Dru

"I'm going to keep nominating Dru until she gets the title. Quite honestly she deserves it, deserved it more than I did when I had it."

Lori

"Well...I find Karen Dallas to be the most realistic character onboard the Galaxy. With events taken from real life situations, written in the most extrodinary way, making us, fellow writers, feel admiration for the art of writing. Always lifting the bar...giving us food for thought and some goals to strive for..."

Dallas

"My nomination for SIMmer of the Mission is Dallas. Once again, he has deeply impressed me with the quality of his writing and the intricacies of his character. It's a measure of his talent and modesty that he wrote off the post with the Vulcan love slave as being rushed and not particularly good, when, in my view, it is just this sort of post - original, fresh, insightful - which make his contributions to the Galaxy such a joy to read. Dallas has dealt with the abrupt departure of Rebecca von Ernst fabulously - Corgan is torn apart by his emotions just as a new, dangerous attraction arrives onboard. Finally, he has probably done more joint posts than anyone else, illustrating his commitment to collaborative writing and producing some wonderful results along the way."

Lee

"I nominate Lee Jones for his consistant ability to take what was given to him and run with it, turning out great post after great post. His character, Savar tr'Khellian, is an interesting contrast to most of the characters onboard, and Lee consistantly finds a place for him in the storyline."

"For me it's Lee who is the "Simmer of the Mission" this time.

The simple argument I have for choosing him is that he described his character so well, his inner turmoil and thoughts is this mission that played out near the Romulan border, close to his homeground."

Matt M.

"I'm going with Matthew this time, both for the number of posts he's cranked out getting T'Shani aboard and interacting with a wide variety of people, and because no matter how messed up she is (and she makes Krieghoff look well-adjusted at time) he manages to keep her entertaining."

"I'd have to go with M.J. this time - T'Shani A'Akledorian. He's made the blue little Andorian a very distinctive character on the Galaxy - high praise, given the vast number of distinctive writer's this game has boasted over the years."

"Francis has been handling his mission well despite his personal setbacks, and writing top notch to boot."

"I appreciate Francis' willingness to step up to the plate and offer to be the plot GM--a relatively thankless job at times. This mission gave us opportunities to flesh out our characters as we saw them react to high stress situations. Character development tends to fall to the wayside in high action oriented plots, but Francis left room for our characters to react, instrumentally and emotionally, and that rocks!"

"In my opinion, Francis seems to have that innate "knack" for good writing: he picks up on plotlines and histories easily, and adds to those underlying threads meaningfully. For example, in setting up the future 'mini-mission' between his charachter (Cassius Henderson) and mine (T'Shani A'Akledorian), he was able to effectively extrapolate on the subtle hints that I had Tish 'drop' for his charachter(s) to pick up on.

In the past, it has been my experience that some types of writers will either complain about these plot-elements ("It won't work here!" "That doesn't sound fun!" etc, etc), or ask for me to *totally* spell everything out--which effectively ruins the suspense build-up that allows the writer to let his or her charachter truly *react* to unexpected turns.

Instead, Mr. Byrne takes those twists and constructively adds his own distinct outlooks and reactions to the matter. Oftentimes, I have been genuinely surprised and delighted as his charachter has truly *reacted* to what mine has said or done, instead of us trying to 'pre-plan' the whole post.

As I stated earlier, I am most impressed with Francis's writing aptitude, ability to creatively construct interesting plot-arcs, and his ability to recognize and build-upon both solid and subtle story elements. For this, I nominate him as "Simmer of the Mission".