These are Negrek's nominations and comments for the 2014 awards. See all nominations here.
It's definitely new, but PhalanxSigil's fanfic already shows great promise, with an unusual twist on the usual PMD formula and solid writing throughout. Plenty has gone in even the small number of chapters posted so far, and suggests that this is a story to watch this year.
This story follows a young programmer brought to Hoenn to work on a wildly popular series of monster-taming video games–a suspiciously familiar-sounding series of monster-taming video games. I don't think I've ever seen a story about a character in the pokemon world working on the pokemon's world of the pokemon games before, and Spiteful Murkrow includes plenty of little details to delight both people who do a bit of coding themselves and people who know a bit about the pokemon games' rocky development history. Definitely one of the fresthest premises I've seen in a long time, and nicely executed as well.
It's a wild-west story of old Orre spun as an adventure game and populated by an endless array of strange and delightful characters, cultures and, of course, monsters. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more out-there premise in pokemon fanfiction, and Cutlerine carries it off with aplomb.
The Origin of Storms takes place in a freshly post-human world, where pokemon inhabit the cities and use the technology humans left behind while they try to cope with the species' sudden loss. It's a post-apocalyptic setting that's not so apocalyptic and full of wonderful little inventions like a car modded so that a snorunt can drive it and a psychiatric hospital for pokemon, full of everything from psychic therapists who can read their clients' minds to heavy-duty containment systems for patients who have trouble controlling themselves.
"Humans of Hoenn" is a story that gives a voice to Hoenn's NPC's, both minor and major. The story explores what it means to be a trainer for people from all walks of life, from kids just starting out with their pokemon to veterans reflecting on years in the business to members of Hoenn's evil teams. It's really a collection of many different stories that happen to intersect through Brendan's journey, and it gives real life and history to characters who may only get a single, throwaway line of dialogue in the games themselves.
A literally venomous companion, Kephi never gives his trainer a shred of peace. His cranky antics and the headaches they cause for his trainer are always a delight to watch, and there have been plenty of hints that there's more to this bug than meets the eye.
He might be a twelve-foot-long strangelsnake of death, but in truth Syr's a real softie, more concerned with the well-being of his friends than anything else. His gentle nature doesn't preclude him from taking charge when he needs to, though, and he's a strong foil for the story's protagonist. Probably the most adorable arbok I've seen in fanfic, and an interpretation that's both consistent with his canon background and reveals new facets of his character.
Anyone who's tried to run a play-by-post game knows how difficult it can be to keep things rolling, especially when the plot takes an unexpected turn. Cutlerine proved herself just as capable of handling the frequent updates and flexible plotting that such a story requires as she is at writing a more traditional fanfic, and managed to not only finish another novel-length story in a year but keep the quality wonderfully high throughout.
starliteevee's been writing for many years now, and she's been steadily improving throughout. The nominations she's received for this year's awards are a clear testament to how far she's come as an author.
Creepychu always leaves thoughtful and in-depth comments, and they're sensitive to the overall themes of the work as well as nitty-gritty grammar details and sentence-level concerns. In addition to giving stories a good close reading, they provide excellent suggestions for improvement and are happy to field follow-up questions from the people they review.
Dragonfree is a fanfic veteran, and it definitely shows in the way she crafts her reviews. She's particularly good at analyzing characters and story structure, and she's great at picking out specific elements of the text that need work as well as suggesting improvements. And in addition to any flaws she finds, she's not hesitant about mentioning things she liked and encouraging authors even when the majority of her comments are critical.
Well, it's kind of hard to find a single review that really shows "dedication," but you need only check out diamondpearl876's contributions to that thread to see how committed she is to commenting on the 'fics she follows, and there are a lot of those. She's definitely one of the most active reviewers today, and a fine one at that.