Literotica Awards Discussion Thread

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HSWriter

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If you have anything to say beyond a nomination, say it here... I am open to constructive criticism, and you are all entitled to say what you like, so say it right here....
 
Hello. Can we not have a 'most humorous story' category? I want to nominate Kerrie O' Keefe's 'Kerrie In The Big Apple'. If not, could someone nominate her for best group sex story? I've already nominated there and I can't think which other category to put it.
 
Roger Simian, Story Critic Extaordinaire

Hey Roger, pop another couple speedballs and keep reading, dude. I heard a rumour being spread by a fox from Michigan that you been "up" for days, but not in the manner in which she intended.
 
I suggested a humorous category in the Author's Hangout, but it was never discussed, Rog. I LOVE Kerrie's story and think it deserves something. Not that I think there should be a category just so she can win. I think that there should be a humorous category anyway.
 
The Literotica Awards are Decadent and Depraved...

(a savage journey into the heart of the American dream...
......but with bigger breasts)


Jeez, Debwa the Zebwa - you know what it's like when Hunter S Thompson's and his New Journalism cronies are over visiting. Talk about fear & loathing - I almost shit through the eye of a red-hot needle when he pulled out that double-barrel shotgun and started trying to blast his Mandrax tablets off the top of the tv. SHEEEEEEITTTT!!! Did you teach him how to shoot like that?

He's wanting me to be his glamorous assistant the next time he tries his Big Bill Burroughs/William Tell routine but I think I'm gonna hafta hide the apple, or maybe even mace him, tape his wrists together, steal his hat and ship him back over into your safe hands. It was real fun while it lasted but you can only listen to 'Sympathy For the Devil' so many times before you start retching.

Whisper - it would be quite wrong to have a category just for Kerrie's story, so how about one for 'Best Erotic Dreams Set In The Publishing Houses Of Major East-Coast American Cities'?

Now, it's time for my nightly fox-hunt.
Heeeeere, foxy-foxy!
(Woof woof! Who let the dogs out?)

[Edited by Roger Simian on 12-29-2000 at 01:52 PM]
 
My goodness!!!Can I have whatever Mr. Simian's having? Seriously, if we are voting for humourous stories, I give a big southern nickel to BobbyJo Sue, Trailer Park Queen by Ariel79.
 
Hey I know these awards are for the writers but what about the SRP and ORP threads. Come on there are some good amatuer talents in there (excluding myself. I can easily see someone like Renegade, Poohlive, Rosethorn, Tiggs, Ravenloft, Countess DeWinter, Angie Girl, Celestial Body, or mfucker walking away with one Litty Award ( yes I name the damn awards and yes I know I got issues)
 
This is picky, but I wonder if Sexiest Female/Male Author, should be changed to Best Male/Female Author. If you want to honor the writing, then the latter is a more appropriate name. When you put the word "sexiest" on there, it sort of puts a different slant on it. Like somehow you're judging the person, and not their accomplishments.

Still, this is LitEROTICA. Sexy is good here.

I don't know. Just thought I'd throw this thought out into the mix.
 
Whisper, I most likly missed the boat again, but I had interpeted the "Sexiest Author" awards to be general and apply to performance across the whole site, including the boards.

There is some terrific writing that takes place on the role play boards, along with a lot of imagination and fun in the general and how to boards. It seems a shame not reward the creativity that entertains so many of us, even if it is less polished and formal than the story side of the site. While the stories certinally brought most of us to Lit, it is the boards that keep most of us coming back, and it is the comination of the two plus chat that make this such a unique place on the web. The awards as curently published focus on just one side of the site.
 
I interepreted these awards to have nothing to do with anything but the stories.

I didn't think the boards came into play at all, other than as a vehicle for making the awards happen.

Wasn't that the rules? Did I miss something?
 
The only posted rules that I could find are for the story awards. I don't find any rules or guidlines for the "Sexiest Author" awards, or for that matter the "Most Valuable Editor" award. Did I miss 'em?
 
LONG ASSED-POST, as usual

Samuari said:
Whisper, I most likly missed the boat again, but I had interpeted the "Sexiest Author" awards to be general and apply to performance across the whole site, including the boards...
(This isn't the whole quote. WS)

Nah. You're on the boat, just rockin' it a tad. <winks>

The aim of the awards is a matter of interpretation. Only Laurel can say whether "Sexiest Author" refers to a person who performs at an excellent level on all areas of the board, or to one who merely produced excellent reading material. We'll have to wait until she gets back. She'll certainly have to make it clear to us, the voters, though before the voting takes place.

