Innumerable Stars 2017!

[elwinfortuna]

My dear people, it's nearly that time again!

The schedule for 2017 looks like this:

Nominations Open: Saturday, 15 July 2017, 3:00 PM UTC  Sunday, 16 July 2017, 3:00 PM UTC
Nominations Close: Saturday, 29 July 2017, 3:00 PM UTC  Sunday 30 July 2017, 3:00 UTC
Sign-ups Open: Saturday, 29 July 2017, 11:59 PM UTC  Sunday, 30 July 11:59 PM UTC
Sign-ups Close: Monday, 14 August 2017, 3:00 PM UTC
Assignments Out: Tuesday, 15 August 2017, 3:00 PM UTC
Assignments Due: Sunday, 08 October 2017, 3:00 PM UTC
Works Revealed: Sunday, 15 October 2017, 3:00 PM UTC
Authors Revealed: Sunday, 22 October 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

This time around, I'm going to propose some changes from last year. Let me know what you think!

1. Change from nominating single characters to relationships -- both romantic/sexual (/) and friendship/family/platonic (&).

2. Adding several more fandoms! The fandom list at the moment looks like this:

Born of Hope (2009)
The Fall of Arthur - J. R. R. Tolkien
Farmer Giles of Ham - J.R.R. Tolkien
The Father Christmas Letters - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Hunt for Gollum (2009)
Leaf by Niggle - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings Online
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Video Game)
Mr. Bliss - J. R. R. Tolkien
Roverandom - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Smith of Wootton Major - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Story of Kullervo - J. R. R. Tolkien

3. I'm considering breaking The Silmarillion up into multiple separate 'fandoms' -- such as The Children of Húrin and Beren and Lúthien. However, this seems really complicated and I'm not sure how to divide it, so any assistance would be really welcomed. Also, if this would encourage people to participate -- I know that a lot of people prefer one part of The Silmarillion over other parts, or only want fanfic about Númenor or something, so if you'd be into that, let me know!

Please comment if you might be participating, even if only to say that you are fine with the changes! I'd really appreciate it, there's nothing worse than feeling like you're talking into the Void with only Morgoth as your audience! :D


ETA: I've had to change the date for opening nominations due to a family emergency. 

Comments

[greatandgrey]

Eeeek, yay! All those fandoms! <3

One question: if we wanted to nominate an entire group, like the Fellowship of the Ring or the Istari, can we nominate them like that or do we need to list each name? :) And what if our hearts are set on just an individual character? Can we nominate "Character & none"?

As for dividing the Silm, I'm not entirely sure about the best way of doing it. A person who's mostly interested in creating fanworks about Númenor will likely to get matched to someone who requested Númenor and only focus on that part of their sign up, so I think it'll just work itself out. :) But if you're looking for ideas: recently everywoman utilized Canon Helpers as a way for people to specify which version of canon they wanted a character from a megafandom. So you would pick the fandom, pick the character, then pick the canon helper the specify which version of the character you wanted. We could do it that way, although some participants from Everywoman did feel the process was a bit complicated. :)

[elwinfortuna]

I've just tried adding 'The Fellowship of the Ring' to the tagset as a relationship, and it makes the tag come out as 'The Fellowship of the Ring - Relationship' which feels a bit strange. Also I think I'd be worried about the implications of nominating groups under a single name -- I'd theoretically be fine with a group of people that was defined, like the Fellowship or the Istari, but I don't want people nominating 'The Noldor' or 'Southrons' so probably best to keep it to names only. Obviously original characters would be fine, and I think if someone really wants just an individual character doing stuff on their own, the formulation 'Character & none' is a good compromise.

I'll need to look into canon helpers! Another thing I've been trying to figure out is if I can do 'worldbuilding' tags, so maybe the solution is that rather than dividing the Silm.

[greatandgrey]

Ah, okay! :) Makes sense, so I'll nominate those groups in an & format!

And yup! :) For the Silmarillion, we had these canon helpers:

Akallabêth
The Children of Húrin
The History of Middle-earth
The Silmarillion
Unfinished Tales

I'm interested in this worldbuilding idea very much! :D

[elwinfortuna]

I think I've figured it out. We'll be using the character field to nominate people (as groups, this can be platonic, romantic, or a combination, or single characters), and the relationship tags for our worldbuilding tags!

[independence1776]

I'm not sure if I'm going to participate or not yet. That said, I am extremely happy to see reveals on a Sunday because I'm never on the computer Saturday for religious reasons.

