*Cetus Media Awards - S54

[lemonoppy]

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Cetus Media Awards! We’re heading into summer, and we’ve got lots of people doing stuff like “touching grass”, “playing sports with friends”, “barbecues”, “camping”, which usually tends for lower levels of being online I find, but this season we’ve still got some great pieces and authors to shout out!

For the new people in the league, of which we have quite a few now, the Cetus Media Awards are a continuation of Baron1898’s excellent Gemini Media Awards, and is a showcase of the work that people put out each season. The qualification season is time between Ultimus events, so anything posted since the 6th is not eligible for this season’s awards.

In semi-related news, Joe Kortesi, the media boss, couldn’t do a 2x media time based on me getting home runs in my softball league because that means we’d have a permanent 2x going on, but there’s a 2.5x going on right now and those pieces will be in play for the Season 55 awards! Get those fingers to writing, you have until the 22nd for some more moola!

Format and Rules

• The Cetus season encompasses the length of time between the end of the Season 53 Ultimus to the end of the Season 54 Ultimus
  
• There are 5 categories for awards: Best Article, Best Series, Whale’s Choice (Comedy), Best Author, and Best New Author
  
• 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 S54 awards, this includes players from S55, S54, S53, and S52 classes.

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

@caleb.grim, Measuring Sim Luck

Some teams get sim hoed and some teams get sim blessed, Caleb Grim tells us which, even conveniently letting us know where to skip to if we don’t want to read any of the nerd stuff. But I love nerd stuff (but am DEFINITELY not a nerd), so on we read. I loved how Caleb split up teams in different eras of the league, especially with season length and sim swaps, and was able to give us a ranking of who’s the luckiest. I am a noted Pythagorean Expectation hater, but it was fantastic to read about this in context of the ISFL. Bad beats to the Season 49 Otters who lost more than 3 games than expected, including 10 straight and 7 by one score or less.

@ctots, Beat The Bots Awards, S53

Some love for the big men! Ctots brings his charm and love of the unappreciated members of the team to the players in the trenches, assigning scores that range from Stale Crumbs to Pancake Perfection to our offensive linemen in the league. Congrats to all the players who accumulated enough Brunch Points to Beat the Bots!

@Megsychan, S54 Host City Bid - Nishinomiya

I think this is an absolute first, but we’ve got a Host City media piece up for an award! Usually Host City media posts are just a quick blurb about the place and the picture to vote for, but it’s Megsychan so she’s written a full article about her choice in Nishinomiya. Giving us so much history and justification for picking a place with a kick-ass logo was definitely something that swayed me to voting for Nishinomiya, playing in the Koshien stadium would be cool as all hell.

@rrf_1, Classifications of ISFL Running Backs

Through this season, rrf has had a very clear voice, a narrative woven to guide you into a place where you understand what the theme, purpose, and vision of the piece you are reading is about. rrf has three pieces that could individually be put up for an award, but this one is my favourite of the three and you should read all of them. Fantastic analysis of the star running backs in the league, exploring archetypal players for Ganymede Moon to emulate, and adding style and personality to the dots we see is very well done.

@xenosthelegend, Scheduling From the NSFC's Perspective (BAL, BFB, CTC, COL)

Xenos, like Zodiac (but the other way around since Xenos has been here longer), does a lot of data input and crunching into league systems when something sticks out, and in this case it’s the ISFL scheduling, where the Home/Away splits have been a bit wonky. This was nearly in the Series category but it, uh, didn’t have any other articles in the series. I do wish the formatting was a bit less vertical, but it was cool to see that there is probably something in the spreadsheet if Black Forest can play against Arizona at home during 10/12 matchups.

@Zephyrus1128, Zephyr Williams: Home

The Zeph saga, I feel, has come to a very satisfying and real conclusion with this piece. I know it was a very stressful and shitty time for everyone involved with how the Joe Cool and Bachira situations resolved, but Zeph does a fantastic job to write in a very poignant way that was legitimately very touching and I’m so very happy that Zeph remains in the league, even if he is on the Otters. Fantastic writing and story-telling here from Zeph.

