Notice Time to get hyped for Summer Awards 2018!

[AetherX]

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who reads our weekly newsletters, but just around the corner is

THE WRITERS WORKSHOP SUMMER AWARDS 2018!​

Hosted this time by me! Most of you know how this all works, but we’ve got a few new faces around here, so I’m going to lay it out real quick.

Every summer and winter, we come together as a community to hold a contest to celebrate the diversity and quality of works here in the Writers Workshop. First will come a nomination period, where authors can nominate their own works and that of their peers in a variety of different categories covering both stories and characters. Once all the nominations are in, a group of judges will read the stories and decide on winners. You can also nominate each other for the user-voted prizes of Best Newcomer, Best Reviewer, and Best Written Word Contributor.

Winners receive banners and a coveted spot in our Hall of Fame. Everyone who gets nominated will receive reviews from the judges who read their work.

For those of you returning, prepare yourselves for some changes to the categories that you’re used to. We’ve come up with these modifications to address some of the issues we’ve seen in the past.

tl;dr Patch notes:

• Removed story categories: Best Drama, Best Poetry/Short Prose.
• Removed character categories: Best Supporting, Best Pokémon.
• Added story categories: Best Speculative, Best Character-Driven.
• Added character categories: Best Deuteragonist, Best Character Interaction.
• The continued existence of Best Character and Best Story is uncertain.
  
• General category description tweaks all around.

Here are the brand new categories in all their glory:

Spoiler: Category Descriptions

STORIES​

BEST JOURNEY FIC:​

Awarded to a captivating Pokémon story that tells a tale of adventure and discovery as characters travel across a region. Nominees can include…​

• Traditional “journey fics” based around a badge quest, contests, catching ‘em all, etc.
• Stories that don’t follow the traditional model, but are about traveling around a region for one reason or another.

BEST SPECULATIVE FIC:

Awarded to a fascinating Pokémon story which takes fantastical and/or futuristic elements to a whole new level. Nominees can include…​

• Sci-fi/Fantasy stories.
• Horror stories.
• Utopian and dystopian stories.
• Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories.
• Stories revolving around myths, legends, fairy tales, or folktales.
• Stories featuring zombies, vampires, or other non-Pokémon fictional creatures.
• Stories featuring the supernatural and paranormal.
• Stories featuring superheroes among the primary characters.

BEST CHARACTER-DRIVEN FIC:​

Awarded to a compelling Pokémon story in which plots/genres covered in other categories are pushed aside in favor of focusing on the character cast. Nominees can include…​

• Stories in which characters are the main driving force in moving the plot forward. In other words, the plot does not move forward of its own accord and dictate a character’s actions as a result.
• Stories in which character development, psychological themes, and/or high emotional stakes take precedence over plot.
• Stories featuring characters struggling mostly with internal rather than external conflicts.
• Slice-of-life stories.
• Romance, friendship, and hurt/comfort stories.

BEST EXPANSION FIC:​

Awarded to an engrossing Pokémon story which builds upon fanon ideas and/or established canon characters and/or concepts. Nominees can include...​

• Stories exploring the Pokémon manga, game, and/or anime canons.
• Stories featuring manga, game, and/or anime canon characters as protagonists, antagonists, and/or deuteragonists.
• Stories exploring myths established in canon, such as the creation and life of legendary/mythical Pokémon.
• Stories with a heavy focus on canon teams or organizations (ie., Team Rocket, Silph Co.), even if most or all of the characters belonging to said teams or organizations are original characters.
• Shipping fics between one or more canon characters.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fics.
• Stories with a heavy Pokémon worldbuilding focus.
• Spin-off one-shots or stories of an author’s main work. This does not include full sequels or prequels.

BEST CROSSOVER/NON-POKÉMON FIC:​

Awarded to a riveting piece of work which takes a step back from the Pokémon world and brings a different, unique type of tale to the Workshop. Nominees can include…​

• Stories about any other fandom that is not Pokémon.
• Crossover stories between the Pokémon fandom and any other fandom.
• Crossover stories between any fandoms that aren’t Pokémon.
• Original fiction stories.
• Original non-fiction works of any kind, such as essays, biographies, memoirs, and more.

BEST ALTERNATE FIC:​

Awarded to a unique story that tackles experimental story structures and/or cannot be classified in any of the other major categories. Nominees can include, but are not limited to…​

• Crackfics, comedy stories, and parodies.
• Metafiction.
• Crime or Mystery stories.
• Pretty much everything else.

