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Admin Post: Cultus Dispatches: Tolkien Fanfiction and Demographics
Oct. 1st, 2022 12:40 pm![[admin post]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/admin_post.png){kind=small}
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silwritersguild
In a lot of communities, you can get a sense of who is present just by looking around yourself. In online communities—especially online fan communities, where pseudonymity is a cultural norm—it can be harder to know just who you share your online spaces with.
This month's Cultus Dispatches column looks at Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data from 2015 and 2020 to answer that question: Just who is in this fandom? Who is present? Who is missing? And why are some groups of people heavily represented in the fandom while others are barely present or absent altogether?
Remember that Cultus Dispatches is always open to contributions! If you'd like to share a piece of fandom history, consider writing an article for the Cultus column.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-01 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-01 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-01 10:32 pm (UTC)That's certainly something to put on your résumé if you're switching careers and looking for something in data analysis.
spend an evening crunching numbers in a spreadsheet.
You should ask Vairë or whoever other Vala and Valië to pay you for it. Make money from the gods' pockets, get rich, retreat to the forest, enjoy life, and so forth
no subject
Date: 2022-10-04 01:18 am (UTC)Alas, my data work (like the tech stuff I do) is but a hobby. I sometimes dream of switching to doing it as work. I'm a teacher now, and I love my work, but it's also exhausting and requires grueling hours. I look at people in tech jobs, and they can work from home and get paid worth their skills and have access to things like bathroom breaks. But I think it's a "grass is always greener" scenario, and I expect doing either as work would make them no fun ... and I'd miss teaching and my students roughly two days in, I expect!
no subject
Date: 2022-10-05 12:21 am (UTC)School tutor here, there are four teachers in my circles (including two closer friends), they try to convince me to become one (they say I'd be good--I put credits on the rigorous training with the Red Cross I had when I was a teenager, I worked as a swimming teacher for two years), but nah. I wish it was a valued profession where I live. Unfortunately, teachers have mediocre working conditions because the government doens't care, are underpaid and overworked. It's ridiculous. There can't be any profession without teachers and professors. I wish we'd follow the example of countries where teachers are held in high esteem and respected by the students, parents and school boards.
You being a teacher would explain your people management skills :D (and people's emotions management as well) + your desire to build a community (you're the SWG CEO, afterall).
and I'd miss teaching and my students roughly two days in, I expect!
Bring them with you into the woods!
no subject
Date: 2022-10-05 01:37 am (UTC)Of course, the pay isn't all, and honestly, I'm more frustrated by the idea that I should donate my time to my job, which I don't see being expected of other [male-dominated] professions where practitioners have similar levels of education and experience to me. But seeing my work as that of a skilled professional foremost and not a nurturer and caregiver (of which I am neither) is an uphill battle.
I actually became a teacher because of fandom, but being a teacher has certainly helped me in my "CEO role" in fandom for sure! :D
no subject
Date: 2022-10-07 04:30 pm (UTC)There are shared issues here as well. Education is a provincial jurisdiction and our government is a diarrhea about it (and then, they have the guts to wonder why teachers either move to another province to practice their profession (how insane that they would want better working conditions!) or resign and change careers (how insane that they would want better pay and schedules!)). I watched a couple of youtube videos by ex-teachers from the US. It's sadly all too relatable. The differences I noticed, however, were that here, if students misbehave, they will be disciplined, school is not a 'free-for-all', although it's slowly turning like it because classgroups are bigger with more students with special needs, but less and less specialists to take care of those students. We have a major infrastructure problem: contaminated water, insulation, heating and mold issues. My friend had mold in her classroom. When she reported it, she was told to open the windows--air is natural ventilation, after all. In their flawless logic, they forgot that it was -20°C outside.
I tutor mostly students from the private sector, I hear less of building issues, but they have similar issues to the public sector: shortage of teachers, some classes have no teachers at all (the 2022-2023 scored the year with the most teacherless (a word I totes made up) classes).
But seeing my work as that of a skilled professional foremost and not a nurturer and caregiver (of which I am neither) is an uphill battle.
Yes, that's a cultural issue as well. During my grandparents' time, on either side of the ocean (half of my family is from Western Europe), students were expected to be well behaved. Raising children was first and foremost the parents' duty. Now, eh. With all the stories I hear...
However, it's too easy to make babies (don't need brains to copulate, cells multiply like champions), and many parents neglect their children, and children are left on their own with teachers as the closest to a parent figure they can get. On the other side of the spectrum, parents behaving like they're little emperors, giving way to mollycoddled children, and blame teachers for nothing and everything. Teachers care a lot and go out of their way to help children and teens (like my friends paying extra food out of their pockets for their students and dealing with children's protection services), never are given credits for it.
Teachers are expected to be teachers, secretaries, psychologists, social workers, parents, bureaucratic experts, a bank, and so on! For Glaurung's sake. Schoolboards aren't the ones dealing with the clientele, and that shows. If they spent an entire week in a classroom, things would miraculously change (them and the government).