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Hmmm... I do think that this conversion chart is definately fairer - although I'm sure the ASC had good reasons for doing it that way. But Marta does raise a good point - why not just do a literal thing? One character equals one point. Might help in breaking some of those ties!

Resha



Marta <MartaL0712@netscape.net> wrote:

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, angelabrooks@y... wrote:
<snip>
> So here's a suggested conversion chart:
>
> Characters Points
> 1-100 1
> 101-200 2
> 201-300 3
> 301-400 4
> 401-500 5
> 501-650 6
> 651-800 7
> 801-950 8
> 951-1100 9
> 1101+ 10
>

This seeems a much more equitable point distribution. Question,
though: why use points at all? Why not just use straight character
counts. One character = one point, up to some maximum. So if I write
a 351-character comment it's five points under the old point, four
under the new -- why not award the story 351 points and be done with
it?

Marta


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha


---------------------------------
Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hey guys,

I was talking to Tanaqui about some confusion we both had over this
year's categorization scheme. Based on that conversation, here's what
I hope is a more thorough FAQ on that subject. Ainae, would you like
to post it to the website?

(Some of the particulars might need to be tweaked, based on what we
decide in this post mortem.)

*****

Q: What are the categories? How are they organized?

Categories can be divided into three kinds:

- Races & Places: Men, Elves, Hobbits, Orcs, Rohan, Numenor
- Genre: Humor, Adventure, Drama, Romance, Horror, Mystery, Crossovers
- Time/Books: _The Silmarillion_, _The Hobbit_, _The Lord of the Rings

Within each category, there may be subcategories. Some apply to all
categories, such as poetry and drabble, while other subcategories
apply to particular categories, such as pairings for Romance. Awards
are made in each subcategory, but there are no "overall" winners for
a whole category or set of categories chosen from amongst the winners
of the subcategories.

Q: What about subcategories?

There are several mandatory categories. If the piece you are
nominating is a WIP, a poem, or a drabble, you need to note that in
the subcategories spot on the application. All of these pieces will
only run against other WIPs, poems, or drabbles.

Beyond that, the awards organizers have the discretion to create
subcategories where there are many stories in a particular category
and a significant number are similar in some way. For example, last
year "Romance" was divided into several subcategories based on
pairings -- i.e., Rivendell, featuring Haldir, Faramir/Eowyn, etc.
While most of the subcategories are created by the awards staff,
based on their overview of all stories nominated, please feel free to
suggest other subcategories than the mandatory ones on your
nomination form if you feel a piece would do well in a particular
subcategory.

Q: But my story is a romance about elves during _The Hobbit_. Can it
go in all three categories?

No. Each piece can only be nominated in one category. So when writing
your nomination, sit down and think about the story. Why do you like
it so much? Is it because it is a romance? Or because it provides an
interesting perspective on events of _The Hobbit_? Or because it
offers some insight into Elvish culture? If you're not sure, ask the
author. (We'll also check with the author to make sure he or she
agrees with your categorization.) But whatever you decide, each story
can go in one and only one category. The main category acts as a
catch-all for any stories which do not fit into one of the
subcategories.

Q: I've heard some talk about categories or subcategories being
viable. What does this mean?

For a category or subcategory to be viable, it must include at least
five stories by at least two authors. This usually isn't a problem
for the main categories, but ensuring that viable subcategories are
created can take some work. Let's look at the situation where there
are only three poems nominated in the subcategory _The
Silmarillion_/Poetry. One of two things can happen:

(1) Those three poems will be moved to other subcategories, based on
the nominators' second and third choices for categorisation. Perhaps
some of them could be moved to Elves/Poetry, for example.

(2) Poems may be moved in from other categories (such as
Elves/Poetry, for instance) to reach the 5 stories x 2 authors
minimum for the _The Silmarillion_/Poetry subcategory.

In either case, pieces will have to be moved from the nominators' (or
authors') first choice to create viable categories. The aim of the 5
x 2 minimum is to ensure a reasonable level of competition in all
categories with no walkovers.

Q: I won the "Luthien and Beren" award but my story is about Sam and
Rosie. What does this mean?

The names of the awards are just titles, themed appropriately to the
overall category. They don't necessarily reflect the content of the
stories that win them. The stories that get the highest number of
votes in the romance category or any and each of its subcategories
win the "Luthien and Beren" award, regardless of their content.
Awards in all other categories have similarly themed titles.

Q: Do subcategories also get their own awards?

Yes. First, second, and third prizes will be awarded in the
subcategories as well as the main categories. These winners will have
the right to use versions of the same banners as their counterparts
in the main categories which have been tailored to reflect the
particular subcategory.

*****

Marta

-----Original Message-----
From: Naresha [mailto:north_shore_fruitcake@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 6:20 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Re: Adjust character counts/point values?

>Hmmm... I do think that this conversion chart is definately fairer -

although I'm sure the ASC had good reasons for doing it that way. But Marta
does raise a good point - why not just do a literal thing? One character
equals one point. Might help in breaking some of those ties!

I can't really put my finger on it yet, but I don't think the literal thing
is a good thing. And it would actually make ties worse. How would you
break them? There's nothing left beyond seeing which had the most votes.
And how many ties were able to break at that point this year? One, I think.
All the others came down to characters. Yes we didn't have any that matched
character-for-character this year, but it *could* happen.

I think the points also makes it more equitable. Like I said, I can't put
my finger on why, but I'm sensing trouble if we go for actual characters.
I'll switch it to the this point scale this year and we'll see how it goes.

And since it's January, except for open polls, all that suggestions and
changes are closed now.

Now we look at categories. I'll make a separate post in a bit.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

Thanks. It will require a little bit of revision to account for authors
picking their own categories, but otherwise it's great. I'll add it to the
Q & A.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 4:57 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] proposed FAQ revision - categorization



Hey guys,

I was talking to Tanaqui about some confusion we both had over this year's
categorization scheme. Based on that conversation, here's what I hope is a
more thorough FAQ on that subject. Ainae, would you like to post it to the
website?

(Some of the particulars might need to be tweaked, based on what we decide
in this post mortem.)

*****

Q: What are the categories? How are they organized?

Categories can be divided into three kinds:

- Races & Places: Men, Elves, Hobbits, Orcs, Rohan, Numenor
- Genre: Humor, Adventure, Drama, Romance, Horror, Mystery, Crossovers
- Time/Books: _The Silmarillion_, _The Hobbit_, _The Lord of the Rings

Within each category, there may be subcategories. Some apply to all
categories, such as poetry and drabble, while other subcategories apply to
particular categories, such as pairings for Romance. Awards are made in each
subcategory, but there are no "overall" winners for a whole category or set
of categories chosen from amongst the winners of the subcategories.

Q: What about subcategories?

There are several mandatory categories. If the piece you are nominating is a
WIP, a poem, or a drabble, you need to note that in the subcategories spot
on the application. All of these pieces will only run against other WIPs,
poems, or drabbles.

Beyond that, the awards organizers have the discretion to create
subcategories where there are many stories in a particular category and a
significant number are similar in some way. For example, last year "Romance"
was divided into several subcategories based on pairings -- i.e., Rivendell,
featuring Haldir, Faramir/Eowyn, etc.
While most of the subcategories are created by the awards staff, based on
their overview of all stories nominated, please feel free to suggest other
subcategories than the mandatory ones on your nomination form if you feel a
piece would do well in a particular subcategory.

Q: But my story is a romance about elves during _The Hobbit_. Can it go in
all three categories?

No. Each piece can only be nominated in one category. So when writing your
nomination, sit down and think about the story. Why do you like it so much?
Is it because it is a romance? Or because it provides an interesting
perspective on events of _The Hobbit_? Or because it offers some insight
into Elvish culture? If you're not sure, ask the author. (We'll also check
with the author to make sure he or she agrees with your categorization.) But
whatever you decide, each story can go in one and only one category. The
main category acts as a catch-all for any stories which do not fit into one
of the subcategories.

Q: I've heard some talk about categories or subcategories being viable. What
does this mean?

For a category or subcategory to be viable, it must include at least five
stories by at least two authors. This usually isn't a problem for the main
categories, but ensuring that viable subcategories are created can take some
work. Let's look at the situation where there are only three poems nominated
in the subcategory _The Silmarillion_/Poetry. One of two things can happen:

(1) Those three poems will be moved to other subcategories, based on the
nominators' second and third choices for categorisation. Perhaps some of
them could be moved to Elves/Poetry, for example.

(2) Poems may be moved in from other categories (such as Elves/Poetry, for
instance) to reach the 5 stories x 2 authors minimum for the _The
Silmarillion_/Poetry subcategory.

In either case, pieces will have to be moved from the nominators' (or
authors') first choice to create viable categories. The aim of the 5 x 2
minimum is to ensure a reasonable level of competition in all categories
with no walkovers.

Q: I won the "Luthien and Beren" award but my story is about Sam and Rosie.
What does this mean?

The names of the awards are just titles, themed appropriately to the overall
category. They don't necessarily reflect the content of the stories that win
them. The stories that get the highest number of votes in the romance
category or any and each of its subcategories win the "Luthien and Beren"
award, regardless of their content.
Awards in all other categories have similarly themed titles.

Q: Do subcategories also get their own awards?

Yes. First, second, and third prizes will be awarded in the subcategories as
well as the main categories. These winners will have the right to use
versions of the same banners as their counterparts in the main categories
which have been tailored to reflect the particular subcategory.

*****

Marta






Yahoo! Groups Links

These are the present categories as they stood from 2004

1. (Topic) Races & Places
a. Men
b. Elves
c. Hobbits
d. Orcs
e. Rohan
f. Numenor
2. (Topic) Genres
a. Humor
b. Adventure
c. Drama (includes Angst)
d. Romance
e. Horror
f. Mystery
g. Crossovers
3. (Topic) Time/Books
a. The Silmarillion
b. The Lord of the Rings
c. The Hobbit

Topics will stay the same: Races/Places, Genres, and Time/Books

So what are we going to do? Rethink some of them. Time/Books doesn't seem
very changeable, but there might be a genre that wasn't represented or one
that needn't be there. And we might want to reorganize Races/Places. Maybe
places are only subcategories that can become main categories with 20
stories (I went ahead and made that the minimum, making that decision
final.)

Let's start with suggestions to add and remove or combine. There will
probably be a lot of polls on this one unless it seems like unanimous
support here in the dis


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sorry, accidentally hit Send to soon. I'll continue below. (Actually, I
just needed to finish one word.)

-----Original Message-----
From: Ainaechoiriel [mailto:mefaadmin@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 10:47 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


These are the present categories as they stood from 2004

1. (Topic) Races & Places
a. Men
b. Elves
c. Hobbits
d. Orcs
e. Rohan
f. Numenor
2. (Topic) Genres
a. Humor
b. Adventure
c. Drama (includes Angst)
d. Romance
e. Horror
f. Mystery
g. Crossovers
3. (Topic) Time/Books
a. The Silmarillion
b. The Lord of the Rings
c. The Hobbit

Topics will stay the same: Races/Places, Genres, and Time/Books

So what are we going to do? Rethink some of them. Time/Books doesn't seem
very changeable, but there might be a genre that wasn't represented or one
that needn't be there. And we might want to reorganize Races/Places. Maybe
places are only subcategories that can become main categories with 20
stories (I went ahead and made that the minimum, making that decision
final.)

Let's start with suggestions to add and remove or combine. There will
probably be a lot of polls on this one unless it seems like unanimous
support here in the dis...

...discussion.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

> Thanks. It will require a little bit of revision to account for

authors

> picking their own categories, but otherwise it's great. I'll add

it to the

> Q & A.
>

I've been trying to keep up with the post-mort, but I'm sure I've
missed some of what's been decided. Feel free to revise as you see
fit.

The FAQs were pretty good this year, especially for the first year,
but I think there's a lot of room for improvement. If you like I can
write up more on other topics that I think would be good to address.
But I think I should wait until I know just how nomination and voting
will work (which will depend I think on whether we're computerized or
not). That is, if you'd like for me to.

Marta

You'll find these in the Categories Post Mortem. You can add some, too.

1) Gondor

Why? Because there were 27 stories in Men/Gondor in 2004. Of course, if we
say that all places are graduated categories (a term for categories that
have to graduate up from subcategories), this becomes moot.

2) Villains

This could replace Orcs because Orcs was a little hard to make viable and
there are other baddies out there without a category at the moment, like
wraiths, Uruks, Trolls, Saruman, Sauron, spiders....

Discuss if you would like. Or if you don't. ;-)


--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: <http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com/>
http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sure. I've borrowed a silly thing from ASC. The FAQ isn't so much a FAQ as
a set of rules. The Q & A is more of a true FAQ. Should I change the
names?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 11:01 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: proposed FAQ revision - categorization



--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

> Thanks. It will require a little bit of revision to account for

authors

> picking their own categories, but otherwise it's great. I'll add

it to the

> Q & A.
>

I've been trying to keep up with the post-mort, but I'm sure I've missed
some of what's been decided. Feel free to revise as you see fit.

The FAQs were pretty good this year, especially for the first year, but I
think there's a lot of room for improvement. If you like I can write up more
on other topics that I think would be good to address.
But I think I should wait until I know just how nomination and voting will
work (which will depend I think on whether we're computerized or not). That
is, if you'd like for me to.

Marta






Yahoo! Groups Links

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

> You'll find these in the Categories Post Mortem. You can add some,

too.

>
> 1) Gondor
>
> Why? Because there were 27 stories in Men/Gondor in 2004. Of

course, if we

> say that all places are graduated categories (a term for categories

that

> have to graduate up from subcategories), this becomes moot.
>

I don't understand the advantage of making it its own category. Yes,
there were a lot for a subcategory, but would there be less if it was
its own category? Even as their own category, it would still be the
same number competing against each other.

I think many people were confused by the categorization scheme (I
know I was at points). The simpler, the better, at least IMHO. I
think if we make Gondor its own category you'll have some stories
nominated for Gondor and some for Men, where they maybe should be
competing against each other.

In short, I oppose this move. Pretty strongly, actually.

> 2) Villains
>
> This could replace Orcs because Orcs was a little hard to make

viable and

> there are other baddies out there without a category at the moment,

like

> wraiths, Uruks, Trolls, Saruman, Sauron, spiders....
>
> Discuss if you would like. Or if you don't. ;-)
>

This I definitely like. I haven't heard any people opposed to this
move, actually.

A suggestion of my own (and whap me over the head if this is too late
to bring this up) - could we have a Dwarves category? I think it
could be viable, and if it's not, there's really nothing lost; we
just have to move the pieces to other categories.

Remember what Aragorn said: "We shall make such a Chase as shall be
accounted a marvel among the Three Kindreds - Elves, *Dwarves*, and
Men." Give Gimli his day!

Marta
(a book!Gimli fangurl)

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

> These are the present categories as they stood from 2004
>
> 1. (Topic) Races & Places
> a. Men
> b. Elves
> c. Hobbits

All good. As I mentioned before, I suggest we add Dwarves.

> d. Orcs

I agree with the suggestion that this should be changed to "Villains"
or something like that, to be more inclusive.

> e. Rohan
> f. Numenor

In the interest of fairness and simplicity, I think these should be
made into subcategories of Men.

Also, maybe consider adding a "Cross-cultural" category? For pieces
about interactions between different races?

> 2. (Topic) Genres
> a. Humor
> b. Adventure
> c. Drama (includes Angst)
> d. Romance

All good.

> e. Horror

I think we had a hard time making this viable, and many of the ones
nominated could have been nominated for Adventure or Drama. Maybe
drop this? (I am not a horror fan, so perhaps I don't see why this
distinction is so important.)

> f. Mystery

Good.

> g. Crossovers

Good, but we may need to decide whether pastiches are viable, or
whether there needs to be a real interaction between the two worlds.

I think the first prize winner for Crossover, Altariel's _A Christmas
Carol_ piece (sorry, I'm forgetting the exact title), was a pastiche
more than a genuine crossover.

Possible additions:
- Poetry
- Research Article
- Drabble
- Alternate Universe

> 3. (Topic) Time/Books
> a. The Silmarillion
> b. The Lord of the Rings
> c. The Hobbit
>

All good. I would suggest adding:

- Fourth Age and Beyond
- Movieverse

Also, maybe change the topic name from "Time/Books" to "Source
Material"?

Marta

Well the only thing I can say in favour of going point-for-point is that there would be very few comments that would have identical numbers of characters. But I can see your point!

Resha


Ainaechoiriel <mefaadmin@earthlink.net> wrote:


I can't really put my finger on it yet, but I don't think the literal thing is a good thing. And it would actually make ties worse. How would you break them? There's nothing left beyond seeing which had the most votes. And how many ties were able to break at that point this year? One, I think. All the others came down to characters. Yes we didn't have any that matched
character-for-character this year, but it *could* happen.


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Might be an idea - avoid any confusion on the subject!

Ainaechoiriel <mefaadmin@earthlink.net> wrote:Sure. I've borrowed a silly thing from ASC. The FAQ isn't so much a FAQ as
a set of rules. The Q & A is more of a true FAQ. Should I change the
names?


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! – Try it today!

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> 2) Villains
>
> This could replace Orcs because Orcs was a little hard to make
> viable and there are other baddies out there without a category at > the moment, like wraiths, Uruks, Trolls, Saruman, Sauron,
> spiders....

Definately a fan of this one!!! Much more encompassing. Still not 100% sure about the Gondor one - but the other main realms have their own section, it seems mean to leave Gondor out, esp if there are enough to make it viable. But Marta did make some valuable points about it all!

Resha


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello. I'd suggest having a 4th Age category somewhere. And could we
consider changing "Men" to "Humans?" Regards - Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 1:54 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins


--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

> These are the present categories as they stood from 2004
>
> 1. (Topic) Races & Places
> a. Men
> b. Elves
> c. Hobbits

All good. As I mentioned before, I suggest we add Dwarves.

> d. Orcs

I agree with the suggestion that this should be changed to "Villains"
or something like that, to be more inclusive.

> e. Rohan
> f. Numenor

In the interest of fairness and simplicity, I think these should be
made into subcategories of Men.

Also, maybe consider adding a "Cross-cultural" category? For pieces
about interactions between different races?

> 2. (Topic) Genres
> a. Humor
> b. Adventure
> c. Drama (includes Angst)
> d. Romance

All good.

> e. Horror

I think we had a hard time making this viable, and many of the ones
nominated could have been nominated for Adventure or Drama. Maybe
drop this? (I am not a horror fan, so perhaps I don't see why this
distinction is so important.)

> f. Mystery

Good.

> g. Crossovers

Good, but we may need to decide whether pastiches are viable, or
whether there needs to be a real interaction between the two worlds.

I think the first prize winner for Crossover, Altariel's _A Christmas
Carol_ piece (sorry, I'm forgetting the exact title), was a pastiche
more than a genuine crossover.

Possible additions:
- Poetry
- Research Article
- Drabble
- Alternate Universe

> 3. (Topic) Time/Books
> a. The Silmarillion
> b. The Lord of the Rings
> c. The Hobbit
>

All good. I would suggest adding:

- Fourth Age and Beyond
- Movieverse

Also, maybe change the topic name from "Time/Books" to "Source
Material"?

