Awards 2005 Summer Post-Awards Discussion

They would definitely need some dedicated assistants, though.

EDIT: what roo said!

 

The Silence Glaive is the awesome weapon wielded by Sailor Saturn from the anime/manga/musical series Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon.

I'll claim my 100,000,000 bonus points now!

FTR, I cheated and googled the term as I had no idea what it was, so I don't really deserve 100,000,000 points. I'll take 50 and run with it.

 

I know what it is. It's Sailor Saturn's weapon, isn't it? I'm a SM fan myself, even have a GORGEOUS Sailor Saturn wallscroll!

Back on topic, I've been reading what everyone has to say and I have a few things of my own to add:

Campaigning: For newer authors who get their first Awards nom, it can be difficult to stifle that excitement. Even though people know they don't *really* win anything, it's still a cool honor to have. I'd say if it's just mentioned here and there, leave it alone. If people start spamming with "OMG, Vote for my fic!!!11" then we have problems.

Completed Fics: I can sum my feelings on this one up in one question. Would you like it if any of your fics were disqualified because they weren't finished by Noms time? I know I wouldn't.

Awards Ceremonies: I agree with folks who have suggested a pre-ceremony entertainment thread. I'd be happy to contribute to that! I had fun contributing to the entertainment for the "Before" ceremony, and I'll be more than pleased to do it again for the Winter Awards.

As for how many, I too hold with the "two a year" idea. Even in a slightly less-crowded Era like "Before", I can post up a fic in the morning, only to find it on page 3 by that afternoon. (Then again, I write in a more niche interest, so that could have something to do with it as well.) The "Autumn/Spring" idea is a good one too, especially if it cuts down even a bit on the stress for the hosts.

OC Awards are a nice idea, but I don't know if OCs are popular enough yet to garner sufficient interest in an entire Awards ceremony just for them.

 

Correct, both of you! *Splits points*

For campaigning, I usually just put something up in my fics. "The awards are coming up. Go nominate your favorite fics' and hope to hades that they think of me.

Not sure on awards for the OCs. We've already got best OC male and female on the regular awards.

 

I alreday said most of my stuff. But I just wanted to say, that I hate the idea of only one awards a year. Two is good, if anything 2 is too little! Well actully 2 is good.
I also like the idea of a pre award ceremony with the entertaniment and stuff. Then you could check that later and only go to a shorter award ceremony.
I also think that it shouldn't be limited to completed fics. Maybe like a quarter of the way through or something. But not that much.

 

As far as ceremony length goes, any of us can do the math on this one. Say we want a 2.5 hr long ceremony; if the awards are all listed on a document and we want the posts every five minutes, the document has to be broken into no more than 30 posts. The same math can be done for any given timetable.

To achieve this we may have to, for instance, post an award, an entertainment piece, and the intro for the next category in a single post. We may also have to post multiple awards in a single post. It's a mater of how committed we are to any given timetable.

As far as the Completed fics question, I agree that completeness should not rule out any existing category. I might still like to see an added category somewhere for completed epics, sort of a combined 'best of' and 'achievement' award.

I could only see cutting down the number of ceremonies if interest in the awards waned, which appears to be in no danger of occurring.

 

Actually posting is where the mods can be the most help. We are immune to OPPM, so an idea is for the actual hostessing, mooooving along, banning of whiners...er, I mean... helping discussion flow could be for a mod to do, provided we get it down to 2.5 hrs. or so. Hostess, volunteers, etc. actually could type up the awards ceremony, though.

 

Wow. This is like a different thread from this morning. I like the upbeat attitudes. And it looks like we are going places now. I honestly wasn't planning on posting until I saw N_P's post and had to comment:

Spoken like a true engineer!Good point, too. Very solution oriented. I am a privileged padawan.

 

Rhonda!

For anyone who was wondering about the OC Awards, you can check out the excerpt thread and the ceremony thread. The OC Awards were very small, but very fun. If nothing else, they wouldn't take 6 hours. Probably much less work altogether, since there aren't a lot of categories. Or if they were combined with another set of awards, like the fun MTV-style categories, that could flesh them out a little, if people wanted that.

The size of the OC awards might depend on how often the regular awards are held, but I'm just tossing in more thoughts for people to consider.

 

We had the Angst Awards last year to great success and were told that there would be OC awards in the spring and angst in the fall. What's the deal on that? It was given the go-ahead from a mod.

 

Do you really think we need the angst awards? I mean, there's already a catagory for best angst. I fail to see why we need them - and yes, i did glance over the results from the last set.

If we have the angst awards, then why not the humor, romance and drama awards? Like the best kiss would be for romance awards, best emotional scene for drama etc.

Then what makes the fanfiction awards special anymore? Or even worth it?

 

Well, they were instituted at a time when angst wasn't really recognized. And they have subcategories that encompass humorous things and romantic things. Personally, I just thought they were a fun diversion. I don't care if they're officially recognized, but I think having them be allowed isn't too much to ask. I mean, we have the Support your local writers challenge, which is just as redundant.

