FltAdml. Wolf

CBS execs be like

https://deadline.com/2020/07/star-trek-prodigy-nickelodeon-series-animation-comic-con-cbs-1202993144/

I've had lots to say in past ceremonies about @Quinn Reynolds (Emma), but this awards presentation by @Tony (Kells) (Tony) really hits different! Emma is the perfect person to be the inaugural winner for this award. Like award's namesake, Elinor of Kanist, Emma is gracious, hard working, and incredibly wise. Her keen intellect has guided my thinking in many situations, and I've learned a lot from the way she approaches a problem. I'm very grateful she's a member of the EC, and an incredible captain. Many thanks to her for everything she's brought to the group over the years. Like Tony, I wasn't quite sure what to make or @Roshanara Rahman way back in the day. His strong opinions often challenged my long-standing positions, but I soon came to understand how valuable this new insight was. Like Emma, Rich is the perfect person to the the inaugural recipient of this award since he embodies the 'multiple disciplines' angle so strongly. Rich is a Renaissance Man who has his hands in everything, and does all of it so well. He's tireless, creative, proactive, and approaches everything from a place of collaboration. Congratulations Rich, you deserve this! I'll admit I was skeptical of @Oddas Aria's (Nick) Capstone Project. Our recent Fleetwide Plot Arcs have been difficult to manage and put a drain on everyone. But Nick found a new way of making a FWPA work, and pulled it off expertly! Between that and his other work around the fleet, including the CAL position and managing a recent launch – the USS Arrow – I'm really impressed with what he's done. Congratulations on earning this award Nick! @Jarred Thoran (Richard) has had a real trial by fire, and certainly earned this award in the past year! He was a "captain transplant," something we don't do very often, particularly with first-timers, but he managed it with aplomb. The Executive Council was impressed with his introspective, analytical leadership style that combined both technical ability but also a sophisticated take on management with empathy and compassion. The results on the Atlantis have proven his skill, and he definitely deserves this award! Congrats Richard. From a former recipient of the Chief's Citation, congratulations @Randal Shayne (Quinn)! He has seen a lot of OOC areas of the fleet this past year, and is learning a lot from each of these interactions – I'm looking forward to seeing how these skills get put to use in the coming months and years as a leader in the community. @Sal Taybrim (Jamie) winning the Sarek Star is perfect alignment with this award's intention. The goal of this award is to reward and uplift those folks who have found a way to navigate with grace the weird and wonderful world of politics in our community – for the sake of encouraging everyone to learn the best way to make change and improvements in a diplomatic way – and Jamie certainly has. I'm thankful that she is using her many years of experience in role playing groups to keep us on the path to bettering ours! Last but not least, Nick winning the Christopher Pike Pendant goes to show how well-rounded he is consideration of his other win this year! I love this nomination that Rich mentioned: “He is humble, exceedingly competent and possessed of a fighting spirit. For every hit, problem and issue, Nicholas has the patience to face it and the desire to find the best answer possible.” What a testament to what he's brought to the Eagle and Juneau crew! Congratulations to him for a great year – looking forward to many more