Marta





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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm wrong someone (I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the Race of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as Men

Resha

Chathol-linn <chathollinn@comcast.net> wrote:
Hello. I'd suggest having a 4th Age category somewhere. And could we
consider changing "Men" to "Humans?" Regards - Chathol-linn



~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

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http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello. It is a small departure from the canon, and so much more
inclusive. I hope we can consider using "Humans." Regards - Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Naresha [mailto:north_shore_fruitcake@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 9:48 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins

The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm wrong someone
(I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the Race of Men. I
know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it canonically
correct, I think it is best to leave it as Men

Resha

Chathol-linn <chathollinn@comcast.net> wrote:
Hello. I'd suggest having a 4th Age category somewhere. And could we
consider changing "Men" to "Humans?" Regards - Chathol-linn



~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

---------------------------------
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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Phew! So I'm not imagining things! :-) Can I ask why you want to use Humans??? I have no issue with you suggesting it - please don't think that - I'm just wondering why, especially when the category is Races and the Race is Men. Unfortunately for us girls, political correctness wasn't really big in Tolkien's time! :-)


Chathol-linn <chathollinn@comcast.net> wrote:
Hello. It is a small departure from the canon, and so much more
inclusive. I hope we can consider using "Humans." Regards - Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Naresha [mailto:north_shore_fruitcake@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 9:48 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins

The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm wrong someone(I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the Race of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as Men

Resha


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

---------------------------------
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Naresha
<north_shore_fruitcake@y...> wrote:

> The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm wrong

someone (I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the Race
of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it
canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as Men

>
> Resha
>

Ah, but then we get into the fact that Eowyn was "no living man". :-)
I don't think Tolkien was very consistgent on the subject.

Personally, I prefer Men. If I read a fic where, for example, Aragorn
was referred to as a "King of Humans", I'd probably wince. It seems a
bit un-Tolkienish somehow. But I don't feel all that strongly about
this one.

Marta

Marta <MartaL0712@netscape.net> wrote:
--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Naresha
<north_shore_fruitcake@y...> wrote:

> The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm wrong

someone (I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the Race
of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it
canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as Men

>
> Resha
>

> Ah, but then we get into the fact that Eowyn was "no living man". > :-) I don't think Tolkien was very consistgent on the subject.

True... But it does seem like that exception is in the minority!!!

> Personally, I prefer Men. If I read a fic where, for example,
> Aragorn was referred to as a "King of Humans", I'd probably wince. > It seems a bit un-Tolkienish somehow. But I don't feel all that
> strongly about this one.

Same here. You're right - Humans just isn't a Tolkienish term! I don't reeeeeeally mind if it gets changed, but I really do feel that it is the Race of Men - that's what Tolkien set it down to be! We still hear the term Mankind! I don't see any reason to change it - plus it might add to the confusion - with people not understanding!

that's just my feeling on the subject.
Resha


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

---------------------------------
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--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Marta" <MartaL0712@n...> wrote:

>
> --- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Naresha
> <north_shore_fruitcake@y...> wrote:
> > The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm wrong
> someone (I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the Race
> of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it
> canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as Men
> >
> > Resha
> >
>
> Ah, but then we get into the fact that Eowyn was "no living man". :-)
> I don't think Tolkien was very consistgent on the subject.

The confusion between the two isn't accidental, of course, it's
deliberate and required or the Witch-king would've stayed the heck
away from any battlefield that Men fought on.

If we are very concerned that "Men" by itself is too exclusive, how
about "Race of Men", "Race of Elves", "Race of... [fill in blank]"?
Compromise by using Tolkien's names, but adding "race of" so that we
are clear that the term is being used collectively in the universal
sense of "mankind" rather than the narrower (and lower case) men=males?

If the Awards wish to remain accurate vis-à-vis Tolkien, then there's
very little to recommend "Humans". If the Awards wish to be more
accurate and inclusive according to contemporary standards, then
"humans" will work.

Dwim

> > > The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm

wrong > > someone (I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was
the Race > > of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but
to keep it > > canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as
Men> > > > > > Resha

> > > > >

<snipped>>> If we are very concerned that "Men" by itself is too
exclusive, how> about "Race of Men", "Race of Elves", "Race of...
[fill in blank]"?> Compromise by using Tolkien's names, but
adding "race of" so that we> are clear that the term is being used
collectively in the universal> sense of "mankind" rather than the
narrower (and lower case) men=males?

> > If the Awards wish to remain accurate vis-à-vis Tolkien, then

there's> very little to recommend "Humans". If the Awards wish to be
more> accurate and inclusive according to contemporary standards, then

> "humans" will work. > > Dwim

I never considered that "Men" didn't mean "Race of Mankind". I like
Dwim's suggestion to add "Race of..." to each of the Race categories.

Sulriel

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...> wrote:

> You'll find these in the Categories Post Mortem. You can add some, too.
>
> 1) Gondor
>
> Why? Because there were 27 stories in Men/Gondor in 2004. Of

course, if we

> say that all places are graduated categories (a term for categories that
> have to graduate up from subcategories), this becomes moot.

I would go with the "graduated categories". Start all places as
subcategories for their respective races (so presumably "Mirkwood"
could be a subcategory as well, and so could "Erebor"). Then if a
category goes beyond the 20 story limit, graduate it to a category
proper.

In revising the FAQs, I assume this will be explained, and perhaps on
the main page where nominations are listed publicly, a link could be
made: "Explanation of categorization". That would cut down on a lot of
confusion, I think, or at least make it simpler to point to the
explanation.

The only trouble might be that some stories might not fit the Race
(category): place (subcategory) schema well. Turin, for example, could
be "Men: Doriath"; Tuor could be "Men: Gondolin". But since
classification is the author's responsibility, the author would have
to sugges that. If enough authors make that suggestion, one might then
create a new Race/place subcategory. However, the downside is that
those sets of stories would *likely* be extremely "specialized"--only
Turin stories, or only Tuor stories or what not--and so that might be
too narrow to be desireable.

But I assume we're not going to get that many cases where the author
feels absolutely compelled to suggest an entirely different
subcategory. Most people, presented with a pre-defined list, will find
a way to fit within the list's options. Only in a total free for all
or in a situation where the list's options are a very poor fit for its
intended...er... "listees"... does one tend to get suggestions, or
such is my experience.

> 2) Villains
>
> This could replace Orcs because Orcs was a little hard to make

viable and

> there are other baddies out there without a category at the moment, like
> wraiths, Uruks, Trolls, Saruman, Sauron, spiders....
>
> Discuss if you would like. Or if you don't. ;-)

I agree: Villains makes more sense than Orcs, and should make for a
more varied and interesting selection of stories. Not to imply that
the Orcs stories weren't a lot of gruesome fun this year, of course,
but variation=spice of life.

Dwim

> I never considered that "Men" didn't mean "Race of Mankind". I like
> Dwim's suggestion to add "Race of..." to each of the Race

categories.

>
> Sulriel

That compromise works for me as well.

Marta

Can you see the angels dancing on that pinhead?

Race of Men, Race of Elves, Race of Dwarves, Hobbits, and Ents. The Free PEOPLES of Middle-Earth. That's Tolkien, that's how it should be catagorized.

And there should be a separate catagory for AU, regardless of political correctness.

RubyG


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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

What about Race of Humankind? That works for me. Best regards -
Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 1:42 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins

> I never considered that "Men" didn't mean "Race of Mankind". I like
> Dwim's suggestion to add "Race of..." to each of the Race

categories.

>
> Sulriel

That compromise works for me as well.

Marta





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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>
> > > I'm not really in favour of people being able to
> > > nominate their own work full stop - but if they are
> > > going to be able to then they may as well be able to
> > > nominate any sort of work.
>
> Can I ask why? ANd exactly what do you mean by "any sort of

work"???


Difficult to answer the why without inadvertently insulting someone
but I'll try. Please bear in mind that this is just how I feel and
how my personal ethics work - and I do realise that that doesn't
seem to be instep with the majority here. IMO - in a contest
situation where entry is only by self-nomination (eg: most cooking
contests) then of course you self-nominate (enter). In other
competitions, such as most fanfic ones that I've seen, where being
nominated is seen as some sort of honour (eg: nomination buttons are
available) then in my view one wouldn't nominate one's own work.
Now, obviously (and I'll admit that I was surprised when I realised
this) people do. It just seems such a peculair thing to do - maybe
it is a cultural thing. Anyway, to me allowing it seems to make the
nomination process a bit of a mix of things - but that's just my
opinion and I realise that I'm in a minority.

<i>ANd exactly what do you mean by "any sort of work"???
</i>

Sorry - the sort of work which was under discussion: WIPS and
incomplete works. If you are going to allow self-nomination then I
can't see why you would only allow it in some categories. Hope that
is clearer.

Avon

Hello. If one doesn't like "King of Humans" then no need to say it.

As for categories, I hope we will consider "Humans" as the category
instead of "Men." It is more inclusive. Best regards - Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Naresha [mailto:north_shore_fruitcake@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 11:46 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins


Marta <MartaL0712@netscape.net> wrote:
--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, Naresha
<north_shore_fruitcake@y...> wrote:

> The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm wrong

someone (I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the Race
of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it
canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as Men

>
> Resha
>

> Ah, but then we get into the fact that Eowyn was "no living man". >

:-) I don't think Tolkien was very consistgent on the subject.


True... But it does seem like that exception is in the minority!!!

> Personally, I prefer Men. If I read a fic where, for example,
> Aragorn was referred to as a "King of Humans", I'd probably wince. >

It seems a bit un-Tolkienish somehow. But I don't feel all that

> strongly about this one.

Same here. You're right - Humans just isn't a Tolkienish term! I don't
reeeeeeally mind if it gets changed, but I really do feel that it is the
Race of Men - that's what Tolkien set it down to be! We still hear the
term Mankind! I don't see any reason to change it - plus it might add
to the confusion - with people not understanding!

that's just my feeling on the subject.
Resha


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

---------------------------------
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

If you ever watch just one episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the
one to watch is on right now on ABC. I have only seen one part of one
episode and it was the conclusion of the one that is on right now. And I
needed a box of Kleenex's.

For a home makeover show? Yeah. These guys are doing a great thing. A
14-year-old kid applied to have his home made over for his family. His
parents are deaf. His younger brother is blind and autistic. What they do
with this house to help with safety and communication and a learning/play
environment for the younger boy is incredible and heart-warming. For those
not in the US, I'll spoil below just in case you're interested.





















Now, it's been awhile since I've seen the end and there's another hour
before I see the end now but what I remember is incredible rooms for each of
the members of the family. The mom has her craft area with video to see
what Lance (younger brother) is doing. Stephen, older brother, gets an
Outback-themed room where he can have a place to just be himself. (He's
incredible,s o helpfuul for his family). Dad gets a workshop full of tools.
And Lance, he gets a huge playroom with places to crawl, swing, learn, play,
all his Braille books and stuff. And a brand new swing set outside (Lance
loves to swing). And Stephen gets a scholarship. Oh, and Marlee Matlin
drops by.

Okay, commercial over.


--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: <http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com/>
http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Okay, I usually read through everything and then reply to the short ones
first, but I wanted to jump right on this one.

It's going to stay Men. Because "Men" is what's used throughout LOTR.
Tolkien doesn't say "Humans" and he doesn't say "Race of Men" and "Race of
Elves" everywhere. Elves, Men and all free Peoples, etc.

Race of Men, etc., maybe conclusive but it's clunky as a title.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com




-----Original Message-----
From: sulriel [mailto:Sulriel@htcomp.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 11:30 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins

> > > The only thing I have against that - and correct me if I'm

wrong > > someone (I'm not an expert by any means!) - is that it was the
Race > > of Men. I know "Humans" is politically correct - but to keep it >

> canonically correct, I think it is best to leave it as

Men> > > > > > Resha

> > > > >

<snipped>>> If we are very concerned that "Men" by itself is too exclusive,
how> about "Race of Men", "Race of Elves", "Race of...
[fill in blank]"?> Compromise by using Tolkien's names, but adding "race of"
so that we> are clear that the term is being used collectively in the
universal> sense of "mankind" rather than the narrower (and lower case)
men=males?

> > If the Awards wish to remain accurate vis-à-vis Tolkien, then

there's> very little to recommend "Humans". If the Awards wish to be
more> accurate and inclusive according to contemporary standards, then

> "humans" will work. > > Dwim

I never considered that "Men" didn't mean "Race of Mankind". I like Dwim's
suggestion to add "Race of..." to each of the Race categories.

Sulriel






Yahoo! Groups Links

I know that Free Peoples is a thought but it does limit us to just two
categories in Races/Places (if we make places graduated categories). What
about some other category title to put in other Free Peoples that aren't
already mentioned (Elves, Men and Hobbits will definitely be viable, I
think. Ents isn't so likely.)? Any ideas?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Amy Miller [mailto:amy_j12000@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 4:22 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


Can you see the angels dancing on that pinhead?

Race of Men, Race of Elves, Race of Dwarves, Hobbits, and Ents. The Free
PEOPLES of Middle-Earth. That's Tolkien, that's how it should be
catagorized.

And there should be a separate catagory for AU, regardless of political
correctness.

RubyG


---------------------------------
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All your favorites on one personal page - Try My Yahoo!

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




Yahoo! Groups Links

Enter your vote today! A new poll has been created for the
MEFAwards group:

Cat. PM: Make all Places (ex. Rohan,
Gondor, etc.) graduated categories.
Requires 20 stories to become a main
category, otherwise stays sub.

o Yes
o No
o No opinion


To vote, please visit the following web page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MEFAwards/surveys?id=1575903

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com wrote:

>
>
> Enter your vote today! A new poll has been created for the
> MEFAwards group:
>
> Cat. PM: Make all Places (ex. Rohan,
> Gondor, etc.) graduated categories.
> Requires 20 stories to become a main
> category, otherwise stays sub.
>
> o Yes
> o No
> o No opinion
>
>

Can someone please explain to me the advantage of graduated
categories? It will make the categorization more complex, and I have
talked to several people who found it confusing this year.

Also, what about banners? It's hard enough keeping up with and
finding distinct titles for the three awards per category. Having
subcategories and even sub-subcategories makes it much easier for
everyone to keep it straight.

I'm sorry if I seem hostile to this. I'm not. I just can't for the
life of me see why it's better to have a Gondor category instead of
a Men/Gondor subcategory. There would be the same number of stories
running for the same number of awards; the difference is that the
latter is simpler for people to wrap their minds around, I think.

Marta

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 12:45 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Two category suggestions



--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

> You'll find these in the Categories Post Mortem. You can add some,

too.

>
> 1) Gondor
>

>I don't understand the advantage of making it its own category. Yes, there

were a lot for a subcategory, but would there be less if it was its own
category? Even as their own category, it would still be the same number
competing against each other.

It goes to the idea of graduated categories. Men/Gondor had 27 stories in
it this last year. More than Rohan and more than Numenor. If I'd had the
gift of foresight, it would have been a main category in 2004.
Unfortunately, I'm mainly gifted with hindsight. Thus the suggestion.

I'm really liking the idea of places being graduated categories though.
They may not be the only appropriate graduated categories but they are
perfect for the idea.

>I think many people were confused by the categorization scheme (I know I

was at points). The simpler, the better, at least IMHO. I think if we make
Gondor its own category you'll have some stories nominated for Gondor and
some for Men, where they maybe should be competing against each other.

That will be up to the authors now. So the author can decide if he/she'd
rather his/her story be represented in Men or Gondor. Simpler may be easier
to understand but I don't want to just have 5 categories. I want a balance
between all-out and too much.

>In short, I oppose this move. Pretty strongly, actually.

Well, there's a poll now for making all places (Rohan, Numenor, Gondor, any
other place that comes up) into graduated categories. Meaning they are
subcategories, but if 20 stories end up in one of those subcategories, it is
graduated to a main category.

> 2) Villains
>
> This could replace Orcs because Orcs was a little hard to make

viable and

> there are other baddies out there without a category at the moment,

like

> wraiths, Uruks, Trolls, Saruman, Sauron, spiders....
>
> Discuss if you would like. Or if you don't. ;-)
>

>This I definitely like. I haven't heard any people opposed to this move,

actually.

This one was mentioned throughout the seasons last year so I won't surprised
if this one is approved.

>A suggestion of my own (and whap me over the head if this is too late to

bring this up) - could we have a Dwarves category? I think it could be
viable, and if it's not, there's really nothing lost; we just have to move
the pieces to other categories.

I've added it to the database. I'm for it if it can be viable. If we
decide to say Yes to it though, we'll need three awards titles so be
thinking on it.

>Remember what Aragorn said: "We shall make such a Chase as shall be

accounted a marvel among the Three Kindreds - Elves, *Dwarves*, and Men."
Give Gimli his day!

Thanks for the quote. This is why I won't make Men into "Race of Men". Just
Men.
--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 12:54 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins



--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

>In the interest of fairness and simplicity, I think these should be made

into subcategories of Men.

That's my idea for graduated categories.

>Also, maybe consider adding a "Cross-cultural" category? For pieces about

interactions between different races?

Good idea. It was a useful sub-category for LOTR last year. I've added it
to the database.

> 2. (Topic) Genres
> a. Humor

> e. Horror

>I think we had a hard time making this viable, and many of the ones

nominated could have been nominated for Adventure or Drama. Maybe drop this?
(I am not a horror fan, so perhaps I don't see why this distinction is so
important.)

This was more easily viable than Mystery. I'd see Mystery go before Horror.
Maybe they could be combined into something like Suspense?

> f. Mystery

>Good.

> g. Crossovers

>Good, but we may need to decide whether pastiches are viable, or whether

there needs to be a real interaction between the two worlds.

>I think the first prize winner for Crossover, Altariel's _A Christmas

Carol_ piece (sorry, I'm forgetting the exact title), was a pastiche more
than a genuine crossover.

Well, I don't know. First, you'd have to define pastiche. If not for your
example, I wouldn't have known what it was. And we did only have one story
like that last year so I doubt it would be viable. Is there a term that
covers both?

>Possible additions:

- Poetry

I still think I don't want that as a main.

>- Research Article

I doubt there would be enough to be viable.

>- Drabble

Same as poetry.

>- Alternate Universe

Not sure I like that as a main either. Should a Men/AU and a Men story be
separate? Couldn't they both compete together? They could both be quality
stories. And what about the delimmiting line between AU and non-AU? Some
are obvious. Some aren't. Take my story Immortal. It poses a conversation
between Merry and Legolas before Merry and Pippin die. It didn't happen in
the books. So it's AU. But it *could* have happened. Nothing in the
precludes it. It fits the timeline notations in the Appendices. So it's
not AU.

Is it, or isn't it?

And remember that authors are going to choose their categories. If an
author chooses her Men/AU story to be in Men, will that be allowed if there
is an AU category? Or do we let there be both and let the authors choose
which one they'll be in?

This one is in the database.

> 3. (Topic) Time/Books
> a. The Silmarillion
> b. The Lord of the Rings
> c. The Hobbit
>

All good. I would suggest adding:

- Fourth Age and Beyond
- Movieverse

>Also, maybe change the topic name from "Time/Books" to "Source Material"?

No, because it plays double-duty. Books should be obvious. But Time
because it provides a place for a story if you just can't find another
appropriate category. You can probably set it in time. Fourth-Age and
Beyond I could see would be a good addition, even though there isn't a Book
for it, so it can't play double-duty, but it does cover that other time
after LOTR.

And that brings up other perfect opportunities for graduated categories:
First Age, Second Age, etc.