 

I've always liked that one - it encourages people to read and reply outside their normal preferences, while most challenges are writing-based.

What about combining the OC and Angst awards, and any other specific-category awards? Like have the regular awards during the spring, the OC/Angst/etc during fall. They could be spread over a weekend the same way the regular awards are, and since they're focused ceremonies, they'd might run shorter, too.

edits: And having only two awards a year total would cut down on drama, too.

 

I really like that idea.

 

*Snrk.* Drama cut-down needed? Nooooooooooooooo... I think Oc/Angst would be fun, but kind of hard to do, since OC is all about the OCs and Angst has things like Best death of a canon character AND best death of an OC.

 

A few more thoughts... sorry if they're rambly.

If we do have an Exec. Producer, I think they should be someone who has at least hosted before, because they'll know so many more things to avoid or what to do better etc.

I don't think we should split the awards at all. Or have all-around awards in summer and OC in winter. Cause frankly, all this talk of splitting awards or completed vs. WIP has left me really confused.

And about splitting series/epics etc. into completed and WIP? Goodness, if we thought the awards lasted too long now?? Adding more categories will only make it worse... (Or I could be not understanding what people meant, and in that case, just disregard this paragraph.)

VM had a good idea about having the awards during Christmas break or something... or, what about having most of the preparation time be during Christmas break? Because if the awards themselves happen during Christmas break, any hosts/volunteers who are in school will also have all of the long prep hours of noms/votes/excerpts/ etc. happen while they have studying and finals at the same time. Except... wait. My school has finals late, like ending the 21st or 22nd of December usually, but other schools are done sometimes weeks before that. So it would depend, I guess. Another point to having the hypothetical Exec. Producer and all the hosts deciding what days/times would be best to hold the awards.

Do we have to have all three sagas during the same weekend, by the way? It'd be easier to plan if we had one a week or something, wouldn't it? We could have all the deadline dates for votes etc. be the same so people wouldn't get confused from era to era, but have the ceremonies on 2 or 3 different weekends if need be, and at times that's best for the hosts or whatever.

I keep thinking about it, and I'm still in favor of having the awards twice a year. I may change my mind, but I just... even with indexes and the like, it's still nigh to impossible to come up with everything possible you could nom from the last six months of people posting on stories, let alone a year. For me, at least.

Although... having a thread where people could posts links to their eligible stories might work. While it seems almost like campaigning, but not, cause it would just be letting people know what's eligible to be nommed, cause that's hard for me to figure out too, so kayladie had an idea there. So whether the awards are once or twice a year, I think that could be something we maybe look into.

Also, another way to remember stories you've read is skim your own post history...

Lex had a great idea about adding a pre-show of goofing off and some entertainment. Combine that with the post-awards party, and put most of the entertainment into both of those areas, and I think we'd be set. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have an ad or two during the awards, just for a little bit of variety, I think.

rhonderoo: My comrades are going to kill me, but maybe there should be a dedicated mod to the awards or maybe even one to each awards ceremony...
IIRC that's how they did it for at least one or two ceremonies. I think there were at least two mods present for each award ceremony and I heard that all the fanfic mods online at the time of the ceremonies as well as the hosts were in a chat room or something together. Helped with coordination I think. *shrug* Might be worth looking into for the winter awards.

-Mia

 

I think Oc/Angst would be fun, but kind of hard to do, since OC is all about the OCs and Angst has things like Best death of a canon character AND best death of an OC.

But they'd be separate awards, not actually combined into one big thing. Like the way the awards for the three eras are basically three different ceremonies - the hosts agree on certain dates and deadlines, but the actual planning of the ceremony's content is left up to each pair of hosts.

So the Angst hosts and OC hosts might have to agree on the same kinds of details - dates, deadlines, that kind of stuff. But they'd pretty much be separate ceremonies held within the same weekend. And if someone wants to do those MTV-style awards, same logic applies.


And about splitting series/epics etc. into completed and WIP? Goodness, if we thought the awards lasted too long now?? Adding more categories will only make it worse... (Or I could be not understanding what people meant, and in that case, just disregard this paragraph.)

I can't even remember why I suggested that. But I know I had a reason! Hang on, it'll come to me eventually.

Do we have to have all three sagas during the same weekend, by the way? It'd be easier to plan if we had one a week or something, wouldn't it? We could have all the deadline dates for votes etc. be the same so people wouldn't get confused from era to era, but have the ceremonies on 2 or 3 different weekends if need be, and at times that's best for the hosts or whatever.

Not a bad idea! Setting aside huge blocks of time all in one weekend was really hard to do. Even if the ceremony times get cut down, you add in pre-show goofing off, and post-show partying, it'll add up. And maybe give people a chance to recuperate in between ceremonies.

