(1) MATCHLESS PROSE, WE HOPE. Will Frank (scifantasy), Vice-Administrator of the 2016 Hugo Awards and Administrator of the 2021 Hugo Awards, who also identifies himself as a fanfiction writer on AO3 and a trademark attorney, is trying to pour some oil onto the stormy waters that separate parts of the Worldcon community from parts of the AO3 community: “HugO3”. (Please don’t strike a match.)
…If the Worldcon-running community doesn’t police use of the phrase, someone else–someone with less humorous, less celebratory, less free-spirited intent–might be able to plausibly argue that he can call his self-published book a Hugo Award Winner just because it was fanfic, or he has an AO3 account, because the term has lost all of its significance by not being protected.
Is that likely? Who the hell knows. Is it something the Worldcon-running community wants to risk, especially so soon after a concerted effort to undermine the award, not by fanfiction authors in celebration of their validation but by a group of politically-motivated writers with an axe to grind? Definitely not.
(I’ve also seen some people saying that there isn’t any prestige in a Hugo Award given some of the historical winners, and…well, get in line behind the Oscars and the Grammys and the others, I guess. The fact is that “Hugo Award” on the cover of a book does indeed help sales. It matters. There is still cachet in being a Hugo Award winner. Or even a finalist!)
So, no, the Worldcon-running community is not saying “Hey, don’t have fun.” It is saying, “please, don’t undermine our ability to stop people with malicious intent from poisoning the term Hugo Award.”
I’m not even telling you that you have to think I’m right. But at least, please know that this isn’t just a matter of “don’t have fun.” It’s a plea for your help.
(2) HEINLEIN’S OTHER VERSION. The Number of the Beast versus Pursuit of the Pankera – not the same book at all. Arc Manor would be delighted for you to put the claim to a test — http://www.arcmanor.com/as/Comparison.pdf
It is a different book. Of the 187,000 words in the new book, it shares the first 28,000. But then is totally different. The separation occurs in chapter XVIII and here is a side by side comparison of the chapters in the two books with the point of divergence clearly marked.
(3) HISTORIC CON MASQUERADE (AND OTHER) PHOTOS. At Vintage Everyday, “Wendy Pini Cosplay: 22 Rare and Amazing Photographs of Wendy Dressed as Red Sonja in the 1970s”.
Wendy Pini does it all. In the 1970s Wendy used to hit the cons dressed as Sonja. She was born in San Francisco in 1951, and from an early age demonstrated the talents later to come to fruition as a professional illustrator, and eventually as the creator of Elfquest.
(4) CHANGES AT TOR. Shelf Awareness is reporting a couple of promotions at Tom Doherty Associates:
- Theresa DeLucci has been promoted to senior associate director of marketing of Tor Books, Forge, and Nightfire.
- Renata Sweeney has been promoted to senior marketing manager, Tor.
(5) ELLEN VARTANOFF INTERVIEW. From Small Press Expo 2017 (but just posted on YouTube today.)
Rusty and Joe talk to Ellen Vartanoff about her decades in the comics field and the early days of comic conventions!
(6) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- September 19, 1952 — “Superman On Earth” aired as the pilot episode for The Adventures of Superman television series starring George Reeves.
- September 19, 1961 — On a return trip from Canada, while in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been abducted by aliens.
- September 19, 1986 — The Starman series debuted with Jeff Bridges replaced in the role of The Starman with Robert Hays. The series lasted for twenty-two episodes.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born September 19, 1867 — Arthur Rackham. English book illustrator who is recognized as one of the leading literary figures during the Golden Age of British book illustration. His work can be seen on genre fiction ranging from Goblin Market to Rip Van Winkle and The Wind in the Willows. Derek Huson’s Arthur Rackham: His Life and Work is one of the better looks at him and his art. (Died 1939.)
- Born September 19, 1911 — William Golding. Though obviously best known for the Lord of The Flies novel, I’m more intrigued by the almost completed novel found in draft after his death, The Double Tongue which tells the story of the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo at Delphi. (Died 1993.)
- Born September 19, 1922 — Damon Knight. Author, critic, editor. He is the author of “To Serve Man”, a 1950 short story which became a The Twilight Zone episode. It won a 50-year Retro-Hugo in 2001 as the best short story of 1950. Wiki says “He ceased reviewing when Fantasy & Science Fiction refused to publish a review.” What’s the story here? (Died 2002.)
- Born September 19, 1928 — Adam West. Best known as Batman on that classic Sixty series, he also had a short role in 1964’s Robinson Crusoe on Mars as Colonel Dan McReady. The less said about his post Batman films, including a softcore porn film, the better. (Died 2017.)
- Born September 19, 1928 — Robin Scott Wilson. Founder, with Damon Knight and others, of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop. He edited Clarion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction and Criticism from the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, Clarion II and Clarion III. He wrote one genre novel, To the Sound of Freedom (with Richard W. Shryock) and a lot of short fiction. Alas, neither iBooks nor Kindle has anything by him available. (Died 2013.)
- Born September 19, 1933 – David McCallum, 86. Gained fame as Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and has rounded off his career playing medical examiner Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard in another TV series that is known by its initials, NCIS.
- Born September 19, 1940 — Caroline John. English actress best known for her role as scientist Elizabeth “Liz” Shaw in Doctor Who as companion to the Third Doctor. She’d repeat her role in Dimensions in Time, a charity special crossover between Doctor Who and the EastEnders that ran in 1993. Her only other genre role was playing Laura Lyons in The Hound of the Baskervilles. (Died 2012.)
- Born September 19, 1947 — Tanith Lee. I hadn’t realized that she wrote more than ninety novels and three hundred short stories in her career. And even wrote two Blake’s 7 episodes as well. I was more fond of her work for children such as The Dragon Hoard and The Unicorn Series than I was of her adult work. (Died 2015.)
- Born September 19, 1952 — Laurie R. King, 67. She’s on the Birthday Honors List for the Mary Russell series of historical mysteries, featuring Sherlock Holmes as her mentor and later partner. She’s also written at least one genre novel, Califia’s Daughters.
- Born September 19, 1972 — N. K. Jemisin, 47. Her most excellent Broken Earth series has made her the only author to have won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years.
(8) COMICS SECTION.
- Candorville makes Trek and Doctor Who jokes.
(9) UNIDENTIFIED WALKING OBJECTS. Aliens have landed at the convention hotel (a couple years early) reports the Tonopah Nevada in 2021 for Westercon 74 page – see the photographic evidence there!
Starting to see some out of this world stuff in honor of Alien Weekend… these aliens came all the way from Michigan to check out the happenings…
(10) OH NO, NOT AGAIN. “False Tsunami Warning In Hawaii Triggered By Police Exercise”.
Emergency sirens wailed on Hawaii’s Oahu and Maui islands Wednesday evening, warning of a tsunami, but the alert turned out to be a mistake, sparking anger from residents who recalled a similar false warning last year of an imminent ballistic missile attack.
Within minutes of the alarm going off shortly after 5 p.m. local time (11 p.m. ET) authorities were trying to calm the public by getting out word of the mistake.
The National Weather Service in Honolulu tweeted: “***NO TSUNAMI THREAT*** We have received phone calls about sirens going off across Oahu, but we have confirmed with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center that there is NO TSUNAMI THREAT.”