As for movie-verse, we have the same issues as for Alternate Universe. If
we have it, do we allow authors of movie-verse stories to place their
stories elsewhere? Or what about those that combine book and movie? I do
that. Again, having it be the authors choice may make this a lot easier.
We could just have the availability of the category there and the author can
choose whether the story goes there or not. And if one isn't viable well
then, it's not viable.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

-----Original Message-----
From: dwimmer_laik [mailto:dwimmer_laik@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 11:55 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Two category suggestions

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...> wrote:
> You'll find these in the Categories Post Mortem. You can add some, too.
>
> 1) Gondor
>
> Why? Because there were 27 stories in Men/Gondor in 2004. Of
course, if we
> say that all places are graduated categories (a term for categories
> that have to graduate up from subcategories), this becomes moot.

>I would go with the "graduated categories". Start all places as
subcategories for their respective races (so presumably "Mirkwood"
could be a subcategory as well, and so could "Erebor"). Then if a category
goes beyond the 20 story limit, graduate it to a category proper.

Yes, exactly. Some wouldn't make any sense. Like romance as a subcategory
of Elves graduating to a main. There already is a Romance main category.
But some are very appropriate, like these places and separate ages of time.

>In revising the FAQs, I assume this will be explained, and perhaps on the
main page where nominations are listed publicly, a link could be
made: "Explanation of categorization". That would cut down on a lot of
confusion, I think, or at least make it simpler to point to the explanation.

Yes, there would be an explanation.

>The only trouble might be that some stories might not fit the Race
(category): place (subcategory) schema well. Turin, for example, could be
"Men: Doriath"; Tuor could be "Men: Gondolin". But since classification is
the author's responsibility, the author would have to sugges that. If enough
authors make that suggestion, one might then create a new Race/place
subcategory. However, the downside is that those sets of stories would
*likely* be extremely "specialized"--only Turin stories, or only Tuor
stories or what not--and so that might be too narrow to be desireable.

>But I assume we're not going to get that many cases where the author feels
absolutely compelled to suggest an entirely different subcategory. Most
people, presented with a pre-defined list, will find a way to fit within the
list's options. Only in a total free for all or in a situation where the
list's options are a very poor fit for its intended...er... "listees"...
does one tend to get suggestions, or such is my experience.

Exactly. I don't think we'll have a huge problem with this. I think we'll
make (and we'll need to come up with this) a list of suggested subcategories
but also let authors know they can add something of their own as suggested
subcategories.

> 2) Villains
>
> This could replace Orcs because Orcs was a little hard to make
viable and
> there are other baddies out there without a category at the moment,
> like wraiths, Uruks, Trolls, Saruman, Sauron, spiders....
>
> Discuss if you would like. Or if you don't. ;-)

>I agree: Villains makes more sense than Orcs, and should make for a more
varied and interesting selection of stories. Not to imply that the Orcs
stories weren't a lot of gruesome fun this year, of course, but
variation=spice of life.

Right but we did have some stories that didn't have a logical place, like
for the Witch-King. This will solve that.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

Sorry but there was call for a Gondor category this year because Men/Gondor
had so many stories in it. It seemed to make more sense than Rohan or
Numenor since they had so few.

This makes it possible for us to have that flexibility. It shuldn't be too
hard to come up with three awards titles for them. Rohan and Numenor
already have some. We can use the ones from 2004 if necessary. Would it be
hard to find some for Gondor. We could go with places like the Pelennor,
Ithilien, Minas Tirith or Dol Amroth, etc. We could go with three known
kings. Or Stewards. We could go with the troubled family of Denethor,
Boromir, and Faramir.

Graduated categories just makes us more flexible.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 7:55 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: New poll for MEFAwards

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com wrote:
>
>
> Enter your vote today! A new poll has been created for the MEFAwards
> group:
>
> Cat. PM: Make all Places (ex. Rohan,
> Gondor, etc.) graduated categories.
> Requires 20 stories to become a main
> category, otherwise stays sub.
>
> o Yes
> o No
> o No opinion
>
>

Can someone please explain to me the advantage of graduated categories? It
will make the categorization more complex, and I have talked to several
people who found it confusing this year.

Also, what about banners? It's hard enough keeping up with and finding
distinct titles for the three awards per category. Having subcategories and
even sub-subcategories makes it much easier for everyone to keep it
straight.

I'm sorry if I seem hostile to this. I'm not. I just can't for the life of
me see why it's better to have a Gondor category instead of a Men/Gondor
subcategory. There would be the same number of stories running for the same
number of awards; the difference is that the latter is simpler for people to
wrap their minds around, I think.

Marta






Yahoo! Groups Links

Hello! What about "Men and Women" instead of just Men? And leave the
others as-is. No need of "The Race of." Regards - Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Ainaechoiriel [mailto:mefaadmin@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 8:32 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins

I know that Free Peoples is a thought but it does limit us to just two
categories in Races/Places (if we make places graduated categories).
What
about some other category title to put in other Free Peoples that aren't
already mentioned (Elves, Men and Hobbits will definitely be viable, I
think. Ents isn't so likely.)? Any ideas?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said,
"for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Amy Miller [mailto:amy_j12000@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 4:22 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


Can you see the angels dancing on that pinhead?

Race of Men, Race of Elves, Race of Dwarves, Hobbits, and Ents. The Free
PEOPLES of Middle-Earth. That's Tolkien, that's how it should be
catagorized.

And there should be a separate catagory for AU, regardless of political
correctness.

RubyG


---------------------------------
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All your favorites on one personal page - Try My Yahoo!

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Yahoo! Groups Links











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* To visit your group on the web, go to:
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Oh, now! We don't say Hobbits and Hobbitesses, and we don't say Male Elves and Female Elves, and we don't say Dwarves and Dwarvettes. It simply isn't necessary. People *do* know when Men means " human" and men means "male", and it's very important that we not mess with that. It is after all, the reason that both Eowyn and Merry were needed to kill the Witch-king: Eowyn was a Man but not a man, and Merry was a man but not a Man. Let's not mess that up.
Dreamflower
(Barbara)

----- Original Message -----
From: Chathol-linn
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 9:40 PM
Subject: RE: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


Hello! What about "Men and Women" instead of just Men? And leave the
others as-is. No need of "The Race of." Regards - Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Ainaechoiriel [mailto:mefaadmin@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 8:32 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins

I know that Free Peoples is a thought but it does limit us to just two
categories in Races/Places (if we make places graduated categories).
What
about some other category title to put in other Free Peoples that aren't
already mentioned (Elves, Men and Hobbits will definitely be viable, I
think. Ents isn't so likely.)? Any ideas?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said,
"for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Amy Miller [mailto:amy_j12000@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 4:22 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


Can you see the angels dancing on that pinhead?

Race of Men, Race of Elves, Race of Dwarves, Hobbits, and Ents. The Free
PEOPLES of Middle-Earth. That's Tolkien, that's how it should be
catagorized.

And there should be a separate catagory for AU, regardless of political
correctness.

RubyG


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page - Try My Yahoo!

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




Yahoo! Groups Links











_____

Yahoo! Groups Links
* To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MEFAwards/

* To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
MEFAwards-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:MEFAwards-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe>

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Service <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> .


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

We won't. If this was just a general area, I'd be all for the PC of "human"
but this is about Tolkien and Middle-Earth and the term just wasn't used.
Men stood for all men and women of the human race. I'm not rewriting
Tolkien so I'm not changing this. Sorry, Chathol-linn, but this isn't about
being politically correct. Our theme is Tolkien and Middle-Earth. And just
as aelfwina said, Tolkien used just that very same play on words. No living
man. Well Eowyn wasn't a living man. Though she was of the race of Men.
It gave WK a false sense of security. He didn't plan on a woman being a
Man.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: aelfwina [mailto:aelfwina@cableone.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 10:01 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


Oh, now! We don't say Hobbits and Hobbitesses, and we don't say Male Elves
and Female Elves, and we don't say Dwarves and Dwarvettes. It simply isn't
necessary. People *do* know when Men means " human" and men means "male",
and it's very important that we not mess with that. It is after all, the
reason that both Eowyn and Merry were needed to kill the Witch-king: Eowyn
was a Man but not a man, and Merry was a man but not a Man. Let's not mess
that up.
Dreamflower
(Barbara)

----- Original Message -----
From: Chathol-linn
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 9:40 PM
Subject: RE: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


Hello! What about "Men and Women" instead of just Men? And leave the
others as-is. No need of "The Race of." Regards - Chathol-linn

-----Original Message-----
From: Ainaechoiriel [mailto:mefaadmin@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 8:32 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins

I know that Free Peoples is a thought but it does limit us to just two
categories in Races/Places (if we make places graduated categories).
What
about some other category title to put in other Free Peoples that aren't
already mentioned (Elves, Men and Hobbits will definitely be viable, I
think. Ents isn't so likely.)? Any ideas?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said,
"for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Amy Miller [mailto:amy_j12000@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 4:22 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [MEFAwards] Categories Post Mortem begins


Can you see the angels dancing on that pinhead?

Race of Men, Race of Elves, Race of Dwarves, Hobbits, and Ents. The Free
PEOPLES of Middle-Earth. That's Tolkien, that's how it should be
catagorized.

And there should be a separate catagory for AU, regardless of political
correctness.

RubyG


---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page - Try My Yahoo!

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




Yahoo! Groups Links











_____

Yahoo! Groups Links
* To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MEFAwards/

* To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
MEFAwards-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:MEFAwards-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe>

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Service <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> .


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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Yahoo! Groups Links

a.. To visit your group on the web, go to:
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Yahoo! Groups Links

Hi Ainae,

>> In the interest of fairness and simplicity, I think these should

be made

>>into subcategories of Men.

> That's my idea for graduated categories.

Perhaps I'm not understanding exactly what you mean by graduated
categories. If Gondor became a graduated subcategory, would it have
to have its own banners distinct from Men? Or could it use the same
banners, just as Men/Poetry or whatever? It seems keeping it as a
subcategory is just much simpler than making it its own category.

>> Also, maybe consider adding a "Cross-cultural" category? For

pieces about

>>interactions between different races?

> Good idea. It was a useful sub-category for LOTR last year. I've

added it

> to the database.

Which means we probably need to think of awards names at some point.
Gimli and Aragorn seem natural choices, as they symbolize inter-race
friendships to me. Maybe Fingon as well? (Or was it Finrod? The first
Elf to meet the Men in Beleriand.)

This brings up another issue that I've been going back and forth on.
The awards names are confusing! If you aren't involved in the MEFAs,
you probably do not know why Lothlorien is Elves/First and Imladris
is Elves/Second, or whatever. I've talked to probably five or so
people who share this opinion. I know it's anecdotal, but... I really
think we should consider having a theme for the different awards per
categories but calling them [Category]/[Ranking] instead of "The
Imladris Award" or whatever.

Is this at all negotiable?

>>>2. (Topic) Genres

<snip>

>>> e. Horror

>> I think we had a hard time making this viable, and many of the ones
>>nominated could have been nominated for Adventure or Drama. Maybe

drop this?

>>(I am not a horror fan, so perhaps I don't see why this distinction

is so

>>important.)

> This was more easily viable than Mystery. I'd see Mystery go before

Horror.

> Maybe they could be combined into something like Suspense?

Yes, that would work well. But if we do so we will need to define
what should be nominated in each category. More on this below.

<snip>

>>> g. Crossovers

>> Good, but we may need to decide whether pastiches are viable, or

whether

>>there needs to be a real interaction between the two worlds.

<snip example>

> Well, I don't know. First, you'd have to define pastiche.

For me, a pastiche is a piece written in the style of another - for
example, Dwim's "The Hamster". A crossover is a piece that has
characters from two worlds interacting, or has some connection beyond
simply style. Fileg & Flick's "Rogers & Hammerstein" crossover is a
good example of this -- you have elements of Rogers & Hammerstein,
but also Lord of the Rings.

I think both can fit in this category. I certainly wouldn't recommend
creating a main "Pastiche" category (though I suppose it could
conceivably be its own subcategory of Crossover).

I think we really need a category guide on the website. Describe what
the different categories represent, so people know where a piece
might best fit. Something similar to the one for the Mithril Awards
(http://www.viragene.com/tolkien/categories.html). And yes, I'm
volunteering to write this if you're interested.

<snip>

>> Possible additions:
>>- Poetry
> I still don't want that as a main.

<rearranging>

>> - Drabble
> Same as poetry.

I'm afraid I don't see why. Can you explain your reasoning? They
certainly take a distinct skill and are as much a distinct genre as
any of the other categories. It takes a very distinct skill to first
find a story that can be told in a hundred words, and second to
successfully create a story arc in that amount. Yes, you're often
only telling a moment, but it still has to set the stage, present a
conflict, and resolve it, all in a very few number of words. Also,
remember this year that all of the HASA birthday drabbles will be
publicly accessible because the challenge closed on the 31st.

Poetry is even more a specialized genre, with its own distinct words.
Often the poems I nominated I loved more because of their mastery of
the form and their genius as poetry, rather than because they were
good drama or told a scene from LotR. The category they were
nominated in was secondary to the fact that they were poetry. Also,
remember how small some of the poetry categories were.

These are two things I write. I think you mentioned in your comments
that you weren't really interested in, and also that you didn't
really write poetry. I don't mean this as a criticism of you - but is
it possible you don't see the distinctions as well as people who do
write these forms? (I know I have this problem with genres I don't
write or usually read.)

>> - Research Article

> I doubt there would be enough to be viable.

As I stated when I first suggested this in the original post-mort, I
personally can nominate enough. Some are only available on the
members-only side of HASA, but if you'll allow this category, I will
offer these authors hosting space on my own personal site. Even
without that, I can think of at least eight essays offhand that I
would like to see nominated.

>> - Alternate Universe

> Not sure I like that as a main either. Should a Men/AU and a Men

story be

> separate? Couldn't they both compete together?

Sure - just as a story about Elves in the Elves category could
conceivably compete with a story about Elves in the Silmarillion
category or the Drama category. It's up to the nominator (or the
author) to decide whether they think it works best as a genre piece,
a race piece, or a time/books piece.

> They could both be quality
> stories. And what about the delimmiting line between AU and non-

AU? Some

> are obvious. Some aren't. Take my story Immortal. It poses a

conversation

> between Merry and Legolas before Merry and Pippin die. It didn't

happen in

> the books. So it's AU. But it *could* have happened. Nothing in

the

> precludes it. It fits the timeline notations in the Appendices.

So it's

> not AU.

No, that's not AU. AU (at least in my opinion) is a story where
Tolkien (or whatever canon - PJ's scriptwriters in movieverse, I
guess) say something happened some way but the author decides to take
it another way. Gollum dies escaping Mirkwood. Merry & Pippin are
recaptured by the uruk-hai. Denethor lives. Frodo dies in Mordor.
Frodo doesn't sail West with Elrond & Co. Elrond decides to not let
Pippin go on the Quest after all. Aragorn marries Finduilas or Eowyn.
You name it -- these are all scenarios that Tolkien explicitly said
didn't happen. Very different from a gapfiller, or a scenario that
Tolkien didn't say happen but could have.

> And remember that authors are going to choose their categories. If

an

> author chooses her Men/AU story to be in Men, will that be allowed

if there

> is an AU category? Or do we let there be both and let the authors

choose

> which one they'll be in?

I go with the latter. We didn't have any problem with
Elves/Silmarillion on top of the Silmarillion category, did we? I
don't see why this has to be any difference. If the author thinks her
story is primarily about Men and secondarily AU, then he or she can
choose to put it in Men/AU. If it's primarily an AU, they might
choose to put it in AU.

<snip>

>> Also, maybe change the topic name from "Time/Books" to "Source

Material"?

> No, because it plays double-duty. Books should be obvious. But

Time

> because it provides a place for a story if you just can't find

another

> appropriate category. You can probably set it in time. Fourth-Age

and

> Beyond I could see would be a good addition, even though there

isn't a Book

> for it, so it can't play double-duty, but it does cover that other

time

> after LOTR.

Fair enough. I can see why you need to include Time. But if we
include movieverse, I think we maybe need to have it
as "Time/Source"? Because the movies are not a book.

Re: Fourth Age - I do think it's important that this includes *and
Beyond*. Case in point - I recently started a story about Tom
Bombadil teaching St. Patrick his song he used to drive the snakes
from Ireland. This would most likely be post-Fourth Age (Sixth Age, I
guess? Or seventh?) but certainly fits under "and beyond".

> And that brings up other perfect opportunities for graduated

categories:

> First Age, Second Age, etc.

Yes, that would be good. I'm not sure how you could phrase this, but
if you go this way, you might want to draw a distinction between Ring
War-era (or possibly post-Quest for Erebor (post-TA 2941?)) and
events that happened earlier in the Third Age. Maybe combine it with
Second Age?

This can be hashed out later, though.

> As for movie-verse, we have the same issues as for Alternate

Universe. If

> we have it, do we allow authors of movie-verse stories to place

their

> stories elsewhere?

Sure. We allow stories set in The Hobbit to also be nominated for
Drama, or whatever.

> Or what about those that combine book and movie? I do
> that.

And you're not the only one. I think it would be the authors' call.
It's certainly *eligible* for movieverse, but if the authors think it
fits better elsewhere, that's fine, too. This isn't an effort to
relegate movieverse or hybrid stories to one category - but instead
to give movieverse gapfillers and similar stories a place to compete
against each other.

> Again, having it be the authors choice may make this a lot easier.

About this - I'm confused on one thing. Does the nominator suggest
categories and the author chooses whether those are acceptable (or
possibly suggest their own)? Or do we just say to the authors "Story
[X] has been nominated, a list of categories is available at URL [Y],
where do you want it to compete?"

I say nominators should make suggestions that are passed along to the
authors, and then authors can accept those suggestions or make their
own. This does two things:

1. If a category proves nonviable, we have backups without going back
to the author for further suggestions.
2. Nominators are probably more involved in the awards than authors.
So they know the categories already. This saves authors from having
to read through the categories and decide where their story best fits.

> We could just have the availability of the category there and the

author can

> choose whether the story goes there or not. And if one isn't

viable well

> then, it's not viable.

Yes, that seems like a good plan.

Marta

Hi Ainae,

> Sorry but there was call for a Gondor category this year because

Men/Gondor

> had so many stories in it. It seemed to make more sense than Rohan

or

> Numenor since they had so few.

I see the point you're making, but I tend to want to solve the
direction the other way. Yes, it doesn't make much sense to have
Numenor and Rohan as their own categories but Gondor as a subcategory
of Men. That's why I suggest do away with Numenor and Rohan as
independent categories and make them subcategories of Men.

If we're going with graduated categories, I really think we need to
do away with the idea of calling First, Second, and Third prize as
awards with separate names. Theme the banners, that's fine, but for
those who aren't involved in the discussion of the awards it just
gets too confusing. I know it's cute and clever, but it also causes a
fair number of complaints that I've heard.

> This makes it possible for us to have that flexibility. It

shuldn't be too

> hard to come up with three awards titles for them. Rohan and

Numenor

> already have some.

Yes, I could easily come up with three awards for Gondor. It becomes
increasingly hard, however, to have *unique* awards names.

<snip>

> We could go with the troubled family of Denethor,
> Boromir, and Faramir.

That's my first instinct. But then you run into the problem of using
those characters for awards elsewhere.

> Graduated categories just makes us more flexible.

I see they make us more flexible than we were this year - where we
were stuck with independent categories for Rohan and Numenor but not
Gondor. But I don't see why this is more flexible than having all of
them as subcategories of Men.

