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Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf

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    Writing Challenge 2020

    in 2020

    Posted

    Resounding congratulations to Brian, the writer behind Geoffrey Teller, for smashing the Writing Challenge 2020 with a superb win!

    Not only the first entry the challenge received but also a beautifully written story “Lullaby” of an officer facing a difficult situation and a heartwarming encounter to leave a tear in the eye. This is the first Writing Challenge done since 2014, so this is a special congratulations extended to him!

    Matt, the writer behind Addison MacKenzie, had this to say about the piece:

    “I’ve served with Teller in various capacities for my entire length of service – as colleagues on the Veritas, as acting first officer on the Diligent, and now as senior officers on the Thor. In that time, I’ve gotten to know the Teller character quite intimately as well as his background – the presumed loss of his parents was initially a small detail to Brian, but it played a major role in one of our missions together on the Veritas when it was actually discovered that his father had survived.

    Getting to watch Teller work through that realization and then explain it to his sister Sarah (whom I wrote for) made for quite remarkable characterization. Now, in this piece of short writing, its interesting to see how Teller transformed into a wide-eyed, innocent projection of his childhood-self as he interacts with his mother. This piece was a compelling demonstration of the Teller’s humanity as we watch him confront [what he thinks is] his mother, their interactions and attempted reconciliation.”

    Our runner-up is Quinten, writer for Pholin Duyzer, recently returned to our community following a brief absence and scoops up this badge for his story “Time to Move On”, which sees the Denobulan officer return to his family home and battle through rough waters. A most excellent story and a compelling narrative glimpse into Pholin’s life at home and how his career has faired in between the time away. Well done, Quinten!

    All entries into the challenge were excellent, and each one deserves a slice of the praise! Thank you for submitting your entries, letting us into the worlds of your characters brought into the spotlight, and for giving us a glimpse of what goes on behind the characters we see.

    For the winner, runner-up and judges, they are in receipt of one of the following badges!

    Writing Challenge 2020 Winner BadgeBadge-Writing_Challenge_Winner.pngBadge-Writing_Challenge_Judge.pngBadge-Writing_Challenge_Runner_Up.png

    Considering the wild success of this challenge, we plan to continue the tradition in yearly challenges. We look forward to more amazing entries next spring!

    • Like 3

    A Decline In Pure Love

    in Trek Discussion

    Posted

    On 5/15/2020 at 6:50 AM, Roshanara Rahman said:

    Anyway, the basic gist of it was that being a fan of Trek since 94 right at the end of TNG, I've seen how every Trek show and movie since gets the same division of many fans liking it, some not sure, and others quite vocal in their dislike. According to the TNG cast, the same happened with them when their show first premiered.

    Yeah, that's what I was thinking too – there was lots of commentary about how people didn't like TNG when it premiered. I think it's just a given that people get attached to their vision of their favorite stories, and only want to see it continue as they knew it previously.

     

    On 5/15/2020 at 10:46 AM, Roshanara Rahman said:

    Section 31 shouldn't have been introduced at all to Trek. It forever tarnished the dream of a Federation/Trek utopia with its cynical take that such a thing could not possibly exist without someone else watching over and doing the "dirty" work behind the scenes that "needs to be done."

    The thing that Discovery muddled a bit to me is that I got the sense in the DS9 era that Section 31 was actually operating "outside" of Starfleet and the Federation control? Like, maybe there was some kind of "top echelon" of Starfleet or the Federation that was still supplying it with resources but that it didn't actually have a mandate anywhere in normal structures and if Federation legislators knew about it they'd disavow or put a stop to it. 

    • Like 4
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    Everything you need to know about the 2020 Awards Ceremony

    in Past ceremony archive

    Posted

    Nominations for the 2020 Awards Ceremony open on Monday, May 18 at 12:15am Pacific Time and close on Wednesday, June 10 at 11:45pm Pacific Time. 

    If this is your awards ceremony with us, welcome! This is a tradition that dates back to 1996, wherein we honor the people of the fleet who are simming really well, or contributing OOC.

    Back in the "old days," we would gather the entire fleet onto one email list (we were a lot smaller then...) and sim together an award presentation; now we do things a bit differently. Here's how it works today: 

    1. Everyone in the fleet submits nominations for consideration. 
    2. The group staff (ship COs, EC members, etc.) review the nominations.
    3. Each ship has their own awards presentation on their OOC email list for awards in the General Awards category. Award in this category can be given to one person on each ship. 
    4. Then, we have a fleetwide presentation of awards here on the forums. Awards in the Duty Post, Special, Staff, and Length of Service categories are presented over the course of three days. One person in the fleet can receive each of the Duty Post, Special, and Staff categories. 