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell also took to Twitter. “Mahalo to everyone for taking appropriate action & tuning into local media,” he tweeted, adding that the sirens had been “inadvertently triggered” during Honolulu Police Department training.
(11) I’M MELTING! FastCompany tells everyone “Burger King is melting down plastic toys to recycle them into something actually useful”.
… Burger King has decided to remove all plastic toys from its kids’ meals. Not only that but the initiative, created by agency Jones Knowles Ritchie and starting this week in the U.K., is also calling for people to drop plastic toys from meals past in “plastic toy amnesty bins” at Burger King locations to be melted down and recycled into things that are actually useful, like play areas and surface tools, which can be recycled many times over.
People in the U.K. who bring in toys to melt down next week will get a free King Junior meal when they buy any adult meal. To promote the project, Burger King has created a cast of melted-down plastic toy characters, including Beep Beep, a jeep-driving bunny, which the brand has installed a giant melting version of on London’s South Bank to promote the project.
(12) IF YOU WERE A PTEROSAUR AS TALL AS A GIRAFFE, MY LOVE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Inside Science reports: “Newest Pterosaur Was Likely as Tall as a Giraffe”.
Ancient flying reptile dubbed Cryodrakon boreas, the “cold dragon of the north winds,” may shed light on the evolution of these dinosaur relatives.
CBC News agrees: “Giraffe-sized flying reptiles once soared over Alberta”
Newly identified pterosaur species had a wingspan of 10 metres
Mark Whitton’s 2013 article has additional details and a great illustration: “9 things you may not know about giant azhdarchid pterosaurs”
Despite their giraffian proportions, giant azhdarchid torso were relatively tiny. Witton and Habib (2010) noted that, like many pterodactyloid pterosaurs, their torsos were probably only a third or so longer than their humeri, suggesting a shoulder-hip length of about 65-75 cm for an animal with a 10 m wingspan. That’s a torso length not much larger than your own, although they were considerably more stocky and swamped with muscle. Azhdarchid shoulders, in particular, are well endowed with attachment sites for flight muscles, as are (for pterosaurs) their pelves and hindquarters.
(13) JURASSIC SHORT. Battle at Big Rock on YouTube is an eight-minute video, set in the Jurassic World universe one year after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom that premiered on FX last night and was put online today.
(14) BRADBURY INTERVIEW. Here’s a 9-minute video of Ray Bradbury’s 1978 appearance on the Merv Griffin Show.
The always brilliant Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest sci-fi writers in history, talks with Merv about the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, Steven Spielberg, his mission as a writer, the future of mankind, and ends by reading from his poem “If Only We Had Taller Been” from his collection “When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed.”
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchccock, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Kevin Standlee, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day JJ.]
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JJ, if it did, it’s not appearing for me, it was a longer response to their question:
I’ll be fine! It’s just, you know, I find that children’s song about “the hip bone is connected to the, leg bone” a bit personally offensive right now, in an I’m in this picture and I don’t like it sort of way. I had one joint go out and then these was a sort of cascade of disrupting all the other joints all the way up and down my left side, since they’re all linked and if one is dragging on the adjacent ones, they start pulling out, too. Which, you know, kinda hurts. A bit. I could definitely do without it. But I’ll be fine.
Alrighty, attempt 2…
@ Lorien I mean, I’m personally a little confused because while some have said what phrasing is good or not, it has varied between WSFS members, so right now, there is only the line from Kevin for preferred language, which has only been “contributor to a Hugo-winning project” and not any others. So the line of “what is disrespectful” doesn’t have consensus between members. So if it remains at what Kevin has said, then that hasn’t changed from the OTW statement, which means the reaction from AO3, generally, isn’t going to change, either.
So all of the following is just my opinion; I don’t necessarily think it’s reasonable or possible, but it is what I think. If the MPC was very determined to continue asking people to rephrase instead of any other action, then they would need to issue a statement and clarify exactly what their intent was with the statement to the OTW. Why did they not mention trademark protection if it was about trademark protection? From the start, the claim that this was about legal protection of the mark was undermined and seen as an insincere excuse. It took days for the conversation to settle on “well, it’s about protecting the Hugo’s trademark, actually, and the AO3 people were just so mean about it!” And another thing, if this is so central to the value of the Hugo’s, why did they pass on a message to the OTW instead of making a statement themselves? This undermined the appearance of seriousness; it appeared probably not that big an issue at all. So the reason it started out that way would need to be clarified if the MPC want the AO3 users to believe it’s both serious and that the core issue really is about the trademark protection.
Ideally, there would be someone, a spokesperson presenting this who could be proven to have enjoyed the joke, or even previously partaken in it. Don’t know if that’s possible. But the request for people to stop calling themselves Hugo winners came in hand with a bunch of WSFS members who were also very loud and ugly about how much they hated it; it went in hand with WSFS users being loud and ugly about their negative opinions of the AO3 and the people who use it. So any official apology would be helped if there was someone involved who were neutral previously, or heaven forbid, could be shown to have appreciated why people were saying it in the first place. Having a public request for people to stop making jokes or stop being celebratory is a bummer. Having a public request to stop making jokes hand-in-hand with what appears from the outside to be part of a group of people seething anger and contempt makes it feel personal. The appearance of impartiality was undermined. So if impartiality is the aim, then the people making the request to stop shouldn’t be the same ones who are publicly being contemptuous of the requestees.
Lastly, this should only actually happen if the MPC truly has reason to believe that the claims are infringement. Then they should thoroughly and precisely illustrate the infringement or dilution claims, with their lawyer-backed reasoning that if they don’t ask people to stop, that it will hurt the ability to keep the trademark.
But if they think or know that there is no real legal basis to ask people to stop, that it’s a personal dislike or a personal feeling that it disrespects the awards, then they should retract the request entirely. Individuals not speaking for the MPC or WSFS should certainly still feel free to explain what they think and why and reach out to the AO3 community – but unofficially, and definitely without the implicit threat of lawsuits.
Look, I spent most of today involved in the kind of repetitive gardening work that lets your hands be busy and your mind go calm and I have shed an awful lot of my anger at the WSFS during that time (which, I can’t lie, is partly why I was doing it.) So please understand that I’m saying this with absolutely no ill intent: I don’t think you’d ever be able to find something that will work the way you want it to.
You have to realize, the vast majority of AO3 users don’t have a horse in this race. They’re out there blissfully reading and posting and commenting and betaing and have no idea whatsoever that this conversation is happening – most of us don’t pay a lick of attention to the AO3 announcements and I say that as someone who absolutely never pays attention unless there’s Wank Happening. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of AO3 users don’t care or even know what the Hugo Awards are or that the AO3 won one, or if they do know that the win happened they have no clue what it won for.
The thing is, and I know I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, you’re dealing with the Old Guard here. It’s like old home week over in the AO3 comments where names are cropping up that I literally haven’t seen since I stopped being active on LiveJournal almost a decade ago. While I cannot speak for everyone in this category, the Fannish Elders, if you will, are the kinds of fen who tend to have long memories and shit lists. I have a large circle of friends who come from that culture and we’re the ones who will never forgive Cassie Claire for her transgressions. We’re the ones who are still warning people about Victoria Bitter/AndyThanfiction and patiently following him from fandom to fandom to warn people about him. We still laugh about posts on Fandom Wank that disappeared literal years ago & reference them as well loved and familiar cultural touchstones. This is the kind of person who you’re seeing who is paying attention to this entire wankstorm.
