Pixel Scroll 9/14/19 We Are All In The Pixel, But Some Of Us Are Looking At The Scrolls

(1) ONE STOP SHOPPING. [Item by Jonathan Cowie.] SF2 Concatenation’s Autumn 2019 edition is up. Voluminous seasonal news and reviews page of both SF and science which includes the major UK SF/fantasy imprint book releases between now and New Year.  (Many of these will be available as imports in N. America and elsewhere.)

(2) LEM V. DICK. [Editor’s note: I apologize for what amounts to misspelling, but characters that WordPress would display as question marks have been changed to a letter of the alphabet without marks.]

[Item by Jan Vanek Jr.] Yesterday the English-language website of the Polish magazine Przekrój published (and started promoting on Facebook, hence my knowledge) the translation of a 2,700-word excerpt (not a self-contained “chapter” as they claim) from Wojciech Orlinski’s 2017 biography of Stanislaw Lem detailing what led to “the famous Lem-Dick imbroglio” with PKD’s “famous Lem report to the FBI”: “access to previously unpublished letters […] resulted in what is likely the first accurate description of the incident, as well as the ultimate explanation as to how the concept of ‘foreign royalties under communism’ is almost as much of a mess as ‘fine dining under communism’ (but not quite as fine a mess)”:

…It all began with Lem’s depiction of Dick – in the third of his great essay collections, Science Fiction and Futurology as little more than a talentless hack. Lem had a poor opinion of almost all American authors, and never thought much of the literary genre of which he himself was an exponent (think of his equally critical view of Pirx the Pilot, for example, or Return from the Stars)….

I found it a quite informative and interesting read, although “Lem’s unfortunate expulsion from the SFWA” that ensued is mentioned only briefly and I think misleadingly (I have checked the Polish book and there is nothing more about it, but it has been described in American sources, many of them online).

(3) ABOUT AO3’S HUGO AWARD. The Organization for Transformative Works has clarified to Archive of Our Own participants — “Hugo Award – What it Means”.

We’re as excited as you are about the AO3’s Hugo win, and we are shouting it to the rafters! We are grateful to the World Science Fiction Society for recognizing the AO3 with the award, as well as to the many OTW volunteers who build and maintain the site, and all of the amazing fans who post and enjoy works on it.

The World Science Fiction Society has asked us to help them get the word out about what the award represented—specifically, they want to make sure people know that the Hugo was awarded to the AO3, and not to any particular work(s) hosted on it. Therefore, while we can all be proud of the AO3’s Hugo win and we can all be proud of what we contributed to making it possible, the award does not make any individual fanwork or creator “Hugo winners”—the WSFS awarded that distinction to the AO3 as a whole. In particular, the WSFS asked us to convey this reminder so that no one mistakenly describes themselves as having personally won a Hugo Award.

Thanks for sharing our enthusiasm, and consider yourselves reminded! We appreciate every one of your contributions.

So far there are 80 comments, any number by Kevin Standlee making Absolutely Clear Everybody Must Understand Things Exactly The Way He Does. One reply says, “You aren’t doing a particularly good job of reading the room here.”

(4) ARISIA PERSISTED. Arisia 2020 has issued its first online Progress Report. Key points: (1) It’s happening! (2) It’s (back) at the Westin Boston Waterfront. (3) The headliners are Cadwell Turnbull, Author Guest of Honor, Kristina Carroll, Artist Guest of Honor, and Arthur Chu, Fan Guest of Honor.

(5) BOO!  LAist primes fans for Universal Studios’ Halloween mazes: “Halloween Horror Nights: A Photo Tour Of The New ‘Ghostbusters’ & ‘Us’ Mazes At Universal Studios”.

Halloween’s almost here… well, OK, it’s more than a month away, but that means it’s time for Halloween haunts — aka Halloween mazes, aka scary Halloween things at theme parks and the like, to start.

Halloween Horror Nights has been taking over Universal Studios Hollywood for 21 years, and we got the chance to take a behind-the-scenes tour of two of the brand new mazes, Ghostbusters and Us. We were guided through by Creative Director John Murdy, the man in charge of creating the stories and the scares inside all of the mazes.

He works with an art director to design every moment, writing treatments for each attraction than can run up to 100 pages.

“It’s a narrative from the guest’s POV — everything I see, hear, smell, etcetera, as if I’m going through the maze,” Murdy said. “But it also has a very elaborate technical breakdown by scene, by discipline, down to the timecode of the audio cues.”

(6) DUBLIN 2019. Cora Buhlert’s report begins with — “WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Part 1: The Good…”. There’s also a shorter version for the Speculative Fiction Showcase: “Cora’s Adventures at Worldcon 77 in Dublin, Ireland”. Each has lots of photos.

…On Wednesday, the day before WorldCon officially started, I helped with move in and set-up at Point Square. This involved carrying boxes, assembling shelves for the staff lounge and crafting area, taping down table cloths and helping to set up the Raksura Colony Tree model. This was my first time volunteering at a WorldCon and it was a great experience. Not only do you get to help to make a great project like WorldCon happen, no, you also get to meet a lot of lovely people while volunteering. Especially if you’re new to WorldCon and don’t know anybody yet, I recommend volunteering as a way to meet people and make friends. What is more, I also got a handful of groats (which I used to buy a very pretty necklace in the dealers room) and a cool t-shirt.

(7) MEMORIAL. Jim C. Hines tweeted the link to his post about the Memorial held for his wife, Amy, on September 8, a touching and highly personal tribute.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • September 14, 2008The Hunger Games novel hit bookstores. (For some reason, the bookstores did not hit back.)

