I was just accused, not by the same guy but by a friend of his, of this:

And Shona and Mara, only to not sound one-sided, if you argued this privately, you should have opened that to the people participating. Rules exist to be followed, and if this was clearly stated, no argument would have followed. Rules for one are not rules at all.




As far as I knew there was no argument in private, and since I was one party
of this purported argument I think I would know. There was a discussion.
Most of which was held on the DarkXZ group, with only three or four emails
in private after the discussion began.

I've searched through my correspondance with him and forwarded to him the
only thing that bore any resemblence to what he claimed I said. He's chosen
to ignore that, that's his perogative.

Count this as an 'official response' if you like - as I said, there is no
organisation, there's just me. I never went back on anything I said. In the
rules for the awards I said that I reserved the right to move a story into a
different category if I felt that it was better suited to that cateogry.
That's it.

The Xander-centric fanfiction community is one of the most diverse I've come
across, and yet it's also one of the most argumentative, I'm tempted to say
bigoted on both sides. No one is going to make everyone who writes
Xander-centric fic happy. What I tried to do with the WKA, was to allow as
wide a diversity as possible. Slash, het, dark, light, comedy, angst.

For me to have said that any Xander/Spike story could not be nominated in
the characterisation category would have been ridiculously prejudiced of me.
I might as well have said I wouldn't accept any Xander/Faith stories in that
category, because after all would he really end up in a relationship with
someone who tried to rape and kill him?

I personally do not like Spike/Xander stories, however, the site was run on
popular vote. If a story was nominated in a category, I looked at it with as
objective an eye as possible to ensure it deserved to be in that category -
and all the fics nominated did deserve to be in the categories they were
in - and then opened it to the popular vote.

I didn't make any decisions once voting had started, I didn't vote, nor did
I nominate. The popular vote put a Spike/Xander fic in the winning spot for
best angst. The popular vote also put a Spike/Xander fic in the runner-up
spot for best characterisation.

The votes were not dominated by slash writers and readers, if anything it
was the exact opposite, and yet the popular vote recognised Spike/Xander
stories as being the best and second best of the nominees in those
categories.

I object to the fact that you think I made a rule for one and not for
others. I did no such thing.

Shona (aka Mara)