Characters​

BEST PROTAGONIST:​

Awarded to a well-crafted lead character who commands the story. Almost every story will have a protagonist; some stories will have multiple protagonists. Nominees can include…​

• The character that is either the lead or one of the leads of a story. Usually, they appear in a large portion of the story.
• Characters who make key decisions in the story and are shown experiencing the consequences of said decisions in full. Their decisions also affect the rest of the character cast.
  
• Characters who are the main driving force of a story’s plot, even in a plot-driven story.
  
• Viewpoint lead characters or non-viewpoint lead characters.
  
• Lead characters of any personality or background; a protagonist does not necessarily equal “the good guy” who always does what is right or kind.

BEST DEUTERAGONIST:​

Awarded to a well-written character who livens up a story’s character cast and demand the audience’s attention almost as much as the protagonist does. Nominees can include…​

• Supporting/sidekick characters.
• Important characters who appear more than or just as often as the lead character(s), but are not the driving force of the story.
  
• Characters who exhibits both protagonistic and antagonistic traits at times (ie., rivals).
  
• Characters who are important in a story with no clear lead character.

BEST ANTAGONIST:

Awarded to an engaging character who works against other characters and the goals of the plot. Nominees can include…​

• Characters whose main role in the story is to provide obstacles for anyone on the character cast to overcome, usually the protagonist.
• Opposite characters of any personality or background; an antagonist does not necessarily equal “the bad guy” who always does what is wrong or malicious.

BEST CHARACTER INTERACTION:​

Awarded to an intriguing pair of characters whose synergy resonates greatly with the audience. Nominees can include…​

• Any combination of two characters: protagonists, deuteragonists, antagonists, Pokémon characters, other fictional creature characters, human characters, minor characters, and more.
• Organizations can count as one character (ie., the protagonist and Team Rocket can be nominated together). Characters belonging to that organization won’t be judged on an individual basis, but rather on the function of the organization itself.

USER-VOTED​

BEST NEWCOMER

Awarded to a first-time Workshop writer who has quickly made their mark as a writer to watch.​

• This user must have posted their first piece of work in the Workshop since the previous Awards. Does not apply to users who frequent the Written Word but have not published any work.

BEST REVIEWER​

Awarded to a Workshop user who has written one or a series of helpful, insightful and thoughtful reviews that aids the development of their peers as writers.​

• This user must have written a review in the period of time since the previous Awards.

BEST WRITTEN WORD CONTRIBUTOR​

Awarded to a Written Word user who has contributed one or more insightful, interesting, intelligent or humorous thoughts to discussions about writing, fan fiction and literature, or has otherwise been a supportive and helpful member of the community.​

• This user must have posted in a thread in the Written Word since the previous Awards.

You probably have some questions about the changes we’ve made, so I’ve preemptively answered what I could:

Spoiler: Why remove Best Drama?

Best Drama Fic started as an attempt to rebrand Best Dark Fic. Dark fics are a fairly well defined genre of fanfiction usually marked by gratuitous violence and death and depressing themes. A few years ago we realized that we as a community had kind of grown out of that. When we write edginess now, we do it because the story demands it, not because seeing someone get stabbed to death in a Pokémon fic is shocking. Best Drama was an attempt to cover all the dramatic, emotional, and atmospheric fics that matured out of the Dark fic genre.

Unfortunately, we’ve begun to realize that Best Drama is a little too broad. Pretty much every fic that has a serious tone could be considered Drama. We decided to replace it with the Speculative Fiction and Character-Driven categories, which we feel will better place stories amongst peers they can be appropriately compared to.

Spoiler: Why remove Best Poetry/Short Prose?

In short: lack of entries. We often ditched this category entirely due to no nominations. Poetry compilation threads come and go in popularity. Our first fix for this issue was to add Short Prose to the category, but even then it often went without any nominations. Short stories and one-shots have historically fared very well against longer stories, so they will fit just fine in the other categories.

At this point, we don’t plan on accepting poetry in the awards. If you write poetry and want to nominate it, we might stick it in Alternate, but it would be a bit awkward to judge. Feel free to PM me if you are in that position and we can talk. We are considering having a standalone poetry contest at some other time if there is interest in one.

Spoiler: Why remove Best Supporting Character?

