The 2008 Golden Pen Awards: Suggestion Topic!

[mr_pikachu]

But - I get the feeling it'll be a contest between three fics to see who wins the most awards. You know?

I think you'd be surprised, actually. Take a quick look through some of the past awards. Considering that Gavin's still the only ficcer to ever win the Awards Award twice... it's always an intense competition.

[PancaKe]

I just mean by that, there isn't that much competiton or that many fics competing this year, thus more fics winning more awards. I wasn't talking about the awards awards.

[Gavin Luper]

I think you'd be surprised, actually. Take a quick look through some of the past awards. Considering that Gavin's still the only ficcer to ever win the Awards Award twice... it's always an intense competition.

How did you know that and yet I didn't? Gnarly.

With regards to the Best Ending category, that came up in the discussions for the last Silver Pencils, I think, along with Best Intro. We kept Best Intro because ALL fics are eligible for it, but there are very few completed fics around the place, so it seems like it will be highly ineffectual as an award. I like the idea of it, mind, and it would theoretically make sense to complement Best Intro, but the reality is that in the last 12 months there's been just one completed fiction moved to the Archive - that's really not grounds for a category. If anyone can put forward a decent argument to include Best Ending, I'd of course consider it, but as it stands I think it'd be a waste of time.

RE: "Best Description", even if description doesn't necessarily equate to "good", I don't think that makes the category any less valid. The award would still be given to the piece of the description that was indeed effective and well-executed. There's no reason that award couldn't go to the LEAST detailed description, as long as it was effective and exemplary.

I do agree that a vast overhaul of the awards might be in order, though, and if we do have to cull a lot of awards, this might well be one of them, if popular opinion is anything to go by. But I still think it's a valid award in it's own right, whether we merge it with something else or not.