1. If at all possible, I would like to have both single character noms and relationship noms. There's some characters I'm happy recieving fic about by themselves and others I want to see interactions with (and overlap between the two groups, of course). The "character & none" would be a good compromise, I think, as long as it was clear "none" isn't a substitute for "any." Which I suppose "character & any" could be another option.

1a. How would nominating an Avarin character best be done? Both "The Avari" and "Avar|Avari" are canonical.

2. The fandoms look great to me.

3. I would not like the Silm to be subdivided. If people nominate based on relationship and/or character, I don't see the point because they'll get matched on that stuff. Also, what if someone hasn't read the expanded books but wants to read or write something with the characters as they are in the Silm?

A thing that isn't related to the above: I don't remember what it was like last year, but would we have to use the piped tags in nominations and the tagset? Because I think they are unreadable and I end up having to copy/paste the tagset into a word processor just so I can strip out the dual names and then decide what I want.

[zdenka]

+1 for not liking the piped tags and finding them very hard to read.

[elwinfortuna]

I agree, the piped tags are ridiculous, let us not use them! :D

[zdenka]

I am so happy to hear you say that. :D

[elwinfortuna]

1. Cool, I think 'Character & none' is the way to go. I'll make sure and specify that any 'character & none' requests don't mean 'character & any' -- those can be nominated separately if people want them.

1a. How about 'Original Avarin Character?' It doesn't matter if they are canonical for tagset purposes.

2. Cool!

3. Fair point! But what about perhaps a separate fandom for 'Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth' then?

I am 100% happy about not using the piped tags! I'll make sure as I approve nominations that they are in the form as they were nominated rather than the 'canonical' form.

[independence1776]

1. Good. Yay. Um, yeah. You get what I mean.

1a. Works for me!

3. I'm not sure how that would work out, given that most people use HoME stuff in their fics even if it's just a detail or two. Or me, using the round world stuff and ignoring almost everything else. That's especially relevant because Dawn just posted a "who uses what source?" post from her survey data; 73% of Silmficcers use UT/HoME: http://themidhavens.net/heretic_loremaster/2017/07/tolkien-fan-fiction-sources/

ETA: On second thought, go for the UT/HoME separation. 27% is still a significant amount and it's easy enough to say in the letter that HoME material is okay, while allowing Silm-only people a chance to get what they want.

YES!

[elwinfortuna]

3. I think I'm finding that there's not really any way to divide it up cleanly. It would be nice to have Children of Húrin and Beren and Lúthien as their own things, but it just doesn't work. So Silm as one 'fandom' it is!

I think I'm also going to have a 'Crossover Fandom' option, for people who want their Tauriel/Arwen and their Nerdanel/Éowyn (I mean, someone might!) :D

[independence1776]

I think Crossover Fandom would be a great idea!

I like the new version of nominations-- the group and indivual character. But I have no idea what worldbuilding tags mean; could you please explain?

[elwinfortuna]

'Worldbuilding' means coming up with detailed information about science or geography or culture in fictional worlds.

Earlier this year, there was the Worldbuilding Exchange, which I've been very much inspired by. Essentially, when we do our nominations, we will also be able to nominate sort of 'meta' tags like 'Gender and sexuality in Númenor' or 'Laws and Customs of the Eldar.'

For Innumerable Stars, these tags will be optional, but it will allow people to specify if they'd like to receive stories based in or including particular elements, thus allowing the author to do some worldbuilding that the recip would like to see. For instance, say you've always wondered about currency used in the First Age, or how Cuiviénen was as a place to live, or any other details about Middle-earth that Tolkien didn't write. You can then nominate and request these, and your author can, if they wish, write a story that incorporates them.

[independence1776]

I know what worldbuilding is; I just didn't know what worldbuilding tags are. Over the years, I've learned to not assume the obvious when it comes to fandom terminology and I honestly wasn't sure whether you were using them to designate worldbuilding elements or something else entirely.

Thank you for explaining! That could a lot of fun.

[zdenka]

I'm excited for this!

1. I don't personally like the proposed change from single character focused to relationships. There are already more relationship-focused exchanges than I have time to do (including GenEx for & relationships), and for myself, my fandom love is more character focused. I like the flexibility of being able to request a character by himself or gen with family members/friends/enemies or in a ship, because any of those would make me happy. I thought the gen/pairing category tags worked all right last year, though I don't know what it was like from a mod/matching perspective.

