streme Wheelie
This is a speech for the losers. The nominees who didn’t make it, those who fell short of the finish line. You are still champions. While the Ciddies is not some glitzy and glamorous awards ceremony where the prestige of wining can catapult your career or the crushing defeat of losing end it, the Best Member Ciddie is still The Big One™.
Winning it can be likened to touching the stars for a brief moment – intense, quite painfully hot and sometimes lethal – just as it can be likened to winning an immaterial award for a popularity contest on a Final Fantasy fansite – shameful, disappointing and a little bit strange.
A victory can go one of two ways. It can be a recognition of services to the site in a variety of ways, most notable of which is kiss-assing and making people like you. High activity and high amounts of low-brow humour can contribute to this. In six months, at the next Ciddies, you’ll be up for nomination again. You’ll hang onto your title, and win a few more extras to boot as everyone deems you the new Psychotic, sweeping the Ciddies. Life is good man.
Alternatively, it can be the touch of death. You’ve reached your prime. Here, have a pat on the back as we shove you into the old folks’ home. You’ll be forgotten – not completely – but enough to ensure there’s a new kid on the block next time, a new favourite. A star. Winning the Best Member Ciddie is a signal to hang up your boots, retire from the spotlight and join Raistlin at the bitter oldbies table. You’ve done your time.
This speech is a message to the losers. A congratulations, in fact. You’ve dodged a bullet here. You haven’t won the Best Member Ciddie. You’re still popular, liked, perhaps even respected. People will nominate you for Ciddies and you will win some and lose some. But, at the very peak of the event, you miss out on Best Member and your continued existence is ensured.
Celebrate, friends, for it is here, in the Runners Up placings, that you have truly achieved the pinnacle of Eyes on Final Fantasy popularity. Relish in it. Embrace it. And hope next Ciddies is not the one where you kick the bucket.
But hey, it could be worse. You could win a Lifetime Achievement award. That’s less of a sign to retire and more a sign to die.
Originally Posted by Jiro
Fine I will post it!
