FA+
Shop
The URSA MAJOR Nominations Are Up -- And I Start Griping
13 years ago
General
The nominees for the 2012 Ursa Major Awards have been posted today (http://www.ursamajorawards.org/voting2012/)... and I can’t help feel disappointed by the final choices. The nominations are chosen each year by the fans (or, at least, by the fans who actually bother to participate and file their selections to the UMA website) from a wide selection of anthropomorphic art and literature that has appeared over the course of a year. But it’s been getting that each year the nominations come in, I feel less and less gratified by the choices actually made, and I always wind up wondering about the breadth of the average furry fan’s knowledge, familiarity or even interest of the genre. Sometimes, I even wonder if I’m in the same fandom as everybody else.
What strikes me first is what’s missing from the lists. Among the graphic stories nominations, there’s no Blacksad. No Grandville. No Mouse Guard. No Mice Templar. Not even Usagi Yojimbo, though that honored series only put out one or two issues this past year while Stan Sakai turned his attention to a new project. (And Sakai has asked in the past that, after winning a few consecutive awards over a few years, that he be passed over in favor of other folks having a chance.) Instead, we get TwoKinds? Furthia High? Slightly Damned!? At least Lackadaisy makes sense, given the strength of the writing and the power of the art. Where is Endtown or Epiphany or even Cheap Thrills, strips with skillful artistry and stories with some real meat to their bones? I mean, really? Slightly Damned gets nominated over Blacksad!? TwoKinds over Grandville!?
In the comic strip category, we are missing strips like Doc Rat (which brilliantly juggles humor and drama in its tales) - and how does Doc Rat keep getting passed over year after year anyway!? - Kevin and Kell, and Heavenly Nostrils, thrown over for the sakes of Housepets, Precocious and Sandra And Woo. Which doesn’t even seem like a fair fight. And I’m not saying that those who got nominated were terrible or even slightly bad – I just don’t think that a number of these are even in the same league.
The short story category this year, rather than be dominated entirely by Kyell Gold, who gracefully withdrew his name from consideration this year, is instead populated almost entirely by Mary Lowd. I’m rather concerned by this, more so than I was when Gold received three or four titles in the category, because it now looks like a trend where one writer can totally dominate if they can get enough friends to nominate them. This is not a criticism of Mary Lowd -- I’ve no doubt that Miss Lowd deserves the award for the category, especially as I personally feel that she is a more capable writer than Mister Gold, but I think the category award determination should be more than simply deciding which of her stories is going to get it. And not just her, but any other writer afterwards. I think it defeats the purpose of having the fans select the winner if it only boils down to one determined bloc of fans dominating the process. Perhaps the UMA should tweak the rules a bit to limit the category to only two entries per writer. I don’t actually like limiting the category in this fashion, but when it happens year after year that one person or another dominates a category, something is out of kilter.
I know this comes down to a lot of griping, but I feel there’s cause. I know it’s a fan award and that it’s the fans that make the choices, but I still question the choices and I question the process. Ideally, it should be an honest expression of the fans selecting the best and finest through involvement in a democratic exercise; but it feels more and more like the majority of the fans are either antagonistic towards or apathetic about either the furry arts or the awards, and what we’re left with is a small, unbalanced percentage of involved fans who continually tip the process one way or the other, but never towards the truly deserving. (The irony, I will note here, is that there was a larger number of people nominating this year.)
It may be, as I noted earlier, that the UMA rules need some slight tweaking. Maybe they need more categories or sub-categories, such as splitting Graphic Stories into Humor and Dramatic categories; limiting the number of times a writer or artist can appear within a category. Something. I don’t know, just… something.
What strikes me first is what’s missing from the lists. Among the graphic stories nominations, there’s no Blacksad. No Grandville. No Mouse Guard. No Mice Templar. Not even Usagi Yojimbo, though that honored series only put out one or two issues this past year while Stan Sakai turned his attention to a new project. (And Sakai has asked in the past that, after winning a few consecutive awards over a few years, that he be passed over in favor of other folks having a chance.) Instead, we get TwoKinds? Furthia High? Slightly Damned!? At least Lackadaisy makes sense, given the strength of the writing and the power of the art. Where is Endtown or Epiphany or even Cheap Thrills, strips with skillful artistry and stories with some real meat to their bones? I mean, really? Slightly Damned gets nominated over Blacksad!? TwoKinds over Grandville!?
In the comic strip category, we are missing strips like Doc Rat (which brilliantly juggles humor and drama in its tales) - and how does Doc Rat keep getting passed over year after year anyway!? - Kevin and Kell, and Heavenly Nostrils, thrown over for the sakes of Housepets, Precocious and Sandra And Woo. Which doesn’t even seem like a fair fight. And I’m not saying that those who got nominated were terrible or even slightly bad – I just don’t think that a number of these are even in the same league.
