(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.)
- Newscast for the Autumn 2019. This includes within it many key sections covering SF books, films; and TV; as well as science. See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
- My Top Ten Scientists – Dominic Dulley (software engineer)
- CERN – Science or Tourism? — Jane O’Reilly
- The Shoestringcon [1]: Polycon 1979 story — Pete Gilligan
- Dublin – The 2019 World SF Convention – Sue Burke
- Ytterbium 2019 – The 2019 British Eastercon — Peter Tyers
- GeyserCon – New Zealand’s 2019 national convention — Alan Robson
(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detailing what led to “the famous Lem-Dick imbroglio” with PKD’s “famous Lem report to the FBI”: “access to previously unpublished letters […] resulted in what is likely the first accurate description of the incident, as well as the ultimate explanation as to how the concept of ‘foreign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, 2008 — The 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 Invaders, The Land Unknown, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, The Alligator People and The Amazing Transparent Man. Series wise, he had one-offs on Alcoa Presents, Science Fiction Theatre, Alfred 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 5. Moontrap, 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 Man, Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Bicentennial Man, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box, Thor: 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.]
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When the WSFS talks to an attorney about this, I hope they’ll ask whether there’s a way to authorize the “One-millionth of a Hugo winner” in some very limited form. I don’t know enough about trademark law to judge whether that’s wise, or even possible, but I see why it’s fun. If it can be done, maybe it should be. I don’t know, as IANAL.
Uh…if this is truly your experience whenever you log onto Twitter, then perhaps you may want to curate your feed and cut out the people you apparently follow whose repeated jokes are causing you this much emotional anguish. I live on Twitter, and I see these jokes once in a blue moon, so I assure you, it is absolutely possible to avoid while still keeping more or less abreast of fandom.
rcade, it’s also common for people to have multiple accounts. Lost passwords, wanting to participate multiple times in a fic exchange, wanting to kudos certain fics but without your own name. It doesn’t translate to the equivalent number of active users.
I have a second account myself; it was for a piece of collaborative fiction that never went anywhere.
@Hampus Eckerman:
Your second sentence appears to contradict your first. If it is legal, then that is a clear indication of the presence of broad agreement that no dilution in value has occurred, or at least broad disagreement that such dilution has occurred.
I think you are arguing from across a severe culture gap, here. Broadly put, this is simply not how many among younger generations see it. For people with very large followings, yes–because their audience is large enough to be considered more than just their friends. For people whose following consists of them and their friends and the fans they share close interests with, it’s much more like a group of friends standing around in public talking to each other. Yes, they are in public, but they are not talking to the public. They are talking to each other.
Guests can comment but some users specifically block comments from non-registered users — I specifically do not allow comments from unregistered users for the same reason that I don’t leave my Ask box open to anons on Tumblr, to cut down on the possibility of random drive-by harassment. Guests can also leave kudos.
Registered users can comment, leave kudos, post fic, bookmark fic, create collections and moderate collections, subscribe to updates for particular pieces of fiction or particular authors, give and receive gifts of fic, and have access to an entire suite of analytics for their own work.
Also: Ao3 has become the home for a great many other endangered fic archives who were about to lose their hosting or otherwise cease to exist. Many of those archives’ regular users have become Ao3 regular users. Most recently, political developments in China leading to a crackdown on “socially unacceptable” forms of fiction led to a massive influx of Chinese fic archives and fic writers seeking safe harbor for their work. (There’s a news item lower down on the main page possibly under the cut, soliciting the assistance of individuals fluent in both English and Chinese to help with translation and communication and getting writers set up with accounts.) In many ways, Ao3 is the safe harbor for at-risk fanfic writers and archives.
If anyone wants a code to start an account I have five unused invitations. Just drop me a note at the email in my info.
rcade, also, I could see a rationale for posting fics in different fandoms under different usernames, so you might want one username for posting your Murderbot fic and another for posting your Raksura fic, just as Catherine Webb publishes her YA under her own name, her urban fantasy under Cate Griffin, and her standalone supernatural works under Claire North.
You don’t have to have multiple accounts to accomplish that feat, since Ao3 allows for the establishment and maintenance of multiple pseudonyms through one main Dashboard. When posting, you just select the pseud you want to use for that particular fic and/or fandom.
RedWombat: you may want to curate your feed and cut out the people you apparently follow whose repeated jokes are causing you this much emotional anguish. I live on Twitter, and I see these jokes once in a blue moon, so I assure you, it is absolutely possible to avoid while still keeping more or less abreast of fandom.
