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2012 Fanfiction Awards - planning thread

The Great Butler

Hush, keep it down
With the end of the year rapidly coming up, we'll once again be in awards season very soon. Like always, we'll be having honors for fics and authors as voted by the users themselves.

Here is the list of categories that were used in last year's awards.

Overall Fiction Awards
Best Pokémon Chaptered Fic
Best Pokémon One-Shot
Best Non-Pokémon Chaptered Fic
Best Non-Pokémon One-Shot

Other Fic Awards
Best Plot
Most Original Overall
Best Writing Style
Best Description
Best Setting
Best Expansion of Canon
Best Character Development
Best Characterization in a Short Story
Best Romantic Relationship
Best Non-Romantic Relationship/Interaction
Best Original Species
Most Suspenseful Fic
Most Heartbreaking Fic

Pokémon Genre Awards
Best Trainer Fic
Best Horror Fic
Best Comedy Fic
Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Fic
Best Pokémon-Centric
Best Canon Character-Centric

Character Awards
Best Human Main Character
Best Non-Human Main Character
Best Human Supporting Character
Best Non-Human Supporting Character
Best Human Villain
Best Non-Human Villain
Best Minor Character
Funniest Character

Fic Moments Awards
Funniest Scene
Most Frightening Scene
Most Heartbreaking Scene
Most Heartwarming Scene
Best Action Scene
Best Cliffhanger
Most Memorable Quote

Author Awards
Best Established Writer
Best New Writer
Most Dedicated Writer
Most Improved Writer

Reviewer Awards
Most Helpful Reviewer
Most Dedicated Reviewer

This list was responded to fairly positively last year, so I don't have anything in mind to modify it with. That said, I'm open to suggestions for things to consider.

The main issue that was raised last year was the need for a limit on how many nominations a single story or single author could get. I've decided that that is something I want to incorporate into the rules this year, but I'm going to need input to decide how to format it. Should it be a limit on nominations for a single story? For a single author? What should the cutoff number be?
 

Diddy

Renegade
We should have an award for "Best person who kinda faded away from writing Pokémon Fanfiction but still hangs around and chimes in on the discussions in the Author's Café every now and then and still kinda wants to write Pokémon fanfiction, but just hasn't really got the time with all of their other fandom fanfiction obligations."

And then vote for me.

In all seriousness, I think we've got a very stable set of categories and I've not seen anything really wrong with it the past two years at least. Unless someone noticed something off about the last awards, I thought it was a great system.
 

SilentMemento

Lone Wolf
In my honest opinion, a five category limit should be set for both writers and fics per voter (a single voter can vote for the same person and/or fic five times and no more). My reasoning for this would be that it would encourage people to delve into other fics and branch out. It would also give authors/authoresses who aren't as well known a lot more positive recognition than they would normally receive.

But a limit has to be set this year. It's completely unfair to the writers who are just starting to get their name out if people keep voting for the same fics and people just because they know them better. There's plenty of great fics on this site to vote for; we just haven't read them yet.

Just my honest opinion.
 

Shadow Lucario

Lone Vanguard
In my honest opinion, a five category limit should be set for both writers and fics per voter (a single voter can vote for the same person and/or fic five times and no more). My reasoning for this would be that it would encourage people to delve into other fics and branch out. It would also give authors/authoresses who aren't as well known a lot more positive recognition than they would normally receive.

But a limit has to be set this year. It's completely unfair to the writers who are just starting to get their name out if people keep voting for the same fics and people just because they know them better. There's plenty of great fics on this site to vote for; we just haven't read them yet.

Just my honest opinion.

I agree with this. I noticed a lot of new authors springing up this year, more so than before and it wouldn't be fair to them if only the already established writers won every other category besides Best New Writer.
 

JX Valentine

Ever-Discordant
In my honest opinion, a five category limit should be set for both writers and fics per voter (a single voter can vote for the same person and/or fic five times and no more). My reasoning for this would be that it would encourage people to delve into other fics and branch out. It would also give authors/authoresses who aren't as well known a lot more positive recognition than they would normally receive.

This. And can we also have license to slap any voter who goes "lol wish i could've voted for more but i tl;dr'd everyone but my fav author"? :|

On the serious side, it'd be nice to put this limit in place. I mean, while I know there's some voters out there who still won't branch out and read anyone else's work (not naming names, although I'd like to say that outright stating that you do this is not cool, jsyk), but it's the principle of it, anyway. Besides, ballots full of just one author for literally every single category is rather unsettling for everyone else in the forum, so keeping that from happening would be pretty nice. The way Silent formatted it makes complete sense, by the by, in that while it's possible for an author to be nominated more than five times, they don't get nominated by a single person, so if they, for example, get nominated for every category, that at least makes it feel like they're more likely to deserve it (as opposed to feeling like they got into every category because their best friend nominated them that way). So in short, it's just fair all around.

