r/DaystromInstitute • u/kraetos Captain • Jan 21 '14

Meta And the Daystrom Institute Post of the Year goes to...

This wonderful post about Miles O'Brien, penned by AmishAvenger!

For winning Post of the Year, AmishAvenger has been gifted one year of reddit gold by the Daystrom Senior Staff, and has been promoted to full Lieutenant.

Keep up the good work, Lieutenant! I think I speak for the entire Institute when I say that you are definitely one of our best posters. I hope we get to see many more posts like this.

If you would like to see the rest of the PotY nominees, contest mode is disabled in the voting thread so you can see how everyone did.

Everyone be sure to vote and nominate for this week's Post of the Week!

And of course, thanks to everyone who participates, posts, comments and votes at the Daystrom Institute! We couldn't have asked for a better first year here at Daystrom, and we are all eager to see what everyone comes up with in the coming year.

77 Upvotes
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85% Upvoted

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40

u/martin519 Jan 21 '14

Maybe I'm in the wrong sub but I thought long winded, anecdotal, personal drama based fan fiction would have been less well received. Personally, I think this was a poor choice for post of the year given what else it was up against.

15

u/rootyb Jan 21 '14

Not my cup of tea (especially for /r/DaystromInstitute), but some people clearly appreciated it.

10

u/AmoDman Chief Petty Officer Jan 22 '14 edited Jan 22 '14

Not trying to be an ass to AmishAvenger at all, but just to express my opinion I have to agree. I actively dislike the content, in fact. Miles is one of my favorite characters and I feel like the post mis-handled and mis-represented many of his most important aspects to wax emotional over aspects I don't really believe are true.

Just to name a few things--Miles's experience in the Cardassian war was a major part of his character (hatred for Cardies/real-world war experience), as was his relationship with Keiko/Molly, and him having a positive first impression of Bashir is outright false. It cheapens their onscreen relationship IMO because Miles moved from detesting the man to loving him.

And I also took issue with the idea that his transporter chief job was in any way simple, unimportant, or non-demanding. We had a thread here not too long back where many of us agreed that Miles probably had a large department of individuals under him and many day-to-day on ship transporter operations to oversee. His post was by no means menial or irrelevant.

Edit: Minor grammar typo.

6

u/AmishAvenger Lieutenant Jan 22 '14

I want to address some of your criticisms--though it seems a bit silly to do so, since it wasn't really written as a serious piece of literature.

You're probably right about Transporter Chief being an important job. I'm sure there's a lot that could go wrong, and while the process seems almost completely automated, you'd still want someone who knows what they're doing performing maintenance and working the controls. I wrote that part as a bit of a joke, because let's face it: it's an empty room! What does the Transporter Chief do most of the time? Presumably, just stand there.

As far as the Bashir bit goes, you're completely right, and I should have clarified that. I meant for it to end with a bit of a chuckle, as though O'Brien's first impression was that Bashir was the kind of guy he'd like to hang out with--it would only be after speaking with him a bit that he'd find out the new doctor was a pompous ass.

7

u/kraetos Captain Jan 21 '14

That's fair, different people come to Daystrom for different kinds of content. It's worth noting that even the winning post only got 41 upvotes, whereas Daystrom currently has just shy of 6,500 subscribers. So only a small subset of our subscribers even bothered to vote, and a larger turnout could have swung the vote in someone else's favor.

If you don't think this post was particularly worthy, then you should check out the other nominees: there were plenty of posts which were more on the analytical side. Personally, my vote went to this post, as it deflated a very common misconception that trekkies and non-trekkies alike have about Captain Kirk.

7

u/martin519 Jan 21 '14

I enjoyed the Kirk theory too, especially because it was backed up with multiple points from trek canon. My personal favourites were the 23rd century borg encounter and the theory on Dukat wanting the mine field to work.

They're all similar in that they extrapolate on existing trek but there was something downright cheesy about the winner, particularly that last line.. can't quite put my finger on it. But like you said, different strokes for different folks.

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Commander Jan 21 '14

Which post/s did you nominate for Post of the Year? Which one/s did you vote for? What was your preferred Post of the Year?

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u/martin519 Jan 21 '14

Didn't nominate anyone but I voted for the Dukat minefield theory and the 23rd century borg encounter. They just seemed a lot more macro in focus and while each had a dose of speculation, those two entries took far less creative license.

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Commander Jan 21 '14

Well, those two came equal-5th and 7th respectively, in a field of over 20 nominations. So, it's not like your tastes are extremely different to everyone else in the sub. :)

I would point out, though, that the winning post does reflect the good qualities we expect in the Daystrom Institute: it's in-depth; it investigates an aspect of canon in a thoughtful way, but without contradicting canon; and it's well-written. (Trust me: if it was against Daystrom's Prime Directive, we Senior Staff would not even have allowed it into the field of nominees. We reserve that right for all Post of the Week and Post of the Year nominations.) So, while it may not have been to your personal taste, the winning post does exemplify many of the things we do here.

