Sorry for not posting until the last minute.
Here are my votes:
Fanart Award: I sorely regret not paying more attention to the Fanart & Fanfiction this past year, especially given the bumper crop of new artists the GOF has received in that time. Based on my all-too-cursory review of the art threads that have been updated in the past 12 months, I have chosen to nominate
StrutEggStealer. She has created an impressive number of pieces; employs several different styles of drawing, painting, and coloring; creates very expressive characters, often in interesting and dynamic poses; and frequently creates artwork for other people. Here’s hoping that sheóalong with such honorable mentions as FlipperBoidSkua, somerandomfangirl, MurMur, Ducky123, and FreckledOneócontinue their marvelous artistic contributions to the forum.
Feedback Award: I feel terrible that I must come to a decision on this award based on only cursory views of fanart and fanfiction threads. Ducky123, Dosu2Dinner, FreckledOne, and StrutEggStealer have all shown themselves to be prolific reviewers, and if I ever manage to get back into posting artwork, I hope I will hear from them.
My nomination this year, however, goes to
somerandomfangirl, whose invariably supportive and passionate reviews of artwork and fanfiction alike I truly admire. Compared to the bloated nitpick bombs I manage to squeeze out on increasingly rare occasions, her reviews are short and succinct, summarizing her thoughts about the work, writes them in such a way that her enthusiasm for the story or picture seems to shine through. If I understand correctly from what I have read in the threads, she also does proofreading of chapters for some authors, sending reviews by PM. If this is indeed the case, then she is an even more committed and hard-working reviewer than is apparent to most of us. :!
Friendly Member Award: Ah, the other F-word.
: To me, the best thing about The Gang Of Five, the most admirable and praise-worthy quality of this community, is just how dosh-garn
friendly it is. You’d be hard-pressed to find a nicer place on the Internet. Of course, it also makes this award arguably the hardest one of all to vote on. I must admit that the decision I have made is probably rather biased, as this is also the only member so far who I know personally. But given that I have (most regrettably
) fallen so out of touch with the rest of the GOF, I don’t feel that I can make a satisfactory judgment for the already difficult matter of who most deserves this award anyway. This member is of course
FlipperBoidSkua, who, in all of the interactions we have had, both online and in real life, has been unfailingly kind and trusting towards me. I cannot express my appreciation for this member accepting me so readily as a friend, and I relish every opportunity we get to communicate. She has not been as active on the GOF as of late (understandable given how busy her life has become), which is a shame, since I feel that her exuberant posts and delightfully random sense of humor bring a great shine to the forum. In any event, I deeply hope that our friendship persists for a long time to come. Thank you, Sparky.
Helpful Member Award: This was an exceedingly difficult category, again since my limited activity on the forum has made it even harder than usual to observe which members have been doing the most to help or support others on the forum. I almost decided to skip this category, before it occurred to me that the contributions of a certain adminówhom I was already planning on nominating for the Proactive Member Awardówould equally qualify her for this award (arguably even more so than for the Proactive Award, at least in my mind). That person is none other than
Mumbling. It would be impossible for me to thank this member enough times for all her hard work as an admin, especially earlier this year, when, as Malte pointed out, most of the GOF’s staff were too tied up with their lives outside the forum to attend to their usual administrative duties. Iris virtually had to hold up the entire forum all by herself, and from what I can tell, she did a magnificent job.
And that’s not even taking this year’s awards into account. Last year, I said that I hoped that Iris would be able to make the 2013 GOF Awards happen, and she came through (Not to leave out the other admins and members involved, of course
). Good show, Iris.
Here’s hoping the 2014 Awards will happen as well.
Philosopher Award: Another award that was extremely difficult to decide on, because not only do we have several brilliant-minded and philosophical membersóDarkHououmon, Malte279, jansenov, and Pterano are but a few that spring to mindóbut each one has their own individual style of explaining a concept, presenting an argument, and describing their perspectives. After choosing my nominees for five of the other categories, I came within a pycnofiber’s breadth of skipping this one. Then I realized that there was one member whom no one else had nominated for this award, who I felt deserved at least a very special mention, if only for the single stunning post on tolerance and openmindedness she shared a few months ago in the AM’s thread on sexual orientation, which would have been enough on its own to earn my boundless respect and admiration (had I not already deeply respected and admired this member).
Cancerian Tiger may not post in discussions as often as she used to, but (much like jansenov’s assessment of my posts as being like
Opabinia fossils: rare but monumental
), when she does participate in one, her two cents are solid gold and diamond-studded.
If someone as sporadically active on the GOF as me can be considered for this award (which I have seen twice already), then surely Anna is more than worthy of at least one nomination.
Proactive Member Award: Originally I was going to nominate Mumbling for this award (at the very least she deserves a very honorable mention
), but after deciding to nominate her for the Helpful Member Awardóand finding out more about a certain other member’s “qualifications” for nomination in this categoryóI felt that I should give another member a chance. Even after seeing several other people nominate this member for this award, I was not fully aware of the extent of his contributions to the forum until I looked at his profile page and clicks “Find all topics by this member” to investigate for myself.
Thirteen pages of posts by this member, in less than five months of membership on this forum.
The majority of those threads have been in the Captions section (which is still a great contribution, especially given how hilarious and caption-worthy many of the screenshots he has provided are
), but he has also started several new Party Room threads (including some which I have found I very much enjoy
), created several other original and often very interesting discussion threads in multiple other sections, helped out enormously with providing images for this year’s award banners, and even made custom animated avatars for other members. Both his contributions. This person has shown himself to be an exemplary GOF member in the short time that he’s been here, not only through his many contributions but also in the kindness, generosity, and conscientiousness he has demonstrated. I hope that this member sticks around, and also that I get the chance to know him better, because I feel like I’ve been potentially missing out on a terrific friend.
I’m sure you can all tell by now that the member I have been speaking of is
MurMur.
Role Play Gamer Award: I will be skipping this category, given that I might as well be completely inactive in the RPG section apart from the RP I am leading.
Kudos to everyone, whether I mentioned you or not!