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 14, 1915 Douglas Kennedy. No major SFF roles that I see but he’s been in a number of films of a genre nature: The Way of All Flesh, The Ghost Breakers, The Mars InvadersThe Land UnknownThe Lone Ranger and the Lost City of GoldThe Alligator People and The Amazing Transparent Man. Series wise, he had one-offs on Alcoa PresentsScience Fiction TheatreAlfred Hitchcock Presents and The Outer Limits. (Died 1973.)
  • Born September 14, 1919 Claire P. Beck. Editor of the Science Fiction Critic, a fanzine which published in four issues Hammer and Tongs, the first work of criticism devoted to American SF. It was written by his brother Clyde F. Beck. Science Fiction Critic was published from 1935 to 1938. (Died 1999.)
  • Born September 14, 1927 Martin Caidin. His best-known novel is Cyborg which was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man franchise. He wrote two novels in the Indiana Jones franchise and one in the Buck Rogers one as well. He wrote myriad other sf novels as well. (Died 1997.)
  • Born September 14, 1932 Joyce Taylor, 87. She first shows as Princess Antillia in Atlantis, the Lost Continent. Later genre appearances were The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the first English language Beauty and the Beast film, the horror film Twice-Told Tales and the Men into Space SF series. 
  • Born September 14, 1936 Walter Koenig, 83. Best-known for his roles as Pavel Chekov in the original Trek franchise and Alfred Bester on Babylon 5Moontrap, a SF film with him and Bruce Campbell, would garner a 28% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and InAlienable which he executive produced, wrote and acts in has no rating there. 
  • Born September 14, 1941 Bruce Hyde. Patterns emerge in doing these Birthdays. One of these patterns is that original Trek had a lot of secondary performers who had really short acting careers. He certainly did. He portrayed Lt. Kevin Riley in two episodes, “The Naked Time” and “The Conscience of the King” and the rest of his acting career consisted of eight appearances, four of them as Dr. Jeff Brenner.  He acted for less than two years in ‘65 and ‘66, before returning to acting thirty-four years later to be in The Confession of Lee Harvey Oswald which is his final role. (Died 2015.)
  • Born September 14, 1947 Sam Neill, 72. Best known for role of Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park which he reprised in Jurassic Park III. He was also in Omen III: The Final Conflict, Possession, Memoirs of an Invisible ManSnow White: A Tale of TerrorBicentennial ManLegend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’HooleThe Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas BoxThor: Ragnarok and Peter Rabbit. 
  • Born September 14, 1961 Justin Richards, 58. Clute at ESF says “Richards is fast and competent.” Well I can certain say he’s fast as he’s turned out thirty-five Doctor Who novels which Clute thinks are for the YA market between 1994 and 2016. And he has other series going as well! Another nineteen novels written, and then there’s the Doctor Who non-fiction which runs to over a half dozen works.  

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Frank and Ernest ask deep questions about Pokémon.
  • A Tom Gauld cartoon about The Testaments launch in The Guardian.

(11) LUCAS MUSEUM. George Lucas, his wife Mellody Hobson, and the mayor dropped by the site yesterday to see how things are going: “Force Is With Them! Construction Of George Lucas Museum In Full Swing”.

Construction of the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is in full swing.

On Friday, Lucas — along with his wife and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — watched as construction crews helped bring his vision to life.

And he thanked them for the tireless effort.

“You’re doing the impossible — thank you so much,” Lucas said.

“Millions of people will be inspired by this building. We were just in our board meeting for the museum and George said you are the artists so you’re the artists of this art museum,” says Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO of Ariel Investments and the museum’s co-founder.

(12) LISTEN TO LIEN. Henry Lien is the Special Guest Star on this week’s episode of  The Write Process podcast, hosted by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program — “Henry Lien on Worldbuilding, Puzzle Stories, Middle Grade, & Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions”

Henry Lien teaches law and creative writing at UCLA Extension. A private art dealer, he is the author of the Peasprout Chen middle grade fantasy series, which received New York Times acclaim and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist.

(13) COSPLAY ID’S. SYFY Wire has collected all the tweeted photos — “Detroit high school encourages students to dress as pop culture icons for ID photos”.

High school can be a turbulent time for any budding teenager, but when you’re allowed to dress up as your favorite movie or television character, facing picture day isn’t the daunting challenge it once was. Per a report from The Huffington Post, North Farmington High School in the suburbs of Detroit allowed its senior pupils to assume the persona of their favorite pop culture icon for the sake of ID photographs. What followed was a parade of Woodys (Toy Story), Shuris (Black Panther) Fionas (Shrek), creepy twins (The Shining), and so many more!

(14) GUTS. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna profiles YA graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier, whose autobiographical graphic novels have sold 13.5 million copies and  who attracted an audience of 4,000 to her talk at the National Book Festival. “Raina Telgemeier became a hero to millions of readers by showing how uncomfortable growing up can be”.

…Now, because her fans kept asking, she is getting more personal than ever. The Eisner Award-winning author who launched her publishing empire with 2010?s “Smile,” about her years-long dental adventures as a kid, is prepared to bare new parts of her interior world with “Guts,” available Tuesday, which centers on how fear affected her body.

 “This is the reality of my life,” Telgemeier told her fans. She quickly got to the heart and GI tract of the matter: “I was subject to panic attacks and [was] worrying that something was really wrong with me.”…

(15) SIGNAL BOOST. Naomi Kritzer offers an incentive for supporting a cause that needs a cash infusion.

(16) MARATHON SITTINGS. The Hollywood Reporter considers “The Long Game: Super-Sized Movies Are Testing the Patience of Audiences”.

And there may be a financial cost. Over the Sept. 6-8 weekend, New Line and director Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two opened to $91 million domestically, a 26 percent decline from the first It, which debuted to $123.4 million on the same weekend in 2017. The sequel ran a hefty 169 minutes, 34 minutes longer than its predecessor.

“Andy had a lot of story to tell in concluding his adaptation of Stephen King’s book, which is more than 1,100 pages,” says Jeff Goldstein, chief of distribution for Warner Bros., New Line’s parent. “We strategically added more shows and locations to counterbalance losing a show on each screen.”

Adds a rival studio executive regarding It: Chapter Two, “look, $91 million is a great number. But anytime the second film in a hoped-for franchise goes down — and not up — that’s not what you wish for. And I do think the fact that it was so long didn’t help.”