The word “Supporting” as well as the definition of the category caused some confusion on which kinds of characters should have been nominated here. We’ve replaced this category with Best Deuteragonist, which is functionally the same thing but with a better definition. Also, it's just a funny word. "Eat my deuteragonist." See?

Spoiler: Why remove Best Pokémon?

Best Pokémon was originally introduced as a way to recognize standard Pokémon “characters” that were fun and well written. It ended up being “Best Talking Pokémon” which sort of ran counter to the whole point of the thing. If a Pokémon can talk, then there’s little to no reason not to put it in another category. If your protagonist is a Pokémon, whether or not it’s a PMD story, then they should be entered in Best Protagonist.

We ultimately decided that choosing whether a certain Pokémon should go here or somewhere else was too fiddly, so we’re axing the category. A variant of it may return in the future if we can find an elegant solution to these issues. All Pokémon characters can now go in whatever other category fits them best.

Spoiler: Why might you remove Best Character and Best Story?

Best Character is chosen by deciding between which of the character award winners is… the best. As such, it has almost always been a controversial category when it comes to judging. It usually ends up being the Best Protagonist winner, which does make sense. Protagonists see the most screen time, they tend to be deeper than other characters, and their character arcs tend to be more prominent and tied in to the plot. But we don’t need a roundtable discussion from a variety of judges to tell us that Frodo Baggins is a more memorable character than Glorfindel.

It’s hard, if not impossible to reconcile all the different roles that each character winner plays in their story. Not to mention, in order to comment helpfully in the discussion to choose the Best Character, a judge has to read all of the fics eligible, which is often an unmanageable task.

These issues or similar ones also apply to Best Story. The top two prizes take a significant amount of extra time and effort to choose, and often result in feelings of disappointment more often than celebration. I hesitate to say they're gone for certain, but we'll see how judging goes this time around.

Spoiler: Where does my fic go now?

In general, we try to discourage swapping categories between awards, but given the redefining we’ve done here, we will allow it this time. Start thinking now about where your story or character fits best, regardless of where they were placed before. There is some overlap between categories, and there always has been. Pick the one that you think describes your work most accurately, and where you think it will be a fair comparison to other stories in that category. I will be glad to work with you on this.

In future seasons if you decide to switch categories, you will have to provide a suitable explanation to the host of that awards season as to why and how your story or character has changed enough to be in a different category.

Keep in mind that the Hall of Fame will be out of date for a little while as we make the transition to these new categories.

Here’s the thing, though: these changes are not set in stone. I’m posting them here in order to get your feedback. If there are any kind of alterations you think should be made to category definitions or if there’s some other kind of feedback you’d like to share, I’m all ears. If we decide that sizable edits need to be made, we might push back the awards start date a bit, but that’s okay!

If you’re interested in being a judge, shoot me a PM! Being a judge does not disqualify your work from being entered.

Nominations open next Friday, June 22nd, so we’ve all got a little under a week to read up on possible nominations and update our stories. Keep an eye out for the nomination thread. Let’s get cracking!

 

[Patrick Haines]

Do entered works have to be complete? I have completed by FanFic The Legend of Ampharos, but I am posting it progressively so it is more likely to be read. Should I post the rest or is it eligible incomplete?

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Those changes sound entirely reasonable! I'm glad to see that the mod team is continually reevaluating the terms of the awards.

we’ve all got a little under a week to read up on possible nominations and update our stories

Just to clarify, does this mean that updates submitted after the 22nd will not be considered?

 

[Beth Pavell]

Do entered works have to be complete? I have completed by FanFic The Legend of Ampharos, but I am posting it progressively so it is more likely to be read. Should I post the rest or is it eligible incomplete?

Incomplete stories can be entered

 

[kintsugi]

WoWoWoWoWoWwow!! So much hard work going on behind the scenes; this looks super exciting! Can’t wait to see how things pan out.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I am currently on holiday at the moment so can't post my full thoughts coherently on the Best Story/Character issue and Best Pokemon issue, but I like all the other changes.

One thing: does an extra story category mean an extra entry for stories (4 up from 3)?

 

[Arkadelphiak]

H Y P E

 

[lucarioknight56]

Hmmm...shouldn't have much trouble finding out where Unequivocant's characters belong--if they're nominated--but now I'd have to figure out what type of story it is best defined as. Guess I'll figure it out by the time the nominations begin.