I do that with my own feed.
The problem is that I have a saved search so that I can see what people are recommending for Hugo and Nebula nominations, and posting from Hugo and Nebula ceremonies, and it’s like playing whack-a-mole there.
Nagaina: You don’t have to have multiple accounts to accomplish that feat, since Ao3 allows for the establishment and maintenance of multiple pseudonyms through one main Dashboard. When posting, you just select the pseud you want to use for that particular fic and/or fandom.
That’s even cooler!
When a person keeps angrily insisting that they the didn’t say something when someone a whole bunch of someone elses tries to explain the probably unintended implication their attack on other people, the only conclusion is that they know what they’re implying and are trying to play dumb.
JJ on September 17, 2019 at 6:31 pm said:
I bookmark the writers I like best. (Saves time when they write a lot!) It’s also possible to download stories, for reading via Calibre.
(That’s browser-bookmark.)
I await the avalanche of lawsuits and speech policing to stop anyone ever saying, even in jest, ‘I won a Hugo’. Gotta watch out for those People on the Street, they could be saying anything!
Oh, and those comparing Ao3 with the puppies? Seriously, stop trolling. You just look hysterical and your arguments get ignored.
fontfolly: When a person keeps angrily insisting that they the didn’t say something when someone a whole bunch of someone elses tries to explain the probably unintended implication their attack on other people, the only conclusion is that they know what they’re implying and are trying to play dumb.
fontfolly, I absolutely believe that you have context from your personal experiences which leads you to believe that what I am saying is about “fanfic cooties”. But from my point of view, it just sounds like deliberate lying. Please stop.
Everyone else can read my posts, and they can see what I’ve actually written, including the fact that I’ve said that when non-AO3 authors posted claims of being Hugo nominees, I felt like that was a smack in the face, too.
@Nagaina:
I didn’t know it was by invitation. I’m interested, please, but I can’t access the email in your info. I think that’s for reasons of security.
JJ, I realize that must be frustrating that your search is now less useful, but I truly do not think that you can reasonably get mad at people who don’t know you exist for deliberately hurting you, when you yourself are deliberately searching for the phrase in question. If they don’t @ you, then they aren’t joking AT you.
RedWombat: If they don’t @ you, then they aren’t joking AT you.
I know that. But when it’s about something in which I’m personally invested, and I feel as though they’re being really disrespectful to something I love, it hurts anyway. The fact that it’s not deliberate, or aimed directly at me, does not change that.
@JJ
That’s how people arguing with you feel, with somewhat more reason: the stuff hosted by AO3 is the exact kind of thing that got put down by “real fans” (like Worldcon members) in the 70s and 80s.
MRM:
I do not agree. Laws only shows what you are allowed to do legally. They do not cover all cause or effect. I do not believe in rule lawyering.
As long as you are searchable and haven’t made your tweets private, then they are in public space.
I’ve got a tonne of AO3 invites. E-mail me at [email protected]. Caveats: 1. I’d ask that you not use them to troll extensively, as they’ll be linked back to me. 2. I will be able to see what username you create. I won’t care, but if that info bothers you… The invite queue for just applying for an AO3 account isn’t too bad, about a day or so right now, and may be found here: (https://archiveofourown.org/invite_requests)
(Mike: Is this okay? I don’t mean disrespect to the site rules.)
I hate to say this to a fellow fan, especially since I also lived and breathed the fight against the puppies a few years back, but being a bit less invested might not be a bad thing at this point, JJ. The AO3 crowd are all just jazzed about being on the show, man. No one is trying to hurt you.
@JJ:
That’s unfortunate, but while I don’t contest the validity of your feelings, your feelings also don’t give you the right to demand that those people restrict their expressions of their feelings that are not at you. Claiming that them doing so is “being a disrespectful asshole”, “a continual slap in the face”, “tak[ing] a big shit on the Hugo Awards, because why not”, or them deciding “to fuck over other human beings” is a pretty extreme misrepresentation of what they’re actually doing.
P J Evans: the stuff hosted by AO3 is the exact kind of thing that got put down by “real fans” (like Worldcon members) in the 70s and 80s.
I’m very aware of, and sensitive to, that. I’ve experienced plenty of the derision for fandom in my own life when I was younger. Earlier this year, two men in another fannish endeavor in which I participate took research which I’d spent hours building and used it to create content under their names, instead of letting me create it myself under my own name. And they couldn’t figure out why it sent me ballistic (my e-mail was entitled “I Am Not Your Research Assistant”). So I absolutely know where the AO3 people are coming from, and that’s why it’s aggravating to be accused of things I have neither thought nor said.