(17) COLBERT. Stephen Colbert’s “Meanwhile…” news roundup includes a furry joke related to the movie Cats, and a bit on “The 5D Porn Cinema No One Asked For.” These items start at 2.02 — here on YouTube.

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Cinema verite of author Liz Hand on Vimeo. A 5-minute video of Hand at work and play

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Matthew Johnson.]

747 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/14/19 We Are All In The Pixel, But Some Of Us Are Looking At The Scrolls

  1. Maz Weaver: Seriously, no one on Ao3 is claiming to really be a Hugo winner.

    Seriously, you should qualify your statements of certitude with “that I’ve seen”. Because I’ve seen several AO3 participants on Twitter insisting quite seriously that they are Hugo Nominees/Winners, and getting really angry when someone told them they weren’t.

    And oh, yeah, there’s an AO3 participant with a Kickstarter to produce enamel pins which say “Hugo Award Winning Author”.

    So maybe you should do a little research before making your sweeping claims that “no one” is doing this.

  2. Maz Weaver: Ao3 admin made it clear very early in the process that it was the site, and not the contributors, being recognised. When people come wandering in and start laying about them with big sticks and scolding us for something we’re not even doing … we get a little testy.

    I’m not surprised. It’s too bad, because it would have been more valuable to make friends with the many AO3 participants who are willing to listen to reason than to priortize playing Whack-A-Mole with a few who aren’t.

    Real service mark violations have to be resolved by contact with the violators. They can’t be ended with admin announcements and fussing in AO3’s comment section, so why even go there?

  3. Doctor Science on September 15, 2019 at 4:13 pm said:

    What are you guys watching on Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, or YouTube?

    Netflix, GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) (fiction. about women’s wrestling the way Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night was about an evening TV sports show.
    Amazon, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Amazing recreation of 1958 New York City
    Netflix, One Day At A Time (new version)
    Amazon, Bosch. Cop show based in LA. Based on Michael Connelly’s books. (May edge into the zones you don’t want, tho.)

  4. On Amazon, at the risk of repeating myself, Charlie Jade was a pretty amazing show — a South African/Canadian coproduction of an SF noir series with three parallel worlds.

  5. Mike Glyer: Real service mark violations have to be resolved by contact with the violators. They can’t be ended with admin announcements and fussing in AO3’s comment section, so why even go there?

    Because:

    1) WSFS would have to send C&Ds to all of the people on social media calling themselves “Hugo Award Winner”. It doesn’t matter whether they are “joking” or not, they’re infringing, and they would need to be sent a C&D. And you know just how much additional whining and screaming that would engender, given the amount of whining and screaming that’s been done over the last 6 months.

    2) Maybe, just maybe, a statement from OTW on AO3 would get at least some of the people who are behaving like complete tools on social media to realize that they are behaving like complete tools and stop. It was worth a try.

    The “joke” stopped being funny after the first 24 hours of the finalist announcement. The last 6 months have just been The Failure Mode Of Clever.

    These are people who don’t care about anyone but themselves. They are the first to get up in arms when they think that AO3 is being shit upon, but they have no problem shitting on WSFS and the Hugo Awards.

  6. JJ:

    1) WSFS would have to send C&Ds to all of the people on social media calling themselves “Hugo Award Winner”.

    It would be tragic if the Mark Protection Committee did such a foolish and self-defeating thing, pointlessly generating a huge amount of ill-will, and made all the rest of us in the Worldcon community suffer for it.

    2) Maybe, just maybe, a statement from OTW on AO3 would get at least some of the people who are behaving like complete tools on social media to realize that they are behaving like complete tools and stop.

    That might have had a chance to work. It might still have some positive effect. There would have been more benefit if WSFS representatives had avoided brawling with AO3 commenters on their own site.

  7. JJ: question. You say that jerks/tools/etc. are calling themselves “Hugo Award Winners”. Are these people generally acting in jerkish ways, or are they making that one statement and otherwise being nice enough?

    Also, I really, truly do not see the “we’re all Hugo winners now!” joke as being an insult to the Hugos, a stain upon the honor of the Hugos, saying we think the Hugos themselves are a joke, shitting on the Hugos, etc. – it’s more at our expense, about how most of the stuff on AO3 is really, really not award-worthy. (I’ve posted stuff on AO3, and I count myself in the “really, really not award-worthy” category.) I don’t doubt that people exist who are completely serious about having “won” a Hugo, but I have heard of two people trying to monetize it and “several/some/a couple” – which I would estimate as ten to twenty, at most – who don’t seem to have realized they, personally, didn’t win anything. I get the WSFS trying to get out ahead of potential legal problems, but jumping into the AO3 newspost comment section swinging, for something that far less than one percent of the AO3 userbase seems to have actually done, seems like a bit of an overreaction. “For legal/trademark reasons, please don’t say you won a Hugo in any professional or commercial context unless it’s actually your name on the award” would have done just fine.

  8. Mike Glyer: It would be tragic if the Mark Protection Committee did such a foolish and self-defeating thing

    Exactly. Which is no doubt why the request was instead made to AO3 to try to handle it internally in a nice way.

    I agree that Standlee’s additional comments were unnecessary. But that doesn’t somehow make the AO3 participants’ behavior okay.

  9. Cloudraker: Are these people generally acting in jerkish ways, or are they making that one statement and otherwise being nice enough?

    That by itself is already jerkish far too much. When everybody on the internet is calling themselves a Hugo Award Winner, what value does the title have? None. They are damaging the Hugo Award brand.

    How many real Hugo Award Winners are getting sneered at for having it on their social media profiles or their websites, because people who see it figure that they’re just another AO3 poseur? That’s a really, really shitty thing that the AO3 jerks have done to the real Hugo Award Winners.

  10. JJ: How many real Hugo Winners are getting sneered at for having it on their social media profiles or their websites, because people who see it figure that they’re just another AO3 poseur?

