2018 Fanfiction Awards - NOMINATIONS

[Dragonfree]

The 2018 Serebii.Net Forums Fanfiction Awards
Hosted by Dragonfree and The Great Butler​

Happy 2019, everyone! It's time to get nominating for the annual fanfiction awards, recognizing our favorite stories from the past year!

As in previous years, nominations take place on the Serebii.Net Forums Fanfiction Awards website.

View nominations - Nominate​

The Rules

- The nomination phase of the awards lasts from January 1st, 2019, 00:00 UTC to February 13th, 2019, 23:59 UTC. If necessary due to low nomination totals, an extension to February 26th, 2019, 23:59 UTC will be given.

- Any member of the Serebii.net forums may nominate for the Fanfiction Awards. Nominations should be submitted through the special 2018 Fanfiction Awards website, located here; to nominate, go here. You will have to verify that you control a Serebii.net forums account in order to nominate or vote, either through an automated process involving editing your user profile or by PMing me (Dragonfree) here on the forums. Further instructions can be found on the site.

- Broadly, anything posted in the Fan Fiction, Completed Fics or Non-Pokémon Fics forums in 2018, defined as the period from January 1st, 2018, 00:00 UTC to December 31st, 2018, 23:59 UTC according to the forum's post timestamps, is eligible for nomination. Specifically, for the "Fic Moments" awards, the nominated moment should be from an installment posted in 2018; for more general story awards, at least one installment of it must have been posted in 2018; and for author/reviewer awards, the member in question must have posted at least one fic/review in 2018. The site will automatically enforce this as far as possible.

- When nominating, you may place up to two nominations in each category. You must nominate at least four different authors or their works in all. You may not nominate the same story more than five times total, or the same author more than six times total. Additionally, you may not nominate yourself or your own works in any category. The awards site enforces these limits automatically.

- Asking other people to nominate your work is not allowed. It is up to your readers to decide whether they want to nominate you. The same goes for applying implicit pressure to nominate you (e.g. messaging your friends about how the awards are going on and linking to your fics, without saying in so many words that you want them to nominate you). You may call attention to the awards and encourage people to nominate their favorite fics in general, to boost participation, but attaching advertisements for your particular work to any such post is not appropriate. Failure to conform to these guidelines may result in disqualification from this year's awards.


Feel free to ask questions, discuss the nomination process or report any bugs or issues with the awards site in this thread.

 

[The Walrein]

Alright, can't wait to start nominating! I have one question, though: How strict is the definition of a 'New Author' for the "Best Pokemon Chaptered Fic (New Author)" award? I'd kind of like to nominate NebulaDreams' The Curious And The Shiny for that category, but, although NebulaDreams posted the majority of his work in 2018, he did post a one-shot on Dec. 20th, 2017, which would seem to technically disqualify him from being considered a 'New Author'.

 

[Dragonfree]

Unfortunately we have to put the cut-off point somewhere, and the most sensible cut-off point is for new authors to be authors who started posting their work after the eligibility period for the previous awards ended. And Deli's Delivery Service was not only eligible for last year's awards, but actually nominated! So I think it's fair to consider NebulaDreams an established author this year, though the cutoff is very close.

 

[Dragonfree]

Award FAQs

Q: How do I find out whether someone's a new author?

The easiest way to find out is to go to the person's profile, click the "Postings" tab, and find the "Find all threads by [username]" at the bottom.

Then you can check out what threads they've posted in the fanfic forum and when they were posted. If they've been around for many years and posted a lot of threads in other forums, this list might be unwieldy; in such cases, you can also go to the main Fan Fiction forum, click the search bar near the top right of the page, enter their username into the "Posted by member" box, and check Search this forum only and Display results as threads; this will unfortunately show all threads they've posted in rather than only threads that they created, but each result will show the avatar of the person who created the thread, so it should be easy to skim through for threads that they actually started. Unfortunately, neither of these methods are precisely ideal, but last time I tried to manually wrangle the forum to search for threads by a particular person in a particular forum, it didn't work. I may try again later.

Q: What about spoilers?

You can use BBCode in your nomination details and comments, including a spoiler tag that will hide the contents until clicked. Don't overuse it, however. If nominating a scene containing truly important spoilers that people shouldn't know before reading the fic, simply describing what scene you're talking about in a non-spoilery way that makes it clear which scene you mean (e.g. "The final scene of chapter 20" or "The scene in chapter 34 where X's identity is revealed") is preferred over spoiler-tagging the entire scene or large parts of it. If you're not sure whether something is an important spoiler that shouldn't be revealed in the nomination list, please consult the author of the story (but err on the side of considering it a spoiler).

If you as an author feel that someone's nomination for your work contains an unmarked spoiler you don't want on the form, please contact Dragonfree about editing the nomination.

 

[Umbramatic]

Question, does any fanfic starring human Trainers qualify as a Trainer fic for the "best Trainer Fic" award, or does it need to follow specific trainer fic tropes?

