Teres

Of course not. Douglass probably thinks there's nothing wrong with what they're doing.

Oh well, you see, it's necessary because there's just so much at stake that basic humanoid decency doesn't matter. Or something.

When you have the author on your side, you could commit murder and they would still find a way to justify it. (Maybe not a good way, but...)

This is precisely why when you write you need to remove yourself from the equation. I've written from the POVs of psychopathic serial killers, rapists, wife-beaters and worse, filthy rich CEOs who think they worked their way to the top via sheer hard graft and didn't have any unfair advantages, and not once did I pause to patronisingly inform the reader that they are either Good or Bad. I just showed them for what they are and left the reader to draw their own conclusions as to how they should view them.

In any other circumstances, I would say congratulations for the nomination, but...yeah. I think I would have been too embarrassed to show my face if I won anything like that, too.

Given that the Sara Douglass Award is part of the Aurealis Awards which repeatedly awarded her crap the prize for Best Fantasy Novel while she was alive, it's depressingly obvious that the organisation's judgement is suspect at best. As such I really couldn't care less about their opinions on my books.

I would ask if I should be scared, but I'm going to preemptively say yes, I should be absolutely terrified.

For what it's worth you won't be scared so much as just rolling your eyes so hard you can see your own frontal lobes.

What does she even have to be jealous of? Barbie Barsarbe knows absolutely nothing about Azhure! That's like saying you're jealous of some random stranger walking past you in the grocery store.

The author knows in advance that Azhure is going to become the Most Amazing Person Ever, so Barbiesarb is being pre-emptively jealous, or at least irrationally mean as a prelude to said jealousy.