alyse: (quill)
alyse ([personal profile] alyse) wrote2006-04-13 01:05 pm

(no subject)

For those who are unaware of them, the Stargate Fandom Awards are awards nominated and voted for by fans to identify the most popular stories, websites, vids etc within the Stargate fandom. They've been running a number of years now, and last year they included Stargate: Atlantis as well as Stargate SG-1 within their awards programme.

I know that last year there was a lot of concern within the Atlantis fandom about the lack of engagement the Awards had with our part of the fandom, which meant that a lot of SG:A fans felt marginalised and unmotivated to either nominate and vote. However, the awards team have listened to the many comments that they received and appear to have taken them on board, and are making an active effort to engage with Atlantis fans this year.

Given this, and the fact that since Wraithbait won last year we cannot be nominated again (no ulterior motives here ::g::), I'd like to take the opportunity to spread the message about the Awards and encourage Atlantis fans to participate. They've tried to accomodate us, but it won't work unless Atlantis fans start nominating their favourite fan works.

One of the main criticisms was that the Awards didn't really understand that the Atlantis fandom is different from the SG-1 fandom in some key ways. In particular, while we do have quite strong main pairings, there are a lot of other popular pairings, a lot of stories that cross slash and het boundaries and a lot of threesome and moresome stories, which don't fit neatly into slash or het. That's one of the things I love about our fandom, and I'd therefore like to encourage people to nominate all sorts of stories. In other words, the Awards Team are trying to make sure that all elements of the fandom are represented, whether you're a McKay/Sheppard fan or whether you only read gen or het or ship a rare pairing like Parrish/Lorne or Weir/Zelenka or like threesomes, cross-genre or other types of fic that we, as a fandom, seem to specialise in :) The more of these sorts of stories are nominated, the more likely it is that they will merit a category of their own and the less likely it will be that rarer pairings will have to compete for votes with the most popular pairings.

In other words, the awards are going to be what you make of them :) If you think a story is wonderful, go forth and nominate.

Nominations for the 2006 Stargate Fan Awards are now open and will remain open until April 30, 2006. The nomination form link can be found on their home page here. The rules for nominating can be found here and the FAQs here. Please bear in mind that the number of nominations per author will be limited on the final ballot, so nominating an author's entire body of work will probably not be of any benefit.

But otherwise, go forth and have fun!