Fic Talk > Felix Awards 2011

Exit Survey

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RokofAges75:
That would be nice.  I wonder, though, if there were more categories again, would more people actually win awards, or would the same number of people just win more awards each?

colorguard_diva:
quote author=RokofAges75 link=topic=2969.msg98864#msg98864 date=1329626310]
That would be nice.  I wonder, though, if there were more categories again, would more people actually win awards, or would the same number of people just win more awards each?
[/quote]

That is a good question to ponder, but isn't that saying that only if you are considered a popular writer you win awards and that it is not necessarily based on talent or writing ability. I'm not trying to be mean or negative. I don't want to hurt feelings. I think anyone who writes deserves a ton of credit.  Everyone who was nominated is extremely talented. Those who won deserved to win.[ All I'm saying is the awards are more like the People Choice Awards and not the Grammys or Oscars.

Sorry if this comment offends anyone, but I am lumping myself into that since I was nominated. I'm not trying to start a fight or a controversy. I'm stating my personal opinion. I think we should honor as many people as we can.  Believe me there are a lot of hurt feelings for those who don't get nominated and work hard to perfect their writing.

I'm not saying we add 50 more awards for next year. I just think we need to really think about the purpose of these awards. Awards for genres are great, but there is so much more than that when dealing with writing.

RokofAges75:
I see what you're saying.  I just think, in reality, the authors and stories that are being nominated for the genre categories would probably be the same ones nominated for other categories because, in order to be the Best Whatever Genre Story, they probably have good storylines, good characters, etc.

Also, in reality, popularity does come into play when the awards are voted on, but that doesn't mean it's not based on talent.  Popularity comes from widespread appeal, and in general, poorly-written stories and poor writers aren't going to have the same widespread appeal.  That's not to say there aren't really good writers who fly under the radar.  There are.  My point is just that if they're not being nominated in the existing categories, I'm not sure they'd be nominated in other categories either.

One suggestion could be to limit the number of categories a certain author or story could be up for, but that would only be necessary if there were a problem with categories filling up, and I'm not sure that has been a real issue.  I know there was a maximum of ten nominees allowed in each category, but only a few of the categories actually had ten nominees; most had less than ten.  If there were other creative, talented writers who could have filled those empty slots, why weren't they nominated?  It's down to the readers to nominate and vote for the authors and stories they feel are most deserving.  We may only be able to vote for one, but we can nominate as many as we want, so if there was someone deserving who wasn't even nominated, then their readers dropped the ball.

RokofAges75:
This might actually make for an interesting debate topic, but I'll just put it here first:  I thought the comment about these awards being more like the People's Choice Awards than the Oscars was interesting.  They definitely are like the People's Choice Awards in that everyone gets to vote.  The Oscars are also voted on, just by people in the industry rather than the general public.  Do you think it would change the outcome of the Felix Awards if we only allowed writers to nominate and vote?

One thing I notice with movie awards is that there's often a big difference between the movies that get nominated for Oscars and the movies that get nominated for People's Choice, Kids' Choice, and MTV Movie Awards.  The latter tend to be commercial, blockbuster movies that aren't always critically acclaimed, whereas the Oscar-nominated pictures get good reviews but aren't always commercially successful.  Would the same difference exist in fanfic awards?  There aren't really any others besides Felix these days to compare.

Personally, I don't think it would make a difference because most of us writers are also readers.  We nominate the stories we like and the authors we think are talented.  I can't imagine our thinking is that much different from that of a reader who doesn't write.  It's not like we have professional critics judging our work... we are each other's critics.

julilly:

--- Quote from: colorguard_diva on February 18, 2012, 11:05:22 PM ---
That is a good question to ponder, but isn't that saying that only if you are considered a popular writer you win awards and that it is not necessarily based on talent or writing ability. I'm not trying to be mean or negative. I don't want to hurt feelings. I think anyone who writes deserves a ton of credit.  Everyone who was nominated is extremely talented. Those who won deserved to win.[ All I'm saying is the awards are more like the People Choice Awards and not the Grammys or Oscars.

Sorry if this comment offends anyone, but I am lumping myself into that since I was nominated. I'm not trying to start a fight or a controversy. I'm stating my personal opinion. I think we should honor as many people as we can.  Believe me there are a lot of hurt feelings for those who don't get nominated and work hard to perfect their writing.

I'm not saying we add 50 more awards for next year. I just think we need to really think about the purpose of these awards. Awards for genres are great, but there is so much more than that when dealing with writing.

--- End quote ---

Don't feel bad Rachel! This is exactly the kind of dialogue I had been hoping to open up. I really value everyone's feedback. These are your awards after all.

Last year the Felix Awards were even called the Reader's Choice Awards so it's hardly offensive to say they are like the People's Choice Awards. I'll try to give you some insight though into why we changed the structure of them this year, apart from just the number of categories.

This is the first year since 2008 that we haven't had those kinds of categories and part of the reason is that they're very subjective. If you look at the way people nominated stories a lot of nomination sheets only contained one or two that someone would try and lump into as many categories as possible. They'd like a particular story and nominate it for everything. So while the action/adventure category, for example, would only get a couple of nominations the more subjective categories (best cliffhanger, best tearjerker, creative storyline, unusual storyline, etc) would literally just have every single story that was otherwise mentioned. It was wherever someone could get the story they liked another nomination. So there would be 35 nominations for creative storyline (just as an example), but we'd be cutting out genre based categories for not having enough. Are you then getting a true look at the most creative storylines or just a list of the most popular stories?

Then when it came to voting... those subjective categories were always judged for a very specific reason. If you get a whole bunch stories from multiple genres/ratings/styles it's rare to find someone who has read them all. Most Nick romance fans aren't reading Howie suspense and vice versa. When they were judged that person was forced to read them all and legitimately pick the most creative. As soon as they were voted on one of two things happened - the person voted for the story they knew (the most popular) or they skipped voting for that category entirely. The number of votes for those subjective categories dropped significantly when compared to the genre-based awards. I can see people's votes and rarely do people actually give a vote for each award. They usually vote for the author they like in whatever category they're nominated in and skip the rest. So the person who ultimately would end up winning would be the person with the most popular story. Not the person who truly had the most creative storyline, but the person whose name was top of mind to voters.

Afterwards those other people would complain that Felix was too subjective, that it was unfair, that it was a popularity contest because the same people won everything. I can honestly say that this year has been the first time that a really good cross section of writers/stories has won. The difference was a lack of subjectivity.

I'm definitely not opposed to bringing those types of awards back in (especially ones like creative storyline) but this year we made it about more than just the stories, this year was about the authors.

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