You heard right. The 1999 Chicken Ball Awards is only accepting votes for
another eight days and then the preliminary voting is over. I strongly urge
anyone who hasn't had a chance to vote for their favorite fanfics in the 24
catagories available to PLEASE do so as soon as possible before the January 21st
deadline.
You can send us your votes in one of two ways. You can either visit our
new Chicken Ball Website at http://www.thekeep.org/~harnums/CB/ and
use our Chicken Balls Voting Form OR you can E-mail your nominations
to chickenball@fanboy.org
For those of you that missed previous Chicken Balls, or the lucky few
that managed to ignore them, here are the rules...
Subject to the eligibility constraints below, the first round of voting is
completely open. Vote for any fic which qualifies. The top five fics
nominated will be placed on the ballot for the second round of voting.
To be eligible for any of this year's Chicken Ball awards, at least one
portion of the fic must have been originally posted to EITHER the Fan
Fiction Mailing List OR rec.arts.anime.creative between the dates of
December 1, 1998 and November 28, 1999. Fics that were started before
Dec. 1, 1998 are still eligible if a later chapter or part was posted in the
eligible period, as long as such posts contained new material -- repostings
of previous parts during the year do not make a fic eligible.
The Procrastinator of the Year award is, of course, an exception to this, as
is Hall of Fame induction. For eligibility for the Best Fanfic of '98 award,
new material for the fic must have been posted between December 1997
and November 1998.
All votes must be for a specific work. You cannot vote for "All stories by"
an author. Exceptions to this are the awards that ask only for a person: the
"Best New Author," "Kasumi-Keiichi," and "Chicken Cannon Target"
awards.
If you have questions about the eligibility of a particular story, write to us.
If you select ineligible fics and include an E-mail address, we may attempt to
contact you as time and volunteer power allow; but we can't guarantee this.
Needless to say, only one set of votes is allowed per person. Evidence of
multiple votes will result in the discarding of all of your votes, and you
may be barred from voting in future Chicken Balls.
The deadline for the first round of voting will be one month from now on
January 21, 2000. To prevent spam, please don't publicly discuss the CB
awards (especially potential fics or authors to nominate) on the FFML. As
we're also posting announcement of the CB Awards to RAAF, public
discussion of nominations could take place there.
You need not vote in every category; select whichever ones interest you.
The categories are...
- 'Funniest Fanfic'
Um, duh. The fic that made you laugh so hard that you laughed pasta out
your nose. And liked it.
- 'Best Sadfic'
Another duh. Four-hankie tearjerkers and up, please.
- 'Best Lemon Fanfic'
This one should also be obvious. I won't post judging criteria, but
you'll know it when you see it.
- 'Procrastinator of the Year'
While it isn't required that fics in this category have been started
last year, they certainly have a better chance. ;p In your opinion, what
is the best fanfic that you've been waiting on for a loooooooooooong
time?
- 'Best Fight in a Fanfic'
The only award that asks for a specific scene. Please take a second to
specify the scene.
- 'Best MSTing'
MST = Mystery Science Theater, inspired by the show. Basically, the best
fic that takes another fic and makes funny and/or rude comments about it
in the form of asides by a group of observers.
- 'Best Shortfic'
No, Undocumented Features is -not- eligible for this award. ^_^ This
award goes to the best one-shot short written in the year.
- 'Spammer of the Year' a.k.a 'The Tybalt'
This isn't an award that you want to win, folks. Who, in your opinion,
has way too much time on their hands and spends it constantly sending
messages to the ML? Prolific authors are one thing; we're looking for
people that can't shut their yap here.
- 'Best Crossover'
The best fic that includes more than one series, not necessarily two
anime series; just about anything qualifies.
- 'Best Songfic'
The best fic set to music, either popular or the author's own creation.
- 'Sickest Fanfic'
Which fic had you picking bits of your lunch out of your keyboard?
Abominations that should never have been committed upon the FFML
community? Pokemon lemons? Eva/SM crossovers? How low can we go?
- 'Worst of the Worst' (or, the "Oscar")
Title says it all, folks. What is the worst piece of garbage created
this year?
- 'Fanfic Hall of Fame Inductees' (formally 'Test of Time')
This category is going to be run a bit differently... the top five
vote-getters are formally "inducted" into our Hall of Fame. Any fic ever
written is eligible. Fire away, guys.
- 'Best Darkfic/Shockfic'
Not necessarily the most disgusting, but instead the most hair-raising,
innately disturbing piece of work you've seen this year.
- 'The Chicken Cannon Target of the Year'
This award goes to the author that everyone would like to see get his/her
just desserts.
- 'The Weird Al'
This award goes to the best parody of a fanfic or fanfiction genre...
not to the best parody of an original series (they fall under
"Funniest".)
- 'Best Ending to a Fanfic or Series'
Yet again, duh. Which fic had the best ending?
- 'Most Underrated Fanfic or Series'
We're looking for fics that tend to deserve more attention than they
get. Know something that was posted but generally overlooked, despite
its excellent quality? Here you go, then.
- 'Most Overrated Fanfic or Series'
Conversely, which fic or series comes up entirely too often in
conversation? Is there something out there that just doesn't deserve the
praise which is heaped upon it?
- 'Best New Author of 1999'
For purposes of determining who is a "rookie", use the same dates as for
fic eligibility. In other words, which author that started writing since
December '98 shows the most skill or promise?
- 'Best New Character'
This award goes to the best new, original character incorporated into a
fanfic this year.
- 'Worst New Character'
And the logical opposite. Note that you don't have to like or hate the
fic itself for either of these awards... just the new character.
- 'The Kasumi/Keiichi'
A new category this year. Which author, in your opinion, is generally
the nicest and most encouraging? (Why two names? Well, I'd feel weird
getting "the Kasumi", myself. ;p)
- 'Best Fanfic of '98'
Well, since there weren't any awards given last year... (Megane: Put
down those torches! Really! I mean it...) Which fic, written and posted
sometime in 1998, was the best? Yeah, we know, it's a whole year ago,
but hopefully you only remember the good fics and forgot all of the
crap. Right? Right??
Thanks for participating! :)
Avatar, Megane 6.7, Gary Kleppe, Alan Harnum, Bogue, Ukyou Kuonji, The
Jusenkyou Guide, Bastion, Kasuga, and the rest of the Chicken Ball '99
crew.
*Special Thanks to Dan Root for helping set up the voting scripts!*