In case you missed it, yesterday the winners of the Dragon Awards were announced and awarded.

What are the Dragon Awards? They’re a set of awards given out by Dragon Con, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Gaming con with over 70,000+ attendees—a pretty significant number compared to other cons out there. Still not heard of them? That’s fair. After all, this was their first year.

Yes, up until now Dragon Con has never had an award. But seeing the absolute meltdown going on over at the Hugo Awards over the last few years (where a tiny, frankly dying con has entrenched itself into the SJW blogsphere in an effort to save itself, insulting a rejecting anyone who didn’t agree with their narrative and taking steps to make sure only the “proper” people were involved, voting, and nominated), and hearing the cry from that same group of “Don’t like it? Go find a different award!” Dragon Con stepped up.

The result? An award that can both take nominations for and be voted on by anyone—anyone—with an e-mail address and an interest in the subject matter. For a con that is attended by over 70,000 people annually. Compared to the Hugo’s paltry attendance (most years below 5,000, actually) and rules and regulations that restrict voters to those who can pay a fee (and now, with recent changes, follow more stringent requirements), Dragon Con seems like a breath of fresh air.

Anyway, the Dragon Awards were announced last night and … surprise surprise, when you open the doors rather than restricting them, you get very different results from Worldcon’s more restricted and elitist offerings. There was no political pandering, no cries (at least, not that I’ve heard of) of “Black Lives Matter” (shouted, ironically enough, at the 2014 Hugo Awards by a winner who was very much not the target audience of that phrase), and no ‘Ass’terisk Awards given out by the convention to those they felt didn’t belong (also the 2014 Hugo Awards; what a classy organization). There were no comments by big-wig attendees (like GRRM) that if you didn’t have enough money to attend, you weren’t welcome because you weren’t the “right” kind of fan.

There was none of that. It was an award given out during an awards ceremony to the creators of work that the public voted for. End of story.

Of course, as one would expect, those who initially rallied the cries of “Go get your own award!” are now, of course, outraged that to their shock, people actually took them at their own leering insults. Already commentary is rolling out of the insular crowd lambasting the Dragon Awards. There are posts accusing it of conspiracy, that Vox Day or some other social ne’er-do-well orchestrated everything from behind the scenes. There are the accusations that the award will never release the number of voters it had because the number would be so tiny and insignificant it would be clear how obviously it was manipulated should the numbers come out. Amusingly enough, these comments are mixed in with contrasting comments already having “answered” the opposite result, claiming that if the numbers are large it just shows that people gamed the system and voted thousands of times, because clearly a con with over 70,000 attending fans isn’t going to have anyone voting for their favorite book, film, game, etc. (All screencaps taken from File 770’s comments on the Dragon Award Winners)

It’s a never-ending tide and, quite honestly, shows the childishness of those in the Insular faction about as well as anything else they’ve said or done. What’s that? People accused your award of appealing only to your limited circle while claiming otherwise, so you threw all those people out and now they’ve gone and voted elsewhere, and it’s a juggernaut compared to what you did?

That’s how life works!

Anyway, Insular insanity aside …

Congratulations to all the Dragon-Con nominees and winners. From what I saw on my ballot, there were some definite tough choices between some outstanding fantasy and science-fiction entries, and each one of you in the running earned your place. I look forward to seeing the Dragon Awards return next year, and from the look of it, I need to pick up a few books in the coming weeks to round out my collection (such as Dave Freer’s Changeling Island, one of the YA nominees).

Anyway, again, if you’ve not seen them, you can check out the winners (and maybe find something fun to read, play, or watch) here.