@hampus
Like this tweet of yours?
Which somehow manages to be even worse than your comparing AO3 users to puppies here. Like…dude, you are actually saying a user base that contains a fuck ton of women, LGBT people, people of color, people with disabilities, and other minorities wants to party with white supremacists. Because you dislike them joking about winning award. Please take some time to stop and consider the things you’re implying here.
@JJ I believe you told me last night that you were going to have words with any user
here comparing AO3 users to puppies. I’d appreciate if you followed through on that, and my apologies if you already have and I missed it. Although I do see that other commenters here have called them on it, and I appreciate that.
@rcade For some additional context, here’s some tweets from this past year with more statistics:
In April:
https://twitter.com/ao3_status/status/1117535084486246401?s=21
“Today we come to you with fun facts rather than downtime notice! The Archive database is currently 693GB in size, and the total word count for AO3’s nearly 5 million works is 32,056,015,255.”
Regarding May:
https://twitter.com/otw_news/status/1135260988343836672?s=21
“We just took a look at the stats and in May, the #AO3 received over a billion page views in a single month! That’s not just a hecking lot of fanworks being consumed, it’s a new record for the site. Thanks to everybody for reading!”
As I said, I think you’re arguing across a rather severe culture gap.
Regarding this:
When a specific law is contains a major component all about determining whether harm has occurred, that law tends to be a pretty good barometer for determining whether or not that type of harm has indeed occurred in the eyes of the public.
Hampus, I’m really unhappy about the people who are apparently now vowing to “get back at” the Hugo Awards because they’ve been asked not to call themselves Hugo Winners, too — and about the copyright violator at that tweet, who FFS ought to stop being an asshole — but honestly, I remember just how bad the Puppies were, and this isn’t anything like that, and we shouldn’t be comparing them to Puppies. Please take a deep breath with me (because I’m taking one, too).
Thank you, Muccamukk, for both parts of that comment.
TMax:
Yes. Because those a-holes deliberately set out to violate and weaken the Hugo trademark for the fun of it. They are setting out to burn the Hugo’s down and are in no way better than puppies. They might even cause more damage.
They try to destroy the Hugo’s in public, they will be called out in public.
Dang it. Trying to think of a good way to do this so let me…do this!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1io6oXzJkK8QwBm0kY4TETUTjc74lK0sXaF_thA9-dOY/edit?usp=sharing
There’s one invitation code on that document. To use it, go to Ao3 and when you create your account you will be prompted to enter the invite code. It is possible to create an account without an invite but I believe you’ll be dropped in the queue and, well, that can take awhile. Registered users get invitation codes over time to hand out to friends/collaborators/individuals in fandom need. I’m not exactly sure when the first one will appear in a newly made account.
JJ:
When people are risking the existence of the award by trying to destroy the trademark, thinking it is a big joke and getting back, then it is just too much 4chan for me.
And having people defending them, saying they aren’t that bad, instead of wondering what the hell they are doing and calling them out for it, then my patience is out.
Sure, they might have better values in the background. But when they threaten the same destruction? No thanks.
@Nagaina:
Thank you kindly, but I already took advantage of Muccamukk’s offer. I appreciate the offered hand up from both of you, thanks.
@TMax
If you think that AO3 users are like Puppies and people on 4ch, then I think you have a very, very skewed view of the world. And you are, once again, just proving to me that the people here claiming hurt feelings really, really don’t care about the feelings of others.
And this is not about “joking”. It is about deliberately attacking the ownership of the trademark, forcing WSFS to defend their mark or risk losing it. It is an extremely rotten thing to do. And I’m calling out the persons involved, not the whole AO3 community.
Do not use others as shields for the abusers.
@Peace –
You are entirely welcome.
Wow, I feel seen.
4chan. The place where murders are announced ahead of time, shootings are planned, rapes are celebrated, white nationalists mobilize, and users celebrated the success of their campaign to deliberately smear LGBT people as pedophiles–you are comparing AO3 users to that. Over some jokes about the Hugos. Hell, over vitriol about the Hugos.
Good lord, your priorities are fucked up.
MRM:
While your priority is to make sure that people don’t think anything bad about burning down the Hugo’s for the fun of it.
