Tynwald Day Tag Tidy and the Tolkien Kerfuffle of 2012!

[curiouswombat]

I had today off work - it is Tynwald Day - our equivalent of July 4th, more or less.

I fear I did not go to Tynwald to hear the laws being promulgated.... I spent the day being fairly lazy; it was the first not-raining day for ages, and I did some washing, hung it out, sat reading outdoors for a while, and then went shopping. S2C spent the day in bed, as he was at work last night and tonight, and D-D was busy with friends. I was happy with my own company - life at work the past three days was hectic and mentally tiring.

But I have also spent time tidying up my tags, so that all the Returnverse stories are now actually tagged 'Returnverse' as well as with their individual names - just in case anyone wants to read them here. Although, to be honest, it is probably easier to do so at TtH or Faerie. But I feel so much more organised for having done it!

Within the Tolkien fandom there has been a very polite and restrained kerfuffle - at least by the standards of some other fandoms I could mention... resulting in the organiser(s) of the big awards event pulling the plug on everything.

This is a bigger problem than some of the similar things in Buffydom, for example, as the MEFAs had eaten all other awards up - they are the only ones. Or were. It was a very short lived kerfuffle, too - from the first mention of a new ratings system - which is what annoyed people - to the 'Thank you and Goodbye, this Group/Community is now closed' posts took less than a week, I think!

I really think those involved with the organisation must have been pretty stressed out by running something so big, before anyone questioned the new rules, so that it was almost a relief to them to take their ball and go home. Otherwise it would either have been resolved or died down...

On the community that had sprung up about two days before that, to discuss the rules changes, someone basically said "OK - there's no point in just going 'Oh Dear...' Do something about replacing them!" So, being curious, I have found myself following it all, chipping in here and there, and am now fascinated by the way that a group of over 40 people are getting themselves into task forces, discussing policy, categories, ratings, finance and so on in an intelligent and organised fashion...

And you know me - can't keep out of something like that - so have joined a task force, or maybe two.

If anyone in the Tolkien fandom is interested the community is HERE. I really hope it will all come together - even just watching all the workings being done in public is fascinating.

Comments

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

Apart from the time you nominated The Little Prince -- and it must have been so hard to find something of mine that was eligible! -- I have always seen the MEFAs as forbidden territory, precisely because of the ratings restriction business. It always annoyed me, because it was just encouraging all those people who assumed that sex=badfic.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

It always annoyed me, because it was just encouraging all those people who assumed that sex=badfic.

This annoyed a great many people - and over time it had caused a grey area to develop where stories with clear sex scenes had been nominated and some had gone on to win (ahem...Pure Morning...) whereas others had been eliminate. This was, to a large extent, why new rules were introduced. But rather than take the obvious step of saying we will introduce a category for higher rated stories as well, they tried to write more and more complex ratings. These were what caused all the fuss; partly because they were very ambiguous despite trying to clarify things - there was the question (I am only slightly paraphrasing here...) 'is the sex/violence/bigotry/language/any one of 20 other debatable things an integral part of the plot or just there for titillation?' But even if it was clearly part of the plot 'would it even be disturbing to an adult?'

And if you mentioned that there was any of the above you had to in one way or another 'prove' that it was part of the plot - although no-one was asked to provide proof that their 'curtain fic' was so innocent that it could be read to pre-schoolers as a bedtime story.

There were so many holes you could drive a bus through - spiders might disturb some adults, mention of the death of a child might disturb another, and so on, and then anything that contained someone 'acting more violently than expected for their race' would be top rated - you know, like those nasty ents at Isengard, or the horrible hobbits with pitchforks threatening men during the scourging of The Shire...!

So - for the new awards being developed the first requirement is that there will be no restrictions on eligibility based on rating... at all. There will be filters so people can easily avoid some of the things they don't like - whether overt sex/violence/whatever.

Watch out for a nomination or two when it comes together.

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

Phew! (I followed your link). You (and the other volunteers) have really got your work cut out for you!

I think you're absolutely right in one of your replies above: you have to keep the rules simple and trust people to be honest, then have a mechanism for dealing with the ones who aren't -- rather like the law's supposted to work. Yes, that may be a lot of work, but surely no more work than laying down complex rules and applying them pre-emptively!

One thing the owners/mods should do, perhaps, is have the sort of disclaimer you see on dvds (saying that the commentaries are the personal opinions of the artists involved and not necessarily those of anyone at New Line or wherever), because then the owners/mods needn't fear readers' thinking that all the stories illustrate the owners/mods' personal tastes (and condemning them for it). Then they could be more relaxed about allowing in stuff they don't personally like, as long as it has appropriate warnings*. The thing is, if the majority of the readership really doesn't like Adult fic, they won't read it, it won't get votes and, eventually, it won't get nominated. That's what happened to the het categories at the My Precious Awards -- nobody would read the het fics. Sorted!

* I do think that the 'Author chose not to warn' option at AO3 is a good idea, because it tells the reader that the fic contains warning-worthy material without forcing the writer to put spoilers outside the cut.

I can see that you'll have huge problems with categories, too. Even with a story as simple as The Little Prince, I spent ages trying to work out what category to put him in. I appreciate that, by having lots of categories, they were trying to be fair but, as with archives, it doesn't work, because most readers cherry pick and avoid the categories they 'already know they don't like', so having lots of categories can actually amount to making the writer consign his or her fic to oblivion from the outset by putting it into a category that everybody 'already knows they don't like'. Maybe the categories should be less about era, races and/or pairings and more about general themes like 'romance', 'action/adventure', 'mystery', or 'missing scenes', etc. People would still hunt for their preferred era/race/pairing, but they might see the other summaries and, you never know, their curiosity might be piqued. I don't really know what the answer is, I can only tell you that, for a Harry Potter het award, I once had a story come second to a Harry/Draco story! (And nobody said a word).

Thanks for the plug (below), btw :-) :-)

[I've just posted some of my Draco/Hermione stories on a new (to me) archive, and one of the comments asks me where I've been hiding all this time! Actually I've been waving my hands over my head and bellowing, "Hey, look! Over here! I've written some fics!" And the fandom's been putting its hands over its ears and chanting, "La, la, li-la, la!"]

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

You (and the other volunteers) have really got your work cut out for you!

More others than me, I think/hope!

The aim seems at present to be 3 ratings - 'general', 'teen' and 'adult' - and all stories welcome. Also fewer categories, and simpler ones. This could well put more stories in each 'division' but should make things simpler.

Posting and commenting is open to all at the community - and what you have said here is all useful stuff. Would you like to add it yourself, or would you mind if I copied much of it over there?

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all if you copy anything you think's useful!