It’s also worth noting that we’re the fen who were there during numerous challenges to our rights to do what we do, who were told that we couldn’t play in multiple sand boxes or with the toys that we were playing with. We didn’t listen, mind, and some of us went on to create DreamWidth and the OTW/AO3 to make sure that we wouldn’t have to listen.
I honestly don’t think that you’ll ever be able to convince us to forget this or to soften our stances. It may happen naturally, over time, with some fen, sure. I’ll probably edit my twitter bio next week. But there’s going to be a significant number of people who are angry about this or who feel so pushed against the wall that they’re literally never going to change their feelings or grant you the slightest bit of leeway. Literally every single time you try to get them to change their stance or come at them with a different tactic, you’re just going to get their hackles raised higher and they’re just going to dig in more. This is, in part, a cultural survival mechanism. It’s not going away and I wouldn’t want it to.
This is the metaphorical quicksand trap – the harder you fight, the worse you’re going to lose. The less you fight, the easier it is to get out alive. Remember that 99.9% of the AO3 userbase gives less than a damn about this and will 100% never even joke about calling themselves a Hugo winner.
Oh, and it might be worth pointing out here, as has been pointed out elsewhere, that the VAST majority of us would rather drop dead on the spot than have people in our mundane normal lives find out we write pervy fanfic on the internet. I personally, would walk through fire to keep anyone in my “real life” from finding out that not only am I intensely fanatical about hockey and the NHL, I also write and avidly read fiction where NHL hockey players are all werewolves and some of them are in love (or have tentacles, or have soulmate tattoos, or or or or.) I would sooner become a hermit in the mountains and live in a cave with no internet access than ever allude to having anything to do with the AO3 and its Hugo Award in my professional life. And yes, do remember, that I’m the one who spite changed her twitter bio to proclaim that I won.
I think there are indeed two different issues here.
The legal infringements aren’t the real problem. The MPC can, and will, take care of those.
The real problem is the clash of cultures. And I feel like there are a number of people saying that if it’s not strictly part of the legal side, it therefore means that AO3 members should be able to say and do whatever they want.
A lot of Worldcon members feel that individual AO3 members saying “I am a Hugo Winner!” and “I’m a Hugo Winning Author!” is not only wrong and just plain untrue, it’s disrespectful to the Hugo Awards.
Of course, no AO3 member is required to considerate or respectful of a Worldcon member’s feelings. But when people say “I don’t have to, so there!”, it is not going to help resolve the current situation. And when people say “Unless you can legally win a case on it, then there’s nothing you can do about it, and I’m going to keep doing it!”, it is not going to help resolve the current situation.
There are two very disparate cultures here, and it seems to me that there are people from one of those cultures insisting that they have the right to decide how the other culture’s award system works, based on their own value system. To which I would say of course AO3 members get to decide what AO3 is and how it works and whose role is what, within the AO3 world.
But AO3 members don’t get to decide what the Hugo Awards are, or how they work. I absolutely understand why the AO3 members who say “but fanzine or anthology isn’t an appropriate comparison” say that. In the AO3 world, it isn’t.
The issue is that, given the way that the Hugo Awards work, from the point of view of a lot of Worldcon members, it is absolutely a comparable situation. The AO3 cultural definition is a different thing from the Hugo Awards definition. And that’s why I keep saying that I feel that there are a lot of AO3 members who are insisting that Worldcon members should change the Hugo Awards to conform to AO3’s cultural expectations, instead of being willing to understand and accept that the Hugo Awards’ cultural expectations are different.
I also think that when AO3 members say “but we all get to claim that we’re winners because AO3 is absolutely a group thing!” it completely undermines the argument that therefore AO3 members are all officially individual winners. If AO3 won as a group, then there are no individual winners, just individuals who can — and should — proudly celebrate and claim credit for being part of something magnificent that won a Hugo Award.
@JJ
“Back during the Puppy attacks on the Hugo Awards,(…)”
JJ, I think this comment is not helping the situation at all. You are drawing parallels between puppies and the people commenting pro AO3 here, which honestly feels insulting to me. And this comparision is not the first time.
The commenters here are not doing drive-bys, but actually engaging in longer discussions and citing reasons for themselves. Some are new, but some are regulars as well for the filers.
That sounds to me that you are accepting of the self-determination of the archive members, as long as it’s inside the archive. I personally think that isn’t respectful toward the archive. It feels like “indulging” a what you have deemed untrue intra AO3, but that the AO3 community is not allowed to selfdetermine what it is to the outside. It’s precisely trying to press the archive into the cultural standard of the Hugo. As before, my argument has been that it is unclear how the collective WSFS judges on that, because there is intra member strife about this as well. The cultural expectations are shifting and could already be in line with the AO3 member’s views. Unless I see the official stance of the WSFS on this, it is an argument between individual commenters.
There is for me absolutely no logical problem there. It has been covered how the structure goes. collective win! -> everyone of us won! -> I am a winner
This is common in every teamsport. The team are winners together and singular people are called winner. Please elaborate how this wouldn’t apply here, if you want to keep with that line of reasoning.
RedWombat: Like, wangst about how horrifically a ship is hurting you is a historically a huuuge crappy underbelly of the fandom! People threatened to kill themselves because the way other people portrayed Snape was at odds with their vision, or accused people of being OMG WORSE THAN HITLER because someone is gay. Or not gay. Or a top. Or a bottom. People declare dramatically from a soapbox that Anyone Who Ships This Couple Is A Rapist and furthermore they have been thrown into crushing despair just seeing the tag go by on Tumblr and that makes anyone who used that tag guilty of attempted manslaughter. Etc, etc, ad nauseam.
Saying that nobody is taking somebody’s proclaimed anguish over Hugo jokes seriously and that makes them bad people Is—there’s no way to say this delicately—so absolutely bog standard for this sort of fandom wank that it honestly isn’t even gonna register for a lot of commenters.
arioch, are you claiming that RedWombat here is drawing parallels between the people who did that and File 770 commenters and WSFS members? Is that really how how you want to mis-portray this?
@JJ
slow blink You really wanna go with this? Let me be as clear as possible.
I made, thanks to my foolish youth, the assumption that file 770 worked texts were written and read from top to bottom and left to right. Or is that another cultural difference at play here?
So I deliberately cited a part of your post below the quote of RedWombat, because that’s what I wanted to address. I didn’t zero in on what I feel is a false paraphrase of RedWombat because the part below it was the part I found particularly egregious. I only cited part of it, because I didn’t want to put a whole block quote of your whole post.
What I was saying is that you comparing the emotionally abusive tactics to how the commenters from the AO3 operate is not a valid comparision. I laid out how the two parties operate differently and that this is why AO3 commenters are not trying to manipulate people through disagreement with the opinions of some filers. In fact, there is overlap between the AO3 users, WSFS members and filers. Even if you feel threatened in the same degree by the pushback, drawing a line towards puppies is, frankly, insulting and inciting even more pushback.
As for misportrayal, I would really like to know how you logically explain how you got from me, citing your comment, below the quote of RedWombat, to claiming I am making any sort of claims about RedWombat instead of you. Even with as much possible leeway I am willing to give, it seems to me you are misportraying my comments, and because this relies on a basic assumption such as reading top to bottom as is the norm in english language, I find it hard to believe this misportrayal was not deliberate.