Valued members of our community, I hope you've enjoyed reading through this year's awards ceremony. I know it's a lot of text, a lot of recognition, just a lot to read overall! But, in particular, I hope what you take away from this ceremony is the full feeling of gratitude and appreciation that pours out from what we're doing. I'd imagine it's hard to understand, before you reach the command levels of our community, just how much work is going on behind the scenes to pull off everything we do. But let me pull back the curtain and point out just how much this exercise is choreographed: Our process begins in April by reviewing the past year's ceremony, the suggestions we got from the community, and the list of awards to decide if we need to retire or add any. The Captains Council discusses these things at length – considering what's working and what's not – before we have to refresh the nominations form, check all of our award pages, begin preparing our news posts and fleetwide emails, and then launch the process. From there it's a sprint to the end of the nominations process, pushing everyone in the fleet to participate – uncovering memories from weeks and months ago of ways that people impressed us, reviewing each of our peers and trying to understand the impact they've made on our community. All the while, our staff is ensuring that every angle is covered in nominations and that each person who has earned an award gets nominated. Things really get hectic once nominations close as our Awards Facilitator – Jo Marshall, this year – picks an Awards Committee and starts collating the nominations. There are at least 100 tasks that must be done in a line before we actually get to the ceremony, involving every member of the command staff, with some folks being buried in the work, like Kirk opening an overhead compartment to reveal thousands of tribbles. At the end of the day, we are all exhausted, but filled with gratitude for the opportunity to make entirely clear how much we appreciate everyone's contributions. Although we go to great lengths throughout the year to try and help each of you understand how much we value the time and effort you expend to write the perfect sims, we also know the magic of coming together for this recognition – to write down in the annals of our history that "this person was amazing, and we want to thank them for that." It's no trivial effort – as much as we want you to think that it is! – and I hope that those of you who earned awards can take some time to look back over the history of the award you won, maybe read some of the presentation from those past ceremonies, and know that someday someone else will be doing the same with your name. Welcome to the Hall of Honor, you've earned it. Before we close, I'd like to mention some commendations and "credits" where they're due: First and foremost, to Jo Marshall, who stage managed this process – collating, coordinating, logisticating, pontificating, and memeing every step. She brought a whole new character to the role and upped the ante for all those who come after her. I have deep empathy for the person in this position, and even deeper thanks for all of the hard work put in to make sure that every detail is perfect and correct. Thank you, Jo Marshall, for everything you've done to make this "show" go off without a hitch! To our Awards Committee, that read through 22 awards worth of nominations and carefully voted to award the Duty Post and Special awards. You've done a great service puting in this time and consideration, and helping our community come to the best decision. To our Deputy Awards Facilitators, who helped Jo Marshall with the incredible lift of bringing this ceremony to fruition, making sure that all the nominations were properly collated and checked against our rules, and that everything was where it needed to be! To our Commanding Officers, who have been tireless and extremely gracious throughout the whole thing. Your efforts are priceless in how much care and time you've put in. Thank you for everything you've done here, and everything you do to maintain this thing we've all built. This is an amazing thing we have and I hope you know how rare and precious it is to have a "round table" like we're experiencing right now. To our First Officers, who judged the Staff Awards and every other day of the year help make what we do possible. Thank you for being our cheerleaders, our assistants, our defenses, our collators, and our partners in this. I look forward to the day when you sit in the captain's chair and look in gratitude at the person in your seat. And finally, my last thanks is to you, dear members! You make it all worthwhile. The joy you bring, and the joy you experience fuels every moment of this. I look forward to many more years in service to this community. Until next year… 🖖 - Jordan, FltAdml. Tristan Wolf

This year we had two sets of special commendations we wanted to give out alongside our awards: Written by Fleet Captain Sal Taybrim: Jalana Rajel - for incredible dedication year after year to The (Image) Collective. She's consistently helpful with graphics of all kinds: New awards, character portraits, and more! And, she's consistently a friendly and helpful staff member for StarBase 118. German Galven and Nijil from StarBase 118 Ops: Who took the lead in cheerleading the awards and nominations process, and assisted in writing up the shipwide awards ceremony for Ops. Alex Blair from the USS Constitution: Who assisted Jalana in cheerleading the awards and nomination process on the USS Constitution and also assisted her in writing up the Constitution's shipwide awards. Also, German Galven for his work on the News Team: He has been an integral part of meeting our goals every month and uplifting others through an unending series of interviews! Written by Commander Randal Shayne, new CO of the USS Arrow: LtCmdr. Quentin Collins: Justin has been nothing short of an exemplary first officer from the beginning. He has had a hand in everything from award cheer leading to mentoring to discussing command decisions and making suggestions for our new region. And, on top of it, he stepped up without hesitation when the launch of the Arrow was moved up. All around fantastic. LtCmdr. Kim Chin-sun: James has been similarly helpful in the launch process. Specifically, his input and work in terms of mentoring cannot be overstated. Because of him, we can help guide newer officers effectively from the beginning. On a more personal note, I'd like to extend my personal gratitude to Marissa (Cmdr. Ash MacKenna) who has been spiritually supportive to me, and, from what I understand, functionally essential to the Juneau.

