Hi, everyone. Good news!

For starters, AOTY is just about ready and will be posted within the next week or so. I am also only one away from finishing the Best Music Video category, so both AOTY and Best Music Video will be posted back-to-back. I will post the AOTY results, then the Best Music Video intros, and then the results for that probably a day after. 

I mark which categories I am doing in the Forms chapter so you can keep track, so if you're ever curious to get a reminder on the categories are and/or which ones I'm doing, please check that one!

I also give progress updates in my Oscars Awards, which I am currently on a small break from to focus on doing this contest along with my others, and those progress updates often give updates about all my contests (I would post them across all my awards, but I'd get spam blocked; I tried posting a lot in one day once and WP blocked me from posting any further, so it's just easier to do it in one awards), hence why I recommend checking out those updates, even if you're not in the Oscars.

No, I did not forget about this contest or stop doing it, it's just that AOTY was the one I was really focusing on, and there were A) some issues in the category that required a lot of back-and-forth and time to sort out, B) it had (prior to some issues) 20 participants, and if the Indie reviews were long with half that, I'm sure you can imagine how long this category will be, and C) if you didn't see my late-April announcement, someone I knew passed away, so I had to take a step back and do light work. I don't want to get into it, but these past few months have been a bit tough due to loss, so I appreciate your patience.

But in happier news, AOTY is one of two gigantic categories, so every other category will be faster, lol, and I also have rock and experimental heavily judged, so those two will be out relatively soon, too. I plan to start Record of the Year, or ROTY, soon as well, likely after Best Music Video drops.

More news: I'll need a separate chapter to post most of the album scorecards because of the image limit per chapter, so I'll post a few of the album scorecards and then I'll post the rest in a separate chapter. All of that is to say don't be alarmed if yours isn't in the results chapter; it'll be in the next chapter. Your playlists will be in the results chapter, though, but it may take me a hot minute to paste all the links since there are a lot of playlists.

The same will happen with SOTY when I get to that category, too.

I also thought I would post this chapter because I don't think I clarified my scoring scale across any of my contests.

People judge everything differently. For a lot of people, a 7/10 is completely different than what a 7/10 means for me. So, I thought I would clarify my grading scale.

For my ten point scale, here is what it means:

1 - Needs major improvement and rewrites

2 - Needs major improvement and likely needs rewrites

3 - Needs improvement, but probably no major rewrites

4 - Slightly below average; needs improvement, but more likely than not no major rewrites

5 - Average; needs improvement

6 - Above average; needs improvement to become far above average, but fine as is

7 - Good; could use some tweaks for a stronger score

8 - Very good; high above average and only needs minor tweaks

9 - Near-perfect; needs the tiniest of tweaks

10 - No criticisms; perfect

I don't do 9.3/10s or anything like that. It's either a full point or half, so either 9/10 or 9.5/10, not any other number. When there's a half there, it just means you're like this close to getting to the next score.

So I wanted to point this out to say a 6/10 is not bad for me. In fact, not even a 5/10 is. It's anything below 5 that I would consider below average and something that needs major improvement.

For a lot of people, a 6/10 or a 7/10 is a meh score, but for me, I'd say it's good.

Something to keep in mind is we don't grade books and media the same way we grade assignments, so it's easy to see 7/10 and think "Wow, that's only okay." In a lot of areas, that's like a C grade, but it isn't like that for media. For me, a 7/10 is a great score and something to be proud of.

So, yeah. Just thought I'd throw that out there so you know what's going on in my head when I give a score.

This is all essentially to say please see the score the way I score it and not the way you would. We probably have different ideas in our head when we score things, so please follow this scale whenever you see me score anything.

I hope that's helpful for whenever you're looking over your reviews! See you in the next results!