Reflection and Analysis

General - Changes to Fanfic Friday (8/19/2017)

I used to love Fanfic Friday. I entered every single time, but this time I'm not. The new ambassadors running the profile have made it all to clear they don't know what they're doing, but also don't care that people are seriously upset with the changes they've made to the contest.

I've also never took issue with the judge's choice in winners except for the Back to School contest where we had guest judges. For that particular contest, I honestly felt there were better stories than the ones which one, but it also seemed like the guest judges favored OC stories that allowed the reader to self-insert, while the other judges didn't' do so.

However, with the last three contests – From the Heart, LuckyFriYay and The Zombie Apocalypse, I have been questioning the judge's decisions. Specifically, let me make it clear that unlike the contest with guest judges, I don't think those who won didn't deserve to. My issue comes down to the bias said judges have, and the fact I can't trust them to be impartial. This includes the first, where no apparent bias was yet evident. What are the biases?

- For the LuckyFriYay contest there were supposed to be ten winners, but the judges only selected five.

- For the Zombie Apocalypse, the judges announced certain fandoms and characters would get more points, but the fandoms and characters felt like what the judges wanted to read, rather than there being any logic to why said fandoms or characters got more points, like said fandom being a small fandom, or the character being a minor character.

- The Zombie Apocalypse also had a line which indicated the judges wanted the stories to have grammar to their personal standards, thus making things harder for those with learning disabilities and language barriers to win.

This, however, is not the only reason I'm not happy with the way Fanfic Friday is now being run.

For the contest From the Heart, the contest was supposed to involve a heartfelt moment from one anon character to the next, yet one of the people running the profile actually said an OC could be used instead simply because so many people asked to be able to use an OC, yet the judges aren't listening when we tell them we don't like the changes they made. I'd brushed this aside, but then came the next contest.

Entry for LuckyFriYay had ended. Everyone was set to wait a week for the judges to announce the winners. Instead, the Judges pulled what everyone hoped was an early April Fool's Day joke and extended the ability to enter by one week, but also changes up how people submitted stories from the tag system to a submission form. Chances are anybody who didn't get the message the following week who correctly submitted a story ended up disqualified.

To make matters worse, only five stories were selected as winners instead of ten as I already noted. Many of us who read through the stories knew there were more stories which could have won, not including our own entries. However, the number of entries submitted to the contest at the time was over a hundred. Now, there are only sixty-five of those stories left, which amounts to the biggest deletion of fanfics after the winners were announced I've ever seen since Fanfic Friday started.

Why? By only picking five stories the judges said to many writers that their stories weren't good enough, which is why they went back on their word of selecting ten winners instead of five. To make matters worse, the following contest had wording which made many of us feel the judges would favor an uncreative story they found to be grammatically perfect over a creative story with a few errors. This is a major change from the previous judging style which actually favored creativity, but used grammar as a way to filter out winners when things got tight.

Add to this, stories were no longer tagged, so despite the fact we were encouraged to be supportive of everyone else competing, we couldn't be. The fun of reading other people's stories was gone, particularly since either so few entered, or almost nobody included links. What we didn't realize at the time was that there would only be one winner and a few runner ups, let alone that the judges were changing the contest to only allow one winner from now on.

We found that out with the newest contest, where the judges decided that having only one winner for multiple fandoms was a good choice, but that having a one-shot added to an anthology was much better than having a story added to the list. Gone is the ability to read other people's stories, but now only an elite few have the chance of actually getting exposure with the contest. The anthology and one winner system also favors more popular fandoms and leaves out smaller fandoms.

Worse yet, the judges aren't listening to the comments which say we don't like the changes, but they also think that having a one-shot added to their anthology is a wonderful prize despite the fact they're taking a lot of our freedom to be creative away. Grammar is far more important than creativity. We're only allowed to do one-shots now. Oh, and don't bother writing for a smaller fandom either. It's also best to stick to what they want from the prompt and not get creative, because the contests are now about what the judges want to read, not what it used to be about.

P.S. This is written in response to the newest contest, one that I can't even be bothered to remember the name of this time around.