I mean, maybe I am getting myself worked up over nothing because you just had a brain fart last comment. Or this is another in a line of posts assigning people arguing from the AO3 side the worst possible intentions and readings, only this one 100% steals the effin cake right now.
arioch, here’s my point:
RedWombat describes how people with an agenda (bad actors) on AO3 have used emotionally-manipulative language to try to get AO3 members to do what they want. RedWombat explains that this is why, when File 770 commenters and WSFS members say they feel the way that the way AO3 members are referring to the Hugo Awards is hurtful and disrespectful, it is not likely to have the effect on AO3 members that File 770 commenters and WSFS members would expect it to have.
I describe how people with an agenda (bad actors) on File 770 have used emotionally-manipulative language to try to get File 770 commenters and WSFS members to do what they want. I explain that this is why, when AO3 members say they used to feel positively about Worldcon and the Hugo Awards, but because of the way that File 770 commenters and WSFS members have reacted, no longer feel that way, it is not likely to have the effect on File 770 commenters and WSFS members that AO3 members would expect it to have.
Neither RedWombat nor I are drawing parallels. We are each explaining why something is not likely to get what might be the normally-expected reaction.
@JJ
What I am seeing here, is again equating emotional manipulation with how AO3 users have expressed disappointment in the conduct of some File 770 commenters. And yeah, some of you feel that way, which is why I find it important that this stems from the projection of emotional manipulation on the commenters that have argued for jokes on twitter. In short, the behaviour is not similar between the groups. I’m pointing that out so you can reflect on this occuring and take it into account, so you can stop making comparisions to the puppies, take the commenters feelings on the other side serious as well instead as an attack and engage more productively with the other side.
arioch, I have made no comparisons between Puppies and AO3 members. I have tried to explain the history and background which will inform the reactions of some of the File 770 commenters and WSFS members.
You insist on attempting to project intentions and motivations on me which simply are not there. This comes very, very close to pushing my aforementioned hot button. I am going to regard any further spurious claims you make along these lines as evidence of bad faith on your part.
People who wish to have their feelings taken into account and respected are well-served to consider that this must be something they are first willing to do for others.
@JJ
Yes, you made no literal comparision. But look at what you said and how your argument works:
There are two options: Either AO3 users here are like the puppies or they are not. If they are only like them in small degrees, there are still similar.
Premise is, pro AO3 commenters are not like the puppies. That’s where I stand and I have said why. Different motivations, different behaviour and real emotions.
You also say the side arguing for AO3 users celebrating is not like the puppies. Agreed here. But, you continue, WSFS members might react to them like the puppies because this feels like the puppies.
But why would they feel like that, I didn’t ask because the answer is, logically and implied: The WSFS commenters are reminded of the puppies by the AO3 commenters and therefore have similar feelings. So in their minds, AO3 commenters are similar to the puppies in action.
~subtext~, spelled out. And people reading and writing fanfic are familar with subtext, mostly we use it for detecting sexual tension where showrunners deny the existence forcefully to us. Often while baiting us in the face.
So, no, you didn’t literally say it, but the subtext of the message are right there. Maybe you will say you don’t feel that, which I would debate as well. I wouldn’t even think you were lying if you said it, because I pointed it out to get your attention on it.
Now, these feelings are understandable, but the point is, if you want to have this discussion, you (that is, commenters that argue that the jokes are dilution in general) gotta check them now and then to make sure you are reacting to the situation at hand, instead of transferring feelings onto AO3 commenters. That is what you were asking for patience for. And again, glad to give it, but you must make an effort as well. And when others are pointing to points and telling you they don’t think it’s warranted, they are trying to give you that benefit. At least I am. So you can recheck whether that righteous anger is justified in presence. I hope I don’t have to copy your last paragraph here to make it clear that is in answer to that.
I’m sorry if you felt like I was jumping over several points, but I usually jump them when they seem selfevident for me. I need the reminder sometimes. But I would also ask you to check your jumps of logic, because I still do not have the faintest idea how you got from me citing you to me talking about RedWombat. I am willing to let your accusation of misportrayal drop and move forward if you are. Otherwise nothing will get done in this wank.
arioch: I still do not have the faintest idea how you got from me citing you to me talking about RedWombat
Of course you weren’t talking about RedWombat. You were making claims that what I said was something completely different that what I actually said, and I pointed out that if that was true about what I said, then it was also true about what RedWombat said. (Something which you’ve still failed to acknowledge.)
RedWombat described how AO3 members consider the feelings of Worldcon members irrelevant because of their past experiences. I described how the past experiences of File 770 commenters and Worldcon members will inform their perceptions of complaints about Worldcon and the Hugo Awards.
Either this works both ways, or it works neither way. Your choice.
WSFS members have been told from the get-go by AO3 members that their feelings don’t matter. I have been told from the get-go by AO3 members that my feelings don’t matter.
To this day (with the possible exception of Meredith and Lorien), I have yet to see AO3 members acknowledge that the feelings of Worldcon members are valid and important. All I see is the insistence of AO3 members that Worldcon members need to change the Hugo Awards to conform to AO3 cultural expectations.
Until you address that, there’s no point in me trying to engage further with your rationalizations about how I am the bad guy here.
HI LectionaryStan! Sorry your earlier reply got eaten somehow. That must have been frustrating.
I have a few thoughts on some of your points.
“I’m personally a little confused because while some have said what phrasing is good or not, it has varied between WSFS members, so right now, there is only the line from Kevin for preferred language, which has only been “contributor to a Hugo-winning project” and not any others.”
It’s true that AO3 members and WSFS members are going to have a range of preferred wordings, but I think we can find a useful scale of responses, ranging from ‘universally accepted’ to ‘generally accepted’ all the way to ‘universally unacceptable.’ How does this work as a scale: ‘I’m a contributor to a Hugo-winning project’ is universally acceptable although clunky in phrasing. Frankly, I don’t imagine many people are going to take that up. But ‘We won a Hugo’ seems generally accepted, as does ‘I won a millionth part of a Hugo.” It seems ‘I won a Hugo Award’ is less acceptable to most people and ‘I am a Hugo Award winning author’ or ‘My fanfic won a Hugo Award’ is universally considered going too far.
It seems like there’s a lot of phrasings there which will cause less uproar. What I suggest is not waiting for some authority figure from the MPC to make a ruling. (And I’ll be frank, here, I don’t think it would have a positive effect anyway. I think everyone will feel like the MPC doesn’t have a right to define standards for AO3, causing yet another uproar.) Let’s just start using one or other of the wordings we’ve heard a lot of people are okay with and see if that starts to calm things down.
“But the request for people to stop calling themselves Hugo winners came in hand with a bunch of WSFS members who were also very loud and ugly about how much they hated it; it went in hand with WSFS users being loud and ugly about their negative opinions of the AO3 and the people who use it.”
I think it would be more helpful to just drop this angle. I think the impression of ugliness stems from basic misunderstandings of community culture, experience and mode of expression. I find that most of the people discussing this are well-meaning at heart. And it is this type of accusation which continues to stir things up. No one likes to be accused of things they didn’t mean. I am going to take people’s word for it when they say they didn’t mean things negatively. (And when I say that, I mean everyone because each of the three community’s members have been doing the misinterpreting and been misinterpreted as well.)
“Ideally, there would be someone, a spokesperson presenting this who could be proven to have enjoyed the joke, or even previously partaken in it. Don’t know if that’s possible.”
