[quote=@Krayzikk]
Congratulations to all the winners, and I'm not really surprised by the selections made. You all did a fantastic job. I'd go more in depth, but for about half of you I did that ages ago. =P

That said, I do have a mild objection. I saw several people (I think I counted three, including myself) that were largely disqualified from consideration because they "weren't enough of a bad guy". Now, this might seem a little odd given that the contest was to make a villainous version of our characters... But that's just it. Neither the term "bad guy" nor "villain" actually denote a degree of evil. Even the more detailed aspects of the contest overview didn't provide an indicator of "must be this evil to qualify".

Both villain and bad guy simply refer to the antagonistic force with evil methods of a given work of fiction. In fact, every entry in the entire contest was significantly more evil than every canon RWBY villain. Ben (who I use as an example only because I'm the most familiar with him), by all accounts intended as an Anti-Villain, kills people. There are only two antagonists in RWBY with an [i]existent[/i] death tally, and that tally amounts to one person. 

I suppose my complaint is that the contest descriptor only really indicated that we should be making the villain of a story, and villains aren't inherently mass murdering mentally unstable people. Mass murdering mentally unstable people qualify, beyond a shadow of a doubt, as villains; but so do characters with goals and personalities that, were it not for their methods, would easily be on the side of the angels.

In the future, it'd be nice if we could know to what degree we're supposed to do something. There are characters with significantly less evil methods that were considered, while some with evil methods but nobler goals weren't deemed villainous enough. It'd be nice to know for the future so I, and others, don't have to default to the generic extreme just so we can be sure we meet the standards.

Because by the definitions given, every entry was villainous. It just seems like there was a metric we were missing.
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I took the term 'bad guy' as the deciding factor here.  To me, bad guy is not debatable; to have bad as the main qualifier, you've got to be doing so much bad that the label envelops the character.  This isn't Wreck-it Ralph.  To be on the opposing side isn't enough, and to accomplish good things in bad ways is to be degrees of an anti-hero.  The reason Grane qualified is because he hasn't accomplished anything good, and it's up to real debate whether or not he ever will.  That's part of the tragedy.  It makes him a bad guy; all the great things that Ben has done for people make him a good guy with a bad rap by some people.  If I want evil, I'd rather have an evil character than just evil methods.  I'll admit that evil is a broad term, and murderlusting serial killers have a place there at one end of the spectrum, but I'm not at all, I don't think, encouraging a generic standard.  The top five entries were all unique, despite the fact that they all killed people.

As for you bringing up the canon...why?  Our contests are something that's non-canon in a non-canon fan work of an actual thing.  The most creative liberties can be taken here.

I'm sorry my judging style didn't appeal to you.  Your main post is right, there's an unclear metric in play: me.  I can't give a real metric of what I like and don't like, and the limited scope of what I ask for compared to the massive spectrum of what I got.  I could only draw the line in the sand after combing the beach.  If that makes me suck as a judge, so be it, but if nobody makes a contest for a month, I'll be the one that does it, and people have only to not participate to make me stop.