TBAY as an Intro only

[sevenhundredandthirteen]

To jump right into the TBAY debate, I'd like to recall the MAGIC 
DISHWASHER post right after OotP. In this post, they used a TBAY 
intro which was fun and set the scene and involved role-playing and 
did all the other stuff that makes TBAY good. THEN, they had a line 
break, and from then on the theory was structured orderly without 
pointless interjection from characters. This to me was the perfect 
TBAY post. 

I do enjoy reading TBAY for it's narrative quality, but when I just 
want to follow a theory and find out what canon can support it, the 
TBAY format is distracting and time consuming.

The only TBAY post that I have written involved me writing a logical 
and ordered post without TBAY fluff, then adding a few lines of 
character at the top to make it look like I'd attempted to set myself 
up a persona in The Bay. This way, all my reply was ordered and in 
one block of monolgue and all the character interaction was separated 
from it. This to me works as the best compromise for TBAY and non-
TBAY readers. If you have a line such as "If you just want the canon 
and no fluff skip to the asterisk" at the top of your post it enables 
people to ignore the TBAY if they don't like it. Of, in my case, skip 
the TBAY the first time, then on rereading go an enjoy the drama.

And, I have noticed that people often structure multi-character TBAYs 
with pointless characters who do nothing but agree with what the 
author is saying. Surely the point of having two or more characters 
is that they have opposing views and can debate each side of a 
theory? This is when using a dialogue between two TBAY-ers becomes 
interesting and useful. 

Also, TBAYs often become more about the author's issues and problems 
rather than the theory's value. I'm thinking of TBAYs such as Elkins' 
Crouch Nine Part Saga where we all got a better understanding of 
Elkins' relationship with her father, but had to wade through a 9 
part epic that may have been able to be condensed into half that. 
And, what's worse, is that this post (as an example) is often linked 
with the instruction 'Go and read this, it is great.' And it is 
great. But it's also an incredibly daunting experience for a newbie 
to be forced to read 9 extended posts of personal issues just to 
understand a theory. 

And the TBAY posts are often the most epic and popular theories 
around. It's a shame to think that people (who ignore TBAY 
completely) are missing out on such wonderful and thought-out 
theories merely because the author has written a novel.

So, what does everyone think of the idea of having TBAY as an Intro 
only? That way we still have all the fun of TBAY, but in a clearly 
separate section of the post as the rest of the argument. You can 
read it for the drama, or skip it for the facts...

~<(Laurasia)>~