The Little World

There is no greater joy than receiving the genuine admiration of peers – no bitterer gall than perceiving their contempt. And you should be worried about yourself for realising how true this is. I know I’m ashamed of me.

I hasten to add that I am speaking only of the scale modelling world. A pastime. A hobby. An art. Not part of the world of science, politics, morals, or relationships. There you can and will experience the joys and woes and they are real things that shape our world. Do not cease to do good and always shun evil.

But when it comes to making scale models, semi-scale models, models, semi-scale toys, toys, or crude parodies…well the opinion of others is neither needed, wanted, nor relevant. We should build for ourselves and the the rest may be damned. Of course this also means their praise must be ignored as well as their criticism – and few of us have the stoic courage for that.

Many people court this by entering into modelling contests – you see the special display room at the plastic model convention with the judges table and the long line of people waiting to deliver their entries. It can be a very long wait if the officials who are running the contest wish to be pedantic about classifications and divisions. You cannot blame them too much for this, as the contest entrants will be even more so in the hopes of winning a prize.

Anyway, once entered the model gets judged, and the poor sap who has built it, as often as not, has invested so much of their love into it that they feel that they are being judged. If the judges do their job well, this feeling is circumvented, but there’s also a good opportunity to indulge in personalities and revenge in this situation. Emotions can run high and support strong words as they do.

The judgement of people who are not your peers is also a thing – the ” People’s Choice ” winner at an exhibition is just such a case. Make of it what you will, but look at what wins these trophies from year to year. It is generally not the well-researched, dead accurate, tiny little perfection that got high marks from the professional judge – it’s the big, flashy, colourful nod to popular culture that succeeds.

Zombies, Monsters, and Star Wars/Trek/Gate will always call to the unwashed, and the unwashed will always applaud what they saw on the screen. They will vote for what their kids like because their kids must be right…

If they like your stuff it’s a sign you need to get out more.