My own little slice of wank... ::wipes away tear::
Long time commenter, first time wanker (ha, ha) honestly, I didn't write this to start wank, though I did know that it might, which it did... but mostly on my part.

This is more Henneth-Annun wank! It all started with me posting a comment in their guest book, replies to me are in italics:

Found this site through Fandom_Wank oddly enough. Thought I'd take a look. The site is great, with some good stories, but one thing I did notice was, story that have won awards on here... aren't all that great. Almost all of the stories I've seen on here so far (which, granted is not many) have had some grammar/spelling mistakes that even I could see. Now, normally, I could care less, the site is nice and well done. But some of these stories have won awards, and also, the people who run this site have rather a high opinion of it. In the ‘Who We Are” section you said: “We were wishing that there was one location on the Web where we could find well-written, imaginative, engaging JRRT fan fiction without encountering large amounts of frivolous material and distracting advertising found at commercial fiction posting sites.” Now, I’m assuming that means that you have made this site to (try and) fit those wishes, which really is a big ask I understand why you’re proud of the site. But... If you're going to toot your own horn, please... make sure you have the right to do so first.

Jess,

As a member of Henneth-Annûn and an author featured in the archive, I was intrigued and puzzled by your message in the guestbook.
Were spelling/grammar errors the only complaint you had with the stories that you read? If so, I would advise you to try to be a little less harsh, since you seemed to me to be overly hasty to condemn the entire archive, especially since you yourself admitted that you had not read many stories. Now, persistent grammatical errors will get my goat as soon as the next reader's, but if you let a mistake here and there (after all, we *are* only human here at HA - as much as some of us would like to be otherwise!) get you all worked up, then you won't be doing much reading. Also, if you were so put off by the grammatical ineptitude that you encountered, then you might have run a closer eye over your own review before submitting it.
And I must confess that your high-handed attitude regarding the "mission statement" grated on me a bit. If you know of an archive out there that better achieves what our stated goal is, would you please point me to it? I would love to find Henneth Annûn's superior, as that would be an extraordinary archive indeed.

Yours,
Bethany (Aerlinnel)


Were spelling/grammar errors the only complaint you had with the stories that you read?

No.

Now, persistent grammatical errors will get my goat as soon as the next reader's, but if you let a mistake here and there (after all, we *are* only human here at HA - as much as some of us would like to be otherwise!) get you all worked up, then you won't be doing much reading. Also, if you were so put off by the grammatical ineptitude that you encountered, then you might have run a closer eye over your own review before submitting it.

Sorry for any errors that were in my post, I'm sure. Yes, I understand that you're only human. But if you preach such HIGH STANDARDS then I'd assume that you'd keep all the work on the site to those HIGH STANDARDS or stop telling everyone what HIGH STANDARDS you have. You know, 'cause you have such HIGH STANDARDS!

(Yes, much wankery on my part here.)

And then this, which I honestly found cool XP: Hi Jess,

Thanks for your comments in the HASA guestbook. I used
to be an admin there and am still a member, so I have
a fairly proprietary interest in the place.

One minor point: the Mithril Awards were actually run
by another group of fans. Some of the winning stories
are posted on HASA, some aren't. If you want to see
all of them, I believe the URL is
www.viragene.com/tolkien.

What I really wanted to ask you is, when did we get
mentioned on Fandom_wank? I've recently become a
convert, and love the site, but all of the
LOTR-related postings I've seen were about RPS and/or
the DomLijah brouhaha. I'd love to know just what form
of our wanking came to their notice! ;-)

Thanks again for visiting and for taking the time to
comment,

Forodwaith

Yay, a fellow wanker (and not in the bad way).