    I haven’t encountered examples of a genuine Hugo winner being sneered at because of any confusion with AO3 — and might have expected somebody to send it to me as a potential Scroll item if it was happening. Do you have a link?

  11. Cloudraker:

    “…but I have heard of two people trying to monetize it and “several/some/a couple” – which I would estimate as ten to twenty, at most – who don’t seem to have realized they, personally, didn’t win anything. I get the WSFS trying to get out ahead of potential legal problems…”

    And here is where you should have stopped. And moved to the AO3 newspost to explain this to the commenters and explain why it is so important for WSFS to stop this.

    If you think there are better ways to express this than Kevin’s, please do. It is a public post there after all.

  12. Mike Glyer: I haven’t encountered examples of a genuine Hugo winner being sneered at because of any confusion with AO3

    How would you know what people are thinking unless they publicly post it?

    I have a negative opinion of significant number of people, but I rarely say anything, except in the most egregious circumstances. That doesn’t change the fact that I continue to think negatively of them.

  13. Hampus Eckerman:

    And here is where you should have stopped. And moved to the AO3 newspost to explain this to the commenters and explain why it is so important for WSFS to stop this.

    I’ve actually already posted there. As I stated in the rest of that paragraph, I totally understand needing to shut down the people who are monetizing the Hugos without WSFS permission, I get why the WSFS would want to make sure everyone knows that it’s an award for the site and not any individual user, and I really don’t think the approach taken was the best one. The newspost was fine. Having one of the Trademark Committee people all over the comments telling everyone that they’re having (non-monetized, not-meant-to-be-at-the-Hugos’-expense) fun wrong was not the best choice. Mr. Standlee’s choice to make a public post under the same name about how we are destroying the Hugos and directly comparing us to the Puppies was definitely not a good one.

    I was an WSFS member. I do not think I will choose to be again.

  14. Cloudraker: they’re having (non-monetized, not-meant-to-be-at-the-Hugos’-expense) fun

    Their utter refusal to acknowledge that intent isn’t magic, and that just because they didn’t intend to cause harm to the Hugo Awards doesn’t mean that they haven’t caused harm anyway, is a huge part of the problem.

  15. JJ:

    doesn’t mean that they haven’t caused harm anyway

    What harm?

    I am entirely serious. What harm has been done here? Not conjectured, not assumed, not “but I think they’re being jerks” – disregarding the people who tried to monetize it, because we can all agree that was a problem, can you present any proof that true harm has been done to the Hugo brand by AO3 users saying they won a Hugo? When Mr. Glyer asked above for a link to show that actual winners were getting mistaken for exaggerating AO3 users, you didn’t provide anything. I’m not one of the people who was saying I’d won – I am a contributor to the Hugo-winning project and proud of that, but I understand I personally didn’t win anything – but I do not believe that those people who are saying, in jest, that they won Hugos are actually hurting the brand. If you have proof to the contrary, I am very interested in seeing it, and will definitely be agreeing with you that the “we’re all Hugo winners!” thing needs to stop.

  16. @Doctor Science: if anime is your thing, I just finished the first half-season of Carole & Tuesday – two young night musicians get together as a duo, and by the way they live on Mars (which makes Tuesday’s name a pun in Japanese). Not grimdark at all. Also I’m two episodes into March comes in like a lion, about a teenaged professional shogi player in contemporary Japan – think Hikaru no Go except with Japan,s other major board game, a slightly older protagonist with slightly older problems, and no ghost. There’s hints of sad backstories for the main characters but it hasn’t been wallowing, and the cats are fun. Both on Netflix.

    Meanwhile on Amazon Prime, there’s Girls’ Last Tour. This is probably not what you want, as it’s clearly post- an apocalypse that the protagonists don’t really have a firm grasp on… and they may be the last people left alive on the planet… and the anime stops right before the part in the original manga where <rot13>tveyf’ iruvpyr oernxf qbja creznaragyl, gurer’f ab zber jbexvat sbbq znpuvarf nebhaq, naq vg’f pyrne gurl’er tbvat gb qvr irel fbba</rot13>. But it’s a lot more cheerful than it sounds.

  17. Cloudraker: What harm?

    The legal term for it is Reputational Harm, and one of the biggest problems with dealing with in the legal sphere is that it tends to be a mostly intangible thing, which can sometimes have very visible, obvious cause-and-effects — or more subtle ones, where the link is suspected and likely, but can’t necessarily be proven evidentiarily.

    And I’m sure that you’re well aware of this.

    By having hundreds of AO3 users on social media all calling themselves “Hugo Award Nominees” and “Hugo Award Winners” — for more than 6 months now, and it will undoubtedly go on for a lot longer — they have diminished and cheapened the brand. What is a Hugo Award worth, when anyone can declare themselves a Hugo winner! Why doesn’t everyone else do it, too, what the hell? It’s all just a joke! Oh, you’re a Hugo Award Winner? What a coincidence, so am I!

    When someone tells you that you have caused them harm, you don’t double-down and say, “Where’s your sense of humor??? It’s just a joke!”

    You don’t say, “I don’t see any evidence of harm. Where’s your proof?”

    You apologize for causing them harm, and you stop doing it.

    I would have expected AO3 members, of all people, to understand this. But apparently not.

  18. @Doctor Science

    What are you guys watching on Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, or YouTube?

    Been binge-watching “Horrible Histories” on Amazon. It’s really good.

  19. JJ: I’m sorry for any decline in reputation that has happened due to jokes made by other AO3 users. I’m not calling myself a Hugo winner. I never have. I said as much earlier. Presumably most people who are involved enough in the WSFS corner of fandom to know what the Hugos are can at least recognize that AO3 is a large website with many users, and the award was given as a recognition of the site as a whole, and that individual AO3 users claiming to be Hugo winners are most likely referencing their contribution to the Hugo-winning project (I believe that’s the officially-approved terminology, based on Mr. Standlee’s posts) and not claiming to have individually won.

