As promised, I wanted to present to you the results of the ballot where you the readers got to choose the Prom King and Queen in Rain. I wanted to post this weeks ago when the winners were canonically revealed, but life just kept happening to me and I never got around to it. Perhaps it's better this way though, as now I can share this without it cutting in the middle of the story to do so.
Needless to say, this is all spoiler territory if you're not caught up with Rain, but I assume that if you're reading this, you're probably caught up. ^^;
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Who you voted for
Among a grand total of 1,644 votes, the winners ended up being Gavin for Prom King, and Rain for Prom Queen. They were perhaps the obvious choices, being the most significant, prominent senior year boy and girl characters in the story. Randy and Emily being the second most voted in their respective categories also made a lot of sense, and I confess there was a brief period where I thought they might have a chance at winning. Similarly, I'm not surprised to see Rob and Debbie in last place, as they are generally less popular characters, but I was surprised to see exactly how few votes they got (especially Rob). Some people tend to vote for "chaos" in these kinds of things, so I actually expected a bit more, specifically for Debbie.
A few other things surprised me too. Such as Colette, still a relatively new character (and much more so when the ballot was live!), ranking third among the Queen nominees, beating out even popular characters like Maria and Holly (maybe Colette was the chaos vote?). Even more surprising to me, Maria and Holly actually tied! What're the odds!? There was one page with the teachers talking about a past prom where a fight broke out over there being a tie for Queen, and a number of readers were like, "oh god, there was a tie, wasn't there?" And the funny thing was, I couldn't say no. There was a tie! Not the winners, but two people did get the exact same number of votes! XD
Individual vote counts
For what it's worth, the idea behind the ballot was that all the readers voting were doing so as if they were St. Hallvard students. There were not over 1,600 people at this prom, though. Probably closer to a third of that (which is still a lot of kids, to be fair). But the truth is, I didn't pay that close attention to the number of votes specifically (my mindset being that 701 kids can't possibly vote for Gavin because there aren't even 701 kids there). I really only needed to know the winner, so I mostly focused on the order. With that in mind, I very specifically never quoted the number of votes in the ballot, nor the number of prom attendees in the comic so that nothing would seem off.
All that said, I know some people are really interested in numbers, so of course I wanted to include them.
Who the characters voted for
This has no bearing on who won, and was in fact, worked out after the winners were already announced in canon. I just thought it might be kind of fun to see who the characters would've voted for. Like, we know from one particular page that Rain and Ky voted for Emily, and one other page points out that Emily voted for Rain as well. But stuff like that just made me think about where everyone else stands. Again though, this didn't really affect anything, and isn't even included in the numbers above. It's probably safe to say nearly every vote combination happened, so how these sixteen kids voted is surely just mixed in among the hundreds of votes that were cast.
Who I voted for
The reason I started the ballot was because I had a lot of different ideas for directions I could go with the story. Depending on who won King or Queen, the story could change. A lot of the same story beats still occurred either way, but some of the buildup and aftermath might be different (maybe we'll still hear about Prom a little in the upcoming chapters). So, with at least a half dozen scenarios already in mind for various assorted Kings and Queens, I decided it might be fun to let the readers vote instead to help me narrow it down.
No matter who was chosen, there was going to be some kind of drama and/or twist, but ultimately with a sweet end result. For instance, I only included the "Rain promises Ana her tiara" bit because Rain and Gavin were both chosen. Had it just been Gavin as King and anyone else as Queen, or Rain as Queen with anyone else as King, then I wasn't really thinking in that direction. It worked with the two of them together because Gavin and Ana are love interests anyway. Same thing with Rain and Gavin's awkward dance, with them recounting how unexpected a twist this was for them. Stuff like that. These things only happened because of exactly this combination.