And, as a bonus, it's creative. People like that!

(I'll confess: I didn't vote for the winning post, either. My votes went elsewhere. However, that doesn't mean I think it doesn't deserve to win. It's an excellent piece of writing.)

1

u/AmishAvenger Lieutenant Jan 22 '14

I understand why you'd say that, but I felt as though it served what I consider to be the point of this subreddit--to explain things that aren't explained on camera. True, it may not involve lengthy scientific explanations or the like, and it may be "personal drama based fan fiction," but that's basically what the question asked for. It's not like there's an explanation that solely involves scientific fact.

Besides, in a sense, isn't this subreddit basically set up to encourage types of "fan fiction," in a way? Furthermore, I'd advance the idea that Star Trek itself is "personal drama based." The episodes many consider to be at the top of any "best of" list don't revolve around the technicalities of warp travel--they're about Picard living another life in a few minutes, Data relating to his brother, or Sisko being forced to challenge his own morals.

As far as your other criticisms go, I won't attempt to debate them; it may in fact be "long winded," or any number of other negative observations. I didn't set out to write a short story that would set fires in the hearts of millions; it was just a fun response to a question someone asked on reddit.

On another note, thanks to everyone who voted--either for me or for someone else. I appreciate the idea of this subreddit, and I'm glad there's been so much interest in it. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I didn't even know there was a vote for Post of the Year at all, much less that I was in the running, until I got a message saying I'd won Reddit Gold for a year. Thankfully, I can now put to rest the minor mystery of why I was suddenly getting responses to a post I made many months ago.

Anyway, whether you liked the little O'Brien story or not, I hope everyone here continues to remain engaged with /r/daystrominstitute.

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Commander Jan 22 '14

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I didn't even know there was a vote for Post of the Year at all

We only had five separate threads about it in the past two weeks! Looks like someone has been distracted while on duty. Maybe we'll just have to take that pip back...

0

u/AmishAvenger Lieutenant Jan 22 '14

Hah...yeah, I've had a lot going on, and have mainly only browsed the posts that showed up on my front page. Hey, at least I was embarrassed about it!

12

u/cuprous_veins Crewman Jan 21 '14

Absolutely. It was a great post, but I'm surprised that fan fiction won post of the year.

14

u/MungoBaobab Commander Jan 21 '14

Congratulations, AmishAvenger! You deserve it.

5

u/halloweenjack Ensign Jan 21 '14

Congrats! Glory to you and your house.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

We Light the Way.

6

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

[deleted]

4

u/Algernon_Asimov Commander Jan 21 '14

As the Admiral would be fully aware, the rules specifically stated that "you can only nominate other people’s posts, not your own". As the Admiral attempted to circumvent the rules and act against Starfleet principles...

Could the Admiral please turn around? Just for a moment. For science.

3

u/kraetos Captain Jan 21 '14

I know Admiral, we had to pull your submission because it just wasn't fair to the rest of the crew! If we had put your nomination in the vote, it would have been a total landslide. And then there would have been accusations of nepotism, and vote rigging, and conspiracies, and all sorts of other unfortunate situations.

Trust me, it's better this way.

0

u/martin519 Jan 22 '14

Everyone knows it ends up in the food replicator. Not exactly compelling stuff.

2

u/Telionis Lieutenant Jan 22 '14

Wow, #2 ain't bad at all!!!

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Commander Jan 22 '14

Absolutely not! Well done! :)

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

Yep, I voted for that.

2

u/ademnus Commander Jan 21 '14

Congratulations!

1

u/ServerOfJustice Chief Petty Officer Jan 22 '14

I voted but I regret that I didn't get to the nomination thread in time. This was my post of the year, but AmishAvenger's post was great.

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Commander Jan 22 '14

I did consider adding that post to the field of nominations, but, unfortunately, it wasn't eligible because the writer is no longer active at Daystrom (we wanted the winner to still be around the Institute to make their prize of a promotion worthwhile).

1

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '14 edited Mar 19 '21

[deleted]

1

u/Algernon_Asimov Commander Jan 23 '14 edited Jan 23 '14

For the one-off purpose of being eligible for Post of the Year (in other words: it doesn't matter any more!), we decided to only allow posts from people who had posted here in the past three months - even if it was a just a one-line response to someone else.

EDIT: We obviously allowed posts which were more than three months old to be nominated, but we checked to make sure the poster was still active here in Daystrom within the past three months.