Marta

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 11:51 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] graduated categories; was: Re: New poll for MEFAwards

>I see the point you're making, but I tend to want to solve the direction

the other way. Yes, it doesn't make much sense to have Numenor and Rohan as
their own categories but Gondor as a subcategory of Men. That's why I
suggest do away with Numenor and Rohan as independent categories and make
them subcategories of Men.

Then vote Yes on the poll.

>If we're going with graduated categories, I really think we need to do away

with the idea of calling First, Second, and Third prize as awards with
separate names. Theme the banners, that's fine, but for those who aren't
involved in the discussion of the awards it just gets too confusing. I know
it's cute and clever, but it also causes a fair number of complaints that
I've heard.

If I understand this right, you're saying do away with the awards titles?
No.

> This makes it possible for us to have that flexibility. It

shuldn't be too

> hard to come up with three awards titles for them. Rohan and

Numenor

> already have some.

>Yes, I could easily come up with three awards for Gondor. It becomes

increasingly hard, however, to have *unique* awards names.

I don't think it would be that hard.

> We could go with the troubled family of Denethor, Boromir, and
> Faramir.

>That's my first instinct. But then you run into the problem of using those

characters for awards elsewhere.

It isn't that hard. We only had two such awards with that problem in 2004
and they were easily solved.

> Graduated categories just makes us more flexible.

>I see they make us more flexible than we were this year - where we were

stuck with independent categories for Rohan and Numenor but not Gondor. But
I don't see why this is more flexible than having all of them as
subcategories of Men.

Marta, if the poll is voted Yes, then they will be subcategories of Men. And
Mirkwood would be a subcategory of Elves. Or Silmarillion. Or LOTR or
whatever. But if there were then 20 or more stories in that subcategory,
that's worthy of becoming a main category. It was discussed here during
December with overall positive thoughts and the decision was made. Final.
There will be graduated categories. Period. The question right now is
whether all places will be.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



Marta






Yahoo! Groups Links

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2005 11:40 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins

>Perhaps I'm not understanding exactly what you mean by graduated

categories. If Gondor became a graduated subcategory, would it have to have
its own banners distinct from Men?

Yes.

>Or could it use the same banners, just as Men/Poetry or whatever? It seems

keeping it as a subcategory is just much simpler than making it its own
category.

No, it would not longer be a subcategory under Men. It would be a main
category under Races/Places and may even have viable subcategories of its
own.

>> Also, maybe consider adding a "Cross-cultural" category? For

pieces about

>>interactions between different races?

> Good idea. It was a useful sub-category for LOTR last year. I've

added it

> to the database.

>Which means we probably need to think of awards names at some point.

Gimli and Aragorn seem natural choices, as they symbolize inter-race
friendships to me. Maybe Fingon as well? (Or was it Finrod? The first Elf to
meet the Men in Beleriand.)

Yes, we'll need to think up some award names if this is decided to be a new
category. Right now I's just a suggestion.

>This brings up another issue that I've been going back and forth on.

The awards names are confusing! If you aren't involved in the MEFAs, you
probably do not know why Lothlorien is Elves/First and Imladris is
Elves/Second, or whatever. I've talked to probably five or so people who
share this opinion. I know it's anecdotal, but... I really think we should
consider having a theme for the different awards per categories but calling
them [Category]/[Ranking] instead of "The Imladris Award" or whatever.

>Is this at all negotiable?

No. And to which I say, "too bad." Sorry, but that's that. We added the
bars under the banners so someone seeing my Witch King award would know it
was for 3rd place in the Horror Author category. MEFA doesn't mean much
when it's just the letters either. It doesn't take much investigation
however to find out what it means. With the bars on the bottom of the
banners, it's even easier to tell what the Witch King Award stands for. You
don't even have to click.

Look, I said this before when I first started these awards, I couldn't come
up with a good gimicky name for the overall awards, like the Mithrils or the
One Rings because all the ones I thought up were already taken. So I came
up with separate awards titles for each of the awards. That's the fun part
for me. I don't begrudge my Best DS9 General Story 1998 award because it
has a generic name, but it is rather boring. When discussion came up at ASC
to come up with a name for the awards (like ASCEM has the Golden O's), I
suggested the ASCIIs. It made sense. ASC is in ASCII and the format of the
newsgroup is ASCII. But we ended up sticking with neither. It's still a
great awards schema but it's a bit boring.

I wanted these to not be boring. As long as I'm admining them, there will be
awards titles. Someday when I hand this off, it will be up to the new admin
to see what changes will be made. Or I might decide this is like the
comment-based system and non-changeable.

I can try and write up something more in the Q & A (soon to be renamed the
FAQ) to try and help with the confusion, but there will be awards titles.
Period.

> This was more easily viable than Mystery. I'd see Mystery go before

Horror.

> Maybe they could be combined into something like Suspense?

>Yes, that would work well. But if we do so we will need to define what

should be nominated in each category. More on this below.

Well, what do you think of when we say "suspense" stories?

>I think we really need a category guide on the website. Describe what the

different categories represent, so people know where a piece might best fit.
Something similar to the one for the Mithril Awards
(http://www.viragene.com/tolkien/categories.html). And yes, I'm volunteering
to write this if you're interested.

Okay, but I do feel we're setting the bar rather low. I tend to believe
people are fairly intelligent. They'd know a Romance from a Suspense from a
Crossover from a Drama from a Humor.

><snip>
>> Possible additions:
>>- Poetry
> I still don't want that as a main.

<rearranging>

>> - Drabble
> Same as poetry.

>I'm afraid I don't see why. Can you explain your reasoning?

Not always. We went through this a LOT back in the early days of the post
mortem. Being that I hate research (and going through all those posts sure
feels like research) and repeating myself, and I have an unreliable memory,
I'm rather loathe to try at this point.

> They certainly take a distinct skill and are as much a distinct genre as

any of the other categories.

Yes, and that's why they are separate for author categories. Not every story
writer can be a poet. But I don't want ten thousand Poetry subcategories.
What I mean is I don't want Poetry/Men, Poetry/Romance, Poetry/Elves,
Poetry/Drama. With Poetry/Author/Elves, Poetry/Author/Men. Do you see the
problem there? And they all get the same awards titles and banners. Yuck.

> It takes a very distinct skill to first find a story that can be told in a

hundred words, and second to successfully create a story arc in that amount.
Yes, you're often only telling a moment, but it still has to set the stage,
present a conflict, and resolve it, all in a very few number of words. Also,
remember this year that all of the HASA birthday drabbles will be publicly
accessible because the challenge closed on the 31st.

Yes, but they are still dramatic drabbles or Elves drabbles or humorous
drabbles. They are still stories the product of an author. They are not
their own genre. They are a format.

>Poetry is even more a specialized genre, with its own distinct words.

Again, it's a format, not a genre. Drama is a genre. Poetry is a format.

>Often the poems I nominated I loved more because of their mastery of the

form and their genius as poetry, rather than because they were good drama or
told a scene from LotR. The category they were nominated in was secondary to
the fact that they were poetry. Also, remember how small some of the poetry
categories were.

The author gets to choose the category so an author can decide where they
will compete.

>These are two things I write. I think you mentioned in your comments that

you weren't really interested in, and also that you didn't really write
poetry. I don't mean this as a criticism of you - but is it possible you
don't see the distinctions as well as people who do write these forms? (I
know I have this problem with genres I don't write or usually read.)

I don't understand this. Aphasia stepping in. I did get some of it. I do
write poetry. I don't write it formally. I don't write sonnets or whatevers.
But I have written some poetry and probably will in the future. You can
read it at HASA if you like. Several of the poems are in my forum.

>> - Research Article

> I doubt there would be enough to be viable.

>As I stated when I first suggested this in the original post-mort, I

personally can nominate enough. Some are only available on the members-only
side of HASA, but if you'll allow this category, I will offer these authors
hosting space on my own personal site. Even without that, I can think of at
least eight essays offhand that I would like to see nominated.

Then we can put it to a poll. But yes, those research articles would have
to posted on a public (not members-only) site BEFORE Nomination Season
starts. Not after.

>> - Alternate Universe

> Not sure I like that as a main either. Should a Men/AU and a Men

story be

> separate? Couldn't they both compete together?

>Sure - just as a story about Elves in the Elves category could conceivably

compete with a story about Elves in the Silmarillion category or the Drama
category. It's up to the nominator (or the
author) to decide whether they think it works best as a genre piece, a race
piece, or a time/books piece.

Yes, I think as I write and I did get to that. They could both be available
and then the author could decide. We'd have to make our note to the authors
a lot longer though. "Think about your story. It could fit into more than
one category, so please look over the list entirely before making your
decision as each story can only compete in one category."

> They could both be quality
> stories. And what about the delimmiting line between AU and non-

AU? Some

> are obvious. Some aren't. Take my story Immortal. It poses a

conversation

> between Merry and Legolas before Merry and Pippin die. It didn't

happen in

> the books. So it's AU. But it *could* have happened. Nothing in

the

> precludes it. It fits the timeline notations in the Appendices.

So it's

> not AU.

>No, that's not AU. AU (at least in my opinion) is a story where Tolkien (or

whatever canon - PJ's scriptwriters in movieverse, I
guess) say something happened some way but the author decides to take it
another way. Gollum dies escaping Mirkwood. Merry & Pippin are recaptured by
the uruk-hai. Denethor lives. Frodo dies in Mordor.
Frodo doesn't sail West with Elrond & Co. Elrond decides to not let Pippin
go on the Quest after all. Aragorn marries Finduilas or Eowyn.
You name it -- these are all scenarios that Tolkien explicitly said didn't
happen. Very different from a gapfiller, or a scenario that Tolkien didn't
say happen but could have.

That could be your opinion. Personally, I don't find it AU, but some might.
Some are easy to spot, I'll grant you. Dwim's LDID, every Mary Sue fic ever
written.... But some are slippery.

> And remember that authors are going to choose their categories. If

an

> author chooses her Men/AU story to be in Men, will that be allowed

if there

> is an AU category? Or do we let there be both and let the authors

choose

> which one they'll be in?

>I go with the latter. We didn't have any problem with Elves/Silmarillion on

top of the Silmarillion category, did we? I don't see why this has to be any
difference. If the author thinks her story is primarily about Men and
secondarily AU, then he or she can choose to put it in Men/AU. If it's
primarily an AU, they might choose to put it in AU.

Yeah, that's what I came around to.

<snip>

>> Also, maybe change the topic name from "Time/Books" to "Source

Material"?

> No, because it plays double-duty. Books should be obvious. But

Time

> because it provides a place for a story if you just can't find

another

> appropriate category. You can probably set it in time. Fourth-Age

and

> Beyond I could see would be a good addition, even though there

isn't a Book

> for it, so it can't play double-duty, but it does cover that other

time

> after LOTR.

>Fair enough. I can see why you need to include Time. But if we

include movieverse, I think we maybe need to have it
as "Time/Source"? Because the movies are not a book.

Nobody said we're going with Movie-verse yet. It's still just a suggestion.

>Re: Fourth Age - I do think it's important that this includes *and

Beyond*. Case in point - I recently started a story about Tom
Bombadil teaching St. Patrick his song he used to drive the snakes
from Ireland. This would most likely be post-Fourth Age (Sixth Age, I
guess? Or seventh?) but certainly fits under "and beyond".

I agree and I do think it needs to be in there.

> And that brings up other perfect opportunities for graduated

categories:

> First Age, Second Age, etc.

>Yes, that would be good. I'm not sure how you could phrase this, but

if you go this way, you might want to draw a distinction between Ring
War-era (or possibly post-Quest for Erebor (post-TA 2941?)) and
events that happened earlier in the Third Age. Maybe combine it with
Second Age?

Depends. I see it as Second Age graduates because it has 20 stories. It now
becomes a main category under the topic of Time/Books. It has it's own
subcategories: 7 stories fall under Pre-Last Alliance and 13 others are just
floating about nebulously in the Second Age.

That's how it would work. Subcategories would still have to be viable. But
this would save us from having Silmarillion/Second Age/Pre-Last Alliance. I
don't want sub-subcategories.

>This can be hashed out later, though.

> As for movie-verse, we have the same issues as for Alternate

Universe. If

> we have it, do we allow authors of movie-verse stories to place

their

> stories elsewhere?

>Sure. We allow stories set in The Hobbit to also be nominated for

Drama, or whatever.

Okay that could be doable, but what about the splices....

> Or what about those that combine book and movie? I do
> that.

>And you're not the only one. I think it would be the authors' call.

It's certainly *eligible* for movieverse, but if the authors think it
fits better elsewhere, that's fine, too. This isn't an effort to
relegate movieverse or hybrid stories to one category - but instead
to give movieverse gapfillers and similar stories a place to compete
against each other.

And if it ends up unviable?

> Again, having it be the authors choice may make this a lot easier.

>About this - I'm confused on one thing. Does the nominator suggest

categories and the author chooses whether those are acceptable (or
possibly suggest their own)? Or do we just say to the authors "Story
[X] has been nominated, a list of categories is available at URL [Y],
where do you want it to compete?"

The latter, and they'll make three choices just like we did when we
nominated in 2004.

>I say nominators should make suggestions that are passed along to the

authors, and then authors can accept those suggestions or make their
own. This does two things:

>1. If a category proves nonviable, we have backups without going back

to the author for further suggestions.

We'd go to their 2nd choice.

>2. Nominators are probably more involved in the awards than authors.

So they know the categories already. This saves authors from having
to read through the categories and decide where their story best fits.

Perhaps, but authors know their stories best. And since stories can fit
into more than one category, the author should rightly be the one to decide
where they will compete.

> We could just have the availability of the category there and the

author can

> choose whether the story goes there or not. And if one isn't

viable well

> then, it's not viable.

>Yes, that seems like a good plan.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com









Yahoo! Groups Links

Avon wrote:

> In other
> competitions, such as most fanfic ones that I've seen, where being
> nominated is seen as some sort of honour (eg: nomination buttons are
> available) then in my view one wouldn't nominate one's own work.

Hi Avon,
you are not alone in this feelings ;-)
Here is another of the minority, who thinks
that nomination buttons should be given
only for stories nominated not by the authors themselves.

Best wishes Elanor

Marta wrote:

> > e. Rohan
> > f. Numenor
>
> In the interest of fairness and simplicity, I think these should be
> made into subcategories of Men.
>
> Also, maybe consider adding a "Cross-cultural" category? For pieces
> about interactions between different races?

I agree to both,
1) subsume Rohan and Numenor into Men
2) Cross-cultural for stories showing evenly various Races

(for me the Men of Middle Earth are NOT humans of our earth,
therefore I do not think that we should use Race of Humans
(answer to Cathol-Linn),
Men means mortals with a varying lifespan (up to 500 years),
while Elves might live as long Middle-Earth exists)

> > e. Horror
>
> I think we had a hard time making this viable, and many of the ones
> nominated could have been nominated for Adventure or Drama. Maybe
> drop this? (I am not a horror fan, so perhaps I don't see why this
> distinction is so important.)

I think this should be still a separate category, because terror and torture
IMO does not belong into Adventure and Drama.
But Horror was somehow the wrong name of this category this year.

But maybe one could make a subcategory in Drama for such a
kind of stories which describe the terror and extinction of the
protagonists.

> Possible additions:
> - Poetry
> - Research Article
> - Drabble
> - Alternate Universe

I support definitely Research Article, but also the other
proposed categories.

> > 3. (Topic) Time/Books
> > a. The Silmarillion
> > b. The Lord of the Rings
> > c. The Hobbit
> >
>
> All good. I would suggest adding:
>
> - Fourth Age and Beyond
> - Movieverse

I agree to that.

>
> Also, maybe change the topic name from "Time/Books" to "Source
> Material"?

Agree here also.

Elanor

Ainaechoiriel wrote:

> Yes, and that's why they are separate for author categories.
> Not every story
> writer can be a poet. But I don't want ten thousand Poetry
> subcategories.
> What I mean is I don't want Poetry/Men, Poetry/Romance, Poetry/Elves,
> Poetry/Drama. With Poetry/Author/Elves, Poetry/Author/Men.
> Do you see the
> problem there? And they all get the same awards titles and
> banners. Yuck.

Hi Ainaechoiriel,
I do not understand what the problem is.
Why is it a difference to be in
Poetry/Men or in Men/Poetry ?

I see no difference concerning the Award.
You surely will find appropriate Award titles :-)

For me the only difference is that Poetry
collects all poetry which for me is more important
than to find poems about men in Men.

But this my personal feeling.
This is no point dear to me,
I readily accept also to find poems in the category Men ;-)
Yet I would have thought it an improvement
if poems were collected in their own category.
But since you see it as a worsening
I try to understand your reasoning.
Maybe I simply cannot understand
because our minds work differently.

Best wishes Elanor

And the other thing is - the category is Races and Places! It implies that it is "The Race of..." at least to me! :-)

Resha


Ainaechoiriel <mefaadmin@earthlink.net> wrote:
Okay, I usually read through everything and then reply to the short ones first, but I wanted to jump right on this one.

It's going to stay Men. Because "Men" is what's used throughout LOTR. Tolkien doesn't say "Humans" and he doesn't say "Race of Men" and "Race of Elves" everywhere. Elves, Men and all free Peoples, etc.

Race of Men, etc., maybe conclusive but it's clunky as a title.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

elanor of aquitania <elanor@codacode.net> wrote:
Avon wrote:

> > In other competitions, such as most fanfic ones that > > I've seen, where being nominated is seen as some
> > sort of honour (eg: nomination buttons are
> > available) then in my view one wouldn't nominate
> > one's own work.
>
> Hi Avon,
> you are not alone in this feelings ;-) Here is another > of the minority, who thinks that nomination buttons
> should be given only for stories nominated not by the > authors themselves.
>
> Best wishes Elanor

What about a compromise? Well a sort of comprimise! What if self-nominated stories need a second? It's often done in meetings - someone puts forward a vote, someone else needs to second that vote.

Resha


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha


---------------------------------
Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Resha wrote:

> What about a compromise? Well a sort of comprimise! What if
> self-nominated stories need a second? It's often done in
> meetings - someone puts forward a vote, someone else needs to
> second that vote.

Hi Resha,
do you mean a second for the nomination itself?
I think that is out as far as I understood Ainaechoiriel.
It might be rather problematic for an unknown author
to get a second during the nomination process.

But a second opinion for awarding the nomination button
could probably still be discussed.

Yet I think as soon as self nomination is allowed
it becomes politically problematic.
Well known authors would not have a problem
to get a nod from a second.

But unknown authors?
This would become another contest IMO
just for securing a nomination button.

I would think one could limit political problems
if only those self nominated stories get a
nomination button which have received
at least one review.
That could function as the seconding
by another member of this list.

But I admit, unknown authors
might again be put at disadvantage
as they might find less readers.

Best wishes Elanor

elanor of aquitania <elanor@codacode.net> wrote:
Resha wrote:

> What about a compromise? Well a sort of comprimise! What if
> self-nominated stories need a second? It's often done in
> meetings - someone puts forward a vote, someone else needs to
> second that vote.

> Hi Resha,
> do you mean a second for the nomination itself?
> I think that is out as far as I understood
> Ainaechoiriel. It might be rather problematic for an
> unknown author to get a second during the nomination
> process.

That was what I meant. But I can see the problems associated with it.

> I would think one could limit political problems
> if only those self nominated stories get a
> nomination button which have received at least one
> review. That could function as the seconding
> by another member of this list.
>
> But I admit, unknown authors might again be put at
> disadvantage as they might find less readers.