    How to nominate:

    We rely on each and every member of the fleet to submit nominations so we can recognize the best members of our community who are putting in the time and effort to make this a fun place to be. So we need your help! If you don't nominate your peers and mentors for awards, they won't get recognized. We want to encourage everyone to be really free with their nominations – there's no penalty in putting in a nomination that doesn't ultimately get the award. But ships that have fewer nominations tend to end up having fewer award winners – so don't be shy! Multiple nominations from members of a ship for any given award can help send a signal to reviewers that a certain person is really deserving, but also one really great nomination can be the deciding factor for someone to win an award.

    Follow these simple instructions to get started: 

    1. Check out the wiki Hall of Honor to see the list of awards and learn more: https://wiki.starbase118.net/wiki/index.php?title=Award
    2. Consider who you want to nominate. Then do a quick check on the list of past award winners to make sure they haven't won the award before: https://wiki.starbase118.net/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_Award_Recipients (You can sort the table by clicking on the column headers, or you can use your browser's "Find" feature to quickly find a character anywhere on the page – on PC, use CTRL+F, on Mac use ⌘+F.)
    3. If the person hasn't won the award before, head to the nomination form: https://www.starbase118.net/members/personnel/forms/award-nomination-panel/
    4. Enter your information and select the award. Then write a nomination reason. For some awards, we'll ask you for a link to a sim if you have one readily available that helps justify your nomination. Don't stress out about finding a sim, but if you have one, it could help.

    If you feel really confident about your award nomination, chat with others on your ship who might also feel the same way and recommend they make a similar nomination!

    Writing a good nomination: 

    Remember, your nominations are going up against other nominations from your ship (for General category awards), or from the entire fleet (Duty Post, Special, Staff category awards). So the better you make your case for why your nomination should win, the more likely it is that it will help your nominee end up getting the award. 

    After the nomination period opens this year, going to post on the Community News some great sample nominations that helped their nominees win an award. I'll add a link to that post once it's up. But in the meantime, you can check out these from previous years: https://www.starbase118.net/2018/award-nomination-examples/ 

    All that being said, don't go overboard! If the case for a nominee self-evident, or clearly shown by a sim, it's okay to write less in your explanation and allow the evidence to stand on its own. 

    How to get a sim link:

    You can grab a link to a sim by going to your ship's Google Group archive (the link is in the footer of every sim). 

    LinkMaking.png 

    Awards Ceremony schedule:

    • June 27, Saturday: Introduction, General Awards
    • June 28, Sunday: Special and Length of Service Awards
    • June 29, Monday: Staff Awards
    • June 30, Tuesday: Duty Post Awards, finale/acknowledgments, complete ceremony posted.

    Questions?

    • Head to the Discord chatroom, where we have the #awards2020 room where you can ask questions of other members. 
    • Or, ask your FO or CO for help – they're happy to answer questions and have been through multiple ceremonies!
    • Like 5

    Award Nominations process suggestions from 2019

    in Past ceremony archive

    Posted

    After you submit award nominations, you're brought to a form where you can suggest changes to our Awards Ceremony nominations process. On the whole, everyone expresses great satisfaction but how things work! But as with last year, we have some suggestions that came through that I'd like to address: 

    Quote

    The checkmark for the award type doesn't show up when clicked. The text becomes bold, indicating its selection, but no check.

    This is an issue with our forms plugin conflicting with our website theme. It's been difficult to fix, but hopefully folks can navigate the form well enough seeing the bold indicator with the selection.

    If you're an expert in CSS / WordPress plugins and themes – and want to help with this – email me at t.wolf@starbase118.net and I'll send you the information I got back from our form plugin support about it and see if you can help us resolve it! 

    Quote

    There's no check to see if the submitted email address is correct. Unless the check is made when the form is submitted.

    I figured it would slow down submission of the form and frustrate people if they had to check the email address twice. We have everyone's email address on record and can pretty easily track back to what we have on file for you if necessary – but you wouldn't get your nomination "receipt" via email, for sure. 

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    Leave nominations open year-round.

    We've gotten this a couple years in a row and I've just asked the Captains Council to consider this suggestion specifically. Hopefully we'll have a decision by the end of the ceremony this year. 

    Quote
    • A short description of what each award means?
    • An ability to see all the awards and descriptions with a dropdown would be helpful.
    • Have a description of all the awards on this page! I don't know them all by heart, and have to jump back and forth between 6 different tabs to choose the best one.

    I must admit I'm always a little perplexed by this one. The nomination panel page is already quite large, so I'm trying to minimize the size of it?