I think perhaps in the beginning, Literotica was a simple story site, therefore the awards focused on the stories. But since January 2000, the site has seen overwhelming changes, not the least of which are the explosion of activity on the bulletin boards and the creation of the rp boards.

I also think that when she realized that it was time for the 2001 awards, she perhaps didn't think about revising the awards to keep pace with the changes in the site. She was, as you know, planning a trip out of the country, it was the holiday season, she's been hacking away at the story backlog, etc. I don't blame her for not scrutinizing the award situation before she left.

I said on some other thread that I think there should be a separate set of awards for the rp area. I still think so, so we're agreed on that point. (I have to admit, I've never participated in the rp threads here. I can't, because I know I'd get obsessed to the point of ignoring my offline life. Been there, done that in a roleplaying game.)

However, as things stand, I think that if you're going to call an award "Sexiest Author" that we should look at the word "author." To me, that word implies that someone has written a book, story, poem, or play. While someone might be highly adept at writing letters, I wouldn't necessarily grant that that person is an "author."

Crafting a good BB post and participation in the rp threads requires writing, of course, writing stories and participating in rp threads are vastly different.

To write a good story, you have to be skilled at characterization, plot, pacing, description, etc. To some extent this is the same for rping, however, you don’t have to tie up all the loose plot details at the end, if the end ever comes at all. (Granted, I could be way off base on my perception of rping, so feel free to set me straight.)

With a story, it's up to the author to keep the reader interested. If you don't pace things right, if you don't keep the action flowing, the reader could get bored and you've failed as an author. In rping, if you get bored, you can do something about it by manipulating your character, or you can let someone else to jumpstart the action.

In rping, you become your character. You make the decisions about what he does, what he says, how he interacts with the other characters. You/your character reacts to the things the others are doing as it happens. This can be challenging because sometimes you have to relinquish the control to others, whereas an author has total control. Also, I'm sure you have to deal with the different personalities of the participants, which could be difficult. When writing a story, you become your character too, but you have to be all of them. Whether the story shines or not depends entirely on you.

With a story, your aim is to entertain anyone who reads the story. In rping, if non-participants read an rp thread and are entertained, great! But the true aim is to have fun with the other participants. The process is the entertainment. I mean, half the fun comes from the ooc comments, right?

In the rp world you can go ooc. It helps everyone stay on track. It gives the participants and non-participants information about the characters backgrounds. When you write a story, obviously you can't do that. If there’s something the reader needs to know, you have to weave it into the story. It can’t be an addendum or the flow will be ruined and the story will be stilted.

All these differences make it impossible to pit authors of stories against participants in rp threads for one single award. It would be comparing apples to oranges. If we want to recognize the outstanding rpers (and I think we should), I think it must be done separately from the authors.
 
Now as far as bulletin board awards, I'm against them.

As BB regulars, we sometimes forget the fact that there are a whole mess of people who come here only for the stories. They could give a rat's ass about the BB.

I think Laurel set up the awards to recognize the people who contribute to her story archive, one of the best online. (I don't shop other sites, so I can't honestly say it is THE best, though it might be.) If she chooses to recognize people who contribute to the richness here in ways other than story writing, that's great. As I said in the above post, I think that the rp area deserves its own awards.

However, the general board already has so many popularity lists, that it seems redundant to put forth a list that everyone votes for.
 
In the end, we may have to simply agree that we disagree (but without being disagreeable). In the meantime, I would like to explore this a little further. As I understand it, your argument is centered on this paragraph:

Whispersecret said:
[B
However, as things stand, I think that if you're going to call an award "Sexiest Author" that we should look at the word "author." To me, that word implies that someone has written a book, story, poem, or play. While someone might be highly adept at writing letters, I wouldn't necessarily grant that that person is an "author."

[/B]

The problem here is that I believe that you are being so narrow in your defination of "author" as to eliminate all writers of nonfiction (execpt poets). This would eliminate Winston Churchill as an author, and relegate Earnie Pyle to being a mere reporter. We now have a nonfiction catagory, best erotic review, are these writers not authors? They are eliminated (if this is thier only publication) by your defination.

