The 2000/2001 Op Achievement Awards (Oppies) "Ladies and Gentlemen, the excitement has picked up here at the Shrine Theater in Los Angeles. Anybody who's everybody is showing up here tonight in the hopes that one of those Oppies will get to go home with them." "Yes, the Oppies are a relatively new award, but they've already become prestigious in the Jihad community. Tonights Oppies award show honors the participants in The Marraketh Connection, a mostly-VRDET written op. With that note, let's go inside the Shrine Theater to see the awarding of this year's Oppies." "The Host of this year's award show is Technician Roberts. Some of the categories in this year's Oppies award are "Most Segs", "Largest Seg", "Least Segs," "Shortest Seg", "Most Blatant Use of A Terry Pratchett Ref", and "Most Surreal Seg" "And now, let's turn the mike over to Technician Roberts in the Shrine Theater as he prepares to present the awards." "Uhhhh...hello. I gotta say it's, uhhh, really nervewracking to be up here presenting awards to all you freaks, uhh, I didn't mean that. Ummm, anyway, our first award is "Most Segs." The nominees are: Aris, Brynhild, Red, and Nexx...." "And the award winner is..." *attemps to rip open envelope, finally succeeds* *stares at paper upside down* "...uhhhh...Nexx, with 13 1/2 segs, barely beating out Red with 13!" "Uhhh...on to our next award...ummm, I, uhh...this is really, uhh, difficult to do this, I don't think I can...Ummm... "Longest Seg"! Yeah! The nominees are Ari and Kat for 'Who Knows What Evil', Kat for "Trippin'", Mal for "Fear and Loathing in Marraketh, Act 2" and Kat for "Transformation"." "And the winner," *rips open envelope* "...weighing in at an amazing 31.1 kilobytes, or roughly 31,800 characters... "Who Knows What Evil", cowrote by Ari and Kat!" "Now, uh...on to our next award. This is the award for the fewest number of segs written! The nominees are Cyohtee, Phoenix, Selvane, Kapella, and Theseus!" "And this award goes to...uhhh...ummm" *tries to tear open envelope, fails* "...damn envelope, open, willya? uhh" *huge ripping sound* "Ummm...it's a tie between Cyohtee and Phoenix, with ONE seg to their credits!" "Onto our next assignment...err, award...the award for shortest seg! The nominees are Theseus with "The Warding", Aris with "Dog Eats Dog", Theseus with "Hopelessly Lost at Land" and Aris with "Already Gone"!" "And here to present the award is Glen Frey, formerly of the Eagles!" "Yes, thank you, Technician Roberts. The award for shortest seg goes to Aris for "Already Gone"...I was asked to present for one simple reason... hit it guys!" *the stage lights go up, the rest of the Eagles blast into "Already Gone"* *much singing takes place* "Uhhh, yeah...that was cool. Rocking. Anyway, the next award happens to be that of Most Surreal Seg. The nominees are Theseus with "The Warding", Ari with "Would you like a refill?", Maruchan with "Unless They're Idiots" and Kap with "Adventures in Destiny"!" "And the winner is..." *rip* "uhhh...ummm...I'm supposed to read this note from the umm, op coordinator. Uhhh, the winner of this award is Maruchan, not only for her interesting takes on anime, angst, and bad cartoon physics, but also for her rather accurate portrayal of the op coordinator's bedroom. Thus, it is our honor to present Maru with the "Golden Chinese Container" for the most surreal seg...uhh, congrats Maru!" "The next award is that of the "Great A'Tuin Loving Cup" for the most blatant Pratchett ref in a story. The nominees are Shadur for his use of L-Space to get to Chi-Lin, and Bryn, for her use of Grovel-Before-the-Master Dhibbhalin. And this year's winner is...grumblemutterfsckingsuperglued envelopes..." *riiiiiip* "...Shad!" "And...uhhh...we're going to commercial while I get a letter opener and have my, uh, mother clean my mouth out with soap..." "Welcome, uh, back to the, umm...what is this place called again? The...umm...the Shine. Yes, live from the Shine, it's the Marraketh Oppies." "Anyway, we head into the overall Op Achievement Awards. These awards are for those folks who went above and beyond the call of duty to help make this op a success. And here to present them is katster, the op co..uh...coop...uh... taskmaster!" *katster walks onto the stage.