Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Official Kerth Awards Announcement!

Hey FoLCs!

Time to get the ball rolling on the 2006 Kerth Awards. As you know, Erin Klingler, Kathy Brown and Pam Jernigan “retired” last year - they’re way too young to think of retirement, but there you go <g> - after seven years of doing a fantastic job for the Kerth Awards. We’re all extremely grateful to all the hard work they put into making this event so much fun, and I think they deserve another round of applause just as we’re getting into this year’s events.

The new committee will keep things pretty much as they were, so you won’t be confused by drastic changes.

The Kerth committee is composed of five people: Annette Ciotola, Elena, Tricia Walpole, Yvonne Connell and Kaethel, but we couldn’t do it without all the FoLCs who dedicate their time and energy to making this ceremony even more fun: the quiz team composed of Sara, Rachel, Chris Carr, Julie Stars and Wendy Richards. Kathy MacFarlane, our external auditor, continues to help us tally the votes. This year, Erin Klingler, Pam Jernigan and Kathy Brown are still around to help us with the transition and teach us the ropes when we need it. And most of all, we’ve got all the writers and readers, without whom the awards wouldn’t exist at all!

Here’s some information about the new staff and about this year’s ceremony. Please take a moment to read this.


Staff organisation

Kaethel is our Kerth Coordinator. Her job is pretty much the same as Erin’s in previous years. Decisions are taken collectively after being discussed among all K-Com members, but as coordinator she gets the last word if there's a disagreement. We usually tend to agree, though. *g*

Yvonne and Kaethel handle the PR side of things. Most official posts will be made by either of them.

Annette and Elena are our techie geniuses. They maintain the website and they’re our official security guards, i.e. they check for fraud in nominations and votes. They know everything there is to know about IP numbers and such.

Yvonne and Kaethel are in charge of the nominations. They receive each nomination form, count all the noms separately, compare the numbers to make sure there’s no error, then they tally them so the official ballot can be released within two weeks at most.

Tricia is our official vote-tallier, with Kathy MacFarlane acting as our committee-independent vote-counter. Both Tricia and Kathy get your forms and count them. Kaethel spot-checks a couple of categories to make sure there’s no error.


2006 schedule

Nominations will run from Saturday, February 18 to Sunday, March 5, midnight EST. The official ballot will be released two weeks at most after all the nominations are in.

Voting will run from Saturday, March 18 to Sunday, March 26, midnight EST. That will give us a week to tally the votes and prepare the list of winners.

The ceremony will take place on IRC on Saturday, April 1, 6 pm EST.


2006 categories

This year, the number of stories dropped from previous years, so we’ve had to reduce the number of categories as well. Don’t panic, old favourites are still there! But we compiled a few stories that were split by size in previous years. We’ve tried to keep as many as possible, but we’ve had to combine some categories which were split by size in previous years. Also, some categories are borderline when it comes to the number of likely contenders, so we reserve the right to remove these after the nominating period if it turns out that only two stories are nominated in such categories. We truly hope we won’t have to, though, and we’ll certainly explain why and what we did if we do!

So here’s the official list for 2006:

Best Super Short (1-10k): Very short stories.

Best Short Story (11-50k): Short stories of any subject or tone.

Best Waffy Story (1-50k): Short, mainly light stories intended to give the reader a Warm and Fuzzy Feeling. No A-plots.

Best Comedy: Generally short stories where the main purpose is to amuse.

Best Special Occasion Story: Generally short stories that deal with a special time of the calendar year, i.e. Christmas, New Year, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Valentine's Day; or with a special occasion in Lois and Clark's lives, such as a birthday or an anniversary.

Best Mid-Length Story (51-200k): Mid-length stories of any subject or tone.

Best Revelation Story: Stories which contain a revelation about Clark being Superman. The person finding out can be Lois or any other character.

Best Episode Adaptation: Stories which alter the events of, or start from some point in, a particular episode. Includes adaptations, continuations, and rewrites.

Best Tearjerker: Stories that elicit strong emotions from the reader and make you repeatedly reach for the box of Kleenex.

Best Drama: Stories which focus on a series of exciting or suspenseful events. Stories can be similar in tone and balance to the show's episodes, or tackle a more serious subject matter, and will generally, though not always, contain a significant A-plot. No size restrictions.

Best Relationship Story (over 50k): B-plot driven stories which focus mainly on Lois & Clark's relationship. No tone or timeline restrictions. Might include "getting together" scenarios, or focus on their developing relationship, either before or after marriage.

Best Alternate Universe / Elseworlds Story: Stories which feature parallel universes (including the Alt World that was introduced on the show), or stories in which the author has made major changes (such as time, place and/or nature of the characters) before where the series started in the Pilot. Cross-overs would also fit in this category. No size restrictions.

Best Original / Supporting Character: Rewards a special character from stories which strongly highlight a supporting character from the series or creates a new, interesting character that plays an important role in the story. No size restrictions. (Sorry, but versions - no matter how altered - of Clark or Lois do not qualify as Original or Supporting Characters)

Best New Author: Limited to authors who first published their Lois & Clark stories in the past year.

