We're roughly halfway through the nominations period, and so we've had closing on 1,000 nominations for over 500 nominees which represent works by nearly 300 authors. However, that's only an average of 7 per category, and there are some categories in which we are still short of nominees:


Characters: Angel/Angelus, Fred/Illyria, Original Character, Slash Pairing, Wesley

Crossovers: Anime, Charmed, CSI, Games, Lord of the Rings, Highlander, X-Men

Mod Awards: All of them could do with some more nominees

Story Types: Drabble, Ficlet Collection


If your stuck for ideas on what to nominate, why not check your "My Recommendations" tab to see what you've recommended in the past. The full rules are on the CoA site, and you can nominate here.

As an aid to any writers wanting a bigger readership for their stories, I've published a list of the total number of hits and average hits per story in each of the main site categories last year:

What was hot in 2008

As you can see, crossovers with crime drama series seem to be particularly popular at the moment, with only House MD preventing them from taking all of the top 5 places. Also flying high are the Anime, Naruto and the Pitch Black series of movies.

Belatedly, the 2008 Crossing Over Awards are now open for nomination.

A few changes from last year:

1. Some categories have date restrictions. Nominees in "Best Crossover" categories must have been completed in 2007 or 2008. Those in "Best Unfinished Crossover" must have been updated in 2008.

2. There will be a second stage of voting this year. Halfway through the voting period, we will cut the field of nominees down to just the top 5 (plus any ties). If you have already voted for a nominee that is removed, you will be able to vote again and your original vote will still be counted when determining the minor placings.

3. Each member may only make a maximum of 30 nominations.

The full rules are on the CoA site, and you can nominate here. A quick note on multiple crossovers: they should be nominated in "Best Multiple Crossover" rather than the categories for specific fandoms, unless the story just crosses over between BtVS and two fandoms in the same universe (e.g. CSI Las Vegas and CSI Miami), even if the story isn't in the "Multiple Crossings" category on the site.

Belatedly, I have finally got around to removing all the duplicate pen names from the site. For nearly 2 years, you have not been able to create an account with the same pen name as an existing author, but I never cleaned up the existing duplicates until now. The following criteria where used to determine who kept the original name, and who got a number appended:

1. Most words of fic posted.
2. Most reviews posted.
3. Earliest to join the site.

If you own two or more accounts, please Contact Us to have them merged providing the addresses of both account profile pages.

Also, any accounts that have been inactive for six months and have never posted any content have been removed.

At the moment, we're adding new Comic sub-subcategories. If you have a comic fic in the base subcategories or in Marvel - Other, please try to move it to a more appropriate home:

1.) Look for a character family. Stuff with the Avengers goes in Marvel - Avengers, Peter/Spidey or Venom goes in Marvel - Spider-Man, etc.
2.) If it's X-Men, that's a top level category. Stop dumping it in Comics, please.
3.) If it doesn't fit in a character family category because you span the entire universe, there are three options for you:
    > Earth-616: The classic comic universe
    > Earth-1610: The Ultimate Universe
    > Movie Universe: Gee, I wonder.
4.) Marvel Knights is Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Iron Fist, etc. If you're writing the fic, you probably know what your comics say on the cover these days, though.

Just because people seem to be forgetting, there are three major reasons your challenges might disappear. If you post your idea anyways... well, it will disappear. See how that works?

1.) No challenges that are too close to other challenges. Take a look around before you post something. We do have close to three thousand challenges active on the site. If you've thought of it, someone else might have too. And if nobody wanted to write it for that person, chances are they don't want to write it for you either.

2.) No challenges that don't involve Buffy and/or Angel. Meaning no Anita Blake/Supernatural crossovers, Marvel/DC crossovers, etc. You can have a challenge asking for a story with six crossovers or just one crossover, but it must cross over with Buffy or Angel. That's the whole purpose behind the site, remember?

3.) No challenges that are essentially just "I want to see Character X with Character Y". That's what FFAs were for and yes, you do need to write those to be able to post those yourself. These are the most commonly deleted, especially if they're slash because... well, lesbians are hot at least so I can pretend I didn't see it.

We have moved the forums onto the same server as the main site. They can now be found at

http://forum.tthfanfic.org


This is both to save some money and it will allow us to start integrating the site and forums more closely in the future, such has having a single registration/sign on for both. It also means we have more space, so may start allowing storage of images for fan art on the forums in the future.

All existing accounts and posts have been copied across, except for attachments and custom avatars hosted on the forums server.

As the forums and website are now on the same server, we have created a status page to announce any site problems:

http://status.tthfanfic.org

Note:Until 20th December there was a problem with outbound email from the new forums. If you've signed up for a new account, or tried to use the forgotten password function and not received an activation email, please try again.