*Cetus Media Awards - S53

[lemonoppy]

Hey everyone! Welcome Cetus Media Awards S53! You might be thinking, where’s Cetus S52? Well, I was a bit busy the last season or so, so… I kinda skipped it. But I’m back and I’ve got some awards for you!

The Cetus Media Awards are a continuation of Baron1898’s Gemini Media Awards, a theme you may realize is that I just steal stuff that people have done and re-do them but a little less good.

The Cetus Awards is a series of media awards meant to showcase and highlight the amazing work that we’ve seen and read in the ISFL each season, and to give recognition to the authors that make it happen. Thank you to all of you who write, I love the media landscape of the league and we had an amazing season this go around, especially the rookies!

Format and Rules

• The Cetus season encompasses the length of time between the end of the S52 Ultimus to the end of the S53 Ultimus
  
• There are 5 categories for awards: Best Article, Best Series, Whale’s Choice (Comedy), Best Author, and Best New Autho
  
• Articles are only eligible for a single category, even if the series started in an earlier season and there was only one eligible piece in the current media season.
  
• Nominees in each category are ordered by author name alphabetically but sometimes I move sections around so it’s not consistent, don’t read into the ordering
  

Categories

The Whale’s Choice is my personal award and I think that there are definitely articles that could be a best article but is instead nominated for the comedy section because that’s how I interpreted them.

Best New Author Award

The Best New Author Award is available for new users who have created within three seasons of the current draft class. For the S53 awards, this includes players from S53, S52, and S51.

Winners of a previous Best New Author or Best Author award are ineligible for this award, and new authors who might win Best Author for the year will be considered for that award before Best New Author.

Baron1898 Award for Best Author

Baron is the goat, and the work and dedication she’s done for the league and media landscape is reflected in naming this award after her.

Disclaimer: None of these awards are some objective measure of quality of writing, it’s a reflection of my taste and what I enjoyed during the season. I have read every piece and while it was a lot, I enjoyed every last one.

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Best Article
The Best Article category covers exceptional standalone articles that stand out for their insightful analysis, original perspectives, and clear, compelling narratives.

Nominees

@DocLars, Film Session - The ISFL Semifinals

DocLars tells all the Box Score Billys to WATCH THE TAPE. Doc goes through each game of the first two rounds of the S53 playoffs and checks to see who actually performed, judging with the eye test and not just the stats we have available from Wolverine Studios. Unsurprisingly, Kim Yeon-Seok and No Pix stand out, but having a ball-knower like Doc was really cool to read.

@IR15H0000000000, Spiderling Hype Compilation!

Irish is a GM of the very young, very rebuilding Black Forest Brood, and we’ve got a super fantastic article where he goes through all the games that the young prospects played to get some hype and excitement in the locker room! What a great idea and lovely way to get your players excited in a down season.

@CowboyBlender, SCP-8736 - Rick Diggersbee's Kicking Challenge

You know what’s super cool? SCP and the quality of writing it produces, and Blender does such a fantastic job writing about SCP-8736-1’s performance in some kicking trials and keeping it exactly in the tone, style, and quality as all of the best SCP pieces.

@soevil, 9 hours, 50 minutes

I love me a narrative post, and I felt like this piece by soevil about the season they just had, moving from Osaka to to Honolulu, and back, especially framed by the Honolulu season was great. I really appreciated the level of writing and the immediacy of the piece as a part of the S53 season.

@zaynzk, Team Records That Could Be Broken

Another type of article I love is record breaking stuff, Sconnie won for it in S51, and I love that we’ve got Zayn going through team records to see what might be achievable, and we’ve got some real Chicago Bears and a 4k passer vibes for a few of these!

@Raf_TML, The Epic of Athena | Part One: The Journey Begins

Soooo…. This one says Part 1 but I considered all one media since they were posted one right after each other, the splitting into parts more formatting and character count thing than a separate story thing. We’ve got an expansive, detailed, wonderful story about Raf’s character, Athena, and it was a great read.

@TubaDeus, The REAL Tuba's S53 Fantasy Guide

Tuba makes another appearance with a fantastic guide to the fantasy landscape for the S53 season! I appreciate all the work Tuba does to go through rosters, build projections, and help all of us who are just hoping to get that Fantasy TPE.

@lock180, The Weekly Mirror

Two seminal pillars of ISFL media, the work by lock180 and the crowd-sourced, somewhat accurate work of the Weekly Mirror comes to a head (the last of many) in this article. I think that this one is more about a sentimental value of the how fantastic all the authors involved in these pieces were and how much they gave to the league with their talents.

@omg, Adjusting Fantasy Scoring

We’ve got a super interesting, detailed look into the IDP scoring of ISFL fantasy, and what might be done to rebalance them for a more equal experience, leaning on higher defense scoring to balance out the defensive line and the secondary. I loved the changes and the in-depth analysis of how to create a potentially more interesting draft and scoring system.