  20. Cloudraker: I’m sorry for any decline in reputation that has happened due to jokes made by other AO3 users.

    Cloudraker, I appreciate your apology. I know that it is genuine. While I intended my last comment to be directed at the AO3 participants in general who have been involved in the Hugo Winner claims, I can see now that the way it was worded makes it read as if it’s directed at you, and for that I apologize. I know that you personally are not part of the problem.

    My frustration is in the fact that of all people, I would expect AO3 participants as a group — who have been much-maligned in the past, from many quarters — to be sensitive to the idea that things other people say and do can cause harm to the image and reputation of their project, and I would expect them to understand why it is not okay for them to turn around and do that to WSFS and the Hugo Awards.

    Thanks for listening and understanding.

  21. Cloudraker:

    “I was an WSFS member. I do not think I will choose to be again.”

    Because you didn’t like comments Kevin wrote and for which you then made up your own meaning?

    Kevin wrote:

    “Be proud of of your contribution to an Award-winning project.”

    And from this you conclude:

    “Mr. Standlee’s choice to make a public post under the same name about how we are destroying the Hugos and directly comparing us to the Puppies was definitely not a good one.”

    He didn’t mention the puppies at all. I see you as commenting entirely in bad faith.

  22. @Hampus Eckerman

    He didn’t mention the puppies at all. I see you as commenting entirely in bad faith.

    Go check out his dreamwidth and livejournal two incredibly public spaces where he USES HIS REAL NAME. AO3 peeps are internet savvy… they know how to google. They were found and commented about within hours of their posting on Fail Fandom Anon.

    Standlee has shown an astounding lack of understanding of how Internet fandom works. Especially coming into a traditionally queer and female space and acting very patronizing about everything. I would have hoped that the WSFS would have been better.

  23. Meredith:

    Thank you. But the interpretation doesn’t work for that text. Regarding puppies, he says destroy. But for those who call themselves Hugo winners without being any, he says undermining, an entirely different word.

    Also, if Cloudraker is indeed thinking of this text, it means that they themselves wants to be called “Hugo winner”, otherwise the word “we” couldn’t be used for them.

  24. +1000 to ambyr’s, Meredith’s, and rcade’s comments on page 1

    Also, I notice some confusion over the exact nature of AO3. It’s very much not a club, and people who have AO3 accounts aren’t “members”. To find something closer to a club, you’d need to look at the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the umbrella organization that runs AO3 among other projects like Fanlore, and which has a yearly membership fee that allows its members to vote in OTW elections.

    Crucially, however, only a tiny fraction of AO3 users are OTW members. AO3 is a platform, like Twitter or Livejournal; it regulates users’ behavior on its site (e.g. deleting spam, harassment, Ko-fi links or other attempts to monetize fandom, etc. posted to the archive, and banning persistent violators), but it takes no responsibility for users’ behavior offsite.

    As an extreme example of the latter, there exists a vanishingly small number of AO3 users who are actively hostile to the site. They’ve even reported it to the FBI in the past because AO3 allows users to post sexually explicit fanfic involving characters under the age of 18. However, those hostile users also continue to use AO3 because it has the best tagging system of any large multifandom archive, and because they want their fics to reach the biggest audience. And as long as they’re not harassing other users on AO3 itself, they’re allowed to do precisely that.

    So part of the mocking response to OTW’s recent “Hugo Award — What It Means” post is due to the fact that the post represents a 180* turnaround from the historical relationship between AO3 and its users. That post was a courtesy to WSFS, but it’s not anything that would resonate with the vast majority of AO3 users who aren’t themselves WSFS members. (And honestly, I wouldn’t say it resonated with me, either, and I am both, though at least I knew more about where the post was coming from and so felt disinclined to mock it.)

  25. I am entirely serious. What harm has been done here?

    As a WSFS member for over 10 years, I think any harm done by individual AO3 contributors non-jokingly calling themselves Hugo winners is outweighed by the good of AO3’s collective joy at winning and the positive publicity it generated.

    I’d prefer that anything WSFS say publicly from this point forward be official, not unofficial efforts like what Kevin Standlee attempted on the message board. I can’t recall a situation where we beefed publicly with a group that won a Hugo. It’s not a good look for us.

  26. “I can’t recall a situation where we beefed publicly with a group that won a Hugo.”

    These people have not won a Hugo. That was the whole point of the clarification.

  27. rcade: You’re objecting to the use of the word “group” to describe AO3?

    WSFS members have been repeatedly asked not to blame AO3 as an entity for the bad behavior of several hundred people who’ve been behaving badly and calling themselves Hugo Award Winners.

    AO3 as an entity won the Hugo Award. The several hundred individual bad actors did not.

    Ergo, WSFS is not “beefing” with the AO3 group which won a Hugo, they are “beefing” with several hundred individuals who have not.

  28. “You’re objecting to the use of the word “group” to describe AO3?”

    I’m objecting to your statement that this is a public beef with a group that won a Hugo. It is not. AO3 won a Hugo, not the people writing in the comment section.

    The question wether it was smart of Kevin to write such comments (I do not believe it was) is a separate question.

  29. JJ: thanks for your continued efforts at explaining this situation.

    Meredith wrote “Maybe transformative works fen could try to understand the trademark protection thing a bit more generously? I know it doesn’t come naturally to us to respect IP, what with our whole thing”

    and I suspect this may be a part of the problem; a deep and abiding dislike of the restrictions of IP law.

    I believe Kevin did and has done the right thing by going to the group that won the award (who would normally have something of a vested interest in helping to preserve the integrity and value of the award they had just won) to exert internal influence in an attempt not to have to resort to formal legal action(s). That the comment thread went bad doesn’t change the intent.

    Just the other day I “messaged” an individual on Facebook because the name of a page they had created infringed on one of my trademarks: I was asked why I was “picking” on them (other pages use the name) and had to explain that most of those pages were mine, or that owing to the vagaries of trademark law others were legitimate uses and one other had been reported to FB’s legal dept; I wanted her to have the opportunity to change things enough to avoid “confusion” and the expense of formal legal action (I wanted to avoid that expense as well).
    Fortunately, I did not get the ‘F.U., internet, info wants to be free, you’re not my mother’ kinds of responses that are frequently typical of such exchanges.