Also, to Diddy, well! Some fic communities do have a "most missed" category in their awards. :p
 

Dilasc

Boip!
We should have an award for "Best person who kinda faded away from writing Pokémon Fanfiction but still hangs around and chimes in on the discussions in the Author's Café every now and then and still kinda wants to write Pokémon fanfiction, but just hasn't really got the time with all of their other fandom fanfiction obligations."

Hmmm....


And then vote for me.


Wait, wut? Sadfaced!

Oh well, hopefully this year the rise of the audio fanfiction will warrant it as its own catergories.
 

The Great Butler

Hush, keep it down
I am in agreement on the need for a limit. What's in question in my mind is, what's the cutoff point? Where do we set the limit?

The suggestion currently on the table as per SilentMemento is to limit each voter to nominating the same author and/or same fic no more than five times. What is the opinion on this?
 

bobandbill

Winning Smile
Staff member
Super Mod
I am fine with that, personally. If that gets changed then I would be for maybe a slight decrease in the number of times a particular fic can be nominated by any one nominator (say three).

Maybe there should be a minimum limit too? As in, someone can't just nominate works by one author, but at least x different authors?
 

The Great Butler

Hush, keep it down
I am fine with that, personally. If that gets changed then I would be for maybe a slight decrease in the number of times a particular fic can be nominated by any one nominator (say three).

Worth considering, though I'm not quite sure how I feel about three just yet.

Maybe there should be a minimum limit too? As in, someone can't just nominate works by one author, but at least x different authors?

I don't know, I think this needs some more discussion.
 

JX Valentine

Ever-Discordant
Maybe there should be a minimum limit too? As in, someone can't just nominate works by one author, but at least x different authors?

I'd be okay with this. Because for serious, guys, it does not take that much time and effort to do your homework. I was a grad student going through finals last year, and this was my nominations post. It's literally not that hard. All you have to do is read the first few paragraphs (or page) of a fic, and if it's just not grabbing you, move on to the next one. You can get through at least ten fics in an hour this way. Helps if you start early, too.

(Note: I know some of you are going, "But you can't get the full picture of a fic within a chapter!" And sure, you can't get the more detailed things like characterization and plot. However, if you can't catch a reader's attention by the first page, then you probably should rethink what you're doing in your first chapter. After all, if your story "doesn't get good until chapter Y," then why should we wade through X chapters of boring material that doesn't reflect your writing abilities? Besides, the above trick is just to get your foot in a reader's door. Naturally, I've read or skimmed all of the fics I nominated last year, but that was only after eliminating every single one that didn't catch my attention in the first place. That's what I'm suggesting you do as well: eliminate the ones you just can't care about and then read a chapter or two -- or the whole thing if you have the time -- of the ones that do.)

But in any case, we keep saying "let's do this to have readers/voters branch out and read new fic" every year, and, well, people just don't do that. In fact, it's more frequent that we have people going, "olol just nominating and voting for three people to fulfill the requirements because I'm too lazy busy to read~! :D" This would be an interesting way to get people to read more than a handful this year.

Not to mention it doesn't have to be particularly high anyway. Let's go with an example. With the story and author limit in place, Missingno. Master can only be nominated a maximum of five times. That's a measly five nominations. While there's no minimum for how many nominations you can submit, that's still an embarrassingly small suggestions list. But! If the minimum number of authors you need to nominate is three, then you can add in Cutlerine and bobandbill to your list, and that amounts to a maximum of fifteen nominations. Suddenly, you've got plenty of ammo, just by reading three or four fics. Easy.

Besides that, most people nominated at least three authors anyway last year, especially after the author/story limit was put in place. It seems like an average number to begin with, so... yeah. (And I certainly wouldn't oppose bumping it up to four authors, either.)
 

Sid87

I love shiny pokemon
I'll let you guys work out all these limits because I wasn't here last year, so I don't know how it did/should work, but here's my thought:

This might be splitting hairs for some, but what about separating BEST fic from FAVORITE fic? For instance, I have two of the fics I read here in mind. One, I think is superbly written and tells a great, artistic story. The other is my favorite to READ and the one I get most excited to see an update of. I definitely think one is the "best", but the other might be my "favorite".

Like I said...might just be splitting hairs, though.
 

JX Valentine

Ever-Discordant
This might be splitting hairs for some, but what about separating BEST fic from FAVORITE fic? For instance, I have two of the fics I read here in mind. One, I think is superbly written and tells a great, artistic story. The other is my favorite to READ and the one I get most excited to see an update of. I definitely think one is the "best", but the other might be my "favorite".

For a lot of people, these tend to be the same thing. (Won't say fortunately or unfortunately about it, but.) See, a lot of people like fics because they think it's particularly well-written according to their standards, even if those standards differ from other people. Certainly, the whole point of the awards is to promote well-written fic, but what that is and isn't tends to vary from person to person, even if we all use the same loose definitions. For example, let's say that two people define a well-written fic as being proofread and having good prose. Sure, that seems specific, but maybe one person finds one story tedious and mediocre while another says it's a perfect example of prose done well.

