Hi, other Tolkien fan with Thoughts!

Personally, I find the differences between the Hobbit book and the Hobbit movies much more of a dealbreaker than those between the LoTR books/movies. I have a lot of Tauriel femslash ships, but I'm not comfortable requesting them under 'Hobbit (movies)' because Tauriel's presence is really the only part of movie canon that I enjoy and I don't wanna be the person going 'DNW: Hobbit movie canon' when that's the fandom I would be requesting under. With LoTR I'm happy to leave book vs movie questions/preferences in optional details.

would 'Silm, LotR book, Jackson movies' be a different split that also works? And say Dis and Belladonna should be nominated under LotR for the books.

I would be happy with this. I would also be happy with an all the books/all the movies split as you and Zdenka discussed above (and would nominate/request Tauriel ships in crossover), but recognise that that might not be the best for people who are mostly-movie fans.

Basically, anything that keeps Hobbit books/movies separate is fine with me :D

ETA: Actually, re-reading this, I think I ended up talking myself into favouring the Silm/LoTR books/Hobbit book vs Jackson movies split. I have a lot of Silm/LoTR ships where I'd be totally happy just requesting book canon (especially Silm character/Goldberry ships and Galadriel/anyone ships where I don't have to think too hard about whether they're Silm or LoTR) and I can also happily do Tauriel/book character ships in crossovers.

Edited (welp i guess i actually do have a preference) 2018-07-28 04:38 am (UTC)

Thanks for dropping by! It sounds like applying the same criteria we use elsewhere for combining definitely benefits some participants. It also benefits us as mods, there was a lot of confused combing through a Tolkien wiki last year because of minor characters that seemed to appear in multiple books and were nominated under unclear fandom tags or had wandered.

Based on comments so far I'm going to say we definitely need a book/movie split. Nobody has said they don't want the movies combined and from what I remember of them they're a shared universe, so unless someone new weighs in specifically about that we'll go ahead and say combined there. (And I didn't realise Tauriel wasn't in the book! That definitely sounds like a logical case for making them crossovers then, if you're wanting her shipped specifically with the book versions of characters.)

Currently I think our best options under the current policies are (though I welcome feedback on better umbrella fandom tag names if people have preferences, I haven't combed through the AO3 tag tree to see if there's an existing option we could utilise yet):

Tolkien - All Books
Jackson Movies

OR

Silmarillion
Tolkien - LotR and Hobbit
Jackson Movies

Currently there's disagreement about Silm, and I don't know it well enough to make a call myself. Could you help confirm similarities/differences? From what I understand, Silm is a prequel. Thus, while you will have gaps and omissions in backstory if you only read one or the other sets of books, any character who appears across two or more book/book series is the same character. However the degree of time difference between Silm and LotR books has been brought up - but also that some characters technically appear in both, so I'm not sure how or if the time issue is relevant (is it just that Silm covers a specifically long period of time that ends closer to LotR? Thus, some characters are Silm only and some characters justify the combination?) I'd welcome a brief Idiots 101 on the Silm if I've missed any nuances or got the wrong end of the stick.

Someone has popped back in further up this thread about canon continuity differences within Silm, and has probably answered those questions I had about Silm - but if you have additional info you'd like considered, please jump on in!

Oops, I was AFK most of yesterday. I agree with the explanation given above, characters who are in both are technically the same but at wildly different points in their lives with possibly contradictory stories. I was coming at it from the perspective of someone fannish about both the Silm/Histories and LoTR, but I can see where the differentiation might be a dealbreaker for others.

I'm happy with the proposed The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, and Middle Earth - Peter Jackson Movies split! My biggest concern was book/movie separation anyway :D

That's great to hear, I'm glad it works for you even if it pushes some of those book pairings into crossover. If you have Tolkien requests in the queue that should be crossovers now, you're welcome to either edit accordingly (feel free to just add clear fandom indicators for book or movie versions of characters even if you don't have the slots to also nominate under crossovers) or drop me a list and I can check they go in the right place for you.