* "Thank you Roberts. Well, this is a strange site, I don't often find myself tasked with standing in front of Jihaddi characters to present awards...but I'd first like to give a brief ack to Katze for popping up in my head and giving everybody a plausible reason to write an op in the first place." *Katze waves to cheers.* "Anyway, I wanted to present three very special awards tonight, those for going above and beyond the call of duty in this op." "The first person I want to thank is the man who kept the servers running. He managed our mailing lists, provided us webspace to put the final product, and even trusted his character in the care of other writers. So, I'd like to present the Golden Sandwich Oppie for Achievement to the sysadmin himself, James 'Calculus' Renken." "The second person I'd like to thank is my partner in crime. She not only kept me sane, but helped me provide entertainment to the list at the end of the op. She was also willing to help with whatever editing was needed, and if it hadn't been for her asking for help way back with the Blood Jihad, there may have been no VRDET, and thus no Marraketh. So, I'd like to present this jar of kosher dill jelly beans and the Silver..." *katster gazes in confusion at the statue placed in front of her* "..the, uh...Silver POW Oppie for Achievement to Ari." "And the last person I'd like to honor tonight with an achievement award is somebody whom a Jihad-wide achievement award ought to go to if we ever come up with one. Anyway, not only did he add a lot of humor and good grace to the story of Marraketh, he came up with the logo for the operation, and then nicely rearranged it on the Jihad pages. He also helped a lot in keeping everybody together for the chaotic finale that is the end of Marraketh. Also, without him, again, there may have been no VR, and thus...I'd like to present the Platinum Pencil Oppie for Achievement to Sean 'Mal-3' Breen." "Thank you for putting up with the serious awards. It was a pleasure working with you all on this." *katster leaves the stage, after turning the mike back over to Roberts* "Uhhhh, thank you, katster! Anyway, we got three more awards sitting back here that I need to award...uhh, Most Grat...uhh, grad...uhh...blatant! use of the[tm], the Gazing into 2001 Award, and the award we've been waiting for all night, Best Operation. "But first...we need you to watch ads for jolt. it funds the program." "Welcome back! The next two awards have only one nomination apiece, so the academy has uhh...allowed me to award them without, umm...announcing the nominees. The first award is the Gazing into 2001 Award, for most..umm...interesting sighting of the Monolith. That award goes to Mal, for his seg, ummm... "General Protection Fault". Speaking of which, this award was not sponsored by Bill Gates and Microsoft. "And the award for most blatant use of the [tm] is best illustrated by this segment from one of Shad's stories..." *the viewscreen lights up with this picture* "Shad swiveled his head to regard the speaker, a rather bland-looking persona decked out in a bright red outfit, who was glaring straight at him in between trying to remain upright with what amounted to several hundred kilos of assorted sharp objects on his person, but what *really* caused Shad's eyebrows to try to make a break for low orbit were the '[TM]' and '(c)' tags on various pieces of clothing and weapons." --Shadur, "Gratuitous destruction" *viewscreen stays frozen in that position* "And the uh, winner, of the Golden [tm] goes to Red Paladin!" "And last but not least, the award y'all been waiting for...best operation! The nominees are "The Marraketh Connection", "Op: Marraketh" "TMC" and "Mketh"! And the winner is, of course, "The Marraketh Connection", aka all of those names." *somehow the camera falls over, and all you can see is the carpet, with Roberts 'guldurn'ing in the background.* *end credits are hurridly put up* "The Oppies: the Marraketh Awards show." *** With special thanks to all the participants in Marraketh, I can't thank you guys enough. You managed to turn an idea into a real story, and I'm proud of you all. I wanted to somehow do an award for everybody, but it didn't work out. Anyway...this is long overdue as the thanks to all the hard work, and when all was said and done, we ended up with 94 segs of pure text. In no particular order, the participants in The Marraketh Connection: Nexx, Mal, Cal, kat, Phoenix, Aris, kap, Red, Bryn, Maru, Shad, Cyoh, Selvane, and Theseus. Give 'em a hand folks, they done well. kat