[daw]

I appreciate the distinctions that people are trying to draw between HASA, HA Yahoo, and the Mithril Awards, although there is enough overlap between the first two in particular to make the difference fuzzy. I also appreciate how careful folks are being to try to make this discussion constructive. I'd like to add my 2 cents' worth.

Re HA Yahoo: Mike has a tough job. I have read many interesting discussions on the HA list but I have also seen extended discussions that I thought were unnecessarily cruel. I'd encourage you, Mike, to step in more quickly. Maybe you could make yourself a macro that you post every two weeks or so reminding people to be civil to one another and to be aware that the list has a very wide readership. Also, IMHO, if someone is publicly rude, you should remind them publicly of the need for restraint. Otherwise, it looks like the rude behavior is acceptable. Having said that, I'll say I do not want your job!

Re HASA: HASA has rules about the confidentiality of the review process. If those rules are violated on HA Yahoo (which you have to belong to be a HASA member), then someone from HASA should remind posters of the need for discretion. Mike should not have to do it all. I have no idea if anyone at HASA has this as part of their responsibility, but someone should.

Re the Mithril Awards: Khazar, I appreciate the amount of work that you and others did, but this is exactly the kind of statement that people here are talking about: "there were also an awful lot of true crimes against humanity, pieces so abysmal that you wanted to rinse your brain in lye before rejoining the human race."

I did not submit any of my work for the awards, but a friend was nice enough to submit something without telling me. It did not win, which is fine with me. The pieces that won were better than mine. But when I read your comment here, I had a momentary fear that it was my story you were talking about. Should I get a thicker skin and be less paranoid? Undoubtedly. Am I the only one who had that fear, however briefly? I doubt it. IMHO, comments like this should be confined to private email between friends and not posted in a public forum. It's a funny comment, but it does not belong here.

[Viv]

[Viv]

[Ariel]

Ooooo! Thank you, Viv! I'm not an elf fancier myself, but have very much enjoyed your pieces as well. 'Inspired' was inspired! Whew! HEHEHEHEEHE... You write the kind of smut I like to read... hot, but without using the kinds of words that would jar me out of the story. I do hope you keep sharing your remarkable talents!

I'd also agree with you and daw about the comment that you quoted. No disrespect intended towards Khazar because I KNOW what you begin to feel like after reading your 500th bad fanfic!, but I also feel a twinge of worry when someone starts complaining about bad fanfic in a genre I write in. Intellectually, I know that she is probably not talking about mine (or yours either) but there’s always that insecure artist in the back of your mind hurling her doubts at you. Being mindful of that, I try to carefully construct my comments so as to encourage no matter how bad I find a fic, but I can’t deny that I have sometimes felt the urge to completely barbeque a fic to vent my frustration.

Generally, I put those reviews in a little folder on my harddrive – or, more detrimentally, I’ll vent my spleen via the barbed comments I put on a BB or two. :p Unfortunately, I tend to hurl those barbs at the ‘establishment’ – being as I am rather devoid of any sense of self-preservation – and the establishment doesn’t take kindly to it. (note Anon’s subtly defensive answer to me earlier in this thread)

But to the purpose of this post, please know that the part of the voting that I was involved in was NOT branding ‘Sue’ into the pages of each fic. I gave each and every contestant an equal judging in as open minded a manner as I could and respected pieces that made the final cut in the categories I judged, even if I could think of other fics that I deemed better that were not included.

Ariel

[KhazarKhum]

Ahhh, still more Mithril Awards.

Daw: while I certainly don't mean to insult you or anyone else, I also can't avoid the fact that some of the pieces that were entered were not very good.

I'm not naming names, or titles, because I am acutely aware of the fact that no matter how godawful something is, it's still someone's baby.

When we started, we expected thirty or forty entries, total. We recieved almost 800. Everything was given a score, based on grammar/spelling, fidelity to canon, and so on. We decided, after a long debate, not to release those scores to the public. We did agree that the judges' comments on the finalists could be sent to authors who requested them.

Nothing was eliminated for being a MS, or AU, or having OCs.
To be honest, or, if you prefer, blunt, most stories took themselves out of the running. Spelling errors and grammatical disasters took a severe toll. Incoherence was also a serious problem.

If in doubt, we had someone else on committee check the story.

We will need judges for next year. Ideally we would like to have no one judge more than one category. Why not volunteer when the time comes?

khazar

[Viv]

[Ellbee]

[KhazarKhum]

Viv:
The judges for the Mithril Awards could not judge a category in which they had an entry. Period.

Khazar

[Gaslight]

[fileg]

"I think the response you want is from that specific person, Tay, so I won't address it. There are those on HA (the list) who freely admit to being "elitist" and like it that way. There are those here who don't like that and freely admit it. "

I don't actually expect a response at all. (Or if I did, I guess I hoped we could be specific enough as writers to say- I had this bad experience, not they are bad) I was trying to point out that people have whatever experience they have-- it is not the site, or the policy, but the particular people they encounter.

