This years Pawpet was one of the 'weak' ones in my eyes sadly, and it could've been easily remedied.
That's easy to say. Come and join the team, make it happen :-)
Sadly I live ~600 km away from your places, so that's a time and money problem on my side :p Otherwise I would be glad to help out, the Pawpetshow is great, and you can see there's a lot of work put into it. Even those 'weak' years I'm speaking about are decent shows, just, the strong ones stand out so much more.
I wonder how you identified one specific puppeteer. For me it was hard to tell people apart behind the stage, they all looked like black men with masks :-D
Because his face was visible several times shortly :p That's something new I've seen. The black masses at for instance the space scene fitted well, they were barely visible. It just stood out this year compared to the others.
People tend to jump on such an opportunity with a lot of unrealistic expectations, which is why I wouldn't want to make a contest that makes any promises in advance, for example.
Yes, that's sadly true. I'm sure there's a way to alleviate that though. It just needs to be the base idea, and we got a few absolutely awesome story writers out there. A disclaimer about send in stories only being adapted in part or rewritten entirely would probably help with that, with credits for the respective writer often being enough. It's basically a win-win situation. Someone with a good idea gets a short time in the limelight, probably putting a bit of attention on their work which might be their way of bringing food in basically. So that could work still.
Also, the main reason I wrote the idea is to alleviate some of the pressure on the crew. While the PPS is a massive undertaking, and has many volunteers, it's basically still understaffed for a 1 year project, so any way to ease the burden on you guys is always good. For a volunteer-only project the PPS is still one of the highest quality things I've ever seen, so keep up the great work
![Smiley :)](https://forum.eurofurence.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Back to drafts in itself though. Even with 'failing' ones, I would say the individual ideas amassed from them - even if it's only small parts - could help along with working out the show quicker, leaving you more time to actually focus on perfecting it. On the other hand, it would surely be quite the undertaking to organize a well thought out way to 'separate the wheat from the chaff' so to speak without stepping on peoples toes along the way.