Anyway, when you're the writer and you have several ideas and you can cast a vote too, who do you pick? Thing is, if I had a favorite direction to begin with, I might not have made the ballot. So, I voted for Randy and Colette, which I did not have a plan for at the time. I just thought that'd be an interesting scenario to write with two characters I wanted to give more screentime to. XD
I'd like to share some of the alternate story paths I did plan, and I've been thinking about bringing up a few during this hiatus. I may wait a little longer before I start doing that, though. Just in case any elements from those alternate paths still comes up. ^_^
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Other than that, I hope you find all this interesting. And once again, if you'd like to share your votes, or who you would have voted for had you been following the comic when the ballot happened (with maybe the added discussion point of what do you think would be different that way), please, by all means have fun.
Also, thank you so much to everyone who was able to vote. 1,644 people took the time to offer some input that lead to what I think a lot of fun. I don't technically foresee a need for something like this again in Rain, but I would love to include reader choice again once in a while for future works. This was genuinely fun for me. And I hope it was for you too. ^_^
Anyway, I am taking a break though, so maybe I shouldn't be posting. Still, I wanted to share this before it got too far after the fact. But now hiatus, for real. Again, there's no definitive return date at this time, but I will be sure to keep you posted. Thanks for reading my rambling, and I hope y'all have a lovely time during the hiatus. Please look forward to seeing Rain and her friends again soon enough.
It's both sad and sweet that Ky voted Drew. Cause they were the only one of the main cast to vote for him, but also it's sweet cause they showed their appreciation of Drew.
I've been surprised to see a lot of people hung up on Devon voting for himself. Are we just missing the part where he's also voting for his girlfriend? It's less that he's voting for himself, and more that he's voting for the complete unit of him and his partner. ^^;
It's not that it's a bad thing that he did, it's just surprising that he's the only one who did it! I mean, looking at everyone else, neither Ana nor Gavin tried to get themselves up there (though Ana helped send Gavin up with Rain), Aidyn didn't vote for himself to go up with Colette, heck, even Holly herself didn't do the same "voting for themselves as a couple" thing Devon did. It stands out because if not for Devon doing it, everybody else's votes would've led me to believe they had some kind of enforcement mechanism against voting for yourself.
That's a fair enough point. My main thing with characters not voting for themselves is more about pointing out the kinds of relationships the kids all have with their friends and stuff. It's a whole bunch of fluff, really. XD
Like Maria voting for Emily, I think, is very meaningful given the roller coaster they've had with each other throughout the story. Similarly, Holly and Debbie still voting for Emily despite their falling out. And then Rain didn't want the win. Emily didn't think she could win. Gavin, Drew, and Colette probably didn't think they were going to win (and Colette likely didn't want it either). Stuff like that. Just a lot of selfless kids voting for their friends and whatnot.
As for Aidyn and Ana, they're junior year students, not eligible to be voted for. Otherwise, they probably would have voted for themselves and their dates. Though, Ana surely voted for Rain because she promised to give the tiara to her if she won (so in this case, Ana voting for Rain was almost kinda sorta like a vote for herself). XD
The way it seemed to me was that Devon voting for himself was a selfless act in a way. I don't think Devon would care too much about being King, but would know that Holly would love for them to be King and Queen together. So he's voting for himself for her. However, Holly wouldn't vote for herself, because that would be selfish, and she seems like a very kind and generous person.
The Comic Fury site was down for a long time yesterday. It's been down kind of a lot lately; I'm not sure if there's something going on internally or something, but unfortunately it's not something I have any control over.
I really enjoyed voting and I hope we get to do so again! :) I'm glad you found it fun, too, and I like hearing more about the other alternate would-have-been moments.
Despite my reservations at the beginning of the chapter/vote-reveal, I really enjoyed how the story unfolded. (I agree with your comments on the last page about how both Emily and Rain had to go through their personal trials in order to get to the point they did.) Rain's grown so much throughout the story, and this chapter really highlighted that. <3
Because rain is a girl? These are the votes that got cast. Rain and Gavin both won, remember? They had that awkward dance right before Rain gave Ana the tiara
Rain got announced as Prom King first because they counted her as a guy, but because Gavin has more total votes than Rain that doesn't even make sense. Even if she was misidentified as a guy Gavin should've been announced as Prom King to begin with.