The other option is creating a new button for self nominators. I can understand your issues with allowing self-nomination. But we encounter problems whereve we turn it seems with this - if we disallow self-nomination, lesser-known readers are denied a chance to become more noticed. However, if we allow it, then it can become a source to receive an award nomination. That's why I suggested that a story had to receive a second nomination to be viable - it means that someone has read it and thinks that it is worthy of being nominated! I can't think of a better way of eliminating said political issues unfortunately! :-( Actually, I can't think of too many other ways period!

Resha


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha


---------------------------------
Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> > This was more easily viable than Mystery. I'd see Mystery go before
> Horror.
> > Maybe they could be combined into something like Suspense?
>
> >Yes, that would work well. But if we do so we will need to define what
> should be nominated in each category. More on this below.
>
> Well, what do you think of when we say "suspense" stories?

I think I'd rather see both Horror and Mystery *offered* as categories
to authors whose works are nominated. *If* they fail to meet the 8x2
requirement, then move them to different categories or perhaps make
"Mystery" a subcategory of Drama and Horror a subcategory of Action.
Horror seems to be very physical, very visceral to me--so it fits in
my conceptual schema with Action Adventure, while Mystery, because it
focuses more on problem-solving and relations, fits more naturally
with Drama.

The reason I suggest this rather than the new conglomerate category of
"Suspense" is that I do see a distinction between Mystery and Horror.
Horror is supposed to scare you or repulse you--to incite horror, in
other words. Suspense *may* be used to do this, but it isn't
necessary, either. Take "Pippin's Crucible"--that was pretty horrific
in its descriptions--warm red puddles on the ground, staring dead
eyes, desire to cut off feet, etc. It could've run as horror if the
author had wanted, I think. But it isn't a mystery story. Mysteries
are puzzles--the point isn't necessarily to frighten, but to present
pieces of a problem, and see how the characters go about figuring out
how to put them together and then solve the problem. That, to me, is a
different set of writing skills from Horror. I can do horrific; I
cannot do mysterious because I tend to get lost in my own attempts to
be clever.

<snip>

>
> Not always. We went through this a LOT back in the early days of

the post

> mortem. Being that I hate research (and going through all those

posts sure

> feels like research) and repeating myself, and I have an unreliable

memory,

> I'm rather loathe to try at this point.
>
> > They certainly take a distinct skill and are as much a distinct

genre as

> any of the other categories.
>
> Yes, and that's why they are separate for author categories. Not

every story

> writer can be a poet. But I don't want ten thousand Poetry

subcategories.

> What I mean is I don't want Poetry/Men, Poetry/Romance, Poetry/Elves,
> Poetry/Drama. With Poetry/Author/Elves, Poetry/Author/Men. Do you

see the

> problem there? And they all get the same awards titles and banners.

Yuck.

I think the trouble we're having here is that we have two competing
categorization standards.

There seem to be two bases on which to make a category or subcategory:

1) Content-based differentiation--we don't want to judge hobbits
against elves against men, and so on and so forth, because it takes a
certain kind of eye to capture the feel of these different races.

2) A distinctly different skill needed to write a particular kind of
work (I cite horror, as per my argument above, and also mystery,
drabbles, poetry).

Ultimately, two is the more basic argument that grounds (1)--it's just
a general statement, which is applied specifically in (1). So for me,
ultimately, the second criterion is the court of final appeal.

What I think we have here is a conflict internal to criterion 2, then:
that certain categories that should be approved if we appeal only to
criterion 2 in terms of broad skill sets can also be disqualified as
categories, also by appeal to criterion 2 in the guise of (1).

So the argument (I think) is that there would be such differentiation
in terms of *content* among poems (a category argued to be justified
by criterion 2) that the whole category would consist of nothing but
highly specialized categories (criterion 2 at work again in the guise
of (1)--it takes different skills to write poetry that sounds hobbity
or that deals with hobbit-specific events/ways of life, etc., from
those it takes to write about Elf-centric events, etc.).

The implied conclusion is that such a degree of specialization would
make competition far too narrow to be meaningful, either to the
competitors or to the general fandom readers.

In this case, I think it is arbitrary that Poetry isn't a category in
its own right. It could be, very easily, and there would simply be one
fewer subcategory within several major categories. It would have its
own subcategories, yes, but all we would need are three award names
and a subcategorial schema that is more broad than content-based
distinctions can draw (so avoid (1)). However, since it worked out
well enough to put poems under other categories as subcategories,
inertia will provide its own argument for keeping them there.

Poetry is certainly a law unto itself in terms of writing--the
format/genre distinction is not, I think, clearly viable. What is a
genre but a particular way or format for telling about a certain
event, after all?

Given all this, my suggestion would be to decide whether (2) or (1)
should prevail when it comes to setting up new categories and then act
accordingly and consistently until some unmanageable problem forces a
reevaluation. (The same argument can be made for drabbles, btw.)


Gotta go move siblings back into dorms.

TTFN,

Dwim

--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>
wrote:

> >I think we really need a category guide on the website. Describe

what the

> different categories represent, so people know where a piece might

best fit.

> Something similar to the one for the Mithril Awards
> (http://www.viragene.com/tolkien/categories.html). And yes, I'm

volunteering

> to write this if you're interested.
>
> Okay, but I do feel we're setting the bar rather low. I tend to

believe

> people are fairly intelligent. They'd know a Romance from a

Suspense from a

> Crossover from a Drama from a Humor.

I'd second the suggestion for a category guide. I don't think it is
always clear where a piece belongs, particularly because different
sites categorise differently. I got a second for drama for 'To Sing
of War' so presumably it did fit into the MEFA's classification of
drama, but over at HASA it is listed as General because none of my
stuff fits into their drama classification, just to give an example
of where confusion might arise.

Avon

-----Original Message-----
From: avonaus [mailto:avonaus@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 3:02 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins



--- In MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com, "Ainaechoiriel" <mefaadmin@e...>

>
> Okay, but I do feel we're setting the bar rather low. I tend to

believe

> people are fairly intelligent. They'd know a Romance from a

Suspense from a

> Crossover from a Drama from a Humor.

>I'd second the suggestion for a category guide. I don't think it is always

clear where a piece belongs, particularly because different sites categorise
differently. I got a second for drama for 'To Sing of War' so presumably it
did fit into the MEFA's classification of drama, but over at HASA it is
listed as General because none of my stuff fits into their drama
classification, just to give an example of where confusion might arise.

Yes, but where would you put it, if you were in charge of putting it into a
category. And that's what we're going to do in 2005. Let the author
choose. We're leaving length up to authors, with only suggestions. They
don't have to stick with them. Do we then need to spell out genres?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

Nothing personal, Dwim, but I have a very hard time reading your posts
sometimes. Aphasia + long sentences don't mix well. I'll try though.

-----Original Message-----
From: dwimmer_laik [mailto:dwimmer_laik@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 1:45 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins

> Well, what do you think of when we say "suspense" stories?

>I think I'd rather see both Horror and Mystery *offered* as categories to

authors whose works are nominated. *If* they fail to meet the 8x2
requirement, then move them to different categories or perhaps make
"Mystery" a subcategory of Drama and Horror a subcategory of Action.

The only problem with that is they we decided to stay with 5 X 2 and a
viable subcatgory has the same requirement as a category: 5 x 2. So if it
wasn't viable as a category, it wouldn't be viable as a subcategory either.

>Horror seems to be very physical, very visceral to me--so it fits in my

conceptual schema with Action Adventure, while Mystery, because it focuses
more on problem-solving and relations, fits more naturally with Drama.

>The reason I suggest this rather than the new conglomerate category of

"Suspense" is that I do see a distinction between Mystery and Horror.
Horror is supposed to scare you or repulse you--to incite horror, in other
words. Suspense *may* be used to do this, but it isn't necessary, either.
Take "Pippin's Crucible"--that was pretty horrific in its descriptions--warm
red puddles on the ground, staring dead eyes, desire to cut off feet, etc.
It could've run as horror if the author had wanted, I think. But it isn't a
mystery story. Mysteries are puzzles--the point isn't necessarily to
frighten, but to present pieces of a problem, and see how the characters go
about figuring out how to put them together and then solve the problem.
That, to me, is a different set of writing skills from Horror. I can do
horrific; I cannot do mysterious because I tend to get lost in my own
attempts to be clever.

I agree that Horror and Mystery are different, but I do think both have an
aspect of suspense. We don't know what horrors await us around the corner or
we don't know where the mystery lead. But perhaps there is some other term
that might encompass both?

>I think the trouble we're having here is that we have two competing

categorization standards.

>There seem to be two bases on which to make a category or subcategory:

>1) Content-based differentiation--we don't want to judge hobbits against

elves against men, and so on and so forth, because it takes a certain kind
of eye to capture the feel of these different races.

If by this you mean content as opposed to format, then yes, this is where I
come from.

>2) A distinctly different skill needed to write a particular kind of work

(I cite horror, as per my argument above, and also mystery, drabbles,
poetry).

For me, this is a case for author comments, not stories. In reviewing a
story you aren't reviewing so much skill. A story has no skill. In
reviewing an author, you review skill to craft that story. During a review
of a story, the skill of the author may come into the discussion. But that
is still meat more for author comments than story comments. And so this is
a better place for subcategories than categories.

>Ultimately, two is the more basic argument that grounds (1)--it's just a

general statement, which is applied specifically in (1). So for me,
ultimately, the second criterion is the court of final appeal.

Oh, I think when we get down to calling on distinctly different skill sets
we're going to see a lot of different opinions as to what those skill sets
are. It's more subjective than criterion 1. Is it about Elves. Yep. Then
it's Elves. Content can be judged rather easily.

>What I think we have here is a conflict internal to criterion 2, then:

that certain categories that should be approved if we appeal only to
criterion 2 in terms of broad skill sets can also be disqualified as
categories, also by appeal to criterion 2 in the guise of (1).

You lost me.

>So the argument (I think) is that there would be such differentiation in

terms of *content* among poems (a category argued to be justified by
criterion 2) that the whole category would consist of nothing but highly
specialized categories (criterion 2 at work again in the guise of (1)--it
takes different skills to write poetry that sounds hobbity or that deals
with hobbit-specific events/ways of life, etc., from those it takes to write
about Elf-centric events, etc.).

>The implied conclusion is that such a degree of specialization would make

competition far too narrow to be meaningful, either to the competitors or to
the general fandom readers.

>In this case, I think it is arbitrary that Poetry isn't a category in its

own right. It could be, very easily, and there would simply be one fewer
subcategory within several major categories. It would have its own
subcategories, yes, but all we would need are three award names and a
subcategorial schema that is more broad than content-based distinctions can
draw (so avoid (1)). However, since it worked out well enough to put poems
under other categories as subcategories, inertia will provide its own
argument for keeping them there.

>Poetry is certainly a law unto itself in terms of writing--the format/genre

distinction is not, I think, clearly viable. What is a genre but a
particular way or format for telling about a certain event, after all?

I don't agree. Historical fiction is a genre. It can be in the format of
poetry, short story, vignette, novella, novel, movie, tv show, miniseries,
etc. Romance is a genre in the same way: poetry, short story, vignette,
novella, novel, movie..... You get my point. Poetry can only be in the
various formats of poetry. It's not a genre.

>Given all this, my suggestion would be to decide whether (2) or (1) should

prevail when it comes to setting up new categories and then act accordingly
and consistently until some unmanageable problem forces a reevaluation. (The
same argument can be made for drabbles, btw.)

Okay, though I get lost again in the criterions, you helped me put my finger
on why I don't like poetry as a category.

Content, not format. Poetry is a format. Drabble is a format, Vignette is a
format. The subject of a story is the content. The genre of the story is
the content. The characters in a story are content.

So, I'll make this rule:

Categories are based on content, not format. Subcategories may be based on
format.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

Elanor said it well on this one: it's for the unknown authors to have a fair
shake. And that means also that no, there will not be a separate button for
self-nominations. I won't make unknown authors into second-class citizens.
Also, it might influence a reader/voter, by making them think that a
self-nominated story is inferior--before they even read it. I've been on
the outside of too many other awards to want to make others feel that way.

The test of whether a self-nominated story was worthy of being nominated is
how it does in the awards.


--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Naresha [mailto:north_shore_fruitcake@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 6:51 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: AW: AW: [MEFAwards] Re: PM suggestion: just found this one in
the database (nominations)




elanor of aquitania <elanor@codacode.net> wrote:
Resha wrote:

> What about a compromise? Well a sort of comprimise! What if
> self-nominated stories need a second? It's often done in meetings -
> someone puts forward a vote, someone else needs to second that vote.

> Hi Resha,
> do you mean a second for the nomination itself?
> I think that is out as far as I understood Ainaechoiriel. It might be
> rather problematic for an unknown author to get a second during the
> nomination process.

That was what I meant. But I can see the problems associated with it.

> I would think one could limit political problems if only those self
> nominated stories get a nomination button which have received at least
> one review. That could function as the seconding by another member of
> this list.
>
> But I admit, unknown authors might again be put at disadvantage as
> they might find less readers.

The other option is creating a new button for self nominators. I can
understand your issues with allowing self-nomination. But we encounter
problems whereve we turn it seems with this - if we disallow
self-nomination, lesser-known readers are denied a chance to become more
noticed. However, if we allow it, then it can become a source to receive an
award nomination. That's why I suggested that a story had to receive a
second nomination to be viable - it means that someone has read it and
thinks that it is worthy of being nominated! I can't think of a better way
of eliminating said political issues unfortunately! :-( Actually, I can't
think of too many other ways period!

Resha


~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha


---------------------------------
Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




Yahoo! Groups Links

Back in 2002, KC had an ice storm that knocked out thousands of houses'
electricity. And now there's another ice storm headed our way. In 2002, I
was one of the lucky ones who didn't lose power. But it is possible that I
could lose power now. Which will mean no internet here at home. Let's hope
not. I'd go into withdrawal without my computers!

So this is just a heads up. Hopefully, it will all be fine.


--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: <http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com/>
http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Greetings all ~

Just a quick note to say that I am unsubscribing from the group, but
it is *not* for any discontent or other trouble. My main reason is
just that I have too many E-groups, and I am utterly able to keep up
with or contribute to the planning of next year's MEFA's. Therefore
I hope everyone will please excuse my exit.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart to Ainae for conceiving of this
and putting in more work than my wee mind can imagine, and also to
every single person involved from top to bottom. The 2004 MEFAs were
a joy and a pleasure to me, and it was my very great honor to have my
stories included. I shall hope to see these delightful awards
continued in 2005!

I'll still be around, if anyone comes looking for me, I just won't be
right here. Thank you again for letting me be a part of this. ;-)
Peace and be well, and a wonderful new year to all!
Cheers ~

Erin

Fine by me, Ainae!!! Was just making another of
my odd suggestions! :-)

--- Ainaechoiriel <mefaadmin@earthlink.net>
wrote:
---------------------------------
Elanor said it well on this one: it's for the
unknown authors to have a fair
shake. And that means also that no, there will
not be a separate button for
self-nominations. I won't make unknown authors
into second-class citizens.
Also, it might influence a reader/voter, by
making them think that a
self-nominated story is inferior--before they
even read it. I've been on
the outside of too many other awards to want to
make others feel that way.

The test of whether a self-nominated story was
worthy of being nominated is
how it does in the awards.

=====
~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
ICQ: 142117881 Yahoo: fruitcake5m1
Personal LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/nareshaninya/
Writing LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/writingsofresha/

My Website! Slash Me Happy
http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

__________________________________________________
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Ainaechoiriel wrote:

> Categories are based on content, not format.
> Subcategories may be based on format.

My heartfelt thanks for these clearing words!

Elanor
whose mind works the other way round
preferring categorization based on format
to that based on content ;-)
but who can easily adapt to the actual scheme

Best wishes for weathering the ice storm!

Hi Ainae,

> >I see the point you're making, but I tend to want to solve the

direction

>>the other way. Yes, it doesn't make much sense to have Numenor and

Rohan as

>> their own categories but Gondor as a subcategory of Men. That's

why I

>>suggest do away with Numenor and Rohan as independent categories

and make

>>them subcategories of Men.

> Then vote Yes on the poll.

I think I did, but I'll make sure I did. Thanks for clarifying.

>> If we're going with graduated categories, I really think we need

to do away

>>with the idea of calling First, Second, and Third prize as awards

with

>>separate names. Theme the banners, that's fine, but for those who

aren't

>>involved in the discussion of the awards it just gets too

confusing. I know

>>it's cute and clever, but it also causes a fair number of

complaints that

>>I've heard.

> If I understand this right, you're saying do away with the awards

titles?

> No.

I was saying that. I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was non-negotiable.

>> Yes, I could easily come up with three awards for Gondor. It

becomes

>>increasingly hard, however, to have *unique* awards names.

> I don't think it would be that hard.

Okay. One of the main reason I can think of not to create more awards
is the difficulty in finding unique award names. (I think you told
me, back when I proposed poetry last Spring that one of the reasons
you were against it was the difficulty of finding suitable awards
names. But maybe my memory is faulty.

>>> Graduated categories just makes us more flexible.

>> I see they make us more flexible than we were this year - where we

were

>>stuck with independent categories for Rohan and Numenor but not

Gondor. But

>>I don't see why this is more flexible than having all of them as
>>subcategories of Men.

> Marta, if the poll is voted Yes, then they will be subcategories of

Men. And

> Mirkwood would be a subcategory of Elves. Or Silmarillion. Or

LOTR or

> whatever. But if there were then 20 or more stories in that

subcategory,

> that's worthy of becoming a main category. It was discussed here

during

> December with overall positive thoughts and the decision was made.

Final.

> There will be graduated categories. Period. The question right now

is

> whether all places will be.

I keep going over this in my head, trying to understand why you (the
collective you; not Ainae specifically, but everyone who's in favor
of graduated categories) sees subcategories as more important than
categories. The same number of stories compete for the same number of
awards whether they run as Gondor or as Men/Gondor. And I can see
practical advantages (mainly simplicity of the category scheme) in
keeping it as subcategories of the race rather than as its own
graduated category.

I think this is my fault. For the life of me I cannot remember the
discussion that occurred. I'm not saying it *didn't*, just that I
have no recollection of it. Can you perhaps point me to the first
message in that thread and I'll go read it myself?

To paraphrase Boromir (ironically, of Gondor ;-) ) "If this is the
will of the group, Marta will see it done." If this is a non-
negotiable either because Ainae wants it or because most people have
alreaedy agreed with it, then I'll accept it. I'm just trying to
*understand* it, and if I could read over where this was first
discussed, I think that would help a lot.

Marta

Hi Ainae,

<snip>

>> Or could it use the same banners, just as Men/Poetry or whatever?

It seems

>>keeping it as a subcategory is just much simpler than making it its

own

>>category.

> No, it would not longer be a subcategory under Men. It would be a

main

> category under Races/Places and may even have viable subcategories

of its

> own.

Okay, I think I just had a "Eureka!" moment and saw at least one of
the advantages of graduated categories. For example, let's say Gondor
had twenty entries, seven of which were poems. So as its own category
you could make a subcategory (Gondor/Poetry). But if you only allow
one levels of subcategories, you could not have (Men/Gondor/Poetry).
I was assuming that a subcategory could have its own sub-subcategory.
Maybe this is a misunderstanding on my part.

>>> Also, maybe consider adding a "Cross-cultural" category? For

pieces about

>>> interactions between different races?