    Mileage may vary, but there are very few ways to enforce protection of IP that don’t involve legal recourse; Kevin tried one of them. Apparently it’s not working.
    I’ll be happy to donate to a WSFS legal fund.

  30. JJ:

    When someone tells you that you have caused them harm, you don’t double-down and say, “Where’s your sense of humor??? It’s just a joke!”

    You don’t say, “I don’t see any evidence of harm. Where’s your proof?”

    You apologize for causing them harm, and you stop doing it.

    I would have expected AO3 members, of all people, to understand this. But apparently not.

    This formulation on prioritizing believing victims and not relying on intent was designed to gain traction as a method of combating deeply-ingrained societal prejudices against believing victims of racism, sexism, and other -phobic acts. It is used to support believing rape victims, believing people when they say that casual jokes about their hair or skin color can be harmful. It has absolutely no place in a discussion regarding the impact of trademark infringement on a non-marginalized group (ie, the WSFS is not doing advocacy on behalf of a marginalized group), which is not facing the kind of prejudice that would cause kneejerk disbelief on the part of the average bystander. That is a legal question and trying to mistakenly use such argument to shut down this discussion is the same kind of misapplication of these argument that lead to them being twisted or mocked by people who would like, unconsciously or not, to uphold the societal prejudices and barriers that such arguments are aimed at overcoming.

    To be blunt: your use of those arguments in this context is extremely inappropriate. It contributes to the devaluation of such argument. And by contributing to the devaluing of those arguments, you are causing far more serious harm in the world than the people you are arguing against.

  31. MRM on September 16, 2019 at 7:45 am said:
    This formulation on prioritizing believing victims and not relying on intent was designed to gain traction …

    Ah. So we should only believe victims when it’s convenient to you, and when its the victims you like. Got it. Glad that’s cleared up.

  32. Olav Rokne

    Ah. So we should only believe victims when it’s convenient to you, and when its the victims you like. Got it. Glad that’s cleared up.

    ‘Believe victims’ is an argument intended to level the playing field for victims who face societal prejudice, and therefore start out disadvantaged. The WSFS does not face societal prejudice and this is not a hate crime, sexual assault, or other commonly-disbelieved-by-society crime. It’s a trademark infringement dispute. The WSFS is not facing discrimination in a court of law or a court of public opinion due to the race, gender, sexuality, or other minority status of the WSFS members, and as trademark infringement by nature is public and depends upon public impact, any private feelings of victimization are totally irrelevant to whether or not infringement occurred.

    Your equating of the two is absurd and disrespectful of victims who actually face societally-ingrained disbelief when they come forward to report a crime.

  33. Ugh.

    I’m a big fan of AO3. I’ve read stories there for years. It’s a great community.

    I also NA’d them reluctantly, because I didn’t think they fit the category.

    I’d have NA’d them a lot more forcefully if I’d foreseen all this nonsense.

    Can the folks who attend the business meetings please get busy and clarify the BRW rules to avoid this sort of thing in the future?

  34. @MRM

    Look, I’m not arguing with you. I understand that we should only respect victims if you agree with them. I’ll make sure not to defend anyone who you don’t like in the future.

  35. @Olav Rokne

    Look, I’m not arguing with you. 

    I’m glad to hear it! I had been worried that you were under the impression that you’d been engaging with my comments in a meaningful fashion.

    For the general audience: I am, in fact, in favour of the WSFS pursuing trademark infringement cases. It is entirely possible to think that and also take issue with deeply inappropriate arguments ostensibly put forward in defence of the WSFS, which in fact do nothing to support the WSFS’s position and trivialize arguments designed to be applied to far more serious societal issues. (No, I don’t consider trademark infringement to be a serious societal issue in modern society compared to sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.)

    I do also think they could have handled the interactions with the AO3 base better, but a lot of volunteer orgs struggle on PR issues and this incident seems about par for the course.

  36. I went to the site to see what it’s about. All I found were tediously written things so I would have NA’d it. I swear some of them have tags longer than the stories.

    I do find it amusing that people who depend on the Internet to get their writing out seem to be very touchy about people not going along with their vision-whether it’s MGC, JDA or some of the commenters on AO3. A lot of the comments have the same tone.

  37. On one hand, I can understand why folks who contribute to and shape the database feel a sense of ownership over the database. I suspect that a lot of the anger in that debate is produced from the feeling that that emotional connection is being attacked. On the other hand, the level of misrepresentation and straw man argumentation is really frustrating.

  38. I had been worried that you were under the impression that you’d been engaging with my comments in a meaningful fashion.

    About as meaningfully as the comments deserve.

  39. @Harold Osler
    And some works at AO3 are close to professional-quality. You can’t look at a handful and make assumptions about the rest, anymore than you can look at one shelf of books in a store and assume that all the rest are the same kind of thing. The tagging may be overdone by your standards – but that’s one of the reasons they were nominated!

  40. About as meaningfully as the comments deserve.

    So meaningless that you just have to keep responding to them! Without being able to provide any actual arguments against them. Well, if you’re set on this course then I’ll concede you the last word, if you like (and I’m sure you will), being secure in the knowledge that it’ll be as much vacuous blithering as everything else you’ve put forward.

  41. @Contrarius: The problem, of course, then becomes exactly what BRW should be. Because I’m not entirely sure there’s any consensus on that. (I voted for Astounding this year, and it placed 6th, so I don’t necessarily trust my personal judgment to be a reasonable reflection of anything.)

    I certainly agree that BRW is a broken category but I’m not convinced it ever wasn’t. Look, for instance, at 2000, where the finalists were Science Fiction of the 20th Century, Sandman: The Dream Hunters, The Science of Discworld, Spectrum 6, and Minicon 34 Restaurant Guide.

