i know that you mean well with this but having fic awards for writers isn't that great. like congrats to those who made the list but there are tons of small and young writers who will never make that list even if they deserve it because its the same five to ten blogs that fill up the categories. some blogs even have multiple stories in one category. i know i'm gonna get hated on for this but this isnt meant to be hostile. people put a lot on whether or not they get recognized for their work 1/2
and no matter how fun this list is supposed to be, no matter how innocent its supposed to be, somehow might get hurt. someone might stop writing all together for whats in these lists. its already hard enough to build up a following if you’re a writer on tumblr. stuff like this only makes it worse and can greatly affect peoples mental health 2/2
We’ve talked it over and we agree that your comment makes a very valid point - this was actually something we were also concerned about in the beginning. Because of this reason, we’ve considered discontinuing the fic awards after this round. However, we like the idea of using this as a way to build community and recognize some of the authors that make our fandom so great. For that reason, we’d like to continue this while using it as a tool to help our fandoms grow. Our original intention was to start this to help smaller blogs gain more recognition. We apologize that it’s gotten out of hand - because this is the first round, we’re still getting our feet wet and trying to figure out what’s going to work best.
We’ve considered multiple options from this point forward, but our most favorable idea is to create categories to specifically recognize smaller authors in the community. Ideally, this would include categories for authors with less than 500 followers, but because there’s no way to fact check that, it makes it significantly more difficult. We’ll also be adding a category for best breakthrough writer, meaning that authors new to the community or with a small following will be recognized. As the mods, we’ll personally check all of the nominees to evaluate whether they fall under this category. Finally, we’re considering putting a limit on how many times a fic or author can be nominated per round, in order to balance out the mix. Does anyone have suggestions on how to best execute this idea?
Finally, we’d like everyone to remember that this is all in good fun as an effort to build community and recognize some of the authors that make our fandom so great. That doesn’t mean that all of our authors aren’t appreciated! We’re working on making these fic awards a LOT more even than how they’re being executed now, as well as adding a larger team of mods to make more possible. Because of how large our fandom is, it’s difficult to recognize everyone, but we want to put an emphasis on the fact that all authors are absolutely wonderful and we’re so lucky to have them in the fandom. We appreciate each and every thing they do for us, and as authors ourselves, we’re able to recognize that this is hard. We can also recognize that popularity doesn’t dictate quality, and a lot of the authors on this list are- while amazing- some of the bigger blogs that have a much larger following. Our intention is only to help some of the smaller blogs receive more recognition as well as appreciate everything that authors do to us, and we will make an active effort to improve how these fic awards are run.
We appreciate that you voiced your concern! This brought a lot of things in perspective for us, and we’re hoping to greatly improve the quality of the fic awards throughout the next few rounds. Thank you so much!
- The Mods