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Chuk

Chuk

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Yeah, there was some weird formatting glitch sometime fairly recently I guess. I had to go back through all my stories post by post and fix 'em up. Thankfully all it took was hitting 'edit' and then 'update'. I didn't actually have to do anything to the text. It retained it's original formatting there, and was just displaying wrong or something.

21-Jun-2013 14:53:00

Xereva

Xereva

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Another two-post update. Nothing incredible this time, I don't think. Just moving the plot along slightly, making it up as I go. I literally have nothing planned except the general elements I want to explore, so I hope this is still making sense to everyone.

22-Jun-2013 05:04:22

Poller5
Dec Member 2023

Poller5

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Ahh, Wolfeh. I missed out on TIGA in its first iteration, but when he brought it back those many years later I was the first to apply - and to be accepted. I'm not sure any accomplishment of mine on these forums has ever been so widely congratulated.

Incidentally, while what little Latin I have is admittedly green, your phrase requiescant in aeturnum passus strikes me as rather jumbled, using a (seemingly) out of place plural verb form and a word in passus that, even were it in the right case, rather makes the phrase unintelligible.

19-Dec-2013 09:58:37

Xereva

Xereva

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Poller5 said :


Incidentally, while what little Latin I have is admittedly green, your phrase requiescant in aeturnum passus strikes me as rather jumbled, using a (seemingly) out of place plural verb form and a word in passus that, even were it in the right case, rather makes the phrase unintelligible.

Caught me. Just used Google Translate. =P

Now when I put the phrase in it gives me a completely different meaning than before; I wanted something along the lines of 'rest in eternal pain,' or something like that, and when I put 'pain' in first it gave me 'passus,' and now it's giving me 'dolor'...

TIGA was always an anomaly among the other forum guilds, for me and others. Having Wolfeh at its head assured that, of course, but the fact that he was so demanding—within the constraints of the talent that was then available, of course; it pains me that anyone ever thought my early work was good—meant that people would just be flat-out rejected rather than just given a lower rank. If you were in, you were good , and that was the end of it. When people still knew about it, if you said you were in TIGA... that was something to respect.

After I experimented with guilds a bit myself I realized how important it is to set firm lower limits, to give people something to work toward. It took me a long time to have the wherewithal to reject people outright; I never wanted to turn people away, I wanted everyone to have a part. But I think it was partly TIGA that inspired me to do so, because the whole 'weakest link' thing... it holds true, it really does. And you want even the lowest members to at least have a chunk of potential before accepting them.

Of course, I also liked TIGA because Wolfeh and I both used the same brand of bloody violent retribution against any that questioned us. I feel the need to apologize, quite frequently, for my younger self.

19-Dec-2013 18:13:43 - Last edited on 19-Dec-2013 18:13:57 by Xereva

The Level

The Level

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Xereva said :

But I think it was partly TIGA that inspired me to do so, because the whole 'weakest link' thing... it holds true, it really does. And you want even the lowest members to at least have a chunk of potential before accepting them.

For TIGA sure, but I believe that TIGA's purpose was directly at odds with that of the forum. I have always believed that the forum isn't a place where people go to showcase their beautiful works of art, but rather to learn how to make beautiful works of art. Chuk and I, and many others I'm sure, learned to write on these forums, and we didn't do it by having a guild tell us "you're not talented enough." That's why tiered guilds were much more popular than get in or go home guilds, because you could see your own progress and showcase it.

Though to be sure, being told you're in the upper echelon of writing skill is quite intoxicating.

19-Dec-2013 18:27:51

Xereva

Xereva

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You're right, really. I have a bit of a skewed view of guilds because I went through the ranks so fast, and undeservedly at that—I think that the first day I posted my story I hit Gold in The Golden Pen, and by the end of that summer I was in TAL, TIGA, and about three others whose names I don't even remember. Honestly the top ranked stories then are equivalent to what today I view as 'acceptable' or 'having potential.'

I think there's a place for honest judgment, is what I'm trying to get at, I think. I agree with all your points, I'm just trying to figure out where my own views fit in. Because tiered guilds do indeed let you showcase your progress, and the feeling of advancing is wonderful, it makes you want to strive. Once you reach the top there isn't really the same impetus. But at the same time, it also helps to have an upper bound as well as a lower one, someone like Wolfeh that is the Supreme Arbiter of Goodness who you so desperately want to impress. Now, I'm not saying that he was justified in being that, because like I said, ranks were inflated, a long time ago. But theoretically, having that top tier is nice, because it's also something to work toward, and—again, theoretically—if that person is really judging truthfully, you know that when you've reached that tier you've started to create something really worthwhile.

I came to not like the guild system as a whole, in the end, though I do miss it—there are some guilds that focus on getting better, on community activity, but ranking was and is always the core of it, medals to pin on your chest to show off. Which is why I restarted the Academy in the summer, though of course that didn't last long.

Anyhow. I don't know what I believe, is the core of it. I love teaching people to get better, and I know that I, personally, have to be absolutely honest about how good someone is if they ask. But there are many ways to go about it, and I don't know that they, at least, can be ranked.

19-Dec-2013 19:10:49

The Level

The Level

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All this talk of the "days of old" has me wondering why some people always come back to this place, while others disappear and never return even for a visit. I'm not even sure what it is for me, personally. Maybe I want to actually finish a story here before I leave for good.

19-Dec-2013 19:31:32

Xereva

Xereva

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I'm not entirely why I return, myself. So few of the people I remember from the very very first days are around, so I don't think it's the company—I was a Golden Pen diehard, and that's who I remember, mostly. And that forum went offsite around the time I first got here, and now it's kind of a ghost town, so. I'm not sure if it's just nostalgia, or if I feel like I still have an obligation to the community, or what.

What's stranger is that I seem to be on a schedule: I'll always come back during what would be winter intercession and summer break if I were still in college. And then I'll drop off the radar, and then I'll come back. If I had the motivation to run The Academy still, with the intent to maintain it for the long haul, perhaps I could inspire some more activity in the community, but I'd probably just leave it behind again, as before.

19-Dec-2013 19:40:18

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