    Martin

  42. @Goobergunch: I voted for “Astounding” too (with Jo Walton’s Hugo book also high) (I did put AO3 above No Award though).

  43. Andrew on September 16, 2019 at 2:59 pm said:
    @Goobergunch: I voted for “Astounding” too (with Jo Walton’s Hugo book also high) (I did put AO3 above No Award though).

    My ballot was:
    1) Astounding
    2) The Hobbit Duology
    3) Informal History
    4) AO3
    5) Mexicanx
    6) Conversations on Writing (put this low because it seemed so slight)

    But literally everything in the category was good. Ridiculous to try and compare them, but there’s a good argument for every single one of them deserving the recognition of a Hugo Award.

    It feels more like a collection of categories than a category itself. It’s like a mash up of “Best Fan Initiative,” “Best Book About Writing,” and “Best Work Of Criticism.”

  44. @Contrarius

    I’d have NA’d them a lot more forcefully if I’d foreseen all this nonsense.

    I wish I could find the statements here, but I’m sure I recall predictions of just this sort of behavior when AO3 was nominated.

  45. So a convention restaurant guide actually did make the best related work shortlist in 2000? I remember that there was some grumbling when the WorldCon 75 restaurant guide made the best related work longlist in 2018. And Sandman: The Dream Hunters would fall under Best graphic story these days, though the category didn’t yet exist in 2000.

    As for the AO3 people, if they really were just joking about being Hugo finalists/winners, then why did they keep that “joke” up for months, put “Hugo nominated” or “Hugo winner” in their Twitter handles and bios, etc…? Not to mention the folks who made pins and the like, blatantly violating the Hugo trademark. Also the AO3 people got snippy when politely asked to knock it off. The comments under the thread linked above clearly show how entitled some AO3 users are.

    And yes, given how many users AO3 has, it’s a minority that behaved badly. But that minority is the first thing that people who don’t regularly hang out at AO3 see, when they think of the site. I also think that the AO3 folks have no idea how annoyed WorldCon members and Hugo voters who are not part of their community are with them right now.

    I also voted Astounding in first place BTW and am still angry that it finished in last place. My preference for best related work are well researched non-fiction books, whether academic or popular, anyway. I’m okay with essay or review collections, interviews, memoirs, biographies, art books, etc…, less okay with single articles and anything that is not a non-fiction book or the electronic equivalent thereof

  46. MRM: That is a legal question

    And this, right here, is the crux of the problem. Ultimately, it’s not a legal question at all. It’s a question of treating other human beings with respect and courtesy.

    WSFS is not a corporation. It is a small group of fans — an exponentially smaller group of fans than the A03 participants — who have put years of blood, sweat, and tears into the labor of love that is the Hugo Awards.

    WSFS members are people. They are human beings.

    For months now, hundreds of AO3 members have been extremely disrespectful and contemptuous of the human beings behind the Hugo Awards. WSFS members have repeatedly told the AO3 participants that what they are doing is hurtful and disrespectful, and have asked them to stop.

    AO3 members have responded by making excuses for their horrible behavior by saying “Where’s your sense of humor? It’s just a harmless joke!”, and by becoming even more hurtful and disrespectful, because not only is it just hilarious to them to take someone else’s project and spend months fucking it over, it’s even funnier to tell those people “fuck you, we’re going to be even more hurtful and disrespectful, because you’ve asked us to stop”.

    It’s not AO3 members’ place to decide whether their actions are hurtful and harmful to someone else. It’s their responsibility, as human beings, to listen when other human beings them that what they are doing is hurtful and harmful. It’s their responsibility to stop being assholes.

    I resent like hell that these AO3 members have put WSFS in the position where they’ve had to resort to sending C&D notices and asking OTW to post a statement. A lot of WSFS members, including me, have an involvement in, or affection for, fanfiction, and I would very much have liked AO3’s Hugo nomination and win to be something that we could all celebrate and enjoy.

    Instead, a bunch of AO3 members have decided to take a big shit on the Hugo Awards, because why not, isn’t it just great fun to fuck over other human beings.

    I resent like hell that AO3 members have deliberately placed WSFS members in a position where they have no option but to act — that they have deliberately forced WSFS members to play the bad guy.

    And here the AO3 members are, screaming about how a WSFS member went onto a post on their site and showed disrespect to them. Apparently, according to them, the only human beings who deserve respect are AO3 members, and it’s perfectly acceptable for AO3 members to shit on other people and on other peoples’ labor of love.

    What a bunch of fucking hypocrites.

    These AO3 members need to start listening when WSFS members say “please stop, what you’re doing is disrespectful and harmful to the Hugo Awards”. These AO3 members need to start showing other human beings the respect and courtesy they’re demanding for themselves.

  47. Hi JJ,

    Thanks for engaging in good faith. After my earlier… I hesitate to call it a ‘discussion’… here, it’s refreshing.

    Ultimately, it’s not a legal question at all. It’s a question of treating other human beings with respect and courtesy.

    I think that there would be benefit here in separating out the elements of this issue.

    1) There are some people out there who have demonstrably infringed against the WSFS’ trademark, by using it in an unauthorized fashion for personal or financial gain: at least one case on Etsy, and I believe somebody mentioned that there was a kickstarter as well. Those people are infringing and that is a legal matter that the WSFS should handle. I think we all agree on that.

    2) There an argument put forward that AO3 users making jokes about the Hugos is causing harm to the WSFS and/or its members, and that therefore the jokes should be stopped.

    This is a more complicated issue and the one where the issue over who has the authority to tell people to stop making jokes, and where that authority arises from. I will separate this into two more pieces: 2a) legal authority and 2b) moral authority.