@ZodiacEXE, Punting in the ISFL

Zodiac has become more of a sporadic contributor, after having won a Best New Author Gemini all the way back in… Season 43? Somewhere around there. This doesn’t mean that they’ve lost a single step. Zodiac’s articles are characterized by them seeing something they’re interested in (which is usually a specific high leverage situation that is “unsexy”) and then (supremely sane-ly and reasonably) logging every single instance of it by going through each box score in the index. Punting in the ISFL does this, but on a lesser scale as it only goes through Season 53, but I have to applaud the effort in getting all this together.


And the Cetus for Best Article goes to… @Zephyrus1128 for Zephyr Williams: Home

I really loved this piece, I truly truly felt like it brought a stress point that the league had to a close, and am very happy that Zephyrus remains in the league, and was able to write something so touching about it. I definitely understand that this as a solo piece and missing the backdrop might not hit as hard, but hey, this is my award and this is the single article that I enjoyed most during the S54 season.

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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

@Nol15736, Payneful Predictions

Here at the Cetus Media Awards, we don’t talk about accuracy, we talk about enjoyment of media, which is a good thing for Nol who wrote a great two parter predicting the Season 54 outcome after being drafted for the first time. Although a bit short, I love newer players jumping into it and getting used to the way our sim works and how to predict teams!

@omg, S54 Fantasy Tier Rankings

I have difficulty figuring out which article to link in these series, and with the S54 Fantasy Tier Rankings, I ended up choosing the recap article, but all six were great to read and follow during the season (it even got me first place in my group!). Omg did a fantastic job discussing the weekly performances of our players, and cross-referencing the other graders in an easy to follow format that really helped me enjoy the ISFL season more, in a season I wasn’t so invested as I was in the DSFL.

@stixvim, Obi-Wan Picknobi: From Centerfield Safety to Shutdown Corner for the Grey Ducks

In my mind, this ended up being a series, it was fantastic to follow stixvim and his player, Obi-Wan Picknobi, through the season and big career moments. For a new user, it’s super exciting to see a strong series start and continue throughout the season. Loved talking to Stix and he was easily worth a first round pick, even though he was on them dirty Grey Ducks. I personally thought that the Flying High article with the recap on the kind of player Obi-Wan Picknobi was my favourite but they’re all great reads.

And the Cetus for Best Series goes to… @omg for S54 Fantasy Tier Rankings

Fantastic work by omg who is no stranger to writing well, or fantasy, the perfect intersection of interests! Too bad we won’t be getting a pre-season draft guide by omg, but thank you for really boosting my engagement in ISFL Game Days when I had no one to cheer for, and for the 5 TPE you got me!

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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, The ISFL S54 Class Hits The Met Gala

The goated S54 class hits the Met Gala, and we get to see some fantastic outfits. Love the work that the class is putting in.

@IceBear32, Praising TMoney

I know, I was shocked to learn, but Tmoney is actually goated and every word in the article is true.

@lock180, WEEKLY MIRROR SPECIAL UPDATE

This is super inside baseball as well, especially with lock loving the bit of just spamming a million newlines into his article to break the media RSS bot, including multiple fake retirement pots.

@SamEagle76, John Paul Jinkins Gives his thoughts on Gyurn Vlommfeldt

Getting under the season cutoff wire with what is legitimately a fever dream. I felt like I lost the ability to read and comprehend as I got further and further into this one.

@SamEagle76, SamEagle's Mock Draft

249/250 mock drafters put Kim Minjeong in the first, the other…. well you can read the mock. This is actually a really well thought through and reasoned mock, with a lot of great work put into it, I’m just a ball of spite.


And the Cetus for Whale’s Choice goes to… @lock180 for WEEKLY MIRROR SPECIAL UPDATE

Believe me, I am equally upset and outraged as you, reader, that both lock180 and the Weekly Mirror are getting another media award, but don’t worry, read the article.