This is a great and helpful suggestion! I think it would have even more impact if more than one person like that would make the effort.
We’re all in this together. Even more so once AO3 won the BRW Award. AO3 is and has been a part of the Hugo Award community for some time now. We’re not outsiders in this discussion. Let’s stop drawing up battle lines over something that was meant as a joke but wasn’t taken that way once it started spreading out into public spaces.
1) “The members of Worldcon” include a substantial number of the AO3 members who are taking part in this conversation. A better descriptor might be, “the members of Worldcon who disagree with the way many members of AO3 are talking about their connection to the BRW 2019 Hugo Award.” Or maybe just “Filers,” since that’s the subgroup of Worldcon members relevent to this conversation.
2) The feelings of those Worldcon members are not important to this discussion, because this discussion is about, “how AO3 participants will talk about the BRW Hugo in public.”
3) There is an argument that this discussion is about, “what is required by trademark law to keep the trademark.” If that is the case, then again, Worldcon Filers’ feelings have no bearing, and AO3 members’ feelings (and willingness to adjust their actions) are only relevant if they’d like to avoid lawsuits. However, most of us are convinced that the majority AO3 members’ claims about the Hugo win are not lawsuit-worthy, so this is back to being a social problem.
4) You, collectively, Filer regulars and Worldcon members who do not believe that individual AO3 participants should call themselves “Hugo Winners,” are asking us, collectively, the AO3ple who believe it is acceptable for us to use some variant of the phrase “I am a Hugo Winner,” to change how we talk. You are asking us for a favor, and you’re being damned insulting while you do it.
You may feel attacked and insulted, here at File 770 which you consider an online home. That is fairly reasonable; there’s a swarm of outsiders who are both unaware of the nuances of how discussion normally works here, and are in sharp disagreement with many of you. But that still doesn’t make those feelings relevant to the topic, which is, “How are AO3 members going to talk about the 2019 Best Related Work Hugo Award?”
If we were all friends to start with, you might have said, “hey, my friend, this thing you are doing disturbs me; could you do something else?” And we might have. But we didn’t start from a place of camaraderie, although we had some goodwill from the struggle against the Puppies.
You’ve burnt through that, and wow, that took some doing. Now we’re down to, “why should we pay any attention at all to what you want us to do?” We have not yet reached open hostility, but some of us are definitely moving in that direction.
@JJ
There is a marked difference between wanker and white supremacist. RedWombat cited fandomwank, not wank that gets unfunny. Gatekeepers too are not the same as white supremacists. And RedWombat certainly didn’t bring them up.
And I never disputed not having wank drama and gatekeeping in the background. I can still give you benefit of the doubt. Which brings me to
“Either this works both ways, or it works neither way. Your choice.”
The thing is, I have been trying to give you room. But I don’t feel like I get any of that benefit back. You go from one thing you argued with me, e.g. I’m making things up when I say don’t put the commenters expressing their disappointment of the reaction of some WSFS members with puppies trying to manipulate you, right to the next as soon as I finished explaining in detail because you accuse me of twisting your words. I literally laid it out, you didn’t comment on it besides saying “of course, I meant something different” and switch to the next thing. In this case how I am not respecting the emotion of WSFS members, when I literally said:
“Now, these feelings are understandable,” – because they are! Emotions are valid AND it still behooves us to check them from time to time if they are grounded in the reality of the situation. Which is exactly why I’m trying to give you the benefit of doubt by giving you outs like “Now, I could be working myself up over nothing (…)”.
So right after I told you feelings are understandable, you come at me with telling me I am not giving you any room for mistakes and that your feelings haven’t been heard from the start. Meanwhile, I’m not sure you actually acknowledged any point I make because as soon as there is nothing to criticise, you move on to a new grievance. I do not in any way see signs of you giving me benefit of doubt, like I try to give you, and you are also telling me I have to do the first step before I get any leeway from you.
What the fuck someone else might say.
I have been addressing your points all day now and unless you actually engage them, there is no point to hop to the next thing. I will be back, because I want to keep dialogue happening, but right now you are free from my “rationalisations” because my laundry machine is leaking.
Hi arioch – I hope you don’t mind if I jump in here, as I think I have something useful to say.
You said, “There is for me absolutely no logical problem there. It has been covered how the structure goes. collective win! -> everyone of us won! -> I am a winner
This is common in every teamsport. The team are winners together and singular people are called winner. Please elaborate how this wouldn’t apply here, if you want to keep with that line of reasoning.”
I believe that you have experienced what you say you have. But I have a very different experience of team sports. So different in fact, I’ve never experienced what you have at all. It seems very possible to me that the structure “collective win! -> everyone of us won! -> I am a winner” is not as clearly understood or as universal as many people expect.
Maybe it’s also my experience outside of AO3 as a crew member on a variety of media projects that has influenced my take on that phrasing. I’ve never heard an actor, writer or director use the phrase ‘I won’ unless it was for an individual win like Best Actor or Best Screenplay. The phrase I’ve seen used most commonly for the whole show winning Best Drama or Best Picture is ‘we won.’ I don’t expect my experience to be universal. I’m sure others have experienced something different. But if there are differences in experience, then it’s only to be expected that there will be differences in how people hear/read that phrasing.
I think this may be a blind spot for us at AO3 – not understanding how the end point of that structure (‘I am a winner’) could be interpreted by the wider Twitter-sphere or non-members of AO3. I think as long as we continue to use ‘I’ phrasing we’re going to be misunderstood by a lot of people.
And that’s why I keep saying that I feel that there are a lot of AO3 members who are insisting that Worldcon members should change the Hugo Awards to conform to AO3’s cultural expectations, instead of being willing to understand and accept that the Hugo Awards’ cultural expectations are different.
I’ll say it again. There are no AO3 members making any demands on the Hugo Awards to change in any way whatsoever. You keep saying this. No one wants the SWFS to change. No one is insisting that the Hugos change. No one is telling you personally that you need to change, or that your attitude towards the Hugos needs to change, or that your opinion towards the Hugos needs to change. You can think of the Hugos in any way you want whenever you want and do whatever you want in relation with them at any time and not a single person will say, you’re doing it wrong. A number of people have suggested that this is a situation where we can agree to disagree and it is the “pro-SWFS” side who has decided that is not acceptable.
Feeling that other people are doing it wrong and believing that your own, superior approach to doing it needs to be respected by others to such a degree that they all as a body conform is an imposition. Being unwilling to change the way you talk about a thing because a small group of pedants have demanded it is not an imposition. You can continue to say that members of AO3 are contributors to a Hugo Award winning project. No one will stop you.
To this day (with the possible exception of Meredith and Lorien), I have yet to see AO3 members acknowledge that the feelings of Worldcon members are valid and important. All I see is the insistence of AO3 members that Worldcon members need to change the Hugo Awards to conform to AO3 cultural expectations.
First, yet again, no one has asked you to change a single thing.
Secondly, I think for a long time now many people have tried their best to acknowledge that certain people are feeling uncomfortable with the way some others have been talking about the Hugos. I acknowledge that it can be frustrating to make an argument in earnest and see that argument dismissed or even laughed at. And I understand that there are people who feel a sense of deep ownership over the Hugos and have spent a great deal of time and effort to support them. I understand that the SWFS is a small org with limited resources and that a lack of control over the way their award is being talked about can be deeply uncomfortable.