>> Good idea. It was a useful sub-category for LOTR last year. I've

added it

>> to the database.

>Which means we probably need to think of awards names at some point.
> Gimli and Aragorn seem natural choices, as they symbolize inter-race
> friendships to me. Maybe Fingon as well? (Or was it Finrod? The

first Elf to

> meet the Men in Beleriand.)

> Yes, we'll need to think up some award names if this is decided to

be a new

> category. Right now I's just a suggestion.

Sure; sorry I jumped ahead. I think this stems from my
misunderstanding (previously mentioned) that it was hard to think up
awards. Sorry about that.

>> This brings up another issue that I've been going back and forth

on.

>>The awards names are confusing! If you aren't involved in the

MEFAs, you

>>probably do not know why Lothlorien is Elves/First and Imladris is
>>Elves/Second, or whatever. I've talked to probably five or so

people who

>>share this opinion. I know it's anecdotal, but... I really think we

should

>>consider having a theme for the different awards per categories but

calling

>>them [Category]/[Ranking] instead of "The Imladris Award" or

whatever.

>> Is this at all negotiable?

> No. And to which I say, "too bad." Sorry, but that's that. We

added the

> bars under the banners so someone seeing my Witch King award would

know it

> was for 3rd place in the Horror Author category.

Okay, that's better - if people are seeing the banners. I archive
most of my stuff at HASA, where banners aren't allowed. And I'm still
building my own site. So I hadn't even gotten around to looking at
the banners where I had won! I thought they just had the
subcategories on them if there was one.

> MEFA doesn't mean much
> when it's just the letters either. It doesn't take much

investigation

> however to find out what it means.

That's true. But MEFA is used so widely, I think most people who have
heard about the awards know what the acronym means. When I'm
introducing them to people (for example, people whose stories I
wanted to nominate) I usually did so as "The Middle-earth Fanfic
Awards (MEFAs)". Instant education.

> With the bars on the bottom of the
> banners, it's even easier to tell what the Witch King Award stands

for. You

> don't even have to click.

Just so I'm clear... does the sub-bar have just the category (and
subcategory where applicable)? Or does it have the place as well.

> Look, I said this before when I first started these awards, I

couldn't come

> up with a good gimicky name for the overall awards, like the

Mithrils or the

> One Rings because all the ones I thought up were already taken. So

I came

> up with separate awards titles for each of the awards. That's the

fun part

> for me. I don't begrudge my Best DS9 General Story 1998 award

because it

> has a generic name, but it is rather boring. When discussion came

up at ASC

> to come up with a name for the awards (like ASCEM has the Golden

O's), I

> suggested the ASCIIs. It made sense. ASC is in ASCII and the format

of the

> newsgroup is ASCII. But we ended up sticking with neither. It's

still a

> great awards schema but it's a bit boring.

I think this is where you and I are coming at this from different
directions. I don't care about a snazzy titles. Why do I value my
awards? Because they represent the accolades of my piers. Anyone can
name an award anything they like; for me it really doesn't matter, if
I don't value the person's opinion who gives the awards. I'd much
prefer something be easily understood.

But in the end, that's just my opinion. And though I am committing a
fair amount of time and energy, in the end they're not *my* awards.
If the catchiness is part of what makes it fun for you, then so be it.

> I wanted these to not be boring. As long as I'm admining them,

there will be

> awards titles. Someday when I hand this off, it will be up to the

new admin

> to see what changes will be made. Or I might decide this is like

the

> comment-based system and non-changeable.

Can we have a list of what is negotiable and what's not? I have to
say, I keep feel like I'm stepping on your toes. It's not what I
intend to do, but if I understood what you're not willing to change,
then I could try to be more respectful of that.

<snip>

> Well, what do you think of when we say "suspense" stories?

I really don't know, immediately. Probably mystery or something
rather similar.

>> I think we really need a category guide on the website. Describe

what the

>>different categories represent, so people know where a piece might

best fit.

>>Something similar to the one for the Mithril Awards
>>(http://www.viragene.com/tolkien/categories.html). And yes, I'm

volunteering

>>to write this if you're interested.

> Okay, but I do feel we're setting the bar rather low. I tend to

believe

> people are fairly intelligent. They'd know a Romance from a

Suspense from a

> Crossover from a Drama from a Humor.

Yes, I agree for shorter pieces. But longer pieces often bridge
genres. I have a piece that has about equal elements of humor and
drama; I've seen others that include hybrids of drama and romance,
drama and action, romance and humor, etc. I don't think it's always
so cut-and-dry. And besides, this is a rather simple way to make
things clearer. Even if it is setting the bar low, I don't think it
will hurt.

<snip>

>> They certainly take a distinct skill and are as much a distinct

genre as

>>any of the other categories.

> Yes, and that's why they are separate for author categories. Not

every story

> writer can be a poet. But I don't want ten thousand Poetry

subcategories.

> What I mean is I don't want Poetry/Men, Poetry/Romance,

Poetry/Elves,

> Poetry/Drama.

But you already have Men/Poetry, Romance/Poetry, Elves/Poetry,
Drama/Poetry - at least as often as they're viable. I don't think
you'd have to have this many subcategories.

For me, the bottom line comes down to why I think a certain piece is
worth nominating. Often, it's *not* because it's a fine piece about
elves, or of the romance genre, but because it's a good use of a
certain form. And as such, I think such stories should be judged
against other poems rather than against elf pieces or romances.

<snip>

> With Poetry/Author/Elves, Poetry/Author/Men. Do you see the
> problem there? And they all get the same awards titles and

banners. Yuck.

Sorry, I don't see the problem - I'd just put them all in
Poetry/Author, and not bother with subcategories beyond that. Maybe
I'm not understanding why you feel the need to subdivide further?

<snip>

>> These are two things I write. I think you mentioned in your

comments that

>>you weren't really interested in, and also that you didn't really

write

>>poetry. I don't mean this as a criticism of you - but is it

possible you

>>don't see the distinctions as well as people who do write these

forms? (I

>>know I have this problem with genres I don't write or usually read.)

> I don't understand this. Aphasia stepping in. I did get some of

it. I do

> write poetry. I don't write it formally. I don't write sonnets or

whatevers.

> But I have written some poetry and probably will in the future.

You can

> read it at HASA if you like. Several of the poems are in my forum.

Sorry, I might be confusing you with someone else. RL has been really
grisly lately, and my memory is iffy at best. (And sorry if I'm
coming across as more antagonistic than I usually do. I think I might
be, but it's not intended if I am.)

>>> - Research Article

>>>I doubt there would be enough to be viable.

>> As I stated when I first suggested this in the original post-mort,

I

>>personally can nominate enough. Some are only available on the

members-only

>>side of HASA, but if you'll allow this category, I will offer these

authors

>>hosting space on my own personal site. Even without that, I can

think of at

>>least eight essays offhand that I would like to see nominated.

> Then we can put it to a poll.

Excellent. Should I go ahead and create one, or add it to the
database? Or is there anything else you need me to do?

> But yes, those research articles would have
> to posted on a public (not members-only) site BEFORE Nomination

Season

> starts. Not after.

Sure. But just so I understand - why is this so? You allow stories
written in a language other than English, don't you? This doesn't
seem that different to me.

<snip AU>

>> AU (at least in my opinion) is a story where Tolkien (or
>>whatever canon - PJ's scriptwriters in movieverse, I
>>guess) say something happened some way but the author decides to

take it

>>another way.

<snip examples>

>>these are all scenarios that Tolkien explicitly said didn't
>>happen. Very different from a gapfiller, or a scenario that Tolkien

didn't

>>say happen but could have.

> That could be your opinion. Personally, I don't find it AU, but

some might.

> Some are easy to spot, I'll grant you. Dwim's LDID, every Mary Sue

fic ever

> written.... But some are slippery.

With all due respect, it doesn't really matter what an individual
reader considers AU. With the category guide we get to define what is
AU for the purposes of this award, and authors get to decide whether
their story fits that category

<snip>

>> I can see why you need to include Time. But if we
>>include movieverse, I think we maybe need to have it
>>as "Time/Source"? Because the movies are not a book.

> Nobody said we're going with Movie-verse yet. It's still just a

suggestion.

As is my suggestion that we change it to "Time/Source". If we decide
not to make movieverse a category, the suggestion is moot.

<snip>

>>> As for movie-verse, we have the same issues as for Alternate
>>> Universe. If
>>> we have it, do we allow authors of movie-verse stories to place

their

>>> stories elsewhere?

>> Sure. We allow stories set in The Hobbit to also be nominated for
>>Drama, or whatever.

> Okay that could be doable, but what about the splices....

As I've said before, it's up to the author. The author could place
them in LotR or movieverse, or some other category that fits (hobbits
or drama or whatever) - whichever they thinks fits best.

<snip>

> And if it ends up unviable?

So be it. If it's not viable, we can always move the stories to the
second and third choices just like any other category. And we can
rethink about it for 2006. But I really think there are enough
stories out there that it probably won't be.

Marta

I like the idea of a Movieverse category. And if it does become a
reality, I'd like to suggest

The Arwen at the Fords of Bruinen Award
The Elves at Helm's Deep Award
and
The Going to Osgiliath Award

as potential titles.

Elana

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 11:13 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Re: Categories Post Mortem begins

>Okay, I think I just had a "Eureka!" moment and saw at least one of the

advantages of graduated categories. For example, let's say Gondor had twenty
entries, seven of which were poems. So as its own category you could make a
subcategory (Gondor/Poetry). But if you only allow one levels of
subcategories, you could not have (Men/Gondor/Poetry).
I was assuming that a subcategory could have its own sub-subcategory.
Maybe this is a misunderstanding on my part.

Right. I don't want to have sub/subcategories and I think my new revelation
that I think categories should be based on content and subcategories *may*
be based on format (or content, if that wasn't understood) should help.

Sometimes I don't know what I think until it's clarified through discussion.
That's why I can't just run out a list of what's negotiable and what's not.
My brain just isn't that cooperative anymore.

> Yes, we'll need to think up some award names if this is decided to

be a new

> category. Right now I's just a suggestion.

>Sure; sorry I jumped ahead. I think this stems from my misunderstanding

(previously mentioned) that it was hard to think up awards. Sorry about
that.

No apologies. I jumped ahead just as much when I mentioned about picking
names for the Dwarves awards if Dwarves becomes a new category.

> No. And to which I say, "too bad." Sorry, but that's that. We

added the

> bars under the banners so someone seeing my Witch King award would

know it

> was for 3rd place in the Horror Author category.

>Okay, that's better - if people are seeing the banners. I archive

most of my stuff at HASA, where banners aren't allowed. And I'm still
building my own site. So I hadn't even gotten around to looking at
the banners where I had won! I thought they just had the
subcategories on them if there was one.

Sorry for snapping. For places where you can't put banners, I'm all for
adding the award in text: Winner of the Morgoth Bauglir Award for 1st Place
Horror Fiction in the 2004 Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards.

I need to remember to add that to my story on ff.net and HASA. I have the
banner on my own site.

>That's true. But MEFA is used so widely, I think most people who have

heard about the awards know what the acronym means. When I'm
introducing them to people (for example, people whose stories I
wanted to nominate) I usually did so as "The Middle-earth Fanfic
Awards (MEFAs)". Instant education.

So is the bar. See below....

> With the bars on the bottom of the
> banners, it's even easier to tell what the Witch King Award stands

for. You

> don't even have to click.

>Just so I'm clear... does the sub-bar have just the category (and

subcategory where applicable)? Or does it have the place as well.

Yep, it also includes the place. Viv did a very classy job with them, I
think.

>I think this is where you and I are coming at this from different

directions. I don't care about a snazzy titles. Why do I value my
awards? Because they represent the accolades of my piers. Anyone can
name an award anything they like; for me it really doesn't matter, if
I don't value the person's opinion who gives the awards. I'd much
prefer something be easily understood.

>But in the end, that's just my opinion. And though I am committing a

fair amount of time and energy, in the end they're not *my* awards.
If the catchiness is part of what makes it fun for you, then so be it.

Yep that's sort of what it comes down to. The MEFAs are my little baby. I
created them and so I want them to retain the parts I feel are important.
Even the gimicky parts. ;-)

>Can we have a list of what is negotiable and what's not? I have to

say, I keep feel like I'm stepping on your toes. It's not what I
intend to do, but if I understood what you're not willing to change,
then I could try to be more respectful of that.

Unfortunately, I often don't know until I get there. Let's see what we've
hit so far:

1) Comment-based. A definite.
2) There will be gimicky award titles
3) Banners will be creative and not overly standardized
4) Authors can self-nominate with no recriminations
5) Categories based on content.

I can't remember any others at this time.

>> I think we really need a category guide on the website. Describe

what the

>>different categories represent, so people know where a piece might

best fit.

>>Something similar to the one for the Mithril Awards
>>(http://www.viragene.com/tolkien/categories.html). And yes, I'm

volunteering

>>to write this if you're interested.

>Yes, I agree for shorter pieces. But longer pieces often bridge

genres. I have a piece that has about equal elements of humor and
drama; I've seen others that include hybrids of drama and romance,
drama and action, romance and humor, etc. I don't think it's always
so cut-and-dry. And besides, this is a rather simple way to make
things clearer. Even if it is setting the bar low, I don't think it
will hurt.

Okay then, if you'll write it. Sounds too much like homework to me. ;-)

>But you already have Men/Poetry, Romance/Poetry, Elves/Poetry,

Drama/Poetry - at least as often as they're viable. I don't think
you'd have to have this many subcategories.

Dwim helped me find my opinion. (Really does happen through discussion for
me, a lot of times.)

>For me, the bottom line comes down to why I think a certain piece is

worth nominating. Often, it's *not* because it's a fine piece about
elves, or of the romance genre, but because it's a good use of a
certain form. And as such, I think such stories should be judged
against other poems rather than against elf pieces or romances.

As mentioned above, Dwim helped me realize I base categories on content.
Not skill level or format. So that the poem is about Elves means it should
be Elves/Poetry. Format is one possible means of subcategorizing. To
eliminate the confusion, I made that a rule: Categories are based on
content.

> I don't understand this. Aphasia stepping in. I did get some of

it. I do

> write poetry. I don't write it formally. I don't write sonnets or

whatevers.

> But I have written some poetry and probably will in the future.

You can

> read it at HASA if you like. Several of the poems are in my forum.

>Sorry, I might be confusing you with someone else. RL has been really

grisly lately, and my memory is iffy at best. (And sorry if I'm
coming across as more antagonistic than I usually do. I think I might
be, but it's not intended if I am.)

Iffy memories, I understand. Be careful. I know why you've been stressed
with RL. Let me be a warning to you, and anyone else. As far as I know, I'm
the only person who has gotten aphasia from stress. If you start to have
memory loss, lack of concentration, inability to do things you used to be
able to do....you're running into trouble. See a counselor, try finding
ways to reduce your stress (some things you can reduce, some you have no
control over). Stress can kill. Don't let it get to the point it got to
with me. I'm a writer. To not be able to trust my ability to read or put
words together in a way that makes sense is scary. And the neurologists
can't find any "hardware" reasons for it. No brain tumors or dementia or
alzheimers (too young for that anyway). This started at a time of severely
high stress. And it hasn't let up even though the stress has. Stress is
dangerous. Sure, we all need some or we'd be dead. But there has to be
balance or we begin to break. Take care of yourself.

Okay, off the soapbox.

>Excellent. Should I go ahead and create one, or add it to the

database? Or is there anything else you need me to do?

Just add it to the database for now. Let's get on to more suggestions of
new categories if we can. Then we'll take a look at the list and make
decisions (mostly with polls).

> But yes, those research articles would have
> to posted on a public (not members-only) site BEFORE Nomination

Season

> starts. Not after.

>Sure. But just so I understand - why is this so? You allow stories

written in a language other than English, don't you? This doesn't
seem that different to me.

That's been in the rules from the get-go. Any nomination has to be on a
public website, otherwise all the MEFA winners would have to sign up at
every website to read the nomination. It has to be in a place where no
sign-ins are necessary. And just to have some sort of deadline (there are
literally tens of thousands of stories in the LOTR fandom), we have a
cut-off date. We can't legitimately make a deadline on each end. "Must be
posted between May 1st and April 30th, 2005" like ASC does (must be posted
between Feb 1st and Jan 31st) because we aren't an archive. If we did that,
we'd have no good way of policing it, and we'd be throwing out the chances
of some very good stories that were written years ago. With 30000+ stories
out there, we can't possibly have read them all to say we've found all the
good ones that were posted by now so that we can now limit ourselves just to
this year's new crop. There are still so many out there that were posted
before that we just haven't found yet. So we have a deadline on the other
end only. Think of it as making things easier for the adminstration. We
need to know that when Nomination Season opens and all those nominations
come rolling in, they all have valid URLs to public sites. It also keeps
this scenario from happening: the day before Nomination Season ends, Author
X posts her story to ff.net just to get it nominated. If Author X wants to
do that, get it posted by the day before Nomination Season starts.

So, Marta, you might want to offer any of those Research Article authors a
secondary public site for their articles, if you have the space. It may
likely become a category (under Genres).

> That could be your opinion. Personally, I don't find it AU, but

some might.

> Some are easy to spot, I'll grant you. Dwim's LDID, every Mary Sue

fic ever

> written.... But some are slippery.

>With all due respect, it doesn't really matter what an individual

reader considers AU. With the category guide we get to define what is
AU for the purposes of this award, and authors get to decide whether
their story fits that category

Yeah, but defining it can be tough. Look at the trouble we had a HASA on the
review guidelines. Let's put up some definitions and then we can put them
to a poll.

Here's mine:

An AU story is one that concretely diverges from the source material. For
the MEFAs, this means The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the
Rings. Examples of concrete diversions would be "What if" scenarios, new
characters, etc.

I'd define Movie-verse as stories that are based primarily on events in the
Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films rather than on the books by Tolkien.

And for splices and blends, I'd just let the author categorize them
somewhere else.

> Nobody said we're going with Movie-verse yet. It's still just a

suggestion.

>As is my suggestion that we change it to "Time/Source". If we decide

not to make movieverse a category, the suggestion is moot.

Okay, I've warmed up to this, but only if movie-verse makes it as a
category.


Re: Movie-verse

>> Sure. We allow stories set in The Hobbit to also be nominated for
>>Drama, or whatever.

> Okay that could be doable, but what about the splices....

>As I've said before, it's up to the author. The author could place

them in LotR or movieverse, or some other category that fits (hobbits
or drama or whatever) - whichever they thinks fits best.

Yep. See, I *am* persuadeable. ;-)

<snip>

> And if it ends up unviable?

>So be it. If it's not viable, we can always move the stories to the

second and third choices just like any other category. And we can
rethink about it for 2006. But I really think there are enough
stories out there that it probably won't be.
I'm just a contrary author. I don't like calling any of Trek stories AU
either, though especially the later ones had to diverge from the source
material because the source material ended the war and split up the crew
before I was done with either! I liked to call myself canon-compatible,
meaning my stories could conceivably fit nebulously in the timeline between
seasons or episodes or whatever. To me an AU means something is
significantly different. Like Gollum not being there, or Bashir did get
kicked out of Starfleet. If all the characters act like the characters and
all the events of canon happened, then, well it's not AU to me. And should
I ever finish my present lot of ST stories, I might end up back compatible
to the canon (war over, crew dispersed). In fact, I even have one story that
is! I like to bend the canon timeline rather than break it.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

Ooh, good ideas. Scenes from the movie that diverge from the book. How
about the Arwen Stole Asfaloth Award. ;P Or the Should-a Been Glorfindel
Award. Where Was Tom Bombadil Award. Hey we can have with this.