Best Overall Story: A story of any type that is outstanding overall. No size restrictions.


More information is available at the official Kerth Website , which will be updated with all the relevant information in the next few hours. There, you will find the FAQ, the list of eligible stories and new authors, the list of categories and so much more. And if there’s still a question we haven’t answered, feel free to email us at kcom@lcficmbs.com. We’ll be happy to help you!


The Kerth Committee
(Tricia, Yvonne, Elena, Annette and Kaethel)

First update!

Annette just added another story to the list of eligibles:

Cloud Nine, by Tic and Toc.

Also, Tic and Toc has been added to the list of eligible new authors.

Kaethel

Hi, I'm still sort of new here and I have a question: I noticed that the Early Years/Super Futures category was axed in 2005 and won't be in the 2006 awards. Why is that?

Chriscy

Hey Chriscy

Every year, the Kerth Committee examines the list of traditional categories and sees if there might be enough potential contenders for each. We're very reluctant to keep a category if we believe there are less than 10 contenders for it.

Also, we take into account the possibilities those stories have to be nominated in other categories. Say, a superfutures story might also be considered for best drama or best relationship or even other categories.

So in a nutshell, this year, we judged there weren't enough stories for superfutures / early years to justify resurrecting the category.

So it's up to the writers to make us change our mind next year.

Kaethel

Ah! Makes sense. Got it.

Stories by Oxiate have been added to the list of eligibles:

New Kryptonian Expedition
Time goes on
Mama's Boy
Cat is Back
Family First: The Next Generation
Family First: A little Miracle
Family First: Settle in Smallville

Kaethel

I just sent in a note to El and Annette to add L's Long Strange Trip to the list of eligible stories. Also, L will be added to the list of eligible new authors.

Kaethel

ok, yesterday my computer was acting kinda funky when I tried to send an email to The Kerth Committee and I'm not sure if it was sent. so I hope you guys don't mind me posting it here. anyways, my friend shannon and I wrote a fic called "have a little Faith in Me." and we just wanted to know if it was eligible for this Kerth awards. It was posted on zoom's MB and this MB on December 17th,2005. and if it is eligible, we would like it added to the list. If you need a copy of the story to upload on the Kerth site pls email me at: lisime1@msn.com

Thank You-
Lisa
&
Shannon

Thanks for the heads-up, Lisa and Shannon. Looks okay for eligibility to me, but I'll let Kaethel have the final say.

Yvonne
KCom member

thanks just email us when you guys decide!


Lisa

No problem at all! It'll be added to the list.

Kaethel
Kerth Awards Coordinator

All right, guys, latest update.

Sarah Luddy's Growing Up Super and Lisa and Shannon's Have a Little Faith in Me have been added to the list of eligible stories.

It's also come to our attention that two of the stories on our list had been eligible in previous years. Both Tank's The Kiss: Aftermath and Anna Belcher's Dating By Deception had already been eligible in previous years, and therefore can't compete this year. I hasten to add that the mistake is entirely ours at the K-Com and not the authors'. So our apologies.

Kaethel
Kerth Awards Coordinator

Yeah, Dating by Deception was an old story that I didn't get around to submitting to the archive till this year. Same with Trouble in Paradise, which I'm pretty sure was on the eligible list the year Carol and I wrote it, so it should be removed too.

~Anna

Thanks for letting us know, Anna! I'll shoot an email to our trusty webmasters to have it removed. With my apologies to the quiz-team, who must now be tearing their hair out thanks to us. All resulting baldness can be blamed on K-Com.

Kaethel

Actually, it's my fault. I should have marked these stories at the time they were submitted to the Archive, so that I remembered to eliminate them from the data before sending it to K-Comm.

You guys can only rely on the good (or bad) data you receive.

Mea culpa. Sorry, guys.

You might want to check out all of Tank's stories on the list for eligiblity. I seem to recall we uploaded a batch of his old stories last year, more or less at the same time, which were 'golden oldies'.

LabRat

I'll look over the list but I believe all the stories that were uploaded to the archives earlier last year were all old ones on my hard drive that had been posted on the message boards but had never been put into Kerth consideration because they'd never been sent to the archives.

Most of them were stories that I'd either forgotten about, or didn't feel needed to be on the archives.

As far as I know, none of my stories have ever been placed in Kerth consideration until they finally reached the archive.

Tank (who doesn't think there is much danger that any of those stories will be factors this year anyway)

I've looked over the list and to the best of my knowledge, none of the stories listed were ever included for Kerth consideration at the time of their posting on the MBs.

This is true for a couple of reasons. First, I always used the uploaded to the Archives 'rule' as my guide for eligibility. And, some of these were only added to the archive last year as a means to have them somewhere else if my own computer hard drive should ever crash again.

So for whatever it's worth (which isn't much). These stories can be taken as eligible for anyone who wants to see them that way.

Tank (who noticed a couple of 'Tank endings' in the mix and thinks they are hardly serious candidates for consideration)

Now Tank. I LOVE your stories. I know some of them are my list of nominees.

And come to think of it, I probably owe you some serious feedback.