Lily's Pond of Fictional Reflections

benpayne has made it "Blog your thoughts on Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog Day", so... well, here I go.

I'm a sucker for musicals. I'm a sucker for superheroes. I'm even more of a sucker for supervillains. I was always going to love a musical about a supervillain made by Joss Whedon. Add in the acting talent on this thing? Be still, my beating fangirl heart!

If you haven't seen it during its limited free-to-internet engagement, you have seriously missed out. Personally, I've seen it um... let's just say enough times that I hope I've got the songs memorised until the DVD comes to Australia. That way I won't have to compromise on my moral objection to giving money to Apple. :P

( Spoilers Ahead )

So, the post you’ve all been waiting for, and the one which Lily’s procrastination of actually starting writing last night has finally made possible: the results for the Orion Awards!

Congratulations to all the the nominees, all the shortlisters, of course to all the winners, and congratulations and thanks to all the judges for having got through a marathon of critique, debates, arguments, and flat out duels to the death. I hope to see you all back again next year. :)

I feel proud and honoured that my fics have done so amazingly well - particularly against some of the competition. I’ve shortlisted fourteen times across four fics, and won four awards across two fics. (NB: None of these stories, with the possible exception of Axiom, will make sense to anyone who has not read Artemis Fowl.)

Lunar Fallacy shortlisted for Best Drabble (under 500 words)
Watching shortlisted for Best Angst, Best Slash Romance, Best Short, and Best/Most Memorable Line (Artemis died young, died suddenly. Geniuses* never live long lives, criminal ones with powerful enemies even less so.)
On Becoming an Axiom shortlisted for Best Overall Characterisation and Best Overall – and won Best Heterosexual Romance and Best Drabble
The Mother of Invention shortlisted for Best Angst, [spoiler removed], and Best Concept/Idea – and won Best Short and Best Overall

Words really can’t express my delight and pride, so I’ll simply say… squeeeeee!

It's not really a surprise – as Judge Coordinator, I have access to see what the judges are saying about my fics, I have warning. The joy of slowly realising something is going to win a category is spread out, and the frustration that a fic is not doing well is spread over a longer time. But while I can eagerly read the criticism, praise, and/or general luke-warm reactions the other judges dole out for my fics, I can’t say anything about it.

If another judge misunderstands a point – or the entire fic – or comes at things from an angle that casts it in a totally different light, we're not allowed to say anything to help keep things unbiassed and at a distance. It's not that I want to shake the person and say they should see it the way I meant it – I should be judged on what I wrote, not what I meant to write – it's just that I want to talk about my fic! I want to sit with the judges across a bottle of red and talk about this line and that line and that plot point and where they got that idea from and where they think I could have trimmed or extended to deal with the misunderstanding or problems they had with it. I love criticism. It's honestly the most amazing thing to receive, because it shows that the reader has really read my story, and thought about it. Someone's showing that kind of attentive deconstruction to my story. Wow.

So, after being gagged for three months while I watched people discuss my stories, I’ve built up a little bit of a head of steam to let off. Now the moment has arrived. Here we are, at last: the results are out, and finally I can speak without either influencing the outcome or being seen to do so. So I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity to rave about them at length, starting with The Mother of Invention. (I was going to do both at once, but… I’ve been stuffing around with the notes for Axiom for almost a month now, because it’s such a personal piece that I keep changing my mind about what to say and where it crosses the line into Too Much Information. :) I’ll probably post them… some time.)

Please don't read on if you haven't read The Mother of Invention - it really will spoil it for you. And you really can’t read MOI without having read Artemis Fowl, because it won't make the least amount of sense without that background. Neither will the authors notes.

Yes, sister dearest, I do mean you, and I know you're tempted, but please go away. :)

( Follow the cut for a great deal of self-love… )

* Yes, contrary to Artemis’s assertion in the last book, the plural of genius is geniuses. The “genius” that pluralises to “genii” refers to a guardian/influential spirit, not a person of exceptional mental capacity. Please, Colfer, learn to use a dictionary. And Orion Awards Judges… you take his word over mine? I’m crushed! :P (But all hail But Why?'s "You must have been good, for half a tonne of gold..." for being twice as good as the rest of the nominees combined. :D) Seriously, though, of the three dictionaries I use, one said geniuses full stop, one said geniuses for Fowls and genii for spirits, and one mentioned both but didn’t specify which for which and then went on to produce examples that happened to use geniuses for Fowls and genii for spirits. I'm counting this in the "canon that, apart from being canon, is total crap" pile.