@hampus
You’ve repeatedly compared AO3 users to Puppies and 4ch in the comments here, and not just in relation to trademark infringement, but in relation to the AO3 community, which you called toxic.
…for a few examples.
This isn’t about infringement, this is about you being mad at AO3 users as a general group and wanting to compare them to hate groups because it makes you feel more righteous and that your feelings and reactions are more valid. You don’t see me comparing commenters over here such as yourself to those groups, because even with as awful as I think you’re currently being, you’re nowhere near as bad as either of those groups. I’d ask you to do us the same courtesy.
(edit: and when I say “you” I mean Hampus, not general you, since many of the other commenters here are lovely, or at least not comparing AO3 users to hate groups. I just…Sheesh. get some perspective, please.)
Hampus, you also need to stop digging. You’re looking worse than the people you’re complaining about.
On AO3 membership
I donated to OTW/AO3 last winter, when Tumblr was having a boycott day. I could have gotten a membership then, but I write so little it isn’t worth it for me, regardless of all the other things I could do as a member.
@Hampus Eckerman: I think you should rethink the word “deliberately”. I don’t think it’s accurate. I’m not sure “attacking” is the right word either. It’s more like Lenny in Of Mice And Men loving and squeezing and calling it George, or the cartoon of the meteor hurling toward earth with an “I LOVE DINOSAURS” hat and pennant.
And I will continue to call it toxic as long as people are totally ok with burning down the Hugo’s, instead spending time tone policing me for being upset.
P J Evans:
I do not care much about how I appear to people who give all f-ck about attacks on the Hugo’s. When they have the decency to acknowledge how damaging the attacks on the trademarks are, then we can start talking about courtesy.
John A Arkansawyer:
I do not, as it has now been six days since they acknowledged on twitter that they had been informed that they were doing infringement.
Anecdata re: AO3 sign-ups – I didn’t have an invitation. Just filled out the form from the public interface. There was a step after that which involved a response identifying itself as an invitation, but I didn’t have to use an invite from anyone else. As I recall, the time from application to membership was a couple of days.
I signed up because, in going through a bunch of old writing files, I ran across the one–sadly incomplete–fanfic I ever wrote and decided it made sense to post it. I very briefly contemplated the possibility of writing Alpennia fanfic under an alias but quickly decided that felt a bit icky (in the “misleading people” sense, not due to anything about the content or context) as well as creating potential complications.
The cultural (and generational?) divide between these two groups is, apparently, enormous. This news of someone named Kevin from WSFS going into AO3 and making a ruckus only filtered through to this AO3 user a couple of hours ago, and through Twitter, not even AO3 because I, like many other users, don’t even check the home page’s announcements regularly.
To illustrate a little of this cultural difference, to me, Kevin’s comments on the AO3 post came off as extremely rude. Coming here to see how it was taken, it was a shock to see the negative response to the AO3 commenters who were answering Kevin and associated, as they seemed to be perfectly matching tone, to me. Why were the AO3 commenters seen as more rude than Kevin? Cannot fathom. He was answered in the same spirit he posted. If that seems strange, at least consider that a lot of AO3 readers are going to perceive it the same way and are not going to agree that the response to Kevin was unwarranted.
I have to agree that concerns about the Hugo trademark being protected were not appropriately conveyed, whatsoever. When the concept came up in my digging to figure out what on Earth even happened here, I genuinely thought that was a joke. I laughed out loud. Current online fandom lives and breathes drama and intrigue it feels like, and there are such crazy stories that exist in fandom history… That the WSFS would be seriously considered about their brand was being damaged from all this is so absurd to me (or was, until an hour ago). I haven’t seen any official statement from the WSFS or the Hugo Committee, and even the actual AO3 statement a few days ago was pretty vague; until I spent actual hours here, the hullabaloo in the comments at AO3 came across as someone trying to make an official statement from the Hugos? (Forgive my lack of knowledge of how the groups are delineated, I literally am just your typical AO3 user trying to make sense of why there’s drama about something that has been so joyful up until now.)
If the trademark/brand protection really is the concern, then that has not been communicated to the AO3 userbase at large. I would put money that most AO3 users have no idea this intrigue is even happening; we’re just having fun.
I understand that many AO3 users are feeling defensive, because prejudice against fanfiction still is a thing on occasion and used to be much worse in the past. And I’m very sorry that fanfiction used to be and still is stigmatised in some corners. But that does not excuse the behaviour of some AO3 users.