(On a serious note, I like the ones you've suggested. I just had fun playing
with the ideas....Merry at the Black Gate Award...)

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: angelabrooks@yahoo.com [mailto:angelabrooks@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 11:55 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Movieverse



I like the idea of a Movieverse category. And if it does become a reality,
I'd like to suggest

The Arwen at the Fords of Bruinen Award
The Elves at Helm's Deep Award
and
The Going to Osgiliath Award

as potential titles.

Elana






Yahoo! Groups Links

Last one, then I've got to get to bed. Since some of this was covered in the
other e-mail, there will likely be some snippage.

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 9:09 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] graduated categories; was: Re: New poll for MEFAwards



Hi Ainae,

>> Yes, I could easily come up with three awards for Gondor. It

becomes

>>increasingly hard, however, to have *unique* awards names.

> I don't think it would be that hard.

>Okay. One of the main reason I can think of not to create more awards is

the difficulty in finding unique award names. (I think you told me, back
when I proposed poetry last Spring that one of the reasons you were against
it was the difficulty of finding suitable awards names. But maybe my memory
is faulty.

Some categories are harder than others. Poetry would be hard. Gondor being
a place, it's easy to come up with smaller places within it or significant
people. LOTR was easy with three books. The Hobbit was easy with three
places on the journey, Rohan was easy with the three royals, etc. Some were
trickier.

>I keep going over this in my head, trying to understand why you (the

collective you; not Ainae specifically, but everyone who's in favor of
graduated categories) sees subcategories as more important than categories.
The same number of stories compete for the same number of awards whether
they run as Gondor or as Men/Gondor. And I can see practical advantages
(mainly simplicity of the category scheme) in keeping it as subcategories of
the race rather than as its own graduated category.

>I think this is my fault. For the life of me I cannot remember the

discussion that occurred. I'm not saying it *didn't*, just that I have no
recollection of it. Can you perhaps point me to the first message in that
thread and I'll go read it myself?

Me? No. My memory is likely worse than yours and my aversion to research
goes far back before the stress that damaged me. Hey, I picked an MA
program without a thesis for a reason! And I'm not envious of Dwim and all
her homework at all! What I remember is that there were questions in the
beginning of the Post Mortem about fairness of categories which kind of blew
me away. When Shadow975 and I were brainstorming we weren't thinking of
fairness. Fairness never came into it. Who knew Gondor would have so many
stories and Numenor so few? It was all just brainstorming. But yes, Gondor
was mentioned specifically. People thought it had been unfairly left out
when it had loads of stories and Numenor and Rohan weren't left out and they
didn't have as many combined. Even during Check Ballot season, seeing so
many Men/Gondor nominations, I thought hey, we're going to have to have a
Gondor category next year. It was more of a lack of foresight than
anything. So now, with graduated categories, it allows for lack of
foresight.

>To paraphrase Boromir (ironically, of Gondor ;-) ) "If this is the will of

the group, Marta will see it done." If this is a non- negotiable either
because Ainae wants it or because most people have alreaedy agreed with it,
then I'll accept it. I'm just trying to
*understand* it, and if I could read over where this was first discussed, I
think that would help a lot.

Thanks, Marta. Now, go have a cup of hot cocoa and curl up with a lovely
kitty cat and relieve some of your stress. I worry about you. (And quite
frankly anyone else who has too much stress.)

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

The following MEFAwards poll is now closed. Here are the
final results:


POLL QUESTION: Post Mortem: Honorable Mentions will be
given to non-winning tiers and stories
that fall within how many points of 3rd
place?

CHOICES AND RESULTS
- 3, 9 votes, 69.23%
- 5, 2 votes, 15.38%
- 1, 2 votes, 15.38%
- no opinion, 0 votes, 0.00%



For more information about this group, please visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MEFAwards

For help with Yahoo! Groups, please visit
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/

Hehehe! I like them! This looks like fun!!! :-P

Hmm...

That B**** Stole My Part Award? :-P Erm...

Elves at Helms Deep?! WHAT THE?! Award...

Didn't Erestor Have an Opinion Award?

Okay... Stopping now! They're crappy I know! But
I can't think properly - had my wisdom teeth out
todya! :-P I'm sore and swollen and my brain
doesn't want to work properly.

-Resha.


--- Ainaechoiriel <mefaadmin@earthlink.net>
wrote: -------------------------------
Ooh, good ideas. Scenes from the movie that
diverge from the book. How about the Arwen Stole
Asfaloth Award. ;P Or the Should-a Been
Glorfindel Award. Where Was Tom Bombadil Award.
Hey we can have with this.


=====
~To forgive calls upon our love, to forget calls upon our strength~

AIM: Naresha21 MSN: candyman_gypsy@hotmail.com
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http://www.websamba.com/SlashMeHappy

http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?biter=Resha

Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.
http://au.movies.yahoo.com

The part that contains the winning banners. Because I ran out of space with
earthlink, I put them on my own server. Well, because of my caution, they
are unreachable at the moment.

Why? Ice storm. And kittens. You see, the server is on a switch box. To
keep the kittens from doing anything to it by stepping on the keyboard, I
switched the switchbox to the ohter non-existent computer. That was fine,
until my electricity apparently flashed. I connect to my home computers
remotely while I am at work. The other two booted again and I am able to
connect to them. The server, however, probably popped up a no keyboard
error which halted the boot process. So there's nothing I can do about it
until I get home and switch that switchbox back to the server and reboot it.
So, not only is there no web site (from my server), I can't read some of my
e-mail addresses (that reside on the server) and I can't convert those .avi
files to .mpgs like I've been doing because they live on the server. I can't
update the web pages to say they're down, because they live on the
server....

Aren't computers fun?


--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: <http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com/>
http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The server is online again so the web site is available.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Ainaechoiriel [mailto:mefaadmin@earthlink.net]
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 11:11 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Part of the web site is temporarily down


The part that contains the winning banners. Because I ran out of space with
earthlink, I put them on my own server. Well, because of my caution, they
are unreachable at the moment.

Why? Ice storm. And kittens. You see, the server is on a switch box. To
keep the kittens from doing anything to it by stepping on the keyboard, I
switched the switchbox to the ohter non-existent computer. That was fine,
until my electricity apparently flashed. I connect to my home computers
remotely while I am at work. The other two booted again and I am able to
connect to them. The server, however, probably popped up a no keyboard
error which halted the boot process. So there's nothing I can do about it
until I get home and switch that switchbox back to the server and reboot it.
So, not only is there no web site (from my server), I can't read some of my
e-mail addresses (that reside on the server) and I can't convert those .avi
files to .mpgs like I've been doing because they live on the server. I can't
update the web pages to say they're down, because they live on the
server....

Aren't computers fun?


--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: <http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com/>
http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




Yahoo! Groups Links

Hi Ainae,

>> Okay, I think I just had a "Eureka!" moment and saw at least one of

the

>> advantages of graduated categories.

<snip>

>> if you only allow one levels of
>>subcategories, you could not have (Men/Gondor/Poetry).
>>I was assuming that a subcategory could have its own sub-

subcategory.

>>Maybe this is a misunderstanding on my part.

> Right. I don't want to have sub/subcategories and I think my new

revelation

> that I think categories should be based on content and subcategories

*may*

> be based on format (or content, if that wasn't understood) should

help.

It does. If I were running the awards, I might opt for sub-
subcategories, but who knows? And the bottom line is, as I said
before, it's *not* my awards. Now that I understand the reasoning, I'm
fine with graduated categories and will stop arguing against them.

Thanks for putitng up with me until I figured out why I didn't
understand.

<snip>

>> that's better - if people are seeing the banners. I archive
>>most of my stuff at HASA, where banners aren't allowed. And I'm

still

>>building my own site. So I hadn't even gotten around to looking at
>>the banners where I had won! I thought they just had the
>>subcategories on them if there was one.

> Sorry for snapping.

It's okay. I was feeling pretty irritable myself, so I probably
interpreted things in an uncharitable light.

> For places where you can't put banners, I'm all for
> adding the award in text: Winner of the Morgoth Bauglir Award for

1st Place

> Horror Fiction in the 2004 Middle-Earth Fanficiton Awards.

Sure. Their might be less verbose ways to word it (i.e., "MEFA Winner:
Morgoth Bauglir Award (Horror/1st Place)", or "MEFA Winner: 1st Place,
Horror (Morgoth Bauglir Award)", or something like that). But I think
it's up to the individual author to decide exactly how they want to
word it.

Can we put this suggestion into an FAQ somewhere, so people know? I
think if we didn't his I'd be satisfied.

<snip>

>>But in the end, that's just my opinion. And though I am committing a
>>fair amount of time and energy, in the end they're not *my* awards.
>>If the catchiness is part of what makes it fun for you, then so be

it.

> Yep that's sort of what it comes down to. The MEFAs are my little

baby. I

> created them and so I want them to retain the parts I feel are

important.

> Even the gimicky parts. ;-)
>

And I can understand and accept that. I guess the hard part for me is
that I have a hard time knowing what's up for negotiation and what
you're not willing to change. For example, when we have a poll on
something, is it a done deal - whatever the result is, we'll go with
that? Or is it just a tool for you to figure out what people like, so
you can make a better decision? Or is to sometimes one and sometimes
the other?

I guess this is where I get confused. It's like some of the time the
decision is made by the group, and sometimes it's made by you, but I'm
never quite sure which it is. If I were running the awards I would
probably do it all one way or all the other: *either* every issue is
votable and if the group decides to change something it's changed;
nothings off-limits. *Or* everything is decided by Ainae, and the rest
of the group can try to convince her, but there are no issues that are
decided solely by popular vote.

> >Can we have a list of what is negotiable and what's not? I have to
>>say, I keep feel like I'm stepping on your toes. It's not what I
>>intend to do, but if I understood what you're not willing to change,
>>then I could try to be more respectful of that.
>
> Unfortunately, I often don't know until I get there. Let's see

what we've

> hit so far:
>
> 1) Comment-based. A definite.
> 2) There will be gimicky award titles
> 3) Banners will be creative and not overly standardized
> 4) Authors can self-nominate with no recriminations
> 5) Categories based on content.
>
> I can't remember any others at this time.
>

Okay. Can you put these in a file somewhere, so we can refer to them
later if we need to? (I'd do it for you, but you might want to add to
it later.)

<snip>

> >But you already have Men/Poetry, Romance/Poetry, Elves/Poetry,
>> Drama/Poetry - at least as often as they're viable. I don't think
>> you'd have to have this many subcategories.
>
> Dwim helped me find my opinion. (Really does happen through

discussion for

> me, a lot of times.)
>

The same happens for me. I can accept your opinion, now that I
understand both yours and my own better.

<snip>

>>> I don't understand this. Aphasia stepping in. I did get some of

it. I do

>>> write poetry. I don't write it formally. I don't write sonnets or

whatevers.

>>> But I have written some poetry and probably will in the future.

You can

>>> read it at HASA if you like. Several of the poems are in my forum.

>> Sorry, I might be confusing you with someone else. RL has been

really

>> grisly lately, and my memory is iffy at best. (And sorry if I'm
>> coming across as more antagonistic than I usually do. I think I

might

>> be, but it's not intended if I am.)

> Iffy memories, I understand. Be careful. I know why you've been

stressed

> with RL. Let me be a warning to you, and anyone else. As far as I

know, I'm

> the only person who has gotten aphasia from stress. If you start to

have

> memory loss, lack of concentration, inability to do things you used

to be

> able to do....you're running into trouble. See a counselor, try

finding

> ways to reduce your stress (some things you can reduce, some you

have no

> control over).

I have a lot of those problems, though probably not on the same level
as you. Try not to worry about me; I am seeing a counselor for it, and
for me, there's a definite reason; a lot of those are symptoms of
depression and PTSD, both of which I've been diagnosed with. So at
least with me I have a name and reason, which helps a lot.

I have been trying to take it easy. I spent much of last night curled
up with _Now We Are Six_ (a book from the Pooh series) and a mug of
hot cocoa. Thanks for the suggestion; it did me a lot of good.

<snip>

>> Excellent. Should I go ahead and create one, or add it to the
>> database? Or is there anything else you need me to do?
>
> Just add it to the database for now. Let's get on to more

suggestions of

> new categories if we can. Then we'll take a look at the list and

make

> decisions (mostly with polls).
>

Okay, I'll do that.

>>> But yes, those research articles would have
>>> to posted on a public (not members-only) site BEFORE Nomination

Season

>>> starts. Not after.

>> Sure. But just so I understand - why is this so? You allow stories
>> written in a language other than English, don't you? This doesn't
>> seem that different to me.
>
> That's been in the rules from the get-go. Any nomination has to be

on a

> public website, otherwise all the MEFA winners would have to sign up

at

> every website to read the nomination. It has to be in a place where

no

> sign-ins are necessary.

Yes, I understand it's an award - but I was wondering why it was
necessary. You have in the FAQ:

Q: Can I submit my German translation of my story?
A: You can nominate it, or any other language story, but whether or
not it will be voted on depends on whether or not there are any voters
who can read those stories.

This same thinking could apply to stories at archives with log-ins.
Just as with foreign language stories, only a subset of the readers
will be able to read it. So perhaps it is not in the best interest of
the author in question. They're restricting the pool of people who
could read it and vote for it. But I don't see how it's fundamentally
different from allowing stories that aren't in English.

I'm not really questioning this policy -- just trying to understand
it.

> And just to have some sort of deadline (there are
> literally tens of thousands of stories in the LOTR fandom), we have

a

> cut-off date.

I see what you're saying here. But would it make more sense to have
the deadline be the *end* of nomination season instead of the
beginning? People shouldn't be checking ballots or reading stories
before this, anyway.

<snip>

> So, Marta, you might want to offer any of those Research Article

authors a

> secondary public site for their articles, if you have the space. It

may

> likely become a category (under Genres).
>

I'll do that. Thanks.

>>> That could be your opinion. Personally, I don't find it AU, but

some might.

>>> Some are easy to spot, I'll grant you. Dwim's LDID, every Mary Sue

fic ever

>>> written.... But some are slippery.

>> With all due respect, it doesn't really matter what an individual
>> reader considers AU. With the category guide we get to define what

is

>> AU for the purposes of this award, and authors get to decide

whether

>> their story fits that category

> Yeah, but defining it can be tough. Look at the trouble we had a

HASA on the

> review guidelines. Let's put up some definitions and then we can

put them

> to a poll.
>
> Here's mine:
>
> An AU story is one that concretely diverges from the source

material. For

> the MEFAs, this means The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of

the

> Rings. Examples of concrete diversions would be "What if"

scenarios, new

> characters, etc.
>

I pretty much agree with this definition, except with the last bit:
new characters. We know from book!canon that Barahir was the grandson
of Faramir; but we do not know that he was the *only* grandchild. So
to give Barahir a sister isn't necessarily AU -- it's filling a gap
but not positively breaking canon. Maybe:

Examples of concrete diversions would be "What if" scenarios, new
characters where existing canon prohibits them (for example, giving
Boromir and Faramir a sister), etc.

I also think you might tweak your definition of canon a little, maybe:

For the MEFAs, this means The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord
of the Rings (for bookverse stories), and Peter Jackson's trilogy of
movies (for movieverse stories).

Besides that, though, I like your definition.

> I'd define Movie-verse as stories that are based primarily on events

in the

> Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films rather than on the books by

Tolkien.

>

That sounds good.

> And for splices and blends, I'd just let the author categorize them
> somewhere else.
>

Or they could run in either the movieverse category or the appropriate
book, if the author feels they are predominately one rather than the
other.

>>> Nobody said we're going with Movie-verse yet. It's still just a

suggestion.

>> As is my suggestion that we change it to "Time/Source". If we

decide

>> not to make movieverse a category, the suggestion is moot.

> Okay, I've warmed up to this, but only if movie-verse makes it as a
> category.

Good. Should I add it to the database?

<snip>

>>> And if it ends up unviable?

>> So be it. If it's not viable, we can always move the stories to the
>> second and third choices just like any other category. And we can
>> rethink about it for 2006. But I really think there are enough
>> stories out there that it probably won't be.

> I'm just a contrary author. I don't like calling any of Trek

stories AU

> either, though especially the later ones had to diverge from the

source

> material because the source material ended the war and split up the

crew

> before I was done with either!

I can't even imagine writing in an evolving canon. At least with
Tolkien, it's all pretty much written and won't be changing... Trek
would be much more tricky.

> I liked to call myself canon-compatible,
> meaning my stories could conceivably fit nebulously in the timeline

between

> seasons or episodes or whatever. To me an AU means something is
> significantly different. Like Gollum not being there, or Bashir did

get

> kicked out of Starfleet. If all the characters act like the

characters and

> all the events of canon happened, then, well it's not AU to me.

I don't think it has to be a significant change -- just a concrete
one, no matter how minor. For example, I've often toyed with the idea
of making Gimli Balin's son instead of Glóin's son, and writing the
Council of Elrond with it Balin coming. For me this is not that
significant of a change; the key point is that Gimli is the son of
*one* of _The Hobbit_) dwarves, not necessarily which one. But it
would still be an AU.

Whereas, for me, Denethor physically abusing his sons is just so
contrary to how I see his character, that I have a hard time with
stories where this plays a role. It feels very OOC to me. (And I know,
that's just my opinion.) But I know that canon never said Denethor
*didn't* abuse them, and so I can't properly call such a story AU.

And from your other email on graduated categories:

*****

> Some categories are harder than others. Poetry would be hard.

Gondor being

> a place, it's easy to come up with smaller places within it or

significant

> people. LOTR was easy with three books. The Hobbit was easy with

three

> places on the journey, Rohan was easy with the three royals, etc.

Some were

> trickier.
>

Is it fair to say that Time/Books and Races/Places are generally
easier than genres? I.e., Rohan is easier than Drama?

<snip>

>> I think this is my fault. For the life of me I cannot remember the
>> discussion that occurred. I'm not saying it *didn't*, just that I

have no

>> recollection of it. Can you perhaps point me to the first message

in that

>> thread and I'll go read it myself?

> Me? No. My memory is likely worse than yours and my aversion to

research

> goes far back before the stress that damaged me.

Fair enough! And given that I now understand the reasoning a lot
better, it's a moot point.

> Hey, I picked an MA
> program without a thesis for a reason! And I'm not envious of Dwim

and all

> her homework at all!

I am a research geek. Always have been, always will be. When I turned
in my undergraduate honors thesis (a 40-page research paper, so
nothing like a masters-level thesis) at the end of my *junior* year, I
think my advisors' eyes grew wider than anyone's I've ever seen. I'm
just that kind of person.

> What I remember is that there were questions in the
> beginning of the Post Mortem about fairness of categories which kind

of blew

> me away. When Shadow975 and I were brainstorming we weren't

thinking of

> fairness. Fairness never came into it. Who knew Gondor would have

so many

> stories and Numenor so few? It was all just brainstorming. But

yes, Gondor

> was mentioned specifically. People thought it had been unfairly

left out

> when it had loads of stories and Numenor and Rohan weren't left out

and they

> didn't have as many combined. Even during Check Ballot season,

seeing so

> many Men/Gondor nominations, I thought hey, we're going to have to

have a

> Gondor category next year. It was more of a lack of foresight than
> anything. So now, with graduated categories, it allows for lack of
> foresight.
>

A very good thing. Remember, not even the very wise can foresee all
ends. ;-)

Marta

-----Original Message-----
From: Marta [mailto:MartaL0712@netscape.net]
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2005 5:27 PM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] Categories... graduated and sub- and new ones, oh my!



