CoT awards

I'm still not sure how I feel about the Children of Time Awards site -- on the one hand, I think it's nice to have another site to promote good fic, but on the other hand, I don't like the necessary consequence of pitting fics up against one another and having one win over the others. One of the reasons why calufrax is awesome is because it's a purely positive site, and I'm afraid the same can't be true of an awards site. It's inevitable that there will be losers, and thus bad feelings. ("It's an honor just to be nominated" may be true, but let's face it, it's a different quality of honor than the honor of winning.) Finally, deciding winners by popular vote does make sense, but it also won't necessarily result in the best stories winning. Fortunately the CoT people have at least set up different categories for different types of fic, because otherwise I'd be afraid that a Ten/Rose OTP fic would be bound to win each and every time, just because that seems to be the most populous segment of the fandom. (Sigh. And it's not that I'm against Ten/Rose -- I'm not, and I even like some Ten/Rose OTP fic when it's well done despite the fact that I don't like OTP in general. But do we really need so much of it?)

But while I'm still on the fence about CoT, I am rapidly becoming a fan of cot_tossed. Even if you don't plan on voting -- and I'm not sure if I will yet, although I might in the Classic Who and SJA categories just to show my support (both were in danger of not being included in the CoT awards at all) -- I have been thoroughly enjoying reading their reviews of the nominated stories. Go check them out. (And no, I don't know who's behind the sock puppet, and I hope I never find out. Some mysteries are meant to be mysteries.)

CoT awards

I'm still not sure how I feel about the Children of Time Awards site -- on the one hand, I think it's nice to have another site to promote good fic, but on the other hand, I don't like the necessary consequence of pitting fics up against one another and having one win over the others. One of the reasons why calufrax is awesome is because it's a purely positive site, and I'm afraid the same can't be true of an awards site. It's inevitable that there will be losers, and thus bad feelings. ("It's an honor just to be nominated" may be true, but let's face it, it's a different quality of honor than the honor of winning.) Finally, deciding winners by popular vote does make sense, but it also won't necessarily result in the best stories winning. Fortunately the CoT people have at least set up different categories for different types of fic, because otherwise I'd be afraid that a Ten/Rose OTP fic would be bound to win each and every time, just because that seems to be the most populous segment of the fandom. (Sigh. And it's not that I'm against Ten/Rose -- I'm not, and I even like some Ten/Rose OTP fic when it's well done despite the fact that I don't like OTP in general. But do we really need so much of it?)

But while I'm still on the fence about CoT, I am rapidly becoming a fan of cot_tossed. Even if you don't plan on voting -- and I'm not sure if I will yet, although I might in the Classic Who and SJA categories just to show my support (both were in danger of not being included in the CoT awards at all) -- I have been thoroughly enjoying reading their reviews of the nominated stories. Go check them out. (And no, I don't know who's behind the sock puppet, and I hope I never find out. Some mysteries are meant to be mysteries.)