Point is, there's a lot of people who, when reading their favorites, say things like, "This is awesome! It's got a great story and absolutely no spelling errors that I could find!" Except other people might pass them over for other fics because they don't see the appeal. That and a lot of people tend to stick with their favorite fics anyway, so for them, their favorites are, in their view, the best written.

And yeah, I know we're not talking about subjectivity or anything. I'm just saying that a lot of people do frequent their favorites as it is, so in the end, their favorites are what they view to be the best already. The only snag is that "best" according to one person isn't always going to be the same as "best" for another person, hence why we get a full variety of fics in the awards every year. Not complaining about that, of course, because the awards seriously wouldn't be interesting if we didn't.

Or I guess the tl;dr version of it is that the awards are already for fics that readers of the forum view to be the best; it just so happens that a lot of the time, those fics are their favorites too.
 

Sidewinder

Ours is the Fury
I agree with what Mem said above in terms of a limit.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't see a place for 'Best Adventure' in the Pokemon Genre section. Sci-Fi, Horror, and Comedy are all genres that fit, but I read a few fics that don't really fall into any categories listed in the Genre section, and I feel like they could best be described as a adventure-centric tory. Lol I hope that makes sense, and if so, is that something that could be added, or are the categories pretty much set in terms of Genre?
 

Firebrand

Indomitable
I agree with what Mem said above in terms of a limit.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but I didn't see a place for 'Best Adventure' in the Pokemon Genre section. Sci-Fi, Horror, and Comedy are all genres that fit, but I read a few fics that don't really fall into any categories listed in the Genre section, and I feel like they could best be described as a adventure-centric tory. Lol I hope that makes sense, and if so, is that something that could be added, or are the categories pretty much set in terms of Genre?

I think I proposed this one last year, under the heading of best journey fic. Though I can't remember what came of it...
 

JX Valentine

Ever-Discordant
I think I proposed this one last year, under the heading of best journey fic. Though I can't remember what came of it...

IIRC, while it was decided it's true that journey fics and trainer fics aren't necessarily the same thing, it was also decided that one was a subset of the other, so just having trainer fics be a category would've been sufficient enough.

As for a category for adventure, I think that might be a bit stickier of a subject. The reason why sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, and horror all get their own categories is because they're all distinct genres. When you go into a sci-fi fic, you know it's a sci-fi fic. Adventure tends to be a genre that's less clearly defined. While, sure, it's about a character going on an adventure, what separates that from the trainer fic genre if it features a trainer, for example? What about separating it from the action or suspense genres? There's a lot of crossover going on with adventure fics, so it could end up being messier to find nominations for because you can't entirely look at a fic and go, "Oh, that's definitely an adventure fic," whereas you can totally do that with sci-fi fics, comedy fics, trainer fics, and so forth.

But that's also probably just me.

Meantimes, there's been a lot of PMD fics this year (although that's true for every year, but still), and I'm wondering if that could be a possible category -- or if it would actually fall under the Pokémon-Centric one.
 

Firebrand

Indomitable
Meantimes, there's been a lot of PMD fics this year (although that's true for every year, but still), and I'm wondering if that could be a possible category -- or if it would actually fall under the Pokémon-Centric one.

I'd probably put that one under pokemon-centric because... well, they are. I suppose a category focusing on those specifically might be workable, but it would seem to me that they are just an offshoot of the pokemon-centric genre.

(also, don't think I'm disregarding the other stuff in that post. I've just got nothing to add/refute)
 

Brutaka

Ignition
Meantimes, there's been a lot of PMD fics this year (although that's true for every year, but still), and I'm wondering if that could be a possible category -- or if it would actually fall under the Pokémon-Centric one.

To be honest, I'm all for that one. (Please disregard the fact that my fic is PMD. Just, uh, look to your left ---->Ha, you failed. Anyways...)

I haven't been around too much to say though. I'm a new writer this year, so i wasnt around to the awards in action last year. But, PMD fics, in my opinion, should have its own category, much like, say, trainer fics do. In my honest opinion, there's a big difference between a fic staring a pokemon in a human setting having an adventure and a story about Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.

The difference doesn't seem big when told like this, but if you doubt it, then go read a couple PMD fics, or write your own. Then you can really see the difference. The story, the attitude, the feel, its all different. That's my two cents anyways. Im sure some people agree.
 

Knightfall

Blazing Wordsmith
I'd have to agree with Brutaka on this one, being a PMD author myself.

I've read trainer fics, journey fics, and many, many other types, but PMD is just so "out there" when compared to journey or trainer fics. The basic storyline, the characters seen in them, and not to mention there's usually no humans other then the main character at all in. All things that differenciate them from other fics.

Lumping them in with the others just doesn't seem fitting in my opinion.

Knightfall signing off... ;005;
 

Azurus

The Ancient Absol
Agreed on the last two posts as well, for myself I don't really want to wade through several genres and the stories to find a PMD setting, I'd rather just find PMD right off the bat in it's own category.

I wonder if I made any sense, but as an aspiring author, I would like a PMD genre category to have my story under as it just wouldn't fit anywhere else.
 
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