Blitz... wow! Where to start.
I'm shocked at how alive the forum becomes during blitz. Ever since I started on TR, I'd been anticipating and preparing for it!
I think heat bonus is a really cool feature and it's always nice to get weekly bonuses and multi-chapter bonuses too! I really tried to capitalize on those and it really did have the effect of spreading out where I put my reviews.
The weekly bonuses were pretty cool too. I got a little bit of bonus out of all of them! The weekly fic recs were also a great addition. I felt so great when I saw people rec my fic in there! Thanks so much,
@Flyg0n @Starlight Aurate @Nekodatta and
@Spiteful Murkrow (For honorable mention)!
Speaking of mentions, I really want to stress how thankful I am for
@Starlight Aurate to give my fic so many reviews without a requirement to return the favor! It's so incredibly rare for people to be that nice to me. I also thought her fic,
Drowning, might be the best new read I picked up during blitz! I really want to read more of it eventually. Great stuff.
I also want to thank
@K_S and
@Flyg0n for providing special reviews of my Book One as a whole! Having readers get to the end and offer that kind of a review was amazing!
Also, I was blown away by how
@Flyg0n and
@Nekodatta got through so many of my chapters during blitz. I know we are in an exchange, but even so, that felt very special. Thank you both very much!
The companion app was really neat in how you could re-submit to fix errors! My thanks to everyone on the logistics team! You guys really hung in there even when there were insane amounts of reviews needing to be checked! Kind of felt like you might want a couple more people on logistics next year, but maybe it was operating within acceptable parameters. Hard for me to tell since it was only my first blitz.
I also noticed how several people would claim prizes prior to their points being updated. I guess that's a thing you can do and it makes sense how they would expect to have the points, but it might be good if the rules officially state you can do that with a caveat that if the points don't go through then the prize claim is invalid or something. (If I am misremembering and that is already in there, I apologize. There were lots of fine details in the rules that I did NOT pick up on the first time I read it!)
But regarding points, I very much love the point donation system and I understand why it waits until the end to function. It's really nice seeing so many people give points away to others so they can claim the prizes they are looking for too. Really helps build a strong sense of community, so great job on that!
A special thanks for
@K_S and
@SparklingEspeon for their point donations to me!
Speaking of prizes, I want to give a shout-out to everyone who offered them! Those really help make blitz special. Thank you all very much for them!
(Yes I know I offered reviews too in there, but mine wasn't very big compared to some of the amazing prizes on offer.)
Also regarding prizes, the raffle was really fun! Since I went other directions with my points, I wasn't sure I was going to get an art at all by the end, and am
overjoyed to not only have one, but a level 3! I'm excited to see how it ends up! And while I did need to change my original idea due to art limitations, it's now on track to look great and I'm
very thankful for Dragonfree!
Regarding art though, why is there no level 4 art category? Level 3 art is too limited to feel like the highest art category. What if someone wants a complex background and more than two characters? There is currently no way to get that from blitz. Is it because no one will volunteer to do something like that? Considering some of the amazing non-art prizes that were on offer this year, I don't think it's impossible for someone to offer something of that level as an art prize. I'd really like to see at least one level 4 art prize in the next blitz, if possible. That said, I'm not the one orgainizing blitz nor am I able to offer even level 1 art prizes. I don't want this to come across as insensitive to the effort an planning that goes into blitz because I think you do a great job with it!
Above all, this blitz has been incredible and I'm so glad I had a chance to participate in it!
