Globalvision Season 13

The 13th season of the Globalvision Song Contest (also stylized as GV13 or Globalvision XIII) that started officially on August 24, with the draw of the first 36 countries being announced on that day. Some participants joined later and got the spots after the 36th in their order of submission on the thread. The reservation of countries started way earlier, on August 13, mostly for veteran participants, with the newbie submissions being open around the day of the start of the season. In the first official list, 40 countries were scheduled to participate again, but due to disqualifications the number got lowered to 36.

The final ceremony took place on 22nd of September. 6 new countries took place: Albania, Antigua & Barbuda, Argentina, Czechia, Latvia and the controversial Faroe Islands, brought respectively by @Marvsnr, @Artx, @Bloody Grammys, @ExMachina, @Sherloid Bai and @RAMROD. @ExMachina and @DiamondGypsy made their first official appearances on the contest. Meanwhile, there was also 2 participants that made their comebacks, @DelusionalGaga and @Sherloid Bai, who previously participated under the name @TOMP

After the over 5 hours long ceremony, Sweden took the trophy for the third time represented for a 12th time by @Bellatrix being this also his third victory. The song and artist that got the trophy were I Trance by Agnes.

Theme
The theme chosen for this season was vintage Hollywood. Many famous actors were used as spokespersons for the ceremony, appearing one every 3 country countries. The country name was decorated as a frame from a movie with the name of the country in it and an image from a movie recorded in the country showing a landscape from there. The votes followed a similar style, as movie frames with extra decoration.

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Returning artists
Delia came back after being featured in the romanian entry of season 11, breaking the rule of the mininum of 5 seasons between participations of the same artist which lead to a bit of controversy. Lilly among clouds came back after representing Germany in season 8. EDITA was part of the group Ministarke that was featured in the croatian entry in season 1. Mayra Andrade came back to the contest after failing to represent Cabo Verde in season 10, due to lack of votes from the participant that chose her to represent the country. SAARA last participated in season 7 representing Finland. Senidah appeared before as the lead singer of the band MUFF that represented Slovenia in seasons 6 and 8.

Final
India was initially drawn on 15th place, but due to failing to send the song to the host on time, it got disqualified on th 31st of August, the day it was scheduled to be revealed. Also Russia, Mexico and South Africa (initially drawn at 23rd, 36th and 37th place respectively) were disqualified for not sending their votes on the 20th of September. This would have been the first participation of South Africa.

Uniqueness Award
The winner of the award was announced during the final, right after the reveal of the position of the song that won the award. Switzerland was the winner of the award represented by Jessiquoi and her remarkable song "The Addict" chosen by @SwissMonster, being this his first award and the first one for the country. This entry got around 23% of the votes.

Other participants
@Josip decided to skip a season as a participant, but instead he joined to the jury panel.

@Blue Madonna officially withdrew on August 14, citing personal reasons as part of the decision, but leaving the possibility of a comeback in the near future.

@rumours and @Gam withdrew without citing any reasons or making any statements about their decision.

@Adarsh initially was going to participate representing India, but he failed to send his entry on time, so he got disqualified on August 31.

@Maic, @Jadeykins and @alextruper17 were disqualified for not sending their votes on time or not sending valid votes.

Faroe Islands
Once again the Faroe Islands were meant to take part in the contest, brought by RAMROD, but this time the announcement of the participation of this region brought some controversy. Technically, the islands are not a fully independent state, even thought it may act like one, as it still belongs to Kingdom of Denmark, so having this in mind, a few users were not pleased with the presence of Faroe Islands when the contest only accepted sovereign countries. In the end, due to the special political situation of the Faroe Islands, they were granted to remain in the game, even thought Denmark was available and the country switch wouldn't have affected the entry.

Delia comeback
Hours after the reveal of the first 5 songs, the host realised that the romanian entry should not be eligible to participate in this season, as the singer, Delia, already participated in the contest in season 11 representing Romania, even thought as a featured artist, that means that she was unable to come back at least until season 16 under the current rules. Initially, the host after revealing that on the main thread of the game, he also asked @FfFfFfFF to select a different entry. But after the support of a few participants, the host decided to let that mistake slide, so Delia's entry remained in the game.

Video battle
During the voting for the final results, a game was introduced to have participants entertained until the big day. The game consisted in a music video battle of past and current entries, submitted by participants and also by the host. 32 music videos competed and in each round the music videos were split in pairs, where only one of them was supposed to pass to the next phase. The first controversial moment occured during the fight between the swiss s13 entry "The Addict" and the greek s11 entry "Tómame", when both videos were constantly getting the same ammounts of votes, which led to spark critics and fights from both sides. The next controversial moment occured during the last battles of round 1, where the norwegian entry of s9 "Wolf" and the finnish entry of s10 "Dig Deep" where tied at the moment of the closing of the round. The host was the one meant to break the tie, but as he was unable to decide which video was better he announced that both songs would compete in round 2 against a third music video. Hours later one participant shared his votes for the last battles, even though winners where already announced, but the host accepted the votes leaving the norwegian entry out of round 2 and creating another tie in the battle between the romanian entry of s10 "Bolnavi Amandoi" and the australian entry of s2 "The Trouble With Us" (that was ahead before the extra votes where added). In this occasion the host decided to push Romania to round 2, leaving Australia out of the competition.

Once again during the last battle, where 4 songs were competing with the vietnamese entry of s12 "Mời Anh Vào Team Em" and the armenian entry of s10 "Hayastani Axjikner" leading the poll. Many participants started to argue that the armenian entry had a higher quality realization than the vietnamese and that the voting seemed a joke as people didn't vote for the video itself, as even some of them were switching their votes constantly. In the end, more votes came for Armenia, leading it to win the final battle.

Flickr reveal of votes
During the first hour of the ceremony one of the participants clicked on the images of the votes that the host had posted on the thread and he realised that all the remaining vote visuals were available in the flickr account of @teenidle, meaning that he saw the final results as they were available there. A few other users jumped in the flickr account after he posted on the thread were the ceremony was held that he saw everything on flickr, but none of them revealed anything, they just kept the results for themselves or left the ceremony. This haven't occured in the past as usually the host kept the visuals private until he had to post them, but that took him more time so he didn't do it this time. At least the ceremony went as planned and only a few users dared to check the results before the official reveal.

Jury controversy
Probably the most controversial topic since the beginning of the contest. Once again it sparked some arguments when new jury members appeared on the thread, brought specially by other participants, which led to think that they would boost the entries of their friends rather than voting objectively. Some participants demanded changes in the jury system, to lower the power of the jury panel, specially for new jury members that haven't shown yet professionalism towards the voting process. There weren't any changes applied on the votes of this season. Some entries got a big jury push, earning more points from juries than from participants, something that probably didn't happen before. One of those was Ukraine, who got the most points from juries, when it was 16th in participant vote, earning that way a top 10 result. After the end of the season some participants shared their proposals to change the jury system, but this topic was left to be handled before the beginning of season 14.