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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

@caleb.grim
I live for the time I get the ping that we have another Caleb piece, I love every time Caleb posts an interesting dive into the stats and structures that make up our league and community.

@”Nol15736”
Coming in with a few articles and mocks, Nol has presented himself as a solid, consistent contributor who has work that is always worth the read.

@”omg”
The one article series undersells that it was six separate articles that were fantastic on their own and combined for a full season and conclusion, great to follow and read!

@”rrf_1”
I didn’t know rrf but I definitely do now. I love the narrative that compels and surrounds each piece, in addition to the fantastic data work they do.

@”stixvim”
Stix’s pieces are mostly focused on his player for this season, but damn, do I want more of Obi-Wan Picknobi. Great work and love to see someone get into the ISFL media scene!

And the Baron1898 Award for Best Author goes to… @rrf_1!

Outside of the ISFL, I participate in a sport called “adventure racing”.  Like sim football, it is a pretty niche activity that attracts a special kind of person.  Apart from its enthusiasts, it is unknown to the rest of the world.  Let me explain how it works.

rrf is truly a force, I can’t explain how excited I was to read that first sentence knowing that I was going to be taken on a journey. rrf exemplifies something that I think is very similar to Baron, while the style may be different, the experience of reading something that is a truly written piece, where you’ll go through stats, narrative, and small details that is more than the sum of its individually fantastic parts is astounding.

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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.

@”Dman9417”
Dman9417 I didn’t really know because I didn’t really interact with them much on Discord, but in the media scene, they put out a lot of work about the Seawolves (boooo, tweet woof), and I love all DSFL focused media.

@Ltblackgrizzly
Grizzly writes with a lot of hype, and I especially loved their Depth Charge piece! Great to see so much excitement in the words.

@Nol15736
I love the league based media and predictions that Nol does, I know he wants to be an ISFL GM, and he’s writing like he’s someone in the know, some to definitely keep an eye out in the community.

@SamEagle76
I don’t know about this Sam guy… except that he’s a bunch of fun, great to hang out with, and I feel like I might recreate in the PBE if people are as fun as Sam.

@stixvim
Love the consistency and quality of the work Stix has put out, it’s always nice to know that I’ll be able to immerse myself in more in-universe league lore with a player who’ll be a big part of the league for seasons to come.

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

Durable, Reliable, Dangerous…
Doing the Dirty Work—and Doing It Well…
Rising to the Occasion…

Okay, yeah, I cherry-picked some quotes from the Flying High piece, but man, I really love the lore stuff and learning about the personality and play style of players. It’s so much cooler when you can head-canon some stuff about the dots you see, and the consistency, style, and voice of stix has been great to read all season. Congrats, welcome to the league Stix.

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Conclusion

Thank you everyone for reading the summer edition of the Cetus Awards! I’ve got a lot of great work for the Season 55 edition, with this 2.5x, and there are a lot of new, strong voices already!

Congrats to @Zephyrus1128, @omg, @lock180, @rrf_1, and @stixvim on your awards! HO has graciously sponsored 3m each for winning an award!

Thank you to all the authors this season, looking forward to S55 and beyond!

[jreed12]

IT IS AN HONOR

[UptownCord]

IT IS AN HONOR

You didn't win or get nominated

[Zephyrus1128]

Wait this has got to be rigged how the fuck did Zeph win anything

[lock180]

That media piece was hard work I'm glad I could get rewarded for it.

Thanks as always @lemonoppy for putting together these awards the media world is better off with it!

[omg]

Thank you for the recognition, and congrats to all the nominees! Lots of great work compiled here.

[SamEagle76]

Wow! Thank you so much @lemonoppy!

[lemonoppy]

Wow! Thank you so much @lemonoppy!

Appreciate all the writing :prayge:

[scudmuffin19]

best comments go to scud for simply being a moron