@TooSweet, DSFL Team Need Analysis

The rookies really came out this season, and TooSweet with his first article was one of many examples of such in S52. I’m a sucker for formatting and DSFL content, and seeing a player really dive into the teams and rosters of the DSFL and connect the recent history of the team was fantastic to read and use as a tool to figure out what might be happening in the upcoming DSFL season!


And the Cetus for Best Article goes to… @omg for Adjusting Fantasy Scoring

The more I read this piece, the more I was excited and interested in it, and potentially changing our fantasy scoring system. I loved the amount of work that was put in, the clear and compelling points, and I of course love charts! The only downside was assigning 1% payouts for the articles to two other people lol.

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Best Series
The Best Series category covers collections of articles that together form a cohesive and compelling narrative. This award series considers the quality and consistency of each article in the body of work.

Nominees

@ManningTypeAim, PrimeTime!

MTA has come out with a great weekly series that goes through the games of the week, and shouting out some players with great performances! I love the work that went into the formatting and display of the post itself. There was a ton of work put into these posts and they were great to read.

@CowboyBlender, Big Boy Of The Week

Another Cowboy Blender nomination, and it goes for a great article series shouting out a part of the league that is a bit under-celebrated, the Big Boys! Love the work to highlight the performances in the trenches and by some pancake enthusiasts.

@Chicken Lips, What's the Chicken Picken

GAMBLING SERIES??? Colour me interested! Well, kind of, I followed these article but was real broke during the season so I couldn’t get into the profits. I would have loved more of these, I also loved Brad Woof’s similar series a few seasons ago.

@Amkamkamk, S52 Amkalytics Review: Who over/under-performed this season?

I’m afraid that this will be maybe the final, or hopefully penultimate, entry from Amk with their proprietary Amkalytics score to rank teams. I love all the work that goes into creating these stats and judging teams based off of their non-garbage time performances. Being fabulously gathered, analyzed, and collated is the calling card of all Amkalytics, combined with the fantastic style of Amk himself.

@somecoach, ISFL S54 Consensus Mock Draft Rankings

This is a bit of a multi-media production as there was a podcast as well, but I feel like this might encapsulate the huge body of work and the time somecoach put into gathering so much of the fantastic mock media that we had. It was really cool being a part of the process, and we’ll see how accurate the community mocks were in a few days after we see the draft!

And the Cetus for Best Series goes to… @Amkamkamk for S52 Amkalytics Review: Who over/under-performed this season?

I can’t speak highly enough of amk as a person and as a writer. We’ve all been so privileged to have them in our community and to read the work that they put into Amkalytics. I love seeing any of his posts pop up and hope we can get a combined history article exploring the best and worst teams in the Amkalytics era!

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Whale’s Choice (Comedy)

Nominees
The Whale’s Choice (comedy) selects from comedic, interesting articles about the league and users that are in good taste, knowing jest, and amusing meta-connections.

@CowboyBlender, Ranking ISFL Miniskirts by How Uncomfortable I Would Be To Wear Them

April Fools was this season, and we’ve got a banger because of it. Redbubble skirts with ISFL logos ranked is fantastic, and we need to run a charity drive to make sure CowboyBlender gets to get one.

@Matt Turk, A study in talking

A blatant cash generating scheme hidden as a “scientific experiment”, Matt Turk and Casey tried to figure out a Mee6 bot exploit for levels, and annoyed Austin in the process! As a disclaimer, this article did not get the full word count of money since they just copied some tables lmao.

@”LGLAC613", The J.J.R Gameplan

Sometimes I wonder about putting in articles that are inside-baseball, parody posts being the major ones. However, this is the Whale’s Choice, so I’m doing what I want. We all know how good JJR is and how they are for PLAYER EMPOWERMENT.

@”Hallmonitor_20", Feeling Ucey

Uce does what he wants, and what he wants is correct. If Uce does not win this award, he has.

And the Cetus for Whale’s Choice (Comedy) goes to… @CowboyBlender for Ranking ISFL Miniskirts by How Uncomfortable I Would Be To Wear Them

CHARITY DRIVE TO MAKE BLENDER BUY A SKIRT. I love this article, love the evolution of CowboyBlender finding out about the skirts in Discord and finally leading up to a great article for April Fools.

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Baron1898 Award for Best Author
The Baron1898 Award for Best Author celebrates a writer whose work consistently demonstrates exceptional writing, creativity, and voice.

Nominees

@somecoach
I think it’s a bit criminal that none of somecoach’s fantastic articles made it into the Best Articles noms but the pace and quality of his work really stands out this season.

@CowboyBlender
We’re gonna get a lot of rookies, and I hope the fantastic range that CowboyBlender has displayed is something we get to see in seasons to come!

@ImJared
I loved this record holding rookie punter’s work, and all the work and detail that went into the explanation of every piece!

