I thought this would be a little fun because several people have already asked "why didn't so-and-so make it?" Don't worry, we'll get to that in another behind-the-scenes post. But here is something to show you the kind of work and thinking that went into this. Because it wasn't just randomly thrown together. Much planning and scheming and mustache twirling abounded. Promise. (okay, except for maybe the mustache part).
I wanted this to show the breadth and incredible range of YA literature, and that in fantasy, everyone has a chance to do something awesome, to play nice and kick butt equally, so to speak. So part of the challenge was to decide how to represent that kind of scope. Here are some stats you might not have realized that went into the weighing process of who would compete.
Stats of the battles:
Number of competitors: 32
Male: 16
Female: 16 (This was a complaint many had in the Suvudu Cage Matches, and something I was adamant about keeping equal)
Number of characters per series: 1
Authors with multiple characters competing: 1 (It's Diana Wynne Jones. She has Howl and Chrestomanci both, and is the only author to have two characters represented)
Boy-Boy fights: 5
Girl-Girl fights: 5
Boy-Girl fights: 6 (I love how that worked out)
Characters of ethnicity: 6 (Ged, Eugenidies, Ai Ling, Goranu, Katniss, Eona)
Children fighters: 3 (Nobody Owens, Kendra Sorenson, and Thorgil)
Characters with dragons: 3
Characters with magic: 9 (Roughly. It depends on your definition of "magic")
Sword wielders: 16
Sci-fi characters: 4
Old school characters (pre-1980): (Aragorn, Ged, Lessa, Westley, Edmund, and Christopher - barely)
oooh....nice breakdown.
ReplyDeleteYou did an awesome job getting this set up and keeping it well balanced and very interesting.
So nicely done. :)