Thank you so much @Sal Taybrim, et al! It's been a pleasure and an hour to serve the community and see it grow and change after all these years. I truly appreciate this award 😊 Congrats again to @Quinn Reynolds and @Jalana – five years is so amazing, and you're an asset to our group and wonderful leaders and people to boot! Thank you for everything you've done over those years to help build this community. I know it's a lot of hard work on a day-to-day basis and it does not go unnoticed how well you've done it! Huge congratulations to all the LOS winners, in particular @Nyka Wyss (15 years!!!); @Roshanara Rahman, @Dassa Alexander-Dalton, and Loxley for their 10-year accomplishment. What trip it is to have folks along for the ride for this long. @Geoffrey Teller, all your hard work this year has paid off! Thank you for everything you put into the Embassy and the Thor transition. It's been a real pleasure watching your progress. @Alieth, thank you for all the beautiful work you've brought to the group. Having your artistic flair here has been a joy. Your kindness and patience is very appreciated. @Blake, you deserve all the plaudits for the years of work you've put into the wiki. Like a tree that we planted years ago, its branches are now providing shade to nearly every corner of the fleet – and you've tended and watered it along the way. You have much to be proud of! @Samira Neathler, thank you for your continued commitment to training. As part of our team of training officers, you've made it possible to grow the fleet over the past few months and your attention to detail and willingness to volunteer has not gone unnoticed. @Jo Marshall, I've said everything I'm going to say about you 😜 Congrats to each of the Xalor winners – thank you for continuing to add your voice and creativity even in the face of these challenges.

Possibly the worst part of the ceremonies for me is the fact that I can't personally thank and congratulate each and every person individually without it becoming way too tedious for our audience 🤣 Nonetheless, I want to congratulate you all for your hard work this year. Not only have your community peers recognized your writing, your contributions to the fleet, or both!, but your captain has acknowledged that you've made a real difference for your ship. This community doesn't work without folks like you who are dedicated to what we're doing and putting the enthusiasm and good cheer needed to make this a place people want to be. So thank you so very much for everything you're doing.

Tristan Wolf has arrived!

Wolf did

Congrats to @Geoffrey Teller and @Pholin Duyzer – and AMAZING work to everyone who participated! Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and creativity!

Resounding congratulations to Brian, the writer behind Geoffrey Teller, for smashing the Writing Challenge 2020 with a superb win! Not only the first entry the challenge received but also a beautifully written story “Lullaby” of an officer facing a difficult situation and a heartwarming encounter to leave a tear in the eye. This is the first Writing Challenge done since 2014, so this is a special congratulations extended to him! Matt, the writer behind Addison MacKenzie, had this to say about the piece: “I’ve served with Teller in various capacities for my entire length of service – as colleagues on the Veritas, as acting first officer on the Diligent, and now as senior officers on the Thor. In that time, I’ve gotten to know the Teller character quite intimately as well as his background – the presumed loss of his parents was initially a small detail to Brian, but it played a major role in one of our missions together on the Veritas when it was actually discovered that his father had survived. Getting to watch Teller work through that realization and then explain it to his sister Sarah (whom I wrote for) made for quite remarkable characterization. Now, in this piece of short writing, its interesting to see how Teller transformed into a wide-eyed, innocent projection of his childhood-self as he interacts with his mother. This piece was a compelling demonstration of the Teller’s humanity as we watch him confront [what he thinks is] his mother, their interactions and attempted reconciliation.” Our runner-up is Quinten, writer for Pholin Duyzer, recently returned to our community following a brief absence and scoops up this badge for his story “Time to Move On”, which sees the Denobulan officer return to his family home and battle through rough waters. A most excellent story and a compelling narrative glimpse into Pholin’s life at home and how his career has faired in between the time away. Well done, Quinten! All entries into the challenge were excellent, and each one deserves a slice of the praise! Thank you for submitting your entries, letting us into the worlds of your characters brought into the spotlight, and for giving us a glimpse of what goes on behind the characters we see. For the winner, runner-up and judges, they are in receipt of one of the following badges! Considering the wild success of this challenge, we plan to continue the tradition in yearly challenges. We look forward to more amazing entries next spring!

We hope to announce a winner next week.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too – there was lots of commentary about how people didn't like TNG when it premiered. I think it's just a given that people get attached to their vision of their favorite stories, and only want to see it continue as they knew it previously. The thing that Discovery muddled a bit to me is that I got the sense in the DS9 era that Section 31 was actually operating "outside" of Starfleet and the Federation control? Like, maybe there was some kind of "top echelon" of Starfleet or the Federation that was still supplying it with resources but that it didn't actually have a mandate anywhere in normal structures and if Federation legislators knew about it they'd disavow or put a stop to it.

https://www.starbase118.net/2020/new-captain-pike-series-star-trek-strange-new-worlds-announced/