    We have links to the list of all awards and their descriptions under the dropdown boxes where you select which award your nominating someone for. And the idea here is you'd open the Hall of Honor – which is linked from the nominations panel – and decide which awards you want to nominate for, and then go back to the form to do the nomination. From what I gather folks are doing that in reverse, like going to the form and looking at the names of the awards and deciding who to nominate for them? 

    Do we really need to have a list of all the award descriptions on this page as opposed to just having links to the Hall of Honor on the wiki? Open to feedback – please respond below! 

    Quote

    Consider allowing anonymous submissions. It is tiresome having to add your own details every time when submitting multiple nominations, if the form could remember what you filled in those sections previously, it would make it easier and quicker too.

    We're not going to allow anonymous submissions. The only way to make this a little bit faster is to have a profile on the site so it can recognize you when you load the form. As such, I've added a registration form where you can do that. Once you're registered and logged in, you should find your email address and character name filled in the form each time you arrive on it. 

    Quote

    Have an option to not submit supporting sims for staff awards.

    Sim links are optional. It says that right on the form, and we hide the sim link box automatically for staff awards where a sim link wouldn't make sense. 

    Quote

    Allow multiple citations of various awards with a waiting period of 2 or 3 years before they can be eligible to receive it again.

    The Captains Council is in discussion about this right now. We're hoping to have a solution before we launch nominations but if not we'll have something to say about it for next year!

    Thank you everyone for your suggestions! Please feel free to add more to the form this year so we can continue to improve the process!

    Writing Challenge discussion and question

    in 2020

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Tasha MacFarlane said:

    Can we submit more than one entry? For example, a solo entry, and one with a friend?

    Prefer we keep it to just one entry per person, please – our judges will have a lot to read (hopefully!). 

     

    1 hour ago, Artinus Serinus said:

    Can I rework previous sims?

    Or, failing that, can I write the story for my PNPC?

    Neither seems to be forbidden by the rules exactly, but I thought that I would seek guidance, nonetheless.

    Per the rules and guidelines, you don't have to use your current character, but you can if you want. This takes place outside our canon by default. 

    • Like 1

    Writing Challenge discussion and question

    in 2020

    Posted

    I've updated the other thread to include the following information: 

    Quote
    • Word count should be a minimum of 300 and maximum of 3000.
    • Members are welcome to submit solo stories, or team up with a buddy to submit a collaborative epic.
    • Your submission should be in the format of a short story. Prose, not sim formatting. (See here for examples.)
    • Submissions are, by default, non-canon – if you find a way to shoehorn this into your own backstory, you're free to use it if you wish, but certainly not a requirement.
      • To that end, you can create whatever characters make sense for the story.
      • And you're free to use characters that you've already written for in sim, but please don't include anyone else's.
    • Submit your story directly into the first post of a new thread. Using the following format for the thread title: 
      • [Primary Character Name(s) of author(s)]: "My Story's Interesting Title"
      • Tristan Wolf: "Five Ways to End Your Starfleet Career"

     

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    Writing Challenge 2020

    in 2020

    Posted

    For this year, following along with the themes of the recent newly released series of Star Trek: Picard, and the current situation many of us are facing at home, the chosen theme is one of Star Trek's most beloved storytelling mechanics — Echoes of the Past.

    "The view screen snaps into focus on an impossible sight,
    and a voice from your past speaks to you and you alone..."

    How would your character react in this situation? What's going through their mind? What scene immediately pops into your head? Is there a word-fire kindling? Does it transport you somewhere? If so, bust out the virtual pen and paper, brew that Earl Grey and get cracking! 

    One judge will be chosen from each ship to help select the winner. 

    Rules & Guidelines: 

    • Word count should be a minimum of 300 and maximum of 3000.
    • Members are welcome to submit solo stories, or team up with a buddy to submit a collaborative epic.
    • Your submission should be in the format of a short story. Prose, not sim formatting. (See here for examples.)
    • All members are welcome to submit entries for the community to read, but only those from active simmers will be reviewed by the judging panel for the final winners selection.
    • Submissions are, by default, non-canon – if you find a way to shoehorn this into your own backstory, you're free to use it if you wish, but certainly not a requirement.
      • To that end, you can create whatever characters make sense for the story. You don't have to use or reference any of your current characters.
      • Also, rank is not an issue here – write as an Ensign or a Captain, civilian, whatever makes sense for your story!
      • And you're free to use characters that you've already written for in sim, but please don't include anyone else's.
    • Submit your story directly into the first post of a new thread. Use the following format for the thread title: 
      • [Primary Character Name(s) of author(s)]: "My Story's Interesting Title"
      • Tristan Wolf: "Five Ways to End Your Starfleet Career"

    All stories must be submitted by Sunday, May 17 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. Good luck!

    • Like 5
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