During the summer of 1998, a young lady named Red Monster, called Alyson by her family and other mundanes, was raising silkworms with her mother. Now, silkworms are fairly easy to take care of, being small and non-poisonous and relatively inactive. The bulk of their care is cleaning the poop out of their boxes every few days and dropping mulberry leaves on top of them to eat.

Ah, mulberry leaves. When they're small, they don't eat very much. However, this late in the summer, the silkworms were quite large and they ate like a flock of football players. So, one hot day, when the temperate was easily 100 F and the humidity was around 90%, Red Monster had no choice but to go out and pick some mulberry leaves for the silkworms, who were waving their little heads around aimlessly, wondering where their food went.

While the Monster stumbled about the DC area town of Greenbelt, Maryland, in the stifling heat and humidity into which no one but herself was dumb enough to venture out, she had a vision. "Fan fiction awards, just for X-Force!" Yes. She would put together a set of awards that would put all X-Force stories on equal footing, regardless of popularity or exposure, and honor them for the rare and precious gems that they are. The details of the project took shape in her head. She decided it would be best if she got her Netfriend Desert Nomad in on the project. That way, they could split up the responsibility and share the fun!

So, she went home, fed the silkworms, and opened up her email. She sent Desert Nomad a brief message describing her vision and her proposal, and later recieved a reply from Desert Nomad saying she was interested. They fleshed out the details together, and procured a web page on which to base their project.

This is the Monster here. It's not just an overheated hallucination of mine anymore. It's really happened. The organizers have fleshed out the details of the project, built this web page, and gotten the whole affair underway. Authors have submitted their valued works, judges and moderator have devoted their time and energy into producing the raw results. I was hoping this would work, but I didn't really believe such a spur-of-the-moment idea of mine would become a reality. Hopefully, the Prosh Awards will be even more successful next year, and all the creative, but shy, X-Force fans out there will come out of their shells and start writing stories!

The most frightening thing about it is, all that stuff you just read about the mulberry leaves and silkworms, is a completely true story!