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Original Character Tournament
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An Original Character Tournament, often abbreviated to OCT, is a form of Web Original media that hybridizes storytelling and competition. Originating on art sharing platforms such as DeviantArt in the late 2000s, Original Character Tournaments feature several creators "competing" through their artistic expression — comics, animation, literature, roleplay, et cetera — by creating a character and producing their story as prompted by the tournament's host.

Okay, let's back that up for a moment. Every Original Character tournament has atleast one "host" — individuals who serve as pseudo "game masters" by providing the foundations of the stories and the eventual prompts. Hosts are accompanied by "judges", whose role is to judge the material submitted by participating creators and decide a winner: in some Original Character Tournaments, judges work alongside a popular jury. After publishing an introduction to the OCT, the host will publish the applications, which contain guidelines that creators willing to participate must follow if they're to be accepted. These "auditioners", in creating their character, are often but not always asked to also provide a reference sheet and an "audition" — which serves as an introduction of the character to the tournament's story — as proof of their ability. The host and the judgest select auditioners based on personal preferences — ranging from "quality above all" systems to "first come, first served" formulas, in which they admit anyone whose application shows no issue.

Either way, once the maximum allotted number of character slots has been filled, the Original Character Tournament begins. An OCT is divided into multiple Rounds, with each Round being made up of individual Elimination Matches. There are different ways through which the characters might be matched up one against the other: randomizers, organizers' handpicks, or prompt choice from their creators. Not all Matches are one-on-ones, though: some feature multiple characters in free-for-alls, team battles, or "Boss-type" battles — these last ones see them face off against one or more characters created by the organizers that, naturally, are stronger than allowed for the participating characters. After a Round's brackets are publicly announced, all participating creators typically have until that Round's deadline to submit their entry, which allows for the tournament to move at a faster pace at the risk of forcing the hosts to grant a deadline extension, else many would get eliminated due to "walkover". Some OCTs, however, employ singular deadlines for each Match, a formula with its won pros and cons. In any case, once the deadline rolls up, the winning entry for each Match is voted on. This repeats until one character, the "winner", remains.

A character's lore, as detailed in their respective entries, is not the only storytelling element to be found in Original Character Tournaments. The course of the story is determined by how the OCT unfolds — i.e., who wins their Matches, how they did it, what happens in each encounter... In some OCTs, the winner's Matches are the sole storyline to become "canon". In others, every Match-winning entry creates the canon. Another option is to declare all entries as canonical through the use of Alternate Universes. More rarely, some Tournaments will have the host write the canon story, following the tournament's developments, with input from all participants when it comes to their characters. Most OCTs are also accompanied by creator-driven side content, additional stories that take place between Rounds, leading to very rich packages.

The way creators produce entries for each Round varies depending on the Original Character Tournament: the most popular form, by far, is through comics, but writing and roleplaying are also decently widespread. Very rarely, an Original Character Tournament may have its participants produce animations.

Trying to collect every Original Character Tournament on the internet is an uphill battle. Nonetheless, a noteworthy attempt at collecting the ones hosted on DeviantArt has been made, and can be found here.

Original Character Tournaments with their own pages on TV Tropes:

Tropes commonly associated with Original Character Tournaments include:

  • Aborted Arc: A concrete possibility for any Original Character Tournament is for one of the participants to drop out due to a sudden loss in interest or a lack of time to dedicate to the endeavor: OCTs take months, if not years to complete. When that happens, the creator's character usually disappears from the story entirely or is uncerimoniously killed off: either way, their Story Arc comes to an abrupt end.
  • Alternate Continuity: In Original Character Tournaments without a single, host-driven story, each entry is how the respective creator believes the events contained in a Round's or Match's prompt will play out. The winning participant's, in these cases, is typically canonized, but some OCTs either run on Alternate Universes which leads to every entry being declared canon, or lead to more than one participant's storyline being declared the canonical one.
  • Bonus Material: Frequently, Original Character Tournaments have their main story accompanied by additional ones. Some are from non-participating creators, whilst others happen in-between rounds and serve to flesh out the characters. If they aren't all collected in a single place, this makes the experience of reading through an OCT particularly troublesome.
  • Cooking Duel: An Original Character Tournament is not necessarily a fighting tournament (or a tournament to begin with — more often than not the structure exists exclusively Out-of-Universe): some OCTs see their participating characters partake in races, games, or other mundane or quirky forms of competition.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Most Original Character Tournaments happen to have very powerful, eldritch Big Bads — or, alternatively, one of two finalists who grows to be very powerful and eldritch. As such, their finales tend to feature said Big Bads being pummeled and defeated by their participants against all odds.
  • Excuse Plot: Older Original Character Tournaments tendentially lacked in the way of an overarching story, and instead boiled down to settings that allowed colorful characters to duke it out. Whilst this doesn't automatically make an OCT bad, the practice has largely become discretited, and contemporary Tournaments tend to have very rich stories and worlds.
  • Elseworld: It's not uncommon, especially for Tournaments hosted through DeviantArt, for participating creators to reutilize characters that have previously appeared in other OCTs. In these cases, unless the Original Character Tournament allows for a minor form of cross-over by allowing those previous events to be mentioned — such as in Law of Talos — the reutilized character is modified to fit the new setting.
  • Schedule Slip: Each Round, and in some Original Character Tournaments such as the JoJo's OC Tournament each Match, has a set deadline by which each participating creator must submit their entry, else they be considered to have unofficially "dropped out" and have their character eliminated. However, the host and the judges often find themselves having to grant deadline extensions due to the competitors lagging behind. In most cases, this is because if the extension wasn't granted, more than half of the participants would be eliminated on the spot, especially in the earlier Rounds.
  • Sequel Hook: It's decently common for an Original Character Tournament's epilogue to either leave some plot threads open or create new ones after the Finale, setting up the foundations for a sequel's plot even if it never ends up spawning.
  • Story Arc: Due to Original Character Tournaments being divided in Rounds, each Round tendentially serves as its own, self-contained arc for the overall plot.

Alternative Title(s): Original Character Battle Tournament

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