Spirit Lake: The Winner

Wow.

Okay, that was one of the most fun competitions I've run so far. The Exquisite Corpse competition is shaping up brilliantly— the standard on display is just mind-boggling— but the Spirit Lake contest has just been fun from start to finish.

So here's what I did.

I collected all of the names of the people who entered, both here on this Blog and on Twitter, and I divided them into bundles. I made sure that each and every one had a valid reason for why they should be a video game character. Some of these reasons made sense. Some were just odd. Some were VERY odd. There are people, both Minions and Ronda Rousey fans, who are just unsettling. I'm not entirely sure how their brains work— if indeed their brains work at all.    

To give you a hint of what I've been dealing with, here are a few reasons you people gave. "Because of my neurax worms." "Because I like pie." "Because I'm short.""Because I've watched Robot Wars.""Because I have a psychic elephant.""Because I have a need for speed.""Because I'm not very smart (which will make the player feel better about themselves).""Because I am Dr Who.""Because I sometimes think that I'm the only human being in the world. The rest of you are all aliens.""I would make an awesome video game character because I already AM an awesome video game character.""Because I am actually Lakota (the Spirit Lake people are my Dakota relatives)."

So I divided you all up, and those of you who entered multiple times got your names put into as many groups as possible. From each of these groups, a winner was chosen. The winners were then put into a hat.

(Not an ACTUAL hat, since I don't own one, but a METAPHORICAL hat.)

(Okay, fine, I wrote all your names on a sheet of paper and I let my cat walk on it, and the closest one to where her tail touched down was the winner.)

And sooooo... without further ado... the winner is...

Willow Kowalski!

Yayyyyyyy Willow! The only thing I know about Willow is that she's five years old (so, er, she can wait a few years before she starts reading my books) and she's a Ronda fan... It's a lovely prize, and I can't think of anyone it'd make happier.