2. The new fandoms look good!

3. I don't personally feel the need for it? I found Everywoman's canon helpers more confusing than helpful. I feel like selecting character (or relationships, if you do it that way) already indicates what part of canon you want? And if someone strongly wants something set in a specific place and time, then they can always explain in prompts or optional details. But maybe it's that I have a hard time imagining how it would work -- if there are people who would find a division helpful, I'd be curious to know what kind of requests or offers would be made easier by that. :) Worldbuilding tags sounds like it could open some cool possibilities, though.

Morgoth would be the worst exchange participant. He'd probably send Ungoliant to eat the tag set.

[elwinfortuna]

1. Sounds like the ability to nominate 'Character & none' should be a good compromise there. I did get quite a few people last year preferring relationship tags to character ones, so hopefully this will be the best of both worlds.

2. Yay!

3. If I can figure out how to do them, worldbuilding tags are sounding like the way to go, then.

[zdenka]

I understand that you're trying to resolve different participants' conflicting wishes, but having 'Character & none' isn't really the same as having character-based matching (if I'm understanding correctly). It's a very awkward phrasing, and it sounds like the writer isn't allowed to include any other characters in the story, which is the opposite of what I want. With character matching, I like being able to include a variety of options/prompts for a character in one request, whether it's a character study, gen relationships, or ships. I like being able to say "something with this character and anyone in her family would make me happy" or "any femslash ship for this character" without being limited to only the specific things that were nominated, or "I like these two characters both as a ship and a gen relationship." There's just a lot more flexibility with character matching, from my perspective.

I like lynndyre's suggestion below of having 'Character' or 'group: Character A & Character B.' If the issue is that people really want to match on specific ships, then you could even put gen vs. ship option in the groups, like 'group: Character A/Character B.' It also avoids the confusing 'Character & none' phrasing.

As I said above, there are so many relationship-based exchanges already, and they have high levels of Tolkien fandom participation. It wouldn't make me not do the exchange, but I'd be a little disappointed if this one switched to relationship matching also.

[elwinfortuna]

I think I've worked out how to do it, so we will be able to use the character field to nominate both individual characters and relationships (as groups)! So hopefully that will work both for people who want to write/read about specific characters and those who are primarily interested in relationships.

And it means we can use the relationships field in the tagset for worldbuilding tags!

[zdenka]

Yay, that's great! And I might use some of the relationship/group tags myself, as long as they're there -- I just didn't want to lose the possibility of character matching too.

[crantz]

Do you mean single AND relationships? I'm very in favour of that.

[elwinfortuna]

Effectively, yes, I think that's what it would work out to.

[crantz]

Works for me!

[lynndyre]

I kinda liked being able to request characters, actually.

We could go with using the character field, not the relationship one, and then allowing people to nominate both single characters and "group: Character A & Character B" as well? That would cover the other question about the Fellowship, too, because that can be nominated in the character field as "group: Fellowship of the Ring".


I think the Silmarillion is fine as one canon.

[lynndyre]

Actually, using the character field might help stop relationship noms from defaulting to the horrible piped tags, as well.

[elwinfortuna]

*fingers crossed*

[elwinfortuna]

Sorry to take so long to get back to you -- I wanted to test out your suggestion on the tagset and see if it would work.

It does, I'm pleased to say!

So I think it's going to work to nominate very inclusively, any of these:

Group: Fëanor/Nerdanel & Maedhros
Group: Nerdanel & Anairë & Eärwen
Group: Aragorn/Arwen
Group: The Fellowship of the Ring
Nerdanel (as a single character)

So I'm happy to use the character field for characters & relationships (as groups), and we can use the relationship field for worldbuilding tags!

[lynndyre]

Yaaaay! I'm glad it works. ^.^

What are the worldbuilding tags going to be?

[elwinfortuna]

I've been inspired by the Worldbuilding Exchange! Essentially, when we do our nominations, we will also be able to nominate sort of 'meta' tags like 'Gender and sexuality in Númenor' or 'Laws and Customs of the Eldar.'

For Innumerable Stars, these tags will be optional, but it will allow people to specify if they'd like to receive stories based in or including particular elements, thus allowing the author to do some worldbuilding that the recip would like to see. For instance, say you've always wondered about currency used in the First Age, or how Cuiviénen was as a place to live, or any other details about Middle-earth that Tolkien didn't write. You can then nominate and request these, and your author can, if they wish, write a story that incorporates them.

[maitimiel]

I agree with the decisions you guys seem to have made in the comments, and will defnitely be participating!

<3