The short story category this year, rather than be dominated entirely by Kyell Gold, who gracefully withdrew his name from consideration this year, is instead populated almost entirely by Mary Lowd. I’m rather concerned by this, more so than I was when Gold received three or four titles in the category, because it now looks like a trend where one writer can totally dominate if they can get enough friends to nominate them. This is not a criticism of Mary Lowd -- I’ve no doubt that Miss Lowd deserves the award for the category, especially as I personally feel that she is a more capable writer than Mister Gold, but I think the category award determination should be more than simply deciding which of her stories is going to get it. And not just her, but any other writer afterwards. I think it defeats the purpose of having the fans select the winner if it only boils down to one determined bloc of fans dominating the process. Perhaps the UMA should tweak the rules a bit to limit the category to only two entries per writer. I don’t actually like limiting the category in this fashion, but when it happens year after year that one person or another dominates a category, something is out of kilter.
I know this comes down to a lot of griping, but I feel there’s cause. I know it’s a fan award and that it’s the fans that make the choices, but I still question the choices and I question the process. Ideally, it should be an honest expression of the fans selecting the best and finest through involvement in a democratic exercise; but it feels more and more like the majority of the fans are either antagonistic towards or apathetic about either the furry arts or the awards, and what we’re left with is a small, unbalanced percentage of involved fans who continually tip the process one way or the other, but never towards the truly deserving. (The irony, I will note here, is that there was a larger number of people nominating this year.)
It may be, as I noted earlier, that the UMA rules need some slight tweaking. Maybe they need more categories or sub-categories, such as splitting Graphic Stories into Humor and Dramatic categories; limiting the number of times a writer or artist can appear within a category. Something. I don’t know, just… something.
Endtown and Jenner's Doc Rat were among my selections for nominations; why neither got on the ballot is beyond my comprehension.
I think you pretty well covered the shortcomings in the selection process. As I am a firm believer in the utility of editors, maybe what is needed is to reorganize the ALAA Into an organization similar to the SFWA. With a larger pool of 'professionals' you should get a broader opinion base.
Just a thought.
There's certainly room for a furry version of the Hugo, which is chosen by a panel of judges rather than the fans. But it's been (rightly) pointed out that the implementation of such an award would require a great deal of preparation, work, and much herding of cats. And dedicated volunteers.
There are other furry awards beginning to come to the forefront, such as the Coyotl Awards for furry fiction, which debuted this past autumn. It's more of a juried award where the selections are deliberated over by a panel. It doesn't replace the UMA, but should, hopefully, augment it.
....you really couldn't find more than TWO author nominees? Christ on a crutch, even at my worst I never had more than two stories competing in any given year.
I am literally speechless, here.
"And they wonder... WHY. I. DRINK." -Nino Greasemanelli
-MMM-
Where is the problem originating? Are there not enough literate fans? Can they not find the books, zines, blogs or wherever the stories are appearing, or do they just not bother to read? Are the friends and supporters of any one writer overzealous? Personally, I suspect a combination of all of these, where only a small subset of fans are actually reading furry fic anymore, leaving only the supporters of a very few writers the open field. (And while I have a great many reservations about Mr Gold, I have far fewer towards Miss Lowd -- the couple of stories of hers that I've read were very good. But still...)
I think there needs to some sort of mechanism in place to offset the unbalance, without depriving the fans of their influence.
Never heard of Ms Lowd before the nominations. Which works of hers do you recommend?
She and her husband, Daniel, won last year's Coyotl Award for best short story: "The Canoe Race".
Meaning if your not friends with the original list creator you wont get on.
IMHO.
I never see vote boxes at cons, or passed around to dealers... etc...
There are no vote boxes at cons. Everything is done online. Which, of itself, is perfectly fine. Is there not enough mention or publicity about it at the cons? I don't get to many furry cons outside of Seattle, so I don't know what gets done or doesn't get down at other cons, but my impression was that they at least put out flyers to inform con-goers about the UMA. And they announce the winners at one or another of the cons at mid-year. Apart from that, everything seems to be done online: they announce through their website and through their accounts on LiveJournal, Twitter and Facebook, not to mention through folks who are associated with the UMA or who are just interested enough to repost the announcements.
On that end, though, I watch the Fur Affinity Forum boards from time to time. The awards are seldom mentioned there, and when they are, they're met with disinterest, apathy and mockery. (In fact, at times, the Forum almost seems to be the most anti-furry corner of the fandom.) Which is why I think at least a part of the problem is the fandom: you can't expect optimum results during the UMA nominations if there's an apathetic resistance from a significant quarter of the fans.
A bias towards friends is always there, but one would hope there was also a bias towards just generally good material as well. A hope that the cream would rise to the top in spite of the small irregularities.
Any kind of popular vote is by its very nature a popularity contest, and there's always the risk when you leave these things up to "the people" that they won't respond in the way that they think you should. I suppose one possible solution is to set up some sort of body of knowlegable people to judge what is truly the best in furry art and literature, but that has its own problems. Since it won't matter how good something is if the judging body doesn't know it exists, promotion would continue to be a necessary evil.
Still, something like that might be a useful complement to the UMA. Furry's version of the Nebulas, where the UMA is more like the Hugos.