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Sterek Wins 2014 Ultimate Slash Madness Tournament!

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All hail Sterek!

32 popular fantasy m/m couples from TV and film competed this year, nearly 5.5 million votes were cast, and in the end fans of Sterek (our original 2012 winner and 2013 runner-up) emerged triumphant-- an impressive feat considering Teen Wolf characters Derek Hale (Tyler Hoechlin) and Stiles Stilinski (Dylan O'Brien) have interacted very little of late on the show itself.

No surprise, but Sterek's biggest Slash Madness competition came in Round 3 when they were pitted against last year's winner Destiel (Supernatural's Dean & Castiel) in the "Big Guns" Division. Together Destiel & Sterek generated nearly 3 million votes and Sterek squeaked by with a narrow lead.

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With fellow Big Gun Destiel vanquished, the final round was more of a victory lap for Sterek. They were up against finalists in the other three divisions and handily beat Rising Star Hannigram (#2), Classic slash ship McShep (#3), and Big Screen contender Stucky (#4).

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Fans of each division's winning couple should be proud they got their favorite pairing to the finals!

We learned a lot with this year's Slash Madness that will probably influence how we run next year's tournament. First, that Sterek and Destiel are clearly the twin titans in the slash universe and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. Even so, fans want attention paid to smaller ships too. Slash Madness can't just be the Sterek & Destiel show every year.

We also discovered that CAPTCHA was (mostly) a hit. Slash fans are willing to put up with the extra hassle in order to ensure that all voting is done manually (no bots!)

Finally, we were introduced to some amazingly talented artists this year through the #slashmadness tag on Tumblr. We highlighted our favorite fanart throughout the competition and this gorgeous, romantic and cleverly ironic illustration from The Dreamchaser (mgnemesi.tumblr.com) seemed to sum up the final round perfectly!

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Artist: mgnemesi

TheBacklot is, as ever, grateful to slash fandom for allowing us to host this annual poll for you. We'd really love to hear your thoughts on how we can make the competition even better next year, so please let us know in the comments.

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