For Best Fan Writer of the Year

My vote is for Mark Oshiro.  He provides a fresh expressive look at the works that create fandom and an open friendly website community for others to participate in.  He reads books and watches TV shows almost completely unspoiled, and he brings a fresh perspective from his own personal experiences, allowing fans to fall in love with their favorite books and TV shows all over again.  By his detailed reactions to reading and viewing you can share his falling in love with works or his horror about the ideas expressed or the bad writing and execution.  Mark has personally created new readers and new fans and made some who felt excluded feel welcomed on his web site. Mark writes from the heart.

It all started with Mark meeting some nice fans at Comic Con who urged him to read Twilight.  He read and posted honest, open, very expressive, posts about his reactions, chapter by chapter. After the conclusion of, in his words, "the worst piece of fiction I have ever had the displeasure of reading"  he was urged to continue with the rest of the series and the movies and then other series and movies and TV series and that is now his schtick with his own web site.

Here is a typical post of his and the comments:  Mark Reads ‘The Sandman’: 7×01 – Brief Lives, Chapter 1

Mark Oshiro, and his fans in the comments, explains who he is and why he should win.

Why Mark became famous, taking down the Twilight series, this was before 2012 and is not the period under voting consideration.

I couldn't imagine that there would be anything worse than the dependency themes presented in New Moon and the complete disdain for female independence that reared its head time and time again.
I was wrong. Throughout Eclipse, we're presented with some of the most damaging, dangerous, and utterly offensive themes I have ever seen in popular culture. Women need men to be whole people. Marriage is an institution that demands respect, not because it is an act of love, but because it is a necessary transaction to complete the soul. There are distinct roles that men and women must follow or there is something deeply wrong with who they are.
Racism. Transphobia. Misogyny. Sexism. Xenophobia. Homophobia. Classism. It's the worst of the worst. It's like a buffet of all the terrible things that hurt this world and directly affect those who are oppressed by these institutions, by the minorities who lack the privilege that a rich, white, Mormon author exerts on a daily basis. And, at heart, that's what a lot of this book felt to me: A person who holds nearly every privilege in the world (no male privilege) rubs this in our faces at every single moment she can.
You aren't a real woman. You aren't a real man. You aren't worthy without a nice car. You aren't worthy unless your skin is white. You aren't worthy unless you believe in God, in marriage, in traditional gender roles, in the subjugation of the woman to the man, in everything that makes ME a worthy part of this world.
BLEEP you, Stephenie Meyer.
Because on top of all of this wankery and bullshit, you cannot BLEEPing write. If we remove every bit of wank you've subjected us to in the 629 pages of Eclipse, you have one of the most poorly written novels ever committed to paper left over. You lack an invigorating vocabulary. You have multiple errors that any amateur editor should have caught. You cannot develop and maintain interesting and consistent characters. You have no idea how to introduce a plot in any of your novels and, even if you were trying to experiment with an alternative narrative technique, you absolutely can't do that well either.
I've finished Eclipse. And I know this fits so well and is poetic brilliance, but I honestly feel this way. I'm not doing this just for the sake of it. But I can say this with 100% certainty:
As of right now, Eclipse is infinitely worse than Twilight and New Moon combined and is the worst piece of fiction I have ever had the displeasure of reading.

My second choice is Tansy Rayner Roberts. She writes and audio podcasts about fantasy and science fiction and pop culture and sexism and gender and has an academic background.  

Historically Authentic Sexism in Fantasy. Let’s Unpack That

Equality, Apparently, Doesn’t Mean Half [the National Year of Reading Edition]


My third is Christopher J Garcia. He is prolific at editing and writing for fanzines.

What It Is We Miss When We Don’t Read Fanzines


My fourth is James Bacon. He is an editor, along with Chis Garcia, and writer in the efanzine Journey Planet which had the Blade Runner issue.  The fan fiction Android Tears in the issue is his.

http://efanzines.com/JourneyPlanet/JourneyPlanet12.pdf


My fifth choice is Steven H Silver who is a fan writer and editor and reviewer who has been nominated for best fan writer eleven times without winning.  He founded the Sidewise Award for Alternate History

This is his 2012 fanzine Argentus.
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