I'm simply begging for the broadest possible defination to allow the voters to bring into thier consideration the total performance of an author across the site. Since Laurel has said that there will be no new catagories created, this would be one way to include all of the ways that members contribute to Literotica, instead of keeping it so narowly focused on the stories alone.



[Edited by Samuari on 12-31-2000 at 05:15 AM]
 
Whispersecret said:
Now as far as bulletin board awards, I'm against them.

As BB regulars, we sometimes forget the fact that there are a whole mess of people who come here only for the stories. They could give a rat's ass about the BB.


Where are they? The nominations board has 452 reesponces as I write this. 36 are from "virgins" and none from guests. This figures out to around 8% of the posts on the nominations board. If these awards are desingned to appeal to the folks that only come here for the stories, they are failing. If they aren't nominating do you think that "they give a rat's ass" about the awards?

It may be a problem of promotion. Somewhere, KM posted an idea that may help: ie. include a link to the corect nominating theard at the bottom of each story. I don't know how much trouble this would be, nor if it would be effective if it were, but it is an idea that would broaden the base of respondents.
 
Hey, there, Sam. So glad to be able to discuss this rationally with you. :)

You have a point regarding non-fiction, however, I never excluded non-fiction in my personal definition. Books can be both fiction and non-fiction. An accomplished essayist must certainly be included in the author category. Yet, I wouldn't call most reporters authors. Why? I can't really say. I just don't think the noun applies to them. As for reviewers, no, I don't think of them as authors either. So, the line is fuzzy, as it is with most things. :) I don't think we'll be able to agree here on what constitutes an "author." It's a subjective title, apparently.

Where did Laurel state there would be no new categories? Most Valuable Editor is a new category. <scratches her head>
 
Samuari said:
Where are they? The nominations board has 452 reesponces as I write this. 36 are from "virgins" and none from guests.

Despite what it says below about who can post, this forum is configured so that only registered users can post here.

As I understand it, the nominations and awards voting are/will be for registered users only, to provide some element of protection against voting fraud.

WS, Laurel said no more categories after the audio category was added. I think it was on the general froum version of this thread.
 
I agree. PR was a big problem. Laurel finally mentioned the awards in her greeting and included a link to the nominations board. Prior to this, I don't think there was any place other than the BB where the awards were mentioned. The guests and virgins couldn't possibly nominate if they had no idea the nominations were even going on.

As far as appeal, my point was merely that having a page that says, "Literotica 2001 Award Winners" is a draw to the casual browser. A tease, a way to pull them into the site and get them to read "the best" that Literotica has to offer, according to the voters. The awards process itself may also be appealing as a way to make the strictly-story people (and everyone else) feel some "ownership" to the site.

I'm sure that there are a large number of members who don't care about the awards. They just read the new stories as they're posted and move on. The people who are going to care the most about the awards are: those who are eligible, obviously, and those who are more than just hit-and-run members, who interact here frequently and have friends who are eligible. This explains the reason why the nominations have been dominated by "BB regulars."

I think KM's idea would be ideal, but most likely, impossible, given the time frame and the fact that Laurel and Manu are on vacation.

So perhaps we can look at this for next year's awards.
 
As I understand it, the nominations and awards voting are/will be for registered users only, to provide some element of protection against voting fraud.

That makes sense.

WS, Laurel said no more categories after the audio category was added. I think it was on the general froum version of this thread.

That's a shame. We need Laurel to come give us her view of the awards.
 
Can we vote for stories in the Extreme section? I really liked The Consequences Of Not Going To School by Le Chevalier. Okay, I'm a teacher, so the idea probably appealed! Still, I'd like to see a best Extreme story section.
 
Reply to Crazy et al

Just getting back online after a few months and read your comments, as well as others. Thank you very much. I am also about to submit another story - does it strike anyone else as funny to talk about "submitting" a story in a bdsm-related group?! ok ok, so I like bad puns - as a sequel to Bobbie Jo Sue, entitled "Cassie June Ledbetter, Beauty Shop Domme."

Thanks again.
 
Am I missing something, or did the best mature story category vanish? Can't find it on the list anymore. Hadn't decided which one to nominate and now it's gone!
 
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