But that does not give them the right to shape the world as they see fit regarding the way others see the Hugos. As valid as your feeling are, they do not give you the license to curtail the free speech of other people, particularly when the crux off this issue is whether or not the speech in question is even in any way offensive to the sensibilities of Hugos culture.
I use the You here individually, as I’m unsure that the majority of those who might be represented by the Hugos actually care about this, and there are those who have actually won the Hugos who say they don’t.
It’s good that Mike shut down comments on the 9/14 Pixel Scroll thread. Pretty much everything had been said, people were reiterating the same positions over and over, and it was getting in the way of other conversations.
@M Lin: Agreed. As someone who’s never paid much attention to AO3/fanfiction culture before the Hugos, more and more I’ve grown
annoyed at the constant Filer assertion that WSFS culture is being forced/asked to conform to AO3 culture. as if that’s a concern shared by the entire WSFS body. It feels like a small section of passionate Filers assuming their feelings speak for the majority of Worldcon members and arguing accordingly. I know my feelings on the matter, and I know they don’t align with this byline. I’ve been a registered member for around 4 years; am I not part of the WSFS culture? What even defines the WSFS culture? I can’t abide by asking AO3ers to use “we” instead of “I” strictly, while at the same time using “we” as an implicit “I.” No one’s asking for either “side” to change, only to coexist with each other and attempt to understand the other. Is this so complicated?
@JJ
And this is why I have you hushed.
Hi Elf – your post wasn’t directed to a specific person so I hope it’s okay for me to respond.
You said “The feelings of those Worldcon members are not important to this discussion, because this discussion is about, “how AO3 participants will talk about the BRW Hugo in public.”
I feel that AO3 is part of the Worldcon and Hugo Award communities. Not just because AO3 won, but, yes, that win definitely means AO3 unequivocally is a part of the Hugo Award community. And I think the feelings of every member of a community are important. The Hugo Award community may be ever-changing, but it is a community, and one with long-established norms. When I hear fellow community members say, essentially, ‘it’s important to be careful in phrasing when you talk about your win’ I think it does no harm to listen. Especially when it’s clear that lots of the Hugo Award community are very passionate about it.
In the past, I’ve been asked to use the phrase ‘Hugo Award Finalist’ and not ‘Hugo Award Nominee.’ I honestly feel that the request to phrase things using ‘we’ wording instead of ‘I’ wording is along the same lines.
And while AO3, and its members, are not newcomers to the Hugo community as a whole: we are newcomers – as winners. And I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that as newbie winners, we may have put our foot in it.
“You, collectively, Filer regulars and Worldcon members who do not believe that individual AO3 participants should call themselves “Hugo Winners,” are asking us, collectively, the AO3ple who believe it is acceptable for us to use some variant of the phrase “I am a Hugo Winner,” to change how we talk. “
The way I’m taking this is that Hugo community members are asking us, fellow Hugo community members, to change how we phrase things. Because we are upsetting our fellow community members over a minor issue of phrasing. What am I defending in arguing over this request? The right to say ‘I’ rather than ‘we.’ And I can understand why people are angry that I’m, essentially, saying ‘I think this minor issue of phrasing is more important than you are.’
“You are asking us for a favor, and you’re being damned insulting while you do it.”
Yes, we’re being asked for a favor. And yes, the request was phrased clumsily and in a manner that it pushed a lot of our buttons. But I don’t think anyone meant to be insulting. I just think this is a culture clash. And unless we all get past the initial misinterpretation of intent and manner, we are just going to continue to cause upset.
@Lorien
I actually think the fundamental problem is less of a culture clash and more a logistical problem, while the culture clash came from the way certain WSFS members attempted to solve the logistical problem.
There are something like hundreds of thousands of pseudonymous accounts on Ao3. An extreme minority of those accounts participated in any way in the effort to nominate, campaign, vote etc. for the Hugos. The vast majority are bystanders looking on who are related to each other only by way of having an account on a website.
It is not feasible to exert any sort of control over such a population in the same way you might exert control over a single individual who who is personally invested in what is going on at a much higher level than the average Ao3 user was invested in Ao3’s Hugo.
Even if everyone on this website were to eventually find themselves in complete accord over the way our relationship to the Ao3 win should be phrased, we would then have to ask, “how do we get everyone else to follow this,” and the answer would be, “we can’t.” As far as policing casual speech about the award is concerned, the task is impossible. I personally could swear an oath that I will solemnly only ever refer to myself as a member of a website that was awarded a Hugo or however that needs to be phrased, and you’d be one down, 1000000000 to go.
I wish I’d known this days ago. Since the only meaning of “wank” I was familiar with is…you know… I thought those references were insults.
I’m very sorry to keep writing it SFWS that previous post. I know it’s World Science Fiction Society and my fingers were moving much faster than my brain.
M Lin: I see the potential for this to evolve into WSFSJWs….
@ Mike
Whoops! I suppose this is one of those times when a word is so common in one lexicon that it never occurs to you that it may not translate!
(We used to have a Journal Fen community dedicated to such arguments/interactions called Fandom Wank that was a foundational touchstone of the LJ/DW/AO3 fannish community & which had a massive record of fannish wanks dating back a decade or more. Sadly, it has been Lost to the Ages.)
FYI. I just went through the spam and restored a few comments which should not have been roundfiled.
@Peggy I think I still have a link to the msscribe wank… God, that was the best wank to read archivally from someone who was lucky enough to have missed it completely.
@Lorien Hmm, after a little thought, I think I disagree with this. Not every single AO3 user was interested in coming over and joining the WSFS, and not every AO3 user took the Hugo win as a sign that we now belonged to the WSFS/Worldcon/Hugo community. There were a (comparatively small) group who didn’t know about it all before and were probably poking around being interested, and then a good few AO3 users who were already WSFS members.
The newcomers didn’t put their foot in it. The newcomers were largely going about their own business when a distant message from a faraway group we didn’t know had “claimed” us was making a very clumsy attempt to request a change, while implicitly throwing around the threat of lawsuits all the while. The AO3 users were not going around intentionally thumbing their noses at the existing Hugo community – before this, nobody would even thought anybody would be offended by it. The post at OTW was the first clue was given, and it came in hand with comments like “entitled princesses” (which, yeah, that’s the one that stuck in my craw the most, although there was a LOT in the early pages of both this 9/20 post and the 9/14 one). AO3 users were not the ones to first step in it.
@Peggy
Not entirely! 😀
F_W at the Wayback Machine
F_W wiki, at same
Lorien Gray on September 21, 2019 at 8:42 pm said:
There certainly have been no threats of legal action by the WSFS MPC against OTW to my knowledge as a member of the MPC, merely expressions of concern about potential misuse. In fact, the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee (a subcommittee of the MPC) has worked with OTW to come up with artwork that appropriately incorporates WSFS service marks and accurately reflects and celebrates AO3’s win, just as the HAMC will provide “winner” variants of the Hugo Award logo to any winner upon request.
Personally, I continue to marvel at how many people assume that you should use the Nuclear Option first. Step 1 = LAWSUIT is almost never the right anwer.
