Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related It's Kerths Time!

Okay, quick question... can Best Original/Supporting Character include Alt Clark and Lois?

Big to K-Com for your hard work in this... I can appreciate how hard it was to have to cut back, and I think you guys did a really good job of it [though, that said, I will miss Tearjerker... ]

Sara

Well, I certainly respect the K-Comm's hard work and the major consideration taken in choosing which categories to eliminate this year. However, I still would hope that the members would reconsider opening up Long Revelation.

I do tend to work on my Nominating List (sporadically, at times) throughout the year. And, interestingly enough, there was one very worthy story where its major strengths, to me, were in the categories you've eliminated:
Long Revelation, Tearjerker, Early Years/Superfutures and Innovative. What are the odds against that?

Yes, I can still choose Overall and Relationship, and I also know that it couldn't have possibly been placed on the voting ballot in all of the above categories (even if everyone agreed with me ). It's just a shame when certain stories don't "fit the mold" as well as others. There's usually a very large number of stories eligible for Relationship, and I'm sorry that I'll have to tweak my nomination list and possibly leave off another deserving candidate just to make sure that this "Story X" does get nominated (at least by me)...

Kathy (not trying to stir up any trouble, but questioning all the same...)

Quick silly question.


Even if a story does not happen in the Alt-world, can we nominate it for best alt-world story if Alt-C or Tempus or Wells show up?

Some quick replies... Sara, I wondered that myself, but I think for the moment, we'll keep Alt-Clark in the Alt Universe category. Mind you, an altworld story might very well have other interesting characters...

Kathy, we're looking at it, since it seems to strike a chord with so many. One proposal that was floated was to bring back Long Rev, get rid of Epic altogether, and remove the size caps on Drama & Relationship. Or we could put Long Rev on the list for nomination purposes, with the proviso that we might cut it again, or maybe cut the ballot slots back from five, after we see how that worked out. Or something.

Erica, yes, any story that's set in any universe that's not the one from the show fits into Alt/Elseworlds. Universe-hopping fits in there, too.

PJ

Thanks Erin, Kathy, Pam and Annette for all your hard work in organizing these awards. Choosing the categories would have been a very difficult decision.

I’m a little disappointed that there is no series category. As Laura said it takes a lot of hard work to create a theme and continue it. Sometimes you need all the parts to complete the whole story. There are a couple of excellent series this year. It’s going to be very difficult to nominate all the stories in these series even though they are all extremely worthy of nomination.

I love the new category.

Tricia

Interesting changes. I'm sad that series is gone *sniff*sniff* but there's hope in future years.. if author's write more. *stares at the writers out there*

I'm really interested to see how the new category turns out. I think it's a great idea.

I was sorry to see Series go, too, especially after I'd already made a quiz for that category.

By the way, Carol, right after I sent off that e-mail to K-Com with my suggested list of past qualified characters, two more popped into my head: Your Jason Trask (and his sister Samantha! ) in Connections, and Cindy Leuch's Jon et al in her next gen series. One of each.

I wads just wondering why you have to shrink the categories at all. What if you kept all the categories, but in the ones with a smaller number of eligible stories, you just make the final list shorter? So instead of 5 eligible stories for best series, you trim it to 4 or even 3. Same with long revelation and epic and other categories where there are fewer stories than in years past. So if there are more short stories and fewer long stories, the short story category could have 5 or 6 spaces while the long story categories have 3 or 4 spaces.

- Laura

First off, thanks so much Pam and Kathy and Erin and Annette for all of your hard work. This truly is a labor of love, and you all do it so well!

One thing Carol mentioned I think might be worth thinking about - if not this year then for next year. That's breaking Best Drama down into something along the lines of Best Drama/A-Plot Intensive versus Best Drama/B-Plot Intensive. While I disagree with Carol that it is a lot harder to write an A-plot (for some it is, for others coming up with a new angle on the Lois and Clark relationship is a major challenge) than a B-plot, it seems a natural break and a good place to have different stories compared to like stories. It's hard for me to compare a highly tense, intensive A-Plot story to a more subtle B-Plot story in terms of drama.

I like the idea of the new character/expansion of character category, but again I agree with Carol. There is a fairly wide gap between these two efforts. I know there is the problem of lack of eligible stories, and since I don't have a good solution for that, I see why it has been done the way it has. Again, maybe just an idea for next year.

Great job! Now I'm getting excited to get reading.

Lynn

Thanks, everyone, for your replies and suggestions. I *think* I've answered all the questions except for this one from Laura:

The short answer is, "We might do that, too". <g>

We've talked about doing that for certain categories, but generally, until nominations come in, it's all in the theoretical -- we start out with a certain number of slots in mind for the ballot but then we look to see where the nominations fall.

For example, we generally shoot to have five stories in each category on the ballot. But if there are six stories that all have a similar number of nominations, we're likely to put all six stories on the ballot. On the other hand, if there is a big gap between the number of noms that story #4 and story #5 got, we're more likely to put only 4 stories on the ballot, especially if #5, 6 and 7 are basically tied.

For this year, we've already discussed the fact that we might need to start with four stories as our baseline and adjust from there. But we definitely want to see where the nominations fall before we put that in stone. Our goal is usually to get as many stories on the ballot as possible, but we do have to balance that with the reduced number of eligible stories. Not to mention the fact that we didn't cut the number of categories by the full 2/3, so there might need to be additional adjusting, based on the nomination numbers.

Kathy

Coming late to this but have just got back to my computer again and am catching up.

Just wanted to clarify this:
I didn't mean to suggest splitting Best Drama at all, but to defend the inclusion of an A plot as one of the necessary criteria in that category. A purely B-plot intensive category would be redundant - overlapping with Relationship or with Long Revelation.

I do agree with Lynn, though, that it is challenging to come up with a new angle on the Lois and Clark relationship and yet still keep both characters "in character" with L&C:THAoS.

Btw, I've just checked out the Kerth website (and very classy it is!) but I can't get the link to eligible stories to work - have so much reading to catch up on.

c

Sorry, Carol, I didn't see your response until today. I just went to the Kerth website, and I could pull up the list of eligible stories with no problem. If you are still having trouble, maybe try clearing your cache? It seems to be working fine on our end, at least.

Direct link:

http://www.erinklingler.com/lnc/Kerth_Eligibles.html

Kathy

Hmm... Coincidently, I think Erin's server must me down right now. I can't even log on to www.erinklingler.com

I already have my list printed out, but was double checking to make sure there were no last minute additions.

Hope the server situation is resolved soon

Sara

EDIT: Seems to be all better now.

Thanks, Kathy, for the suggestion.

c