 

[Dragonfree]

Question, does any fanfic starring human Trainers qualify as a Trainer fic for the "best Trainer Fic" award, or does it need to follow specific trainer fic tropes?

Trainer fic is a genre, and the genre is not defined solely by featuring human trainers; if that's the only feature it has in common with what'd usually be called trainer fics, I probably would not call it one, any more than any story with a romance in it is part of the romance genre. I'm not sure I can think of an example of something I'd consider a trainer fic that doesn't specifically involve a trainer as the main character on a journey, but I'm not sure I'd consider that a singular defining quality of the genre either, and I'm sure others would disagree on precisely what they'd consider a trainer fic.

Like with PMD fics, I think we might as well go by self-identification. If in doubt, well, does the author consider it to be a trainer fic?

 

[Umbramatic]

Okay. Second, for the reviewer awards, can you submit a review they put in for one of your fics?

 

[Dragonfree]

Absolutely! The review isn't by you.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Is it ok to do a "for your consideration" sort of thing like movie companies do in magazines around award time? It isn't asking for nominations, sort of a "hey awards are going around and there's this thing that's good so do with it what you will".

 

[Dragonfree]

Is it ok to do a "for your consideration" sort of thing like movie companies do in magazines around award time? It isn't asking for nominations, sort of a "hey awards are going around and there's this thing that's good so do with it what you will".

I'm afraid we're agreed that while you may call attention to the awards generally, suggesting particular fics to nominate in that context would not be appropriate. This applies whether the fics in question are your own or other people's.

 

[Firaga Metagross]

Hey I see that TheAlpar's The Child of Thorns isn't on the nomination list. It updated this year and one of their other works is on, so I was wondering if this was intentional or not.

 

[The Great Butler]

Hey I see that TheAlpar's The Child of Thorns isn't on the nomination list. It updated this year and one of their other works is on, so I was wondering if this was intentional or not.

If it is eligible for any certain category or categories, it is not on the list simply because it has not yet been nominated by anyone. Our nominations are user-submitted, so if you wish to see it, I encourage you to fill out a ballot! You will likely find many other things you enjoy while reading things to fill it out.

Unless, are you saying someone nominated it and it hasn't appeared on the list yet?

 

[Firaga Metagross]

If it is eligible for any certain category or categories, it is not on the list simply because it has not yet been nominated by anyone. Our nominations are user-submitted, so if you wish to see it, I encourage you to fill out a ballot! You will likely find many other things you enjoy while reading things to fill it out.

Unless, are you saying someone nominated it and it hasn't appeared on the list yet?

Perhaps I should clarify: I went into the nominations site, went to the drop down list for which story I want to nominate, and it wasn't listed under the eligible fics, despite definitely having updated in 2018. It's simply missing from the list of possible to nominate fics on the site.

 

[The Great Butler]

Perhaps I should clarify: I went into the nominations site, went to the drop down list for which story I want to nominate, and it wasn't listed under the eligible fics, despite definitely having updated in 2018. It's simply missing from the list of possible to nominate fics on the site.

Ah, I will need to have a talk with Dragonfree about that. She's the one that handles the technicals of how the site works. For now, I will look at the thread in question myself, but if you could also provide a picture of the post that makes it eligible yourself, that would be helpful.

EDIT: On second thought, I examined the thread and saw that it definitely seems *very* eligible. As in, there shouldn't be any doubt. I will talk to Dragonfree and get back to you on this.

 

[Dragonfree]

Perhaps I should clarify: I went into the nominations site, went to the drop down list for which story I want to nominate, and it wasn't listed under the eligible fics, despite definitely having updated in 2018. It's simply missing from the list of possible to nominate fics on the site.

The drop-down list does not list all eligible fics, only those that have already been nominated this year; to nominate a fic that hasn't been nominated yet, you need to paste the link to the thread into the text field below the drop-down (once the field then loses focus, the site will look up the fic, verify that it's eligible, and add it to the drop-down).

The drop-down is essentially mostly there as a shortcut so that you don't have to keep copy-pasting links unnecessarily, but if you're the first one to nominate the fic in a given year, you are going to have to paste the link (once; after that you can pick it again from the drop-down).

 

[Firaga Metagross]

The drop-down list does not list all eligible fics, only those that have already been nominated this year; to nominate a fic that hasn't been nominated yet, you need to paste the link to the thread into the text field below the drop-down (once the field then loses focus, the site will look up the fic, verify that it's eligible, and add it to the drop-down).

The drop-down is essentially mostly there as a shortcut so that you don't have to keep copy-pasting links unnecessarily, but if you're the first one to nominate the fic in a given year, you are going to have to paste the link (once; after that you can pick it again from the drop-down).

Oh okay, thanks for the clarification! All things are good!

 

[Dragonfree]

Reminder that you have roughly 28 hours left to make your nominations!