@ValorX77
Valor is back and came out with a great series of articles aimed at helping rookies, with a lot of great advice from themselves and GMs from the league.

@”omg”
Omg articles are always fantastic, and they’re so much work that I am always just so excited to see a new one. I appreciate all the fun, thoughtful conclusions reached by omg during their pieces.

@Raf_TML
I’m not so sure where to put Raf, she write so well but the bulk of her work was in a couple pieces, albeit that does account for like 40k words.

And the Baron1898 Award for Best Author goes to… @CowboyBlender!

It looks like I got something on my skirt. I definitely will at some point, I'm messy as hell, so I don't need that. The Coyote is also howling right at my crotch, and I'm sure the witchier folks here would take some sort of negative meaning out of the full moon aspect.

CowboyBlender is here and I think it’s hard to deny the volume and quality of so many of the pieces they had this season. Just as an overall force for the media scene, who else can you point to this season? Congrats CowboyBlender!

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Best New Author
The Best New Author recognizes an emerging writer who has quickly made an impact with the quality and impact that they have created with their fresh voice.

@Griff
This guy may not have made the first two rounds of the DSFL General Chat mock, but he’s such a consistently great guy and his media reflects his great writing and sense of humour.

@ImJared
I love Vittori and I love the in-depth work and info that I get in all of Jared’s pieces. He was nominated up above, what else can I say about him!

@TooSweet
It really is hard to deny the variety and depth of so many TooSweet pieces centering on the DSFL and the mock drafts he’s created this season.

@Casey
I loved all the Casey work that came near the start of the season, so much work and excitement about the Prospect Bowl and the DSFL! Welcome to the league, Casey.

@Raf_TML
Raf is a great person and one of the league's new long form authors, which we have been so lucky to have many of.

And the Award for Best New Author goes to… @Raf_TML!

Eventually, the stadium bleachers filled up with excited parents and family members, and graduation began. The graduating class had about 400 students, so the actual name announcements would end up taking nearly 2 whole hours. Students were eager to get up and be done, after spending all that time sitting there. Eventually, the final name was read, and the students threw their caps up into the air. They had finally completed their primary education.

Now it was time to move on, in more ways than one.

Guys, how can you look at the absolutely fantastic novel that Raf wrote and not give her this award? I loved reading it the first time around, and re-reading it so I could write this article! PLUS she does sick graphics????

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Conclusion

Thank you everyone for reading the third edition of the Cetus Awards, Sorry I skipped last season, but I’ve got a bit less work on my plate next season, so we should be good!

Congrats to @omg, @Amkamkamk, @CowboyBlender, and @Raf_TML on your awards! HO has graciously sponsored 3m each for winning an award!

Thank you to all the authors this season, looking forward to S54 and beyond!

[Baron1898]

Typical Raf W

[CowboyBlender]

Extremely common raf, omg, and amkam Ws

Significantly less common me Ws

It’s an honor and a privilege, thanks Lemon. Side note, I will definitely put up a miniskirt purchase and modeling session for the next charity drive.

[jreed12]

Zenzeroni!!!!!!!!!!!!! CURSE YOU!!!!!!!

[Casey]

Congrats everyone!

[somecoach]

Congrats folks!

[TooSweet]

Congrats! Definitely agree with the winners here.

OMG's deep dive into idp for fantasy football was super well researched and I really respected that it wasn't only a deep dive into what was currently broken about the system to heavily favor LBs but provided insight and guidance on modifications to balance it out.

Amkalytics is 100% my favorite media series. The level of hard work that goes into the analytics and metrics here is such a good read. And hearing more about the methodology and process with Amkam on the podcast was a great companion piece.

Diggersbee's miniskirt article was so funny. I actually had to show it to my partner when it came out because it was just so hilarious. I still think about "why so smol" from time to time. ?

And yeah, there's no better choice than Raf for best new author. What a debut of a media piece, 30k words to tell a character's journey is wild and they definitely deserved the recognition for that effort.

[soevil]

Neat to be nominated (:

[Amkamkamk]

A kind word from a kinder person. I am always flattered and honored to be in proximity to this community's brilliant, funny, and dedicated writers.

[omg]

And the Cetus for Best Article goes to… @omg for Adjusting Fantasy Scoring

The more I read this piece, the more I was excited and interested in it, and potentially changing our fantasy scoring system. I loved the amount of work that was put in, the clear and compelling points, and I of course love charts! The only downside was assigning 1% payouts for the articles to two other people lol.

Thank you for this honor! The 1% payouts were mostly a meme: we started the discussion in the fantasy discord and when I brought up "maybe I'll do an article on this" roque asked for 1% so I said sure. Then I gave another 1% to Willeh since he gave me some ideas to try out with the weights, and it felt wrong to give roque something for nothing and not Willeh anything for actually helping.