However, I’m also sick of having to walk on eggshells, if I as much as want to criticise the Hugo nomination and win for AO3. No, I don’t hate fanfiction, though it’s not my thing, and yes, AO3 is a wonderful project and seems to have a great community. However, I don’t want to have to repeat every time how wonderful AO3 is, when I say that I feel that it does not belong in the best related work category.
As for AO3 members supposedly joking about being Hugo finalists/winners, I would have accepted that it was a joke if there had been a flurry of such posts/tweets immediately after the nomination or respectively the win, but some people have been calling themselves “Hugo award winning/nominated fan fiction author” in their Twitter handles or bios for several months now. That’s a long time for a simple a joke. Also, you’ll notice that Hampus replied to someone who ran a Kickstarter to produce trademark-infringing enamel pins. I thought we had all agreed that the blatant trademark infringers were jerks.
I agree that the original statement, whoever wrote it, could have been worded better. And while most of us here know Kevin Standlee and what he is like, the first time being exposed to his Hugo explainer routine can be something of a shock. However, it was absolutely clear to me that Kevin was not trying to brag about having had an article published in a Hugo-winning fanzine, but that he was trying to explain that there is a difference between publishing in a Hugo-nominated/winning venue and being a Hugo winner.
Also, while AO3 is certainly a wonderful community for those who use it regularly, for many people here the link to that one thread in the AO3 forum is their first and maybe only exposure to AO3, because they don’t use the site. In fact, I’m not sure if I ever visited AO3 before I looked around a bit during the Hugo voting period to check out the highly lauded tags and search function. So if that one thread is your main exposure to AO3, it does not make the site come across as a pleasant place for anybody who is not a member of the fanfiction community.
As for fanfiction nominated for the Hugos, “The Ballad of Black Tom” by Victor LaValle and “The Dream Quest of Vellit Boe” by Kij Johnson, both finalists in the novella category in 2017, were clearly Lovecraft fanfiction. Several of the fairytale retellings we’ve seen nominated in recent years might be considered fanfiction as well. And the various Star Trek fanzines that were nominated in the fanzine category in the 1970s probably contained fanfiction and there were some people who also wrote fanfiction nominated in the fanwriter category in the 1970s and 1980s.
@hampus
Asking you not to compare a group of people–many of whom are marginalized themselves–to white supremicists and hate groups is not tone policing by any stretch of the imagination. This has nothing to do with your tone and everything to do with the direct comparisons that you’re drawing here. Be as mad as you want. Yell and scream and swear, if you like. Just please stop comparing AO3 users to Puppies and 4ch.
@Cora
The trademark infringers are definitely jerks, but someone being a jerk doesn’t warrant implying that they’ll enjoy celebrating with white supremacists. And Hampus has been making those comparisons about the entire AO3 userbase here. Which is very much its own kind of jerk behavior.
throws in the towel
Right, I’m out. If nobody is willing to listen to even a suggestion that sometimes context matters and other places can view something differently without automatically being in bad faith, I’m not gonna waste my breath anymore. Y’all win, Standlee was the essence of tact and charm and tread the boards as lightly as a ballerina huffing helium, and all the people he inadvertently pissed off were probably just You Peoples anyway, and who cares what THEY think?
Hi all,
I have not read the last comments and will not. I’m trying to get my anger under control so I can think clearly. I do not feel good about getting this angry.
I apologize to everyone that I have hurt or all statements I have made to broad or generalising. To those I have given the impression of attacking a whole community.
I do not have the spoons to read all comments and see where I have gone wrong. And I do not think it is good for me (or others) that I continue to write or read in this thread.
Take care all. I include all of you from AO3 in this. Again my apologies.
I typed one more post… then saw all the people throwing in before the edit timer ran out.
So I’m just going to leave it at what was said here and on my blog.
Peace out.
Man, I think the thing that has me the most utterly croggled about this entire thing is this idea that people edit their twitter bios on the regular.
… why… why would someone change the words that are there? It was already such a pain in the ass to get them all to fit in the first place? Unless there’s an active reason to put new ones in there, why… is anyone… surprised… that the words didn’t change?
I’m so genuinely, utterly, overwhelmingly bewildered by this.
“They still have the same joke in their twitter bio from a month ago”, I’ve changed my twitter bio all of TWICE and one of those was to put in a riff on Allen Ginsberg and getting it back under space limits took me like two hours of tinkering and figuring out what I had to edit down or drop entirely.
Do y’all have a hobby of changing up your twitter bios on a weekly basis or something?
Where do you find the time?