched if it doesn't get an update two months in a row :-p. As such, I'm planning on giving it at least a small update in May. It will likely only be 5-7k, not the full 15k of a normal update. I just don't have the time available to be certain of more than that. Even the smaller update could fail to happen, I'm afraid, time dependent. I have a number of things going on in May that are going to be time drains, so I can't actually guarantee the extra update. But I promise I'll try.
Regardless, Eridium Dreams if finally going to see a big update in May! That also, of course, means that it's boost will reset. Since Halfway Broken is going to get its own 30% boost as of the next poll. Well...that will be hard to overcome. Not impossible, however, since Pandora's Box will have a +50% boost to compete with it. Pokémon adventure, despite continue to see a strong showing in polls, likely won't have a very good chance until it gets its own boost again in June.
Comments
A little bit of both of Column A, little bit of Column B, and some of Column Q. I don't dislike the Gomu Gomu no Mi, but it's comparatively unimpressive. That's actually nice, in a way, because Oda did a good job of making Luffy's fighting style highly creative instead of just overpowered. But that's actually where the 'Column Q' comes in. Specifically, that Oda proceeds to eventually shit all over his own interesting creativity with the Awakened abilities of the fruit. While they are technically sort of creative, they're also...nonsensical. In a way that makes what should be an epic fight into a Looney Loons episode instead. He also flips to the other side of the power curve where he's just been handed an 'I win' button. Which is sort of terrible storytelling. So Column A is that I agree it's not a particularly good DF at base. It's not BAD, it's just nothing special in its unawakened form. Column B is I think that Oda already did a very good job of taking the base Gomu Gomu fruit to its limits. Exploring a lot of interesting ideas with it. I don't see the value in merely repeating what was already done at high mastery level by the original author. Much more fun, for both me and readers, to explore a different possible option. Column Q is that I HATE everything to do with the Joy Boy plot and his devil fruit awakening. Which meant that I wanted to firmly steer away from that. I technically made allowance to include some parts of it eventually, if I ABSOLUTELY MUST. But I will only actually do so if it proves that Oda's final plans for One Piece are so reliant on the Joy Boy nonsense that I can't find another alternative. The last official 'end' date given for the Manga by Oda was actually April 20 of this year...which has now passed. Without me hearing anything about it ending. So that was probably yet another lie (seriously, he's kept moving the date for six years at this point). I'm hoping it will come to an end before I get too far into the New World so I can properly plan one way or another.
Novus Peregrine
2025-04-28 08:02:36 +0000 UTCHey real quick I’m starting halfway broken just about to start the fourth chapter and I wanted to know your actual thoughts on the gomu gomu no mi and if they aligned with Alex? Or was it just a way to change things up with a new devil fruit? So you could put your own spin on the story
Jacob Van Earden
2025-04-28 07:44:06 +0000 UTCUnfortunately, that's incorrect. Those numbers are for after Vote Weighing is done PLUS boosts. Without the weighing and boosts, the numbers for this poll are: 49 for Halfway Broken vs 55 for every other story combined. That means Halfway Broken was 47% of all votes. And that number is one of the lowest in months. For the Previous poll it was 45% For the poll before that it was 50%. Halfway Broken routinely accounts for roughly half of all votes, without any help from boosts. No other fic even comes remotely close and, so far at least, not a single other story has managed to beat it without at least a +30% boost. That's happened twice, both time it was Pokemon Adventure, which has the EXTRA advantage of being backed by the largest number of $10 tier voters. The only other upset until now was Pandora's box, with needed a similarly absurd vote boost in order to win.
Novus Peregrine
2025-04-28 06:43:23 +0000 UTCYou mention how popular Halfway Broken is, and yes 120 votes is more than the raw (or adjusted, since others have decimals even before the boosts). But if you compare that 120 to the nearly 210 total votes the other stories get together, that means Halfway Broken is less than half your *voting* audience (non-voters may or may not have a similar division of preference). That means that the voters for Halfway Broken are only the largest minority of your (voting) audience, not the majority of your audience. Just a different perspective to look at things and a reason to express appreciation and gratitude for the vote boosting process as a method to provide updates for the other works
Keht Jelicho
2025-04-28 05:23:48 +0000 UTC