    2a) Legal authority is a matter for the lawyers and the courts. If the jokes made do not satisfy the law as being acceptable as parody, transformative content, etc etc, and are shown to be infringing the WSFS’ mark or otherwise causing damage to the WSFS, then that’s a matter that the WSFS legal defence should pursue. I, personally, haven’t seen any evidence that I (a person who is not a lawyer) would consider that the joking (distinct from the genuine attempts at false representation discussed under point 1, above) crosses such legal limits. In an earlier comment you did suggest:

    How many real Hugo Award Winners are getting sneered at for having it on their social media profiles or their websites, because people who see it figure that they’re just another AO3 poseur?

    However, no evidence of this actually occuring, as opposed to it potentially occuring, has been presented. I would therefore suggest that there is an, at most, extremely limited if not non-existent legal basis to claim that such jokes have caused harm and should be stopped.

    2b) Moral authority. This is, I think, is the crux of the issue that you and I are now discussing, so please forgive the extended preamble above to peel away other aspects.

    (In this essay, I will demonstrate that…) When one person makes a joke or even a simple statement that another person finds hurtful, wrong-doing is not automatically guaranteed, even if Person A continues to make the joke after being asked not to by Person B. It can’t be. It’s more complicated than that.

    If Person A and Person B don’t agree about whether the joke is in bad taste, then they find themselves in a position of trying to figure out more objectively if it’s caused harm. Clear threats or calls for harm to be committed are one thing; jokes are more difficult, and it’s not as simple as saying that anyone who is offended is in the right.

    The first aspect to consider is the subject matter of the joke. Is the joke contributing to or a symptom of systemic prejudice? For example- I have a friend who hates cats. I have two cats myself that I adore. If my friend makes a mean joke about cats on the internet, he’s not causing any societal harm, because cat-lovers do not face societal prejudice. If my friend made a mean joke about female engineers, then he would absolutely be contributing to societal harm, because sexism is a massive society-wide problem.

    This is one of the reasons why it is important to apply ‘believe victims’ appropriately. People who make racist, sexist, homophobic, etc ‘jokes’ may not realize that they are contributing to a pattern of societal harm by reinforcing such prejudices with such a very low-level, everyday kind of action. Cat-lovers do not face potential threats to their health, safety, or livelihood due to societal prejudice; victims of racism, sexism, etc do. A joke that is funny about cat-lovers and has no impact societally upon the population of cat-lovers may therefore do actual harm when instead targetted at marginalized populations. Applying the ‘believe victims’ to cat-lovers would be inappropriate because cat-lovers are not struggling to overcome societal prejudice that prevents them from being believed about the greater harm such jokes cause.

    The WSFS is not a marginalized population. It may be a small population, but its members do not face discrimination due to said membership. The AO3 membership base may be quite a lot larger than the WSFS membership base, but that doesn’t by default put the AO3 membership base in a position of power. Further, as only an extremely small component of the AO3 membership base appears to be engaging in such jokes, the relative size of the entire userbases seems fairly irrelevant. As far as I’m aware, there’s been no concerted trolling or attacks on WSFS forums or sites that would indicate a larger group is leveraging its power over a smaller one. (If I’m wrong about that, please do correct me, and I would heartily condemn the perpetrators.) Therefore, the simple existence of jokes regarding some aspect of the WSFS is not contributing to any societal pattern of imbalance and harm.

    The second major aspect to consider is where the joke is being made. If my friend who hates cats makes jokes about cats to my face after I’ve asked him not to talk to me about that, then he’s being rude. But if he makes such jokes on his own blog, in his own space, then that’s just making a joke, even if I find it in bad taste. (Again: this is ruling out clearly offensive statements, such as those that rely on simple insults or call for harm against members of any particular group.)

    I do not have the right to demand that my friend never make any jokes about cats again. Nearly every joke out there is going to be in poor taste to somebody. Expecting everyone to avoid making any jokes in public would be completely untenable and, well, ridiculous, because some people’s expectations about what is acceptable joking material are going to be considered absurd by some other people’s standards. And that’s okay. It is not Person A making the joke at Person B; it’s on Person B to manage their own experience on the internet.

    Now, if AO3 users are coming into WSFS spaces and tossing around the Hugo Award Winner joke where members of the WSFS would prefer them not to do so, then that is indeed being extremely rude. However, aside from those cases of actual mark infringement discussed in my preamble above, that hasn’t been happening (again, as far as I am aware, and please do correct me if I’m wrong). Instead, what is going on is that some AO3 users are making jokes on public spaces and in ‘their’ spaces (that is, on the AO3 site, which is viewable by the public but can be considered to ‘belong’ to them, much like file770 is viewable to the public but is ‘for’ the members here).

    It’s not AO3 members’ place to decide whether their actions are hurtful and harmful to someone else.

    Agreed. We all have the right to our own feelings. But feeling hurt does not inherently give someone the right to demand that somebody else restrict their actions. The AO3 members should be able speak as they wish in public or in their own spaces, so long as (on the legal side) they are not committing a legal trademark infraction or (on the moral side) they are not contributing to a societal pattern of harm.

    It’s their responsibility, as human beings, to listen when other human beings them that what they are doing is hurtful and harmful. It’s their responsibility to stop being assholes.

    No. It may be their responsibility to listen when somebody says that they feel hurt. But that does’t mean that the person who feels hurt is automatically in the right. I’ve run into people who have been absolutely hurt and offended because they had to wait in a line, because they felt their need was more urgent than everyone else’s in the queue. It wasn’t. They weren’t in the right, no matter how insulted they felt. It sucked for them, but it didn’t mean that they were entitled to receive accomodation from the other people.

    These AO3 members need to start listening when WSFS members say “please stop, what you’re doing is disrespectful and harmful to the Hugo Awards”.

    There are WSFS members who disagree that any harm is being done by such jokes, as evidenced in other comments on this post. In this I would agree with Cloudraker: what is the actual harm being done? So far it seems that your criteria has been that any joke about the Hugos, at all, is to be considered harmful simply because it’s a joke about the Hugos. But if we go by that logic, we can’t make any jokes about anything. That would be a very joyless world.

    Therefore, I must continue to respectfully disagree with you.

    (And also, respectfully, apologize for all this tl;dr.)

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