 

Oh, okay, now I understand you. That might work.

 

Maybe we could put each over a weekend like we do with the Sagas now.

Angst one night, Drama one night, and Humor the next and have OC fun in all of them?

It would only be taking five or six categories out of the regular awards, but it could still make it more efficient.


And the more we mods think about it, the more we will probably decide we should be more involved as far as helping with hosting, planning and actual posting the night of the awards. I agree that the Executive Producer should be someone with experience hosting for sure, and I still think the idea of one dedicated Entertainment person would be beneficial also. Of course they would be a part of the planning commitee (why am I having visions of Queen Amidala in the Senate?) and work closely with the hosts and volunteers. This would take some of the burden from the hosts and volunteers. We can start collecting entertainment throughout the year. The Entertainment Director (if you will - humor me, I work in Corporate America...) can be over the pre- and post-parties also.

 

"I am not a committee!"

What? Someone had to say it.

Okay, I found what I had forgotten: If we do the awards once a year, we could split categories like Best Epic/Short Story/Series into Completed and In Progress. That might open the field up a little bit more and get people looking for the older stories.

Key phrase there being once a year. If we keep the awards at twice a year, I don't see the need to split the categories. Though, if we do what Rhonda suggested - moving categories like angst and humor to the other awards, that would take out categories, but we'd also be adding in Completed categories, which would kind of cancel out any changes. If that makes sense. So maybe the split isn't necessary at all.

Angst one night, Drama one night, and Humor the next and have OC fun in all of them?

Sounds like it could work, with a well-organised committee.

 

I like the idea of having an angst, drama, and humor night with the OC categories. The OC categories are in there, anyway, so it wouldn't be detracting.

 

Key phrase there being once a year. If we keep the awards at twice a year, I don't see the need to split the categories. Though, if we do what Rhonda suggested - moving categories like angst and humor to the other awards, that would take out categories, but we'd also be adding in Completed categories, which would kind of cancel out any changes. If that makes sense. silly So maybe the split isn't necessary at all.

"I will not stand here and discuss this in a comittee while my people are dying!" (Okay, waaay too much. )

I think in this scenario, we wouldn't split completed and WIP, we would just leave them like they are. Would that be better?

Damn, I feel like Leia negotiating a Peace Treaty with the Empire, or Darth Vader negotiating a deal with the Rebel Alliance. Go us!

 

I suppose I can wait...

Setting aside huge blocks of time all in one weekend was really hard to do. Even if the ceremony times get cut down, you add in pre-show goofing off, and post-show partying, it'll add up. And maybe give people a chance to recuperate in between ceremonies.

Hey, there's another good point to it. Just as long as the voting/submission deadlines are the same -- because if you try to have three separate schedules for the three different ceremonies, I really think that'll confuse people badly. No one wants to remember 3 different sets of dates, all overlapping and innerlapping (is that a word?). But if you say, votes for all sagas are due on the 15th, and the ceremonies will be the weekends of the 22, 29, and the 5, then... that's much easier.

Key phrase there being once a year. If we keep the awards at twice a year, I don't see the need to split the categories. Though, if we do what Rhonda suggested - moving categories like angst and humor to the other awards, that would take out categories, but we'd also be adding in Completed categories, which would kind of cancel out any changes. If that makes sense. silly So maybe the split isn't necessary at all.

... I think my brain just rejected trying to understand that. Wait. Ah ha. I think I got it.

Can we just keep the categories of the regular awards as they are, please? And if people want to do sorta "un"official angst or humor or OC or whatever their heart desires awards other times during the year, they can, but I'd really love to see the categories in these awards as they are go unchanged, as well as the eligibility rules for stories and authors go unchanged. It took me so long to understand them, and if we change them I'll just get confused all over again. *whimper*

I like the categories as they are now, I think they're great. Aren't the angst/OC/etc. awards smaller anyway? It just... I'd hate to see things like Best Humor go and stuff.

-Mia

 

I like the categories as they are now, I think they're great. Aren't the angst/OC/etc. awards smaller anyway? It just... I'd hate to see things like Best Humor go and stuff.

They wouldn't necessarily be done away with. The way I'm thinking, the "specialty" (or is that speciALity?) awards would still have Best Overall Humor - exactly the same as what the regular awards have. But the speciality awards would also have things like Best Slapstick, Best Prank, Best Dark Humor, Best Joke That No One Gets. Another night could be centered around Romance - Best Kiss, Best Romantic Rejection, Best Unresolved Sexual Tension (oh my), Best "Whew! Is it hot in here?" And no, PM posts don't qualify for that last one, because I would melt away in a puddle after reading all the excerpts.

I think the fact that these awards are smaller is actually a good thing - less stress!

 

Yes, the smaller awards are less stress and a lot more fun to see the nom results. You never really think while voting for Best Angst, "Oh, well, I'd vote for this because it has the best verbal fights, but this has the best non-jedi battles..."