Meredith on September 21, 2019 at 9:54 pm said:
Thank you. And as I posted elsewhere, it’s not as though I haven’t done some transformative works myself, as the two amateur Doctor Who movies I directed and acted in show.
bill on September 21, 2019 at 9:21 pm said:
Before I answer, a massive caveat: I have been advised that the 2020 WSFS Business Meeting is “going in a different direction” and that my volunteer services are not needed there. My role in the 2021 WSFS Business Meeting is (as far I know) assistant videographer, a non-management staff position assisting Lisa Hayes recording the meeting. I therefore have no management position on the next two Worldcon’s WSFS Business Meetings and have no inside information at all about them relevant to this question. Anyone claiming that my statements here represent any form of insider information is flat-out wrong. I apologize for having to hedge so much, but there appear to be people who assume that I am the Sole Voice of WSFS.
Having warned you all about this, here is my opinion, which is my opinion only of me, and not that of any other group, committee, corporation, or other entity of which I ever have been or currently am a member: I think there may well be attempts to do as you suggest. I think it unlikely that such attempts will succeed in being passed, and that the debate on such attempts may prove to be quite heated. Even an advisory motion suggesting (but not requiring) that it would be appropriate to recognize the translator of a translated work along with the work’s author was shot down by this year’s meeting.
There are certain subjects that I expect would plunge the meeting into a very long and contentious debate, and this is one of them. Remember that there’s a lot of things that are not explicitly codified or required, but are only a matter of custom and practice. For example, Worldcons are not actually required to have a Hugo Awards ceremony, nor are they even required to present trophies to the winners (although if they do present trophies, they have to use a specific design).
I am fond of using the toothpaste-tube analogy when it comes to codifying some things: the harder you try to pin it down, the bigger mess you make.
@Lorien Gray
As a typical Worldcon is approx 7k members it would seem logical that the majority of AO3 members are newcomers to the Worldcon/Hugos community. Many of the AO3 members are only experiencing it through being a finalist and winning a Hugo, and only experiencing that through reading a few articles or maybe watching video of the awards ceremony (or at least the BRW bit).
But apart from that I think your post was a very good one.
@M Lin
Everyone knows that. However that doesn’t mean that uncool behaviour shouldn’t be called out (in general). It doesn’t mean that people can’t set an example. Will there be hold-outs who carry on saying “Hugo award winning author” – probably. But I would guess over time they will become more and more isolated.
@Mike
Yep I originally had the same reaction when I saw people using ‘wank’.
Hi, Kevin. Thanks for all your comments, they’ve been great.
This did stick out to me, here:
If I’m following along correctly, this exchange says to me that who gets to call themselves a Hugo winner isn’t currently codified and is a matter of This Is How It’s Always Been? A cultural norm rather than a law?
@ M Lin – I know a lot of others feel that if it won’t be 100% effective, then it’s pointless to even make the effort. I’ve always thought individual change can have a huge effect in a group so I do see a point in however many people end up embracing a change in wording.
@LectionaryStan – “Not every single AO3 user was interested in coming over and joining the WSFS, and not every AO3 user took the Hugo win as a sign that we now belonged to the WSFS/Worldcon/Hugo community.”
It seems a little unfair for AO3 members to say, essentially, ‘we’re a group and the group won a Hugo so I’m a Hugo winner’ while at the same time saying ‘AO3 members acted as individuals when joining the Hugo community so it’s nothing to do with me and how dare you request I change how I talk about the Hugo win I’m taking a partial credit for.’
And to go a bit further – AO3 members laid down money to join the 2019 Worldcon; then a group submitted AO3 for nomination large enough that it became a finalist; and a large group of them also voted in the Awards sufficient for it to become the winner. And that sounds to me like AO3 joined the Hugo community in order to participate in the Hugo Awards. In fact, it took a huge group effort to accomplish that. And when that happened, AO3 automatically became a part of the Hugo community. Because that seems to be how the Hugo community works – if you participate, then you’re a part of it.
It seems very unfair to me when a group joins a community in order to try to win an award in that community and then, essentially, says ‘it’s our award now and that community shouldn’t have a say in how that win should be described.’ (Although for the record, many AO3 members, including myself, have been participating in the Hugo community for years.)
It’s this ‘us against them’ attitude (which has been displayed by members of each group so far) which is causing a lot of the unpleasantness. And continuing to argue over who did it first is just extremely unhelpful no matter how right someone may feel.
@bill – “Do you anticipate any attempts to amend the WSFS Constitution in light of what has gone on lately? Such as:
– Refinement of what may or may not be eligible for BRW?”
I sincerely hope not. I know I may be in the minority here, but I like having that category be a grab bag. I find it very entertaining to compare an apple, a fish and bicycle for an award. And, for the record, that’s my ranking – apple, fish, bicycle (unless it’s this fish here in which case the bicycle comes in second.
@Lorien That’s a fair point, but I think my point is also fair, that the vast majority of AO3 users were NOT plugged in to the nomination process, voting process, or subsequent WSFS community discussions, heard about it from afar, but are now suddenly being asked to comply with community standards they never agreed to join.
@LectionaryStan – “I think my point is also fair, that the vast majority of AO3 users were NOT plugged in to the nomination process, voting process, or subsequent WSFS community discussions, heard about it from afar, but are now suddenly being asked to comply with community standards they never agreed to join.”
It is a fair point, you’re right. It does sound though that those who didn’t participate before in any of the process, but now want to participate in the celebration, could be understanding when asked to describe the win in a specific way. (I fully understand the initial response to the request but I think we should move past that.)
And all those AO3 members who didn’t know about or care about the Hugos before, didn’t join in the celebration at all, and still don’t care about the Hugos, probably didn’t start calling themselves Hugo winners on Twitter or anywhere else. And so the request doesn’t affect them at all anyway.
I’m still left with impression that the request is reasonable. Although the manner of the request was unwieldy: the response to the request, and the defense of the request, the subsequent defense of the response to the request and the defense of the defense of the request has been way too filled with anger and eagerness to assume the worst.
@LectionaryStan: During debate on the resolution that Kevin mentioned, I found the most persuasive argument against the resolution to be that it stated the “translator shall be awarded a Hugo” when we award Hugos (in those categories) to works, not people. I don’t have the same level of WSFS experience as Kevin (or many others in this thread) but that debate and everything else I’ve heard is consistent with your understanding re: “who is a Hugo Winner” being non-codified tradition.
Martin
@Martin Thanks, I’m glad my understanding isn’t so off-base, then. 🙂
@Lorien And now it comes back to whether a relatively small portion of WSFS members really want to continue asking this, because it’s certainly not every WSFS member who is making the request. Saying it like that makes it sound like WSFS at large is unified in the request to largely AO3 to please abide, but that’s not the case. I don’t think the entirety or even the majority of WSFS is asking this, I think it’s a relatively small group, so small that we can make a list of individuals I could count on my fingers (maybe toes, too? Maybe?) right now. The request isn’t going to stop appearing as mean-spirited even if the intent from the requesters wasn’t to be mean. I believe it when people clarify they’re not trying to be mean, but the request itself is so inherently insulting based on the transformative fandom’s past experiences that there is never going to be a way to ask it that sounds nice.
Eli: You, collectively, Filer regulars and Worldcon members who do not believe that individual AO3 participants should call themselves “Hugo Winners,”… are asking us for a favor
M. Lin: no one has asked you to change a single thing.
This is the thing. AO3 members aren’t being asked for a “favor”. AO3 members are being asked to respect the way that the Hugo Awards work.