The mistake wasn't that Rain's votes were counted toward "Prom King". The mistake was that the announcer saw Rain's deadname and assumed she had been voted King instead of Queen.
That doesn't make sense either. In that case the announcer would see that the winners are Gavin-701 and "Ryan"-590 and announce them as two kings. Or more likely he would just tell one of the teachers that there was some kind of mistake and they would explain him that "Ryan" is a typo.
For what it's worth, the idea behind the ballot was that all the readers voting were doing so as if they were St. Hallvard students. There were not over 1,600 people at this prom, though. Probably closer to a third of that (which is still a lot of kids, to be fair). But the truth is, I didn't pay that close attention to the number of votes specifically (my mindset being that 701 kids can't possibly vote for Gavin because there aren't even 701 kids there). I really only needed to know the winner, so I mostly focused on the order. With that in mind, I very specifically never quoted the number of votes in the ballot, nor the number of prom attendees in the comic so that nothing would seem off.
Unless I missed one, the image on this page is the second-largest in Rain, after the cast page image (and the largest that appears in the main archives on CF and SJ). That's in pixels, I haven't checked which is the largest in file size.
Nobody voted for Ky because, as you say, they're not a student. Unless you're asking about how did they cast a vote? In which case, they're allowed. I never said non-students couldn't vote.
I've been surprised to see a lot of people hung up on Devon voting for himself. Are we just missing the part where he's also voting for his girlfriend? It's less that he's voting for himself, and more that he's voting for the complete unit of him and his partner. ^^;
That's a fair enough point. My main thing with characters not voting for themselves is more about pointing out the kinds of relationships the kids all have with their friends and stuff. It's a whole bunch of fluff, really. XD
Like Maria voting for Emily, I think, is very meaningful given the roller coaster they've had with each other throughout the story. Similarly, Holly and Debbie still voting for Emily despite their falling out. And then Rain didn't want the win. Emily didn't think she could win. Gavin, Drew, and Colette probably didn't think they were going to win (and Colette likely didn't want it either). Stuff like that. Just a lot of selfless kids voting for their friends and whatnot.
As for Aidyn and Ana, they're junior year students, not eligible to be voted for. Otherwise, they probably would have voted for themselves and their dates. Though, Ana surely voted for Rain because she promised to give the tiara to her if she won (so in this case, Ana voting for Rain was almost kinda sorta like a vote for herself). XD
On the plus side, if this should happen again Rain is still now and always available on DeviantArt and SmackJeeves as well (it's exactly situations like this that I post the comic on multiple sites). Every site has hiccups sometimes, but it's unlikely all three will crash at the same time, so Rain is always accessible somehow if you need it. ^_^
DA - https://www.deviantart.com/jocelynsamara/gallery/27273884/rain-comic
SJ - http://www.smackjeeves.com/comicprofile.php?id=90588
Despite my reservations at the beginning of the chapter/vote-reveal, I really enjoyed how the story unfolded. (I agree with your comments on the last page about how both Emily and Rain had to go through their personal trials in order to get to the point they did.) Rain's grown so much throughout the story, and this chapter really highlighted that. <3
For what it's worth, the idea behind the ballot was that all the readers voting were doing so as if they were St. Hallvard students. There were not over 1,600 people at this prom, though. Probably closer to a third of that (which is still a lot of kids, to be fair). But the truth is, I didn't pay that close attention to the number of votes specifically (my mindset being that 701 kids can't possibly vote for Gavin because there aren't even 701 kids there). I really only needed to know the winner, so I mostly focused on the order. With that in mind, I very specifically never quoted the number of votes in the ballot, nor the number of prom attendees in the comic so that nothing would seem off.
Nobody voted for Ky because, as you say, they're not a student. Unless you're asking about how did they cast a vote? In which case, they're allowed. I never said non-students couldn't vote.
Only seniors could be nominated and voted in as King and Queen. But anyone present at prom can cast a vote. We even see Ky actively voting. ^_^
http://rain.thecomicseries.com/comics/1140/
http://rain.thecomicseries.com/comics/1142