Hi Ainae,

>It does. If I were running the awards, I might opt for sub-

subcategories, but who knows? And the bottom line is, as I said
before, it's *not* my awards. Now that I understand the reasoning, I'm
fine with graduated categories and will stop arguing against them.

>Thanks for putitng up with me until I figured out why I didn't

understand.

Thanks for putting up with me in return. I realize I'm a rather strange
being. And this whole brain warp thing I've undergone doesn't help.

>Sure. Their might be less verbose ways to word it (i.e., "MEFA Winner:

Morgoth Bauglir Award (Horror/1st Place)", or "MEFA Winner: 1st Place,
Horror (Morgoth Bauglir Award)", or something like that). But I think
it's up to the individual author to decide exactly how they want to
word it.

Right, you can write it up however you want.

>Can we put this suggestion into an FAQ somewhere, so people know? I

think if we didn't his I'd be satisfied.

Again it feels like setting the bar low to me, but yeah, we can do that.

<snip>

>>But in the end, that's just my opinion. And though I am committing a
>>fair amount of time and energy, in the end they're not *my* awards.
>>If the catchiness is part of what makes it fun for you, then so be

it.

>And I can understand and accept that. I guess the hard part for me is

that I have a hard time knowing what's up for negotiation and what
you're not willing to change. For example, when we have a poll on
something, is it a done deal - whatever the result is, we'll go with
that? Or is it just a tool for you to figure out what people like, so
you can make a better decision? Or is to sometimes one and sometimes
the other?

That's just the way I am. I'm the same with my beta readers. Some things I
write are negotiable. Some are not. When I was writing my BTVS/Angel fic, I
needed contributing authors to help with the characterization and dialogue
(among other things). The author that got the job of characterization and
dialogue had the authorization to rewrite my dialogue so that it still said
what I wrote but sounded more in character in that witty way that BTVS was
written. But there were times when I told him he couldn't change a word.
Because that was the way the inspiration hit me.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I am just that way. Some things are
negotiable. Some are not. The ones that I put up for a poll go the way the
poll goes. Or quite frankly, I'd have a different banner up for one of my
awards (won't say which one. It's not that it's a bad banner but it's not
the one I voted for).

>I guess this is where I get confused. It's like some of the time the

decision is made by the group, and sometimes it's made by you, but I'm
never quite sure which it is. If I were running the awards I would
probably do it all one way or all the other: *either* every issue is
votable and if the group decides to change something it's changed;
nothings off-limits. *Or* everything is decided by Ainae, and the rest
of the group can try to convince her, but there are no issues that are
decided solely by popular vote.

I don’t like to be a dictator, but I also don't want to let these awards get
away from me. If it had all been up to the majority in the beginning, the
MEFAs would have been the Mithrils. I was in on that discussion early and
promoted the comment-based concept. The majority didn't want it, were
afraid of it, or whatever. The majority went in a way I would not. I left
the discussion and the group. Two years later, I decided to create the
MEFAs. The important (to me, I suppose) stuff would be how I wanted. Others
would be negotiable. And since I mostly just borrowed from ASC and then
just tweaked, well, that makes the first year a bit of an experiment. I'd
never been the administrator for the ASC awards though I had been some small
part of the staff. This was an experiment. We're all learning as we go. I
just know some more of it than everyone else.

> 1) Comment-based. A definite.
> 2) There will be gimicky award titles
> 3) Banners will be creative and not overly standardized
> 4) Authors can self-nominate with no recriminations
> 5) Categories based on content.

>Okay. Can you put these in a file somewhere, so we can refer to them

later if we need to? (I'd do it for you, but you might want to add to
it later.)

Okay, I'll put it in the Files sections.

<snip>

>I have a lot of those problems, though probably not on the same level

as you. Try not to worry about me; I am seeing a counselor for it, and
for me, there's a definite reason; a lot of those are symptoms of
depression and PTSD, both of which I've been diagnosed with. So at
least with me I have a name and reason, which helps a lot.

I have some PTSD myself, though I'm not sure how it fits into the aphasia.
Stress is a campaign for me. No one else should have their mind degrade the
way mine has because of stress. I've come to be content with some of it.
(God once told me He was keeping me weak so I could see Him better. And I
now wouldn't trade that for my old brain back.) But it can be annoying and
the aphasia is a bit scary to say the least. (BTW, God said that before the
aphasia.)

>I have been trying to take it easy. I spent much of last night curled

up with _Now We Are Six_ (a book from the Pooh series) and a mug of
hot cocoa. Thanks for the suggestion; it did me a lot of good.

Good for you! I'd like the hot cocoa but I'm dieting again so I can't afford
the calories. I had a hot tea today instead. (Just 3.5 pounds to go to get
back to my 110 goal.)

>Yes, I understand it's an award - but I was wondering why it was

necessary. You have in the FAQ:

>Q: Can I submit my German translation of my story?

A: You can nominate it, or any other language story, but whether or
not it will be voted on depends on whether or not there are any voters
who can read those stories.

>This same thinking could apply to stories at archives with log-ins.

Just as with foreign language stories, only a subset of the readers
will be able to read it. So perhaps it is not in the best interest of
the author in question. They're restricting the pool of people who
could read it and vote for it. But I don't see how it's fundamentally
different from allowing stories that aren't in English.

>I'm not really questioning this policy -- just trying to understand

it.

To me, it's not the same thing. One is about access the other is about
education. Even if someone nominates a Norwegian story, as long as it's
accessible (without login) everyone has access to it. Not everyone can read
it or will bother to do so with an Norwegian-English dictionary at hand.
Allowing stories that are on log-in sites restricts the access to only those
voters with a login. Whether they know the language or not.

> And just to have some sort of deadline (there are
> literally tens of thousands of stories in the LOTR fandom), we have

a

> cut-off date.

>I see what you're saying here. But would it make more sense to have

the deadline be the *end* of nomination season instead of the
beginning? People shouldn't be checking ballots or reading stories
before this, anyway.

I honestly don't think I can say why right now, but the idea of changing
that just doesn't sit right with me. People can be reading stories (and
voting early) all year long! I advocated that through all the seasons last
year. We're always reading. That's where we find stories to nominate. If
you find a story you think is worth nominating, make a list, write your vote
and save it. Then nominate when the time comes and vote with that time
comes.

Anyway, this was decided early on. At this time, I'm just going to add it
to the non-negotiables.

Oh, I just remembered why (and it's still going to be non-negotiable).
Remember that these awards are inspired by (and largely borrowed from) the
Alt.StarTrek.Creative Awards. We only have nominations because we don't
have our own archive. If we had our own archive, every story posted to it
by the deadline would be nominated by default. We don't have that so we
have to mimick it, via open nominations. But the ASC Award year begins the
first day of February and ends the last day of January. We can go with the
beginning because of the gazillions of stories out there we'd be tossing
out. But we can go with an end date. And it's good to have a perfect year.
Start of May to end of April. (Only the poll suggests changing that just
this once. It was May in 2004 just because I just decided to do this in
April. May was the next month. When the schedule came out to end in
October that did turn out to be a problem. I was reading stories and trying
to get my last votes in while waiting for trick-or-treaters at my sister's
house. End of September will be easier on everyone I think.

Anyway, Nomination Season marks the end of the MEFA year. The beginning of
it. That's why it's the deadline. Just like it is for ASC. At the ASC
Virtual Staff Offices we're discussing awards now. Getting the FAQ
straightened out, testing the voting web site and vote-counting software
etc. Come Feb. 1st, we SOS maintainers (status of stories. I'm the SOS
Maintainer for DS9) will compile our lists of stories posted throughout the
year, sort them by category and give them to the Admin who will then make
the check ballots and decide on the voting schedule. So no voting actually
happens until March or April, but the Awards did start on Feb. 1st. So, if
I don't have The Honored done by Jan 31st (it's very highly likely I won't,
even though I started it 8 years ago), I won't have an eligible story.
Unless I decide to go against my usual habbit and post the one chapter I
have and let it run as an incomplete. Got less than a month to decide....

Anyway, that's why we have the deadline. The more I borrow from them, the
less work I have to do. And it IS the inspiration for these awards. The
ASC Awards work. And if it's not broke, why fix it?

Anyway, it's on the non-negotiable list now.

>
> Here's mine:
>
> An AU story is one that concretely diverges from the source

material. For

> the MEFAs, this means The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of

the

> Rings. Examples of concrete diversions would be "What if"

scenarios, new

> characters, etc.
>

>I pretty much agree with this definition, except with the last bit:

new characters. We know from book!canon that Barahir was the grandson
of Faramir; but we do not know that he was the *only* grandchild. So
to give Barahir a sister isn't necessarily AU -- it's filling a gap
but not positively breaking canon.

Good point.

>Maybe:

>Examples of concrete diversions would be "What if" scenarios, new

characters where existing canon prohibits them (for example, giving
Boromir and Faramir a sister), etc.

Good addition. I like that.

>I also think you might tweak your definition of canon a little, maybe:

>For the MEFAs, this means The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord

of the Rings (for bookverse stories), and Peter Jackson's trilogy of
movies (for movieverse stories).

>Besides that, though, I like your definition.

Okay, any objections to these? Marta, can you put them in a separate post
so they're not buried in here? I really need to finish this post and get to
my chores. It's trash dady tomorrow and I have 3 cat boxes to clean. Yay,
aren't you jealous?

> I'd define Movie-verse as stories that are based primarily on events

in the

> Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings films rather than on the books by

Tolkien.

>

>That sounds good.

> And for splices and blends, I'd just let the author categorize them
> somewhere else.
>

>Or they could run in either the movieverse category or the appropriate

book, if the author feels they are predominately one rather than the
other.

Exactly.

> Okay, I've warmed up to this, but only if movie-verse makes it as a
> category.

>Good. Should I add it to the database?

There's no real place for it. It's not a category. I think we can remember
this one.

>I can't even imagine writing in an evolving canon. At least with

Tolkien, it's all pretty much written and won't be changing... Trek
would be much more tricky.

It worked for a few years, but then they did something really drastic and
ended the war.... And the series. Ah well.

>I don't think it has to be a significant change -- just a concrete

one, no matter how minor. For example, I've often toyed with the idea
of making Gimli Balin's son instead of Glóin's son, and writing the
Council of Elrond with it Balin coming. For me this is not that
significant of a change; the key point is that Gimli is the son of
*one* of _The Hobbit_) dwarves, not necessarily which one. But it
would still be an AU.

Right, that's why my first story, though written as canon-compatible, became
AU. They finally gave Bashir a back story and it wasn’t the one I'd written
for him. I still count that story as part of the history of my other
stories though, except that I ignore the part about his family history and
go with the canon one now.

>Whereas, for me, Denethor physically abusing his sons is just so

contrary to how I see his character, that I have a hard time with
stories where this plays a role. It feels very OOC to me. (And I know,
that's just my opinion.) But I know that canon never said Denethor
*didn't* abuse them, and so I can't properly call such a story AU.

Yep. Even if it seems OC, it's still in the realm of possibility, so it's
not a concrete change.

>And from your other email on graduated categories:

*****

Re: award names

>Is it fair to say that Time/Books and Races/Places are generally

easier than genres? I.e., Rohan is easier than Drama?

Yes and no. When the category, like LOTR, offers up three obvious titles,
it's easy. The Silm wasn't as easy. It wasn't really hard though. But for
the genres, it wasn't hard either. Look at Crossovers. The actors of the
three hunters had all done other movies.... For Drama we picked three angsty
characters. For Humor, we tried for three funny characters, etc. Romance
was the three main Elf-Man romances.

>I am a research geek. Always have been, always will be. When I turned

in my undergraduate honors thesis (a 40-page research paper, so
nothing like a masters-level thesis) at the end of my *junior* year, I
think my advisors' eyes grew wider than anyone's I've ever seen. I'm
just that kind of person.

Hmmm...you do research for fun? That could prove useful.....

> It was more of a lack of foresight than
> anything. So now, with graduated categories, it allows for lack of
> foresight.
>

>A very good thing. Remember, not even the very wise can foresee all

ends. ;-)

Ah that does make me feel better! ;-)

Off to those cat boxes.

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com

Hi Ainae,

> >Thanks for putitng up with me until I figured out why I didn't
>> understand.

> Thanks for putting up with me in return.

You're welcome.

> I realize I'm a rather strange
> being.

Welcome to the fandom! 3'6" hairy-footed hole-dwellers... walking
trees... things that go "gollum"... I think we both fit right in. ;-)

> And this whole brain warp thing I've undergone doesn't help.
>

No, it really doesn't. Which is why I try to read everything at
least two or three times before forming an opinion. Of course,
sometimes my own stuff requires the same.

<snip award titles>

> >Can we put this suggestion into an FAQ somewhere, so people know?

I

> > think if we didn't his I'd be satisfied.
>
> Again it feels like setting the bar low to me, but yeah, we can do

that.

>

You may be right... but I took one major lesson away from my time
admining at a major fanfic archive and moderating for several Yahoo
groups: "Make it idiot-proof, and they'll build a better idiot."
What I mean is, it may seem like setting the bar low to you and me,
but the chances are pretty good that it could cause confusion or
problems for someone. In my experience it's better to spell things
like this out, and hope it wasn't really necessary.

> <snip>
> >And I can understand and accept that. I guess the hard part for

me is

>> that I have a hard time knowing what's up for negotiation and

what

>> you're not willing to change. For example, when we have a poll on
>> something, is it a done deal - whatever the result is, we'll go

with

>> that? Or is it just a tool for you to figure out what people

like, so

>> you can make a better decision? Or is to sometimes one and

sometimes

>> the other?
>
> That's just the way I am. I'm the same with my beta readers. Some

things I

> write are negotiable. Some are not.

<snip examples -- but boy, you do write in a lot of different
fandoms!>

> Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I am just that way. Some

things are

> negotiable. Some are not. The ones that I put up for a poll go

the way the

> poll goes.

Okay, but the relationship between beta and author or between co-
authors is much more intimate than what we're dealing with here.
Believe me, I know! I am part of a beta circle with four other
writers, so I am very familiar with that kind of relationship. But
this means that when I suggest changes to the people I beta, I know
what kind of suggestions they're receptive to and they have a pretty
good idea of what exactly I mean.

Whereas here, I don't intrinsically know what's negotiable and
what's not negotiable. The more I talk to you about these awards the
more I get to see where you're coming from. But it's still a work-in-
progress of sorts.

I don't think anything needs to be done about this (or even *can*
be) -- I'm just pointing this out so we're both aware of the
potential difficulty.

<snip>

> >Yes, I understand it's an award - but I was wondering why it was
>> necessary. You have in the FAQ:
>
> >Q: Can I submit my German translation of my story?
>> A: You can nominate it, or any other language story, but whether

or

>> not it will be voted on depends on whether or not there are any

voters

>> who can read those stories.
>
> >This same thinking could apply to stories at archives with log-

ins.

>> Just as with foreign language stories, only a subset of the

readers

>> will be able to read it. So perhaps it is not in the best

interest of

>> the author in question. They're restricting the pool of people

who

>> could read it and vote for it. But I don't see how it's

fundamentally

>> different from allowing stories that aren't in English.
>
> >I'm not really questioning this policy -- just trying to

understand

>> it.

> To me, it's not the same thing. One is about access the other is

about

> education. Even if someone nominates a Norwegian story, as long

as it's

> accessible (without login) everyone has access to it. Not

everyone can read

> it or will bother to do so with an Norwegian-English dictionary at

hand.

> Allowing stories that are on log-in sites restricts the access to

only those

> voters with a login. Whether they know the language or not.
>

Okay, I think I can see what you're saying. Personally, I think most
people are much more likely to join an archive than learn a foreign
language to read a story, but I do see the distinction you're
drawing.

[moving deadline for public posting to end of voting season]

> Oh, I just remembered why (and it's still going to be non-

negotiable).

> Remember that these awards are inspired by (and largely borrowed

from) the

> Alt.StarTrek.Creative Awards. We only have nominations because we

don't

> have our own archive. If we had our own archive, every story

posted to it

> by the deadline would be nominated by default. We don't have that

so we

> have to mimick it, via open nominations. But the ASC Award year

begins the

> first day of February and ends the last day of January. We can go

with the

> beginning because of the gazillions of stories out there we'd be

tossing

> out. But we can go with an end date.

I understand why have to have an end date; for me the question is
why it has to be the *beginning* of nominations season.

Since we're having a nomination *season* (instead of one day where
everyone has to post all their nominations together), it seems to me
logical that people are getting their nominations together during
that season. Of course you can start getting those nominations
together beforehand, just like you can vote early - but the whole
concept of a season suggests you don't *have* to.

Now, for me (since I do most of my reading at HASA) one key
component of getting my nominations together is making sure the
piece is publicly accessible. Usually this is just a matter of
hunting down the appropriate link, but if it *isn't* available, it
seems logically like this would be the time to get that problem
resolved. It's kind of a mixed message - "You have nomination season
to get your nominations in, but you should really have all that
organized beforehand so you can make sure it's all publicly
accessible."

I'm sorry if I'm going on about something that's non-negotiable. I
understand the need for a deadline, and I understand the value of
borrowing from the ASCs... but like you've admitted, the ASCs are
their own archive, so things work differently for them.

Anyway, that's my $.02 on this matter.

> > Here's mine:
> >
> > An AU story is one that concretely diverges from the source
> material. For
> > the MEFAs, this means The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord

of

> the
> > Rings. Examples of concrete diversions would be "What if"
> scenarios, new
> > characters, etc.
> >
>
> >I pretty much agree with this definition, except with the last

bit:

> new characters. We know from book!canon that Barahir was the

grandson

> of Faramir; but we do not know that he was the *only* grandchild.

So

> to give Barahir a sister isn't necessarily AU -- it's filling a

gap

> but not positively breaking canon.
>
> Good point.
>
> >Maybe:
>
> >Examples of concrete diversions would be "What if" scenarios, new
> characters where existing canon prohibits them (for example,

giving

> Boromir and Faramir a sister), etc.
>
> Good addition. I like that.
>
> >I also think you might tweak your definition of canon a little,

maybe:

>
> >For the MEFAs, this means The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The

Lord

> of the Rings (for bookverse stories), and Peter Jackson's trilogy

of

> movies (for movieverse stories).
>
> >Besides that, though, I like your definition.
>
> Okay, any objections to these? Marta, can you put them in a

separate post

> so they're not buried in here?

Good idea. I'll do that.

<snip>

> >I am a research geek. Always have been, always will be. When I

turned

> in my undergraduate honors thesis (a 40-page research paper, so
> nothing like a masters-level thesis) at the end of my *junior*

year, I

> think my advisors' eyes grew wider than anyone's I've ever seen.

I'm

> just that kind of person.
>
> Hmmm...you do research for fun? That could prove useful.....
>

*sigh* I really am a hobbit at heart you know... "they liked to have
books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and
square with no contradictions." If the topic doesn't interest me,
then I'm not likely to put in the legwork, but yes, I do do interest
for its own sake.

(Btw, the quote above? I pulled it from an essay I'm writing
attempting to collect all quotes describing hobbits in one place.
That should give you a clue how far this research tendency goes.)

Marta