The first award is Palaskar's Damn Good Writer Award. It is given for works of fiction that move me so deeply as to create a strong physical reaction. These stories have reached right out and grabbed my soul.
The second award is the Painfully Crappy Prize. You'll notice that the acronym for it is PCP, which is probably what these writers were on when they wrote these stories.
Following each award is an attempt to enlighten myself and hopefully the rest of the writing community by analyzing what was so good or bad about the story.
Disclaimer: Everybody that I mention is owned by whoever owns them.
Disclaimer II: These awards are based on pure emotional impact, and
are not objective.
The Damn
Good Writer Award
EternalChange: Palaskar's Home
Award winners, feel free to link to this page. Ok, it's not very pretty, heck using a sword doesn't even make much sense, but hear me out. One, I can't find any image editing Mac software for free. Two, the sword is supposed to be a Dragonsword. It is representative of the union of the chaotic, eternally changing dragon, and the skill of the sword art. I did have a Qing Long image I nabbed from someone's site, but FC disallows that, so I had to go with a public domain image. Thus, it's Eternal Change made manifest into Beauty. Makes more sense like that, eh?
I promise I'll make a better image when I get my hands on some decent image editing software.
Winners, just copy/link the text and the picture if you want something to display.
New rules of thumb for the Damn Good Writer Award:
A Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic. It's 20 years after Angel escapes Hell, and Buffy goes looking for him. From there...well, it's one of the most heartwrenching stories I've read anywhere.
Why it's so good:
Damn, if I knew that, I'd be writing stories like this one. But let
me try to understand.
First, it's longer than other pieces dealing with this subject
-- 11 chapters plus prologue and epilogue. Second, it doesn't get less
tragic as the story moves on. It gets worse. Third, the nature of
the story makes it sad to begin with. But why is it so heartwrenching?
Maybe it's the familiarity of the characters to me, and the fact that it's
set 20 years after Becoming, giving the whole the weight of a lifetime
of history. Maybe it's the story's structure, effectively communicating
half the emotional impact of the later chapter by means of flashbacks through
letters. I really don't know! This story made me, a man who often gets
into compulsive spitting fits of disgust when he sees Touched by an
Angel, go through four and a half tissues.
After some more consideration, I think I feel these things are really
one thing. The story's structure is the key. Layer by layer, Christine
strips away our cynicism, turning what could have been a sappy story
into a truly moving one.
To George R. Martin, for
Sandkings
A science fiction short story about a vicious man, who gets some new pets (the titular Sandkings) who turn out just like him...in all the worst ways. This story is scary. How scary? Let's see, I shrugged off Clive Barker's Hellraiser, get the creeps occasionally when I watch the X-files at night, but reading this story in the bright light of my hometown library on a lazy afternoon made me shiver...two and a half hours after I had finished reading. While walking. In broad daylight.
Why it's so good:
Martin applies what I now call the "Chinese finger trap" method
of suspense. He gets me to identify strongly with the protagonist and
his struggle. But the harder the protagonist tries to fix things, the worse
they get! Mix in some unforgettable visual imagery like the Sandkings,
and you've got one hell of a story.
To Chris Mulder, for
Love Beyond
All Measure
A Lois and Clark fanfic. Lois gets kidnapped, Clark gets tortured. Sound blase? It's not, believe me. This story genuinely quickened my heart with worry. I kind of debated whether or not to award the prize, but I decided on yes. Why? Because this story is brilliant, that's why. I simply can't write this well at this juncture.
Why it's so good:
For this story, the payoff is in the details. One moment we
see Clark in his Superman guise survive fly from Smallville to Metropolis
as a regular commute, shrug off toxic fumes, then to top it off, fly into
the Sun to get his costume clean -- oh, and did I forget circumnativigating
the globe underwater to make sure? Then, only a couple hours later, he's
being tortured by a sadistic investement banker using only kryptonite and
a cup of ice water. Don't laugh. Chris has got a sick imagination. The
helplessness I felt as first Lois, then Clark, are tortured by a man
who's 'merely' human is shocking. The guy had no real, obvious weapons
except a gun and his wits; no real defense but a bulletproof vest and those
selfsame wits. But he very nearly kills both our heroes. Mix in some romantic
tension: Superman can't save Lois this time, he's expected in the old 'Lois-as-bait'
scheme, but Clark can -- at the possible cost of his life -- all while
set against the harmless backdrop of an expected date, the exploitation
of Superman's real vulnerability -- his heart, not kryptonite -- , and
the repeated inability of most of the characters to do nothing but listen
as Lois then Clark get tortured -- well, it's a hell of a story.
Another Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanfic. I was really hesitant to give out another prize in the same fanfic genre, and especially since anything involving Willow and Xander romance tends to make me cry. But this -is- a damn good story, for me, anyway.
Willow's been in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. She's in a coma, and the Slayerettes don't know if she's going to make it. Pre-Becoming and pre-Oz.
Why it's so good: This story pulls on the heartstrings like nobody's buisiness. Willow's near-death is utterly senseless. There's no monster, and Buffy can't even kill the guy who did it, since the drunk died in the crash. The characterizations are just perfect. Cordelia flees, Buffy descends into Slaying, Xander crumples. But I still can't quite pin down what it is about this story that I love so much. Probably, it's the fact that everything comes out in this story -- no more Willow and Xander dancing around each other. And also, that the story nearly permanently breaks up my favorite TV couple. And also, that I really empathize with the whole W/X unrequited/unspoken love thing.
To Katy
Camppbell
for Will
You Ever Know?
Okay another BtVS fanfic, and another Willow-lays-dying-Xander-professes-his-love one. But if I awarded Like This, Will You Ever Know has to get one too. They're both, well, incredibly affective for me.
Why it's so good: Well obviously some of the reason are the same as for awarding Samantha for Like This. The empathy, the pouring-out-your-heart syndrome. But intrugingly, this story is told entirely from Xander's point-of-view, and has a lot of introspection on his part. It's the introspection that really sets this piece apart. We get a view into Xander's real character. He's not a jerk. He cares for Willow so much, he figures he's not really in her class. He's not a prince, in his own mind; just someone who can't live without her. The quote from Anne of Avonlea at the beginning is just the sweetest icing on a great piece.
The Painfully Crappy Prize
When you get the PCP you're not entitled to the satifaction of a picture.
to Toni Morrison, for
Beloved
Simply the most offensive book I have ever read.
Why it's so bad:
This book, what I could manage to read of it, seems to take excellent
imagery and story structure and pollute it with offensive shock-crap that
belongs on Jerry Springer. For example, the novel begins, "124 was spiteful.
Full of a baby's venom." Boring. I already know babies are evil. The only
possible reason Morrison would put such a thing there would be as an attempt
to shock me into reading more. This is rather like slapping a person to
make them like you.Then there are the passages about slave men raping cows.
Yes, raping cows. This crap belongs on Jerry Springer, yet somehow, Toni
Morrison won a Nobel. Well, I am here to say that the PCP officially
cancels out all positive prizes won by the author, plus one! The third,
and last time I could manage reading, is when Sethe, the main character
starts whining about how the men of Sweet Home, the slave plantation where
she had lived, had sucked her breast milk when she was nursing. The really
aggravating thing is that she doesn't seem to give a damn that she was
beaten at the same time. Message? Sethe cares more about something replaceable
than her own dignity. To my mind, she's an idiot.