The Cons of Hosting Awards

Meta
Title:	The Cons of Hosting Awards
Creator:	Renee P.
Date(s):	May 4, 2010
Medium:	online
Fandom:	Hanson
Topic:	fanfic awards
External Links:	the essay posted at hanficrants
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The Cons of Hosting Awards is a meta essay written by Renee P. It was posted to the now defunct blog section of PlaceToHide.net and crossposted to Hanfic Rants.

Topics Discussed

• general and personal hanfic history
• hosting fanfic awards
• cheating in awards
• cliques and popularity contests

Excerpts

Now, after numerous years of working on my Hanfic and watching the fandom world around me change with the growing-up of my fave musical brothers, I’ve learned a great deal. Having purchased my very own domain a few years ago, I wanted to not only write and host fanfic, but also participate within the fandom. The best way to do that was to get involved with other writers. I wrote submissions for challenges, collaborated on special projects, AND even won a few awards for my efforts!

So I’m saying to myself, “heck yes! I want to host some of these fun things too!” not knowing the drama that goes hand in hand with being the coordinator of said events. I’ve co-hosted two awards and one challenge that has an awards presentation and lemme tell ya, it’s fun to come up with the theme, title, award categories, etc. but it SUCKS to see the amount of crap that goes on behind the scenes. No, I’m not talking about building/coding the awards page or tallying the endless amount of votes that come pouring in, I’m talking about the way the fandom acts at the mere mention of a competition.

Cheating gets you no where. In fact, when I figured out that these people or their friends cheated, it left a bad taste in my mouth and I couldn’t bring myself to actually read their work. I don’t want to feel that way, but the cheating epidemic has not only happened to me but other hosts as well. It’s getting old. Surprisingly, this is not the only thing that “grinds my gears” when it comes to awards.

Along with those who take the awards so seriously that they couldn’t stand the idea of losing, there are also those who don’t give a shit and only nominate/vote for stories out of blind stupidity. By this I’m saying that there are those who don’t bother looking at the other nominees. They have simply been recruited to vote ONLY for their BFFs or ONLY for a certain genre of Hanfic. They could care less about everyone else. It’s awesome to support your friends and your favorite types of stories, but let’s have a little courtesy for the other writers who worked damn hard on their fics too. The least you could do is check out their websites or add them to your reading lists and then later go back and vote for the ones you think you’d be interested in. That’s at the VERY least. I honestly think that, even though awards are meant to be light-hearted fun & entertaining, they should also be a way to show appreciation for others. We’re all in this together, and who knows you might end up finding a new fic to flail over. It doesn’t take much effort to figure out if a story should win for the category it was nominated for, just take the time out to research the other nominees. Pay respect to the people who obviously are loved in this fandom or otherwise they wouldn’t be nominated in the first place.

That’s right it all boils down to reading and writing, the basic fundamentals. If you write fanfic, read other people’s fanfic. If you read only fanfic, don’t stick to a particular genre or group of authors. That way these awards can be more diverse and meaningful. We can keep a record of the tight community of fandom we share and take pride in the fact that we’re all doing what we love to do. Don’t cheat either, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t win, but it looks poorly on us all if you act like an idiot. Respect one another and help each other out by leaving good feedback so that way when the time comes to nominate/vote for your favorite stories you know they’ll actually DESERVE to win.