I thought I’d share some of the anonymous messages I’ve gotten over the last 24 hours about different nominations to clear the air for those who seem to be under the impression that I’m being excessively unfair by refusing to reply to a simple question about how a nomination made it into this year’s BFWA.
First of all, if these are what you consider to be simple inquiries and polite questions, we might need to step away from the topic of fanfiction and maybe talk about manners and how to address others.
As for how I “let this fic be nominated”, the nominations are not up to me. I don’t decide who makes it in and who doesn’t. You do. The fans do. I just process the information and let you vote on it. If it “happens to feature Bellarke”, then that makes it a Bellarke fic. By whose standards? Yours. The people who nominated it, and the people who gave it enough votes to get past the first round. If your opinion was so widespread, then I doubt the fic would have made the top 12, so it seems like you might be alone in your criticism. Your persistent anonymous messages won’t change that. BFWA works because it’s impartial. My opinions don’t change the outcome, and neither will yours.
As a Bellarke, you might not want to see someone rewarded in this fanfic contest, but as an organizer, I will not see your bratty behavior rewarded in my contest.
As for letting a lot of people down, I don’t think I have. Over 400 nominations were received this year, 400 works and people recognized. This event is for them. It’s to thank them for the content they created and to show our support to encourage them to produce more. Do you know what I think would have let a lot of people down? If I’d let Bellarke Fanfic Awards die in 2017 like it was supposed to. Then 1,000 people, fics, and other fan works would never have been shared or recognized. I think that might have been a little more disappointing.
But I have always been open to constructive feedback, and because this seems to be something that has profoundly impacted certain of you, I have made a few decisions to hopefully rectify the situation.
First, the Mutual Pining category will be removed from this year’s BFWA. If the nomination in question was so out of place, it could have easily been fairly eliminated in the next rounds. However, you will not force me to outcast a writer and dictate how I run these awards, so please take a moment to go apologize to your faves and explain to them that because you were so deeply impacted by the thought that they’d lose to a fic you felt didn’t belong, you’re now single-handedly made sure that your faves can’t win at all.
Second, all other categories featuring the fic after Round 1 will also be eliminated from the running to prevent you from spam voting in an effort to eliminate certain fics. Go apologize to those authors, too.
Third, as a preventative measure, in order to protect you from any such events in the future, I’ve added a new feature to this blog that I encourage you to take advantage of. If you head to our blog and move your cursor to the top right corner, you’ll find a new button labeled “unfollow”. Please feel free to use this feature liberally. If the thought of crossing one of our posts anywhere else during your time on Tumblr continues to worry you, you can also select the new “block” feature, that will prevent you from seeing any other disturbing content on this blog.
I hope you’ll be able to sleep well now that you know something has been done about this very troubling situation. And to the authors, I apologize that the voice of the few spoiled the opinions of the many. You’re all winners to me, to your readers, and to this fandom.