I never denied there is a cold faction at HASA, and some factions (the canon police, for ex.) that tick me off. I have not been quiet about responding there, either. There are some closed-minded people I would gleefully strangle! But that is not my HASA, and I don't let them spoil my experience there. There are people who feel you are entitled to their opinion everywhere you go. I personally find it chilly over here, but I never assumed it was Scrolls, just that I hadn't had time to give to making friends here yet.

Language is part of that -- here are 2 quick examples:
1 the stated policy of this being a HET archive led me to understand that my stories, which contain no pairings, would not be welcomed. But in truth, this is a No Slash zone. Not the same thing at all. OR

2 someone said that when HASA asked for a story of theirs for review, they did not request the best one -- one individual somewhere asked for that story. They may not have even been a member of HASA. Anyone on the internet can nominate a story for review -- and any writer (and I have done this myself) can say no, take this one instead.

There was a discussion on HASA less than a week ago where one of our young members was going to take down his writing and look for somewhere he would get more feedback. Response to this was - why not leave it here AND go elsewhere? I offered to tell him places to try, and the two that sprang immediately to mind were Open Scrolls and Stories of Arda.

So as someone who has been recommending this site on the HASA line, I was just surprised to find myself feeling so unwelcome here.

This is my entire position - write - post - respond when you can. encourage.

Now, Tuor wants me to come home and write, so that's me done.

[Viv]

[fileg]

-- And as to the off-hand nature of nomination ... I don't know how Henneth Annun works, so I wasn't aware that it indeed was not an honor to have been asked. How embarassing. And here I was thinking that someone among the exalted Henneth Annun bunch was mildly impressed with my scribbling. I, ah, won't mention it again. Thanks for setting me straight. --

Why embarrassing? I will always consider it a great honor to have someone like a piece of my writing enough to request it. Don't you?

I only mean to point out that that there is not some committee at HASA that surfs around judging and soliciting. It is not a reflection on the taste policy of the site, since it is a secret who asks for a story, and anyone on the internet can go there and say - I think this should be invited, because it is *beautiful to me.*

(Review is where that judging happens, and I will readily admit it can be very arbitrary and random, give the nature of nine random members giving their opinions. It is supposed to be based on impartial guidelines - but people are people. When someone writes they did not like my summary, (yes, summary) I think "What a nitpicker!" (insert the appellation of your choice there) not "What a bunch of nitpickers!"

I mentioned my feeling a chill here only to say I myself had not done enough to participate (since I had a bloom of real life in the short tie I have been here) and that I find that situation to be true everywhere on line - that the circumstances of a persons personal experience don't reflect the policy of a place.

I just don't like being labeled.


-- And I don't recall seeing you post here at the forum before all this HASA ruckus began.--

My vision can make the forums tough for me - I ache reading colours on black, and the yellows and blues here disappear on the white background. so I generally respond in emails. And as I said, my own circumstances kept me from spending that kind of time lately. That, in fact, was my point - that I did not hold it to be a policy of the site, but simply a reflection of what happened in one circumstance.


---If the two language examples you cited, mine included, are your primary reason for feeling unwelcome I'd like to apologize for my own unwitting offense and ask you to please not hold it against the archive or the other members. Far as I know, I'm the only complete snark here. Everyone else I've met has been fabulous.---


My two examples are examples -- of how things can be misinterpreted.

I hold nothing against anyone here. I came here to try and make some time to read Nancy Brooke's story Autumn Hunt, (met nancy on the Boromir fanfiction list) and I was surprised to find this archive took non- romantic stories. That was not what "Het Archive" meant to me. My point is, sometimes you have to ask!! I have been talking this site up, even on the HASA line, because I think it is a great service to a beginning writer to get varied feedback and encouragement, and there are too few good places to go - Scrolls and Arda being the ones I tend to recommend. I have met some excellent people, and read some excellent stories.

edit -- I had taken this last bit out, a last moment bit of sanity, but since I was not quick enough, and it has been mentioned, I will put it back in

I thought my problem fitting in here was going to be that I don't write romance. I was surprised to find out that the problem is that I am an elitist, canon quoting, award fixing, unfriendly snob.

(That was me being cranky, and to little purpose, except to show that name calling hurt me. I apologize and will act like a grownup now)

[Ariel]

Fileg's reply could have been mine, except in reverse. I joined HASA because I too thought someone in that order was mildly impressed with my work and was rather nonplussed to find that it was merely a reader that liked one of my pieces. That disappointment and a not inconsiderable amount of confusion trying to find my way around the site and its procedures set the tone for my first, and rather unpleasant, introduction to HASA. While I can appreciate that there are very good people there and not everyone was so arrogant seeming, enough of the ‘names’ there were to put me completely off the site. HA Yahoo and Mike have been VERY different – welcoming and gracious, interesting and kind. I have NO problem seeing a difference between the two entities.

It may indeed have been just the way I was introduced to HASA that caused my preference, but I have to agree with Viv. Notifying an author out of the blue that one of their stories is wanted for an archive they never heard of and THEN expecting them to be so grateful that this site deigns to include their fic that they fall down in homage to the site’s greatness is asking an awful lot. But that is how they get fics. Oh, well, - that procedure obviously works with some people. It didn’t work very well with me.

Ariel

[Levade]

[Robbie]