#2026 bracket

Who is the Sexiest Fictional Podcast Character? 2026 Edition.

Hello! Welcome back as we undertake our fifth attempt to find the sexiest fictional podcast character! How did we get here? First, when tumblr polls were new, fictionpodsexyperson ran a 64 entrant single-elimination bracket, but deactivated before the final two rounds (however, we performed a minor act of necromancy and saw them through, but that's getting ahead of ourselves). In the fall of 2023 I ran three single-elimination brackets with 64 Non-Night Vale scripted characters, 64 unscripted characters, and 32 Night Vale character. The 2024 brackets were delayed to 2025, as I figured out how to structure two double elimination brackets, with 64 scripted character and 32 unscripted characters. The 2025 tournament was a 10 character round robin, using the previous winners.

Which brings us to now.

Due unscripted podcasts being less popular in general* on Tumblr (as seen both in number of submissions and average votes per poll (last year 366 for the scripted bracket and 288 for the unscripted bracket)), I have seeded the scripted and unscripted characters separately, although they are still in one bracket and will start going against each other in Round 3. Due to filling out the polls with some honorary mentions from last year, we have more scripted characters than unscripted characters.

After 85** submissions for 66 characters from 42 podcasts, 2 honorary mentions and 6 late submissions from 2024, and 2 characters of Mod's selection, we held one round of preliminaries that received 1,402 votes across 7 polls. This year we will be holding a single elimination bracket, which means if a character loses once they are out of the running (except for the third place poll).

*The TAZ tumblr fandom in 2017–2018 is an outlier adn should be handled carefully, with the 2013–2014 WtNV fandom and the 2020-ish TMA fandom.

**This includes a submission for Moth which came after the Hello From The Hallowoods preliminary was already running.

Round 1:

So, submissions are pretty low even though the form has been up for almost a year, which means the 2026 Sexiest Podcast Character tournament will have 64 characters (for context: 2023 had 160 and 2024 had 96) which means I could fit them in one spreadsheet instead of splitting them up. Additionally, we're only 75% of the way full for the Unscripted Bracket but there's a handful of scripted characters that were submitted for the 2024 tournament after I was done running preliminaries that I feel bad about neglecting. So I could mix them all together like I've done for the mini-brackets.

Who is the Sexiest Fictional Podcast Character? 2026 Edition.

We started off this bracket with 7,588 votes across 32 polls, including some votes by a phantom! Over the final day of the poll, Atlas Edwards-Caruth (who was so far behind I wasn't keeping track) silently and steadily rose in votes until they overtook Mercedes Oak-Garcia in the final hours. While I cannot discard individual votes from the phantom, I will be leaving their chosen candidate in Round 1. We will see if there are any consequences to this hubris.

Other polls of note include Niklaus Hendrix vs Bruce Wayne, who were neck-and-neck all week although Bruce was usually in the lead, and Konora vs Worm where Konora had a healthy lead until Worm's creator found her and overnight Worm shot past Konora, before Konora eventually clawed her way back to the lead.

Round 2 may drop this weekend, although I am about to be very busy as next weekend I will be in Colorado for The Audio Fiction Convention (TAFCON) and the start of our Summer Reading Program means I can't take off time from work, just shuffle it around. So, maybe polls this weekend, maybe polls Friday June 19th/Sunday June 21st.

Preliminaries. Round 1.

Round 2:

In 2023:

Ties were if tumblr rounded to 50.0%.

If it would have been a tie without my vote, I removed my vote to encourage #Love Wins.

In 2024 (well, 2025):

Ties had to be exact — no rounding.

Ties were not allowed in the Undefeated Brackets, so if it was a tie I removed my vote because #Love Loses.

I feel like I shouldn't mention this part, but from my personal blog I revealed a site you could use to coordinate ties and then y'all got really good at ties, nearly resulting in 7 victors.

In 2026:

Ties must be exact — both the bars must be blue.

I don't know yet if I'm merging them but in the meantime submissions are still open for the Unscripted Bracket except for:

Dungeons and Daddies: Odyssey/Quest

Eidolon Playtest: Pop/Rock

Eidolon Playtest: VGM/EDM

Hope's Hearth

The Adventure Zone: Balance

If you only want to see these polls, the main tags to block are #Propaganda, #Post-Polls Reactions, #Results, #Other Polls, #Not A Poll

Fuller list of tags here.

I reblog pretty much any addition, including anti-propaganda, as long as it isn't insulting to real people.

Suicide threats/jokes are not allowed. You will be blocked.

Bribes are allowed as long as it isn't cryptocurrency or real money to strangers.

Check out #Rules and #Voter Fraud for more.

Each round gets their own tag. I usually link to sexiestpodcastcharacter.tumblr.com/tagged/[tag] because I resent the way tumblr is moving from open blogs to closed social media, but if you want to easily be able to vote on the polls from desktop you should go to tumblr.com/sexiestpodcastcharacter/tagged/[tag].

If you think I should have reblogged a post and didn't, send a message via the askbox or instant messages. Sometimes I miss things, especially if there is a fancy font or multimedia component. If I purposefully ignored the post, I will tell you the reason.

Propaganda asks get responded to with random unicode, so as not to be influenced by my own biases. This bracket is pulling from the domino symbols.

Preliminaries are live as of May 13th:

Dungeons & Daddies: Odyssey/Quest

Eidolon Playtest: VGM/EDM

Episode One

Sherlock & Co.

Hello from the Hallowoods (live May 19th)

The Magnus Archives (live May 19th)

The Silt Verses (live May 19th)

Structural Polls:

Are Genevieve St. Cloud and Saint Genevieve the same character? (Verdict: 3 votes yes, 0 votes no, 0 votes nuance.)

Change the per-podcast limits? (Verdict: tie, Mod decided not to.)

Is Episode One scripted or unscripted? (Verdict: 8 votes scripted, 2 votes unscripted, 0 votes nuance.)

Like is this a Helen Richardson vs Helen Distortion situation (different people), an Isabel Lovelace and Isabel Lovelace situation (same person), or a Michael Walters (cowboy) vs Mike Walters (all of them) situation? Could it be like 2023 when "Nicky Close" was submitted who was actually Nicky Foster (adult) from a different universe than Nick Close (child, deceased) neither of which are biologically related to Nicky Jr (rat)? Or is the difference in title unrelated to the difference in the original vs virtual copy vs clone body?

Basically, was one character submitted or two?

Additionally: