User blog comment:Tdiandrockmusic2/My First Ever Acceptance Speech/@comment-1874924-20100926020730

I missed this post when you first put it up, and have just now stumbled upon it. Anyway, congratulations. Did you notice that VH, in addition to being the first one-shot to be Featured, is also the 3rd noncompetition story to be Featured in the last 6 months?

For the record (I looked this up on the History page), VH's supporters were yours truly, Comicstrip2000, TDIFan13, Weblykinly, Kgman04, Reddy, Gigi, and Sunshine. Sprink, Spenny and Ult actually didn't support it this month for whatever reason, although I think all 3 have supported it in the past.

As for the merits of the story itself, sometimes you just can't predict what will resonate emotionally. While it's true that our culture regards premature death as the pinnacle of tragedy, that is not, in and of itself, enough for an emotionally powerful story. There's a fine line between emotional and sappy, and our signature stories both managed to stay on the right side of it.