Voting is still open, but make sure to nominate songs to represent the idols who make it into the Corenament!

March Madness kicked off this week, and next week begins the big tamale itself, the NIT NCAA tournament. Every team that’s earned the right to play for the championship feels that it can happen, that anything’s possible. It’s drama and excitement like none other.

So let’s rip it off and do our own thing with the concept.

Friends, I give you the 2016 Homicidols Corenament.

What a name.

I’ll launch the full tournament early next week, after all of the Selection Sunday and whatnot has shaken out, but you can’t have a Corenament without first establishing who’s going to be in it, and that’s what we’re going to do for the next several days.

Through midnight on Selection Sunday, that is 24:00 on March 13, this series of polls will be open. I’ll do my part to pass them around the idolverse, but I encourage everybody to share them with friends, on social networks and with weird strangers wherever you might deem appropriate, even Reddit.*

Friends, we’ve had polls, and we’ve done voting, but never in the history of idol blogging has so ambitious a project be undertaken.**

If you’re ready to start and don’t need to worry about pesky rules and guidelines, jump on ahead. Or keep reading like a civilized person.

Here’s how it works:

I’ve roughly grouped idols of various styles into “conferences” based on primary musical style. The only real criterion to get on was that they had to have had some appearance on this site in the time that it’s been alive, and they have to be currently active (so no Lolisyn).

Every conference is going to advance their winner into the Homicidols Corenament. There are three power conferences, Idol Metal, Idolcore and Idol Rock (don’t argue :)); two mid-majors, Alt-Idol and Idol Punk; and two “autobid” conferences, Solo Homicidols and Death Pop. Idol metal, by dint of being the most popular and widespread, will be awarded four berths into the Corenament; the other two power conferences will each get three; the mid-majors, two; and the autobids, one. Because death pop isn’t all that big a thing, and because the results will amuse me, and because even the NCAA Tournament is this ridiculous, that berth will actually be decided in a play-in round, a DEATH POP DEATHMATCH, to be held on Tuesday, March 15 .

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: What we’re going to vote on in the Corenament is #1 Best Song ; that is, you may love Bellheart with your whole heart, but if you can’t realistically put “Ice Cream” ahead of “Genkidane,” you still have to vote the song. It’s on the honor system. THEREFORE, beginning with when this post goes up, please NAME YOUR #1 FAVORITE SONG BY THE ARTISTS THAT YOU SELECT IN THE COMMENTS. I’ll also solicit this info in a separate post over the weekend. Every artist gets ONE song for the duration of the Corenament. HOWEVER, these conference tournaments are all about personal preference, the idols you like best, period. But do have top songs in mind when you vote, as you don’t want your favorite to be humiliated in a stunning first-round upset.

This is a seeded, single-elimination tournament, with each match determined by popular vote.

The seeds will be determined by vote in each conference tournament below. The top vote-getter overall in each conference is the champion, and the next 0-2 highest getters of votes will accordingly advanced. The conference champions will be seeded 1-6 according to the total number of votes that they received; ties will be broken by the total vote percentage difference between the champion and the second-place finisher in that conference–it pays to dominate. The 10 remaining entrants will be seeded according to their total votes received; ties will be broken by whichever method makes for more interesting matchups or makes me chuckle the best. UPDATE: Ties for conference titles will be decided by a principle called My Discretion.



Here’s the schedule:

Conference tournaments: Voting open March 10-13.

Individual artist song nominations: Open March 12-13.

First round: Voting open March 16-20.

Second round: Voting open March 23-27.

Third round (semifinal): March 30-April 2.

Final: April 4.

Any questions? Ask in the comments so we can have a public Q&A.

Now get to it! This is a carousel; use the little arrows in the top corners to advance from poll to poll.

*I did say before that we’d need to mitigate the Babymetal fandom’s influence on polls in the future, but let’s not pretend that they aren’t going to get through this step. Acknowledge where your bread is buttered, and your life will be a happier one.

**Possibly not true!

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