Individual book runs are too inconsistent to be a viable category. Survival battles are the main inconsistency.

I know this has been settled ages ago, but to put a close to this suggestion, no, this is probably not happening. The main issue is how 6 of the badges are simply obtained through menu skipping over 50 times in a row with the correct word. This isn't fun, and only tedious. Getting annihilated 40 times is the only hard part about this run, which in itself doesn't really warrant a category.

As long as the game is still up to date it should be fine for run submissions. PopCap is still the original developer of the game after all.

The reason we use lawnmowers at the start is so that we don't need to spend sun early on defences, and so we can set extra sunflowers up. Stalling for a mower also helps as you can release them to clear later waves nearly instantly. Also yes, you got the principle of the 50% Rule correctly.

Well, a timer isn't required to be in the actual video for the run, so you could use Livesplit on a PC on the side.