Demanding to be able to refer to oneself individually as an individual Hugo Award Winner is asking Worldcon members to change the way the Hugo Awards work, to conform to AO3 cultural expectations.
LectionaryStan on September 22, 2019 at 12:40 pm said:
Sure. How could it be otherwise? Try to write black-letter law and you’ll always find an edge case. As has been said before in this discussion, much bad behavior has been discouraged because people “didn’t want to be that person.”
arioch, you can insist that human beings aren’t allowed to have instinctive responses to past negative experiences, but human beings are going to human.
When I was 8 years old I was sitting on the porch, minding my own business and eating a sugar cookie, and a bumblebee stung me on the ankle. I react really badly to insect stings, even mosquito bites; it’s not on the level of anaphalaxis, but it’s much worse than the way most peoples’ bodies react to stings. I was quite ill for several days, and in pain for weeks.
Ever since then, when something comes around me carrying with them a stinger, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a bumblebee, wasp, hornet, or harmless honeybee. My instinctive reaction is extremely visceral: “get it away get it away GET IT AWAY”.
I know that this is neither a fair or rational reaction, but my attempts to get past it over the years have met with only limited success. It is what it is.
So when someone pulls out an argument that has been repeatedly used in the the past to hurt and manipulate me, the fact that I have an instinctive response to that is not surprising.
And when the same people who are using that argument are also insisting that they don’t have to respect the way the Hugo Awards work and can do whatever they want, well, it’s just not going to be received by me as something to which I should have to respond with anything other than “okay, whatever”.
Hi, JJ, good evening. If I’m I understanding Kevin and Martin correctly, that if the way the Hugo Awards work isn’t a rule but a norm. And I correctly am counting the number of WSFS members who are making this request vs WSFS members who are not making this request, then “the way that the Hugo Awards work” is not agreed upon in the Worldcon community, so it isn’t a request that has the official backing or majority backing of the WSFS. So if it’s not commonly agreed on by the WSFS at large, then I don’t think that even is how the Hugo Awards work, if the majority of Hugo-voters don’t agree on this point. To my understanding, joking or memeing or being celebratory over a shared win isn’t allowed by the AO3 but is allowed in basically every other circumstance. And this goes in hand with the fact that it is possibly never going to be officially codified that the AO3 users can’t say it, so my read on this is that we’re not breaking any rules according to the tradition of the WSFS, it’s just not how things have been done up to this point. It seems to me that the jokes/claims are something that only a portion of the WSFS thinks are inappropriate.
I respect that this is how you are responding to your past experience. I think the arguments to the contrary have been exactly the same. We are also having instinctive responses to an argument you are using that to us has been used to harm us, and our response to you has also been “okay, whatever.” We are feeling as mis-characterized, as trespassed, as insulted as I believe you said you have felt that we have done to you as well. In the same way that some of us have accidentally been hitting on old subtextual history that is getting such a visceral reaction from you, we have been having the same “GET IT AWAY” reactions as you, but for something in the subtext that you don’t realize you’ve been hitting on for us, though we’ve been trying to explain it. We understand where you’re coming from with that, that is completely valid. That’s a reaction we get and have also been feeling this whole time.
LectionaryStan: it isn’t a request that has the official backing or majority backing of the WSFS
I think that you’re mistaken about this. I think you’re seeing what you want to see. But of course, I don’t have statistics to cite for you.
In the other thread I referred to arguments by people claiming they could do whatever they wanted unless WSFS could legally stop them as “Rules Lawyering”. You objected to that term.
But I think that’s what you’re doing here, you’re Rules-Lawyering. I feel that you’re saying, “Since you can’t legally make me stop doing this, I have the right to do this”.
And it’s probably the case that no one can stop you. But you’ve seen several people referring to “before now, nobody wanted to be that person”. In WSFS culture, this is being “that person”.
Right, I believe that. And in transformative fan culture, making that kind of request to stop is seen as being “That Person”, too. As for seeing what I want to think, I think I’m making a fair assumption of the numbers based on the proportion of users I’ve personally seen argue for either way – it’s not hard statistics, sure, that’s a fact, but it is the real conclusion I’ve come to based on my experiences in the last week or so.
And for what it’s worth, I objected to the term “Rules-Lawyering” because I felt it was a condescending or dismissive way of describing the discussion, not because I wanted the discussion to stop. It’s one example of a way that I have felt mischaracterized or misrepresented by your responses in a similar way you have felt about my responses.
@JJ
This is the thing: I don’t have to convince you of anything.
@arioch: part of the problem with your sports-team analogy is that I don’t believe it scales. Sports teams only have a handful of people. I mean, also, it’s also rare for a team member to describe a team win as “I won”, but yes, it happens, so let’s look at some other cases. Bigger cases. Does it scale?
The biggest is probably the EU. I don’t believe you’ll ever find a single person who claims to have personally won that Peace Prize. It clearly doesn’t scale that far.
So, what about groups that aren’t quite that large? Well, Ford Motor Company has won numerous awards, but I don’t believe anyone who works for them has ever claimed to have personally won those awards. My father was a loyal employee for many years, and loved the company, and if anyone were going to identify with Ford to that degree, it would have been him. But he didn’t.
Ok, but Ford is a corporation, and it’s got a lot of employees around the world. What about something even smaller? And something where the people feel more like they’re actually part of it, and not just employees? Surely that would be more like AO3, right? Let’s take the Debian Project, which I was a member of for many years. A group of about 1000 programmers from all around the world who, in their spare time, put together a large and complex software project, basically just for fun. That sounds a bit more like AO3, except much smaller, right? And Debian, which is now used to run Wikipedia, and has been launched into space multiple times by NASA, has won numerous awards in the twenty years since version 1 first came out. And in all those twenty years, I have never heard, nor heard of, any Debianer saying “I won” one of those awards. Not even the Customer Support award, which was clearly for the team, not the software. It just doesn’t happen! There’s too many of us, and we all know it’s a team effort.
So, no, I don’t understand this urge AO3ers have at all. It does not seem to be just human nature–it seems to be rather odd and quite unusual. At least for a group that large.
LectionaryStan: I objected to the term “Rules-Lawyering” because I felt it was a condescending or dismissive way of describing the discussion
To me, Rules Lawyering is when people say “I don’t have to do the right thing, because legally you can’t force me to.” And I think that’s exactly what’s happening here.
For all of his problematic aspects — and there are many — Heinlein also had a lot of perceptive moments.
LectionaryStan: I think I’m making a fair assumption of the numbers based on the proportion of users I’ve personally seen argue for either way – it’s not hard statistics, sure, that’s a fact, but it is the real conclusion I’ve come to based on my experiences in the last week or so.
The vast majority of WSFS members do not hang out either on File 770 or on AO3. What you’ve seen thus far barely scratches the surface of WSFS members.
Goobergunch: I found the most persuasive argument against the [give the Translator a Hugo Award] resolution to be that it stated the “translator shall be awarded a Hugo” when we award Hugos (in those categories) to works, not people.
I voted against the resolution because the wording “the translator shall be awarded a Hugo” is wildly-ambiguous. What does that mean? That they will be given a trophy? That they, rather than the translated work, will be declared a Hugo Winner?
If the resolution had been worded “When a translated work wins a Hugo Award, the translator shall be credited alongside the author on official Hugo Award announcements, on the trophy plaque, and on the official Hugo Award records, and they shall be given their own trophy”, I would have supported it.