 

[AetherX]

Just to clarify, does this mean that updates submitted after the 22nd will not be considered?

We'll accept updates up until the end of the nomination period, which is about two weeks depending on when exactly I post the threads. But if you haven't updated at all since the last awards then you're not eligible for nomination until you update. Not a problem for you

I am currently on holiday at the moment so can't post my full thoughts coherently on the Best Story/Character issue and Best Pokemon issue, but I like all the other changes.

One thing: does an extra story category mean an extra entry for stories (4 up from 3)?

Looking forward to your feedback!

Technically there are the same number of story categories, we just won't be cutting poetry/short prose again. We have no plans on changing nomination limits as of right now.

Hmmm...shouldn't have much trouble finding out where Unequivocant's characters belong--if they're nominated--but now I'd have to figure out what type of story it is best defined as. Guess I'll figure it out by the time the nominations begin.

If you look closely at the category descriptions, you might find placing your stories to be pretty easy in your case

 

[Persephone]

I think the problem with best character is that 2/3 of the time it went to either the protagonist or a supporting character who might as well have been in protagonist, so the discussion was usually boring. I'm not sure if having a category for supporting characters who might as well have been in protagonist will make that more interesting or not.

Best Story has sometimes suffered from limited pools and the ability to jump in early and define the debate. Which is totally not something I make sure to abuse every time. But it's broadly competitive across categories, except for poor journey. Tbh journey might just suffer further from the new drama guidelines siphoning more off but I can't think of a solution for that and I still support those changes.

The only real change I'd advocate is reinstalling Best Supporting or Best Minor as a replacement to best Pokemon. My problem with supporting was always that the same borderline protagonist types kept winning (Sandy, Evelina, Kimberly). This change removes them from Supporting. I think a category for people who aren't the antagonist, the protagonist or his closest confidante would be more competitive and might even allow for well done non-speaking 'mons to shine.

dp876 told me over discord that supporting characters would still be allowed in the new category, but tbh that just sounds like it'd set up the same problem where Sandy/Evelina/Kimberly dominate supporting again.

 

[Ambyssin]

So, uh, this might be my newness talking here, but how do nomination limits work, exactly? I went back to find the winter thread (not an easy task) and it sounds like the limit is one category per story and one category per character from any story. Do I have that right?

 

[lucarioknight56]

Yeah, that's right. I looked through Serebii's award process and saw they have the nominated stories in multiple categories that are voted on. Here it becomes more exclusive in where they can compete.

 

[AetherX]

Best Story has sometimes suffered from limited pools and the ability to jump in early and define the debate. Which is totally not something I make sure to abuse every time. But it's broadly competitive across categories, except for poor journey. Tbh journey might just suffer further from the new drama guidelines siphoning more off but I can't think of a solution for that and I still support those changes.

Journey is definitely on its last legs. Opening the category up to stories that don't follow the traditional formula was the writing on the wall. It's the same deal as Best Dark, and Best Shipping before that. I'm honestly kind of disappointed in myself that I didn't realize it earlier. We just don't fall into those neat little categories anymore. We'll see how it does this time, and maybe replace it with Best Action/Adventure or something next time. That might mean ditching the category this season if it doesn't get nominations, but that wouldn't be the end of the world. What we want is for fics to be compared to other fics fairly and on even ground.

The only real change I'd advocate is reinstalling Best Supporting or Best Minor as a replacement to best Pokemon. My problem with supporting was always that the same borderline protagonist types kept winning (Sandy, Evelina, Kimberly). This change removes them from Supporting. I think a category for people who aren't the antagonist, the protagonist or his closest confidante would be more competitive and might even allow for well done non-speaking 'mons to shine.

A minor character category is an idea we've considered. I actually think the Character Interaction category will be a great place for them, though. Minor characters tend to be defined by their relationship with major characters anyway, and that way we can avoid judging them by the same character aspects like depth and development. And to be frank, I disagree on the non-speaking Pokemon comment. Even well done non-speaking Pokemon are almost always going to get trounced by other characters when judged on their own merits. Usually when they do win, it's because the judges went out of their way to give credit for doing a decent character without dialogue. Now if we're talking about the relationship between a trainer and a Pokemon, then yeah that could easily compete with a friendship between two humans. That's where I'm coming from, at least.

If we were to make a minor character category, how would you suggest we set it apart from deuteragonist in terms of nominations and what fits the category? We've already had issues with protagonist and supporting. We'd need some kind of objective marker as to how much of a role they can have in the story before they stop being considered as minor.

So, uh, this might be my newness talking here, but how do nomination limits work, exactly? I went back to find the winter thread (not an easy task) and it sounds like the limit is one category per story and one category per character from any story. Do I have that right?

Yep! More info on nominations will be given when they open up.

 

[Beth Pavell]

You can at least partly blame category overlap for the situation in Journey. I seem to recall a lot of entries that could be Journey have ended up in other categories instead.

The issue I had and still have with the Supporting category is that there's no consensus on what that means. Minor character? Deuteragonist? Sidekick? In order for it to really be a fair contest the definition has to be a clear one. I feel like minor characters in general get given the short end of the stick, which is a shame.

 

[Persephone]

Minor would be defined as tritagonist and below in importance. If they aren't the protagonist or the closest thing to it in story.

Sure, it might just wind up dominated by tritagonists, but there are barely any of those on site tbh. We kinda have a trope of a guy and a girl (or two girls or guys or whatever) on a journey.

 

[diamondpearl876]

The minor character category idea was a popular one in the post-awards feedback, despite the complaints from judges generally not liking to judge characters where there's not much to say or discuss. Or at least, that's what I observed the last time I hosted and the last couple times I judged.

So, I figured that, if the main issue was leaving minor characters in the dark entirely, people could simply nominate minor characters in the "fun" awards section. For those who don't know, "fun" awards (need a better name for them probably smh) don't fit outside any of the existing categories but can be given to other authors if you want to recognize something else about them as an author or about their work specifically. They wouldn't count for badges in the Hall of Fame, but they'd still get a banner prize and, of course, the satisfaction that someone is reading and enjoys a specific aspect of their work. I realize the fun awards were a brand new idea I came up with just last season, though, so they may not take off and stay.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Hell yes, I love the idea of minor characters, scenes and little details getting nods through the for fun categories. It's a shame I haven't kept up with my reading as much as I'd like, I'd love to spearhead that kind of stuff to make it easier for others to think of/do the same.

 

[Ambyssin]

Hearing that idea makes me thing of superlatives... which put a goofy smile on my face. ^^;

 

[AceTrainer14]

I was going to split my thoughts up originally into different subjects, but I realised that some of them address multiple things at once so this is going to be a bit of a disjointed essay type thing. Please note I am coming at this from the perspective of someone who ran the awards for five years rather than as a consumer or writer, my thoughts are in no way shaped by any desire to win or anything.

The main issue with the awards has almost always been the judging. This is not an attack on any one person or any particular group, but there are issues embedded in the judging that have made things difficult. The biggest example would be the Contribution to Story / Plot issue, where I feel many judges, both old and new, still value what a character does to further the plot more than almost any other part of their character and being. People have specific thoughts and prejudices and opinions that shape how they judge that can’t be changed by rewordings and explanations and category changes, and it means that we have situations where people are inclined to side with certain aspects continually.

Now, I think the last two or three rounds of judging have had the best bit of debate we’ve ever seen. People actually debated and fought for certain stories and characters and winners were decided on more than just points, which was great to see. The issue has been though, in my opinion at least, that stories and characters won that made it hard to argue for them as winners. Last round in particular I felt it was quite a one-sided race in the end; others may, and indeed did, disagree, but to me, it was quite swayed and that made the debate feel kind of forced and probably did lead to disappointment.

However, I think re-imagining the categories, splitting the stories up more so that there is more variety in the top winners, and putting supporting on a more even keel, will do a good job of providing a bigger group of deserving winners and allow for more vibrant debate. I don’t think the top prizes should be axed when big changes are happening as then we will have no idea if they are beneficial and could have fixed things. It does feel like a cop out rather than trying to fix the issues – a bit rich coming from me as I never did manage to fix them, but in hindsight I think I would have put my foot down a lot harder on certain things.

Which brings me back to the plot/story issue and Best Minor/Pokémon. I do think Best Pokémon has a place in this competition – talking Pokémon weren’t actually allowed in that category, or at least weren’t supposed to be, but I agree that that was contentious and caused confusion. Also, in the end, very few people put much interest and energy into creating interesting Pokémon that can’t speak, so it was always skewered a bit towards the one major winner.

I think having a Best Minor category would make a really good replacement, and also allow more characters to shine. In my personal view, under this new system, Best Protagonist would be your Harry Potter’s, Best Deutragonist would be your Ron’s, Hermione’s and Dumbledore’s, maybe your Ginny’s and Neville’s as well, whereas Best Minor highlights those who are there and contribute to the world rather than being at the centre of everything: your Luna’s, your Hagrid’s, your McGonagall’s. All three have different roles to play in Harry Potter, are crucial enough to the plot to be missed but not crucial enough that their roles couldn’t be filled by others. Minor characters are what makes a story or show great to watch – Protagonists are like a hearty rice that makes up the crux of your meal, whereas Minors are the the seasoning that make it taste good.

I don’t think they should be shoved off into the random, eclecticness of the ‘fun’ section. There is a big difference between having a category judged and analysed and it being given a random banner assignation that twelve other characters could get as well. I admit the fun banners aren’t for me and appreciate they entertain others, but I feel like something like this deserves some proper evaluation alongside any fun-ness of “Best Best Friend” or “Biggest Moron” or whatever.

In summary: Don’t axe Best Story/Character just yet, consider us Minors, and maybe push for less of a focus on a character’s purpose in the story as being the most important part of their existence. We don’t judge Stories on how big and explosive and ‘how much’ they cram in, we shouldn’t judge characters the same.

 

[AetherX]

I see your disjointed essay and raise you an equally disjointed post that ended up being about a bunch of shit and not just what you talked about

These are not the only changes that are going to be made to these awards. I also have plans to mix up the way we do judging, so those of you who decide to help out this time around will see that later. You're absolutely correct that there are issues embedded in judging. Frankly, I think that as long as judges can have a horse in the race, we're going to be biased. That's part of why I wanted to host this time. Not only am I not entering, but I have no intention of entering again in the foreseeable future. This means I don't care about making changes that may favor or hinder stories I write, and most importantly I won't feel too bad about doing just what you suggested: putting my foot down. If I feel that a judge isn't being fair, isn't paying attention to category descriptions, or isn't following guidelines, I'm going to call them on it. To go a step further, I'm going to make some decisions that will probably be pretty unpopular if I think judges aren't doing a good enough job. Which leads me to Best Story/Character...

Both of these categories necessarily require comparing apples to oranges. I'll focus on Best Story here since I already went into Character a bit in the OP. Action-heavy stories will have to go toe to toe with slice-of-life fics and stories that are essentially 50,000 words straight of philosophical introspection. It all ends up coming down to taste. An action fic won't be able to match the deep religious symbolism of the introspective fic. The slice-of-life fic won't be able to match the roller coaster plot of the action fic. The introspective fic won't be able to match the rich setting of the slice-of-life fic. The choice is ultimately made by the shared tastes on what is considered "most important" by the majority of the judges... who actually comment... early on to define the debate. The purpose of the category rework is to make categories that won't have as many of these kinds of comparisons. But that won't do anything to change what happens when they all end up competing for Best Story.

We need judges who are willing to give every fic a chance and see them for their strengths in an equal light, regardless of what the other judges are saying. The very fact that anyone would say Best Story was a one-sided race is an indicator that this doesn't happen. If the race really is one-sided, then it's not a race worth having. That's what is putting the future of the top two prizes on unsteady ground. We will consider Best Story for these awards. Discussion will be opened. But if I don't think that the judges are doing a decent job or the stories can clearly not be compared fairly, then I'll declare a no-contest.

As for Best Character, I'll reiterate: If the race really is one-sided, then it's not a race worth having. Best Character is one sided. Proof:

Best Character wins by category since 2012:
Protagonist - 11
Supporting that toes the line with being a protagonist - 2
Actual Supporting - 1
Antagonist - 1
Source

We don't need to keep doing that. It goes beyond bias. It goes beyond judging solely based on contribution to the story (don't get me wrong, I'm going to try to crack down on that). Protagonists tend to be deeper and get more development. I think most writers can agree that writing a decent protagonist that does a good job at being the protagonist is a much better indicator of skill than writing a character that does a good job at being a secondary character. If Best Story is apples to oranges, Best Character is a chocolate apple to a rock omfg I'm so clever.

I appreciate everyone's suggestions on a Best Minor Character category. We'll definitely consider adding one for future awards seasons. For now, I think Best Character Interaction and fun awards will cover one page wonders and fan favorites well enough. Mostly what I'm looking for here is feedback on the proposed changes and new categories.