Pixel Scroll 4/13/17 Hark! What File Through Yonder Pixel Scrolls?

(1) ODYSSEY CON LOSES SECOND GOH. Honoring the reasons for the withdrawal of Monica Valentinelli, another Odyssey Con GoH has dropped out — Tad Williams made this announcement on Facebook:

I am sad to announce that I won’t be appearing at the upcoming Odysseycon. I feel a debt of conscience to guests of this con and to others whose complaints of harassment (and worse) at gatherings in our field have gone unheard and unresolved.

At the same time it seems to me and Deb that the issues are complicated and a lot of people must be having a very miserable time right now. We don’t want to contribute to the heat, and hope that things can be improved for everyone in the future. Odysseycon have been straightforward in their dealings with us, and gracious when we withdrew. I wish to extend my apologies to any members of the convention who will be disappointed by my not attending.

(2) TOOLMAKING. And today, Monica Valentinelli is looking for knowledge to make cons safer.

How can we…

  • …teach people not to harass?
  • …teach allies what to watch out for?
  • …foster healthy and safe communication about harassment?
  • …teach people how best to enforce harassment policies?
  • …address safety concerns that are not part of an official claim?
  • …share experiences between conventions so each con doesn’t live in a silo?
  • …implement better documentation policies so materials aren’t lost?
  • …help allies understand how to support victims?
  • …help victims have the confidence to come forward?
  • …guarantee that personal e-mails will not be posted publicly?
  • …help victims/allies mitigate the losses that come from making hard decisions?
  • …teach con goers how we take their safety seriously?
  • …teach con goers what to do next if something should happen?
  • …address what proper resolutions are and how they should be implemented?
  • …leverage our social communities better to review our convention attendance?
  • …help con runners decide how to implement training for their staff?
  • …help con runners understand how important it is to have the right people on staff to handle this?

I am 100% certain there are other questions I am missing, as I am speaking through the lens of my experiences. Regardless, I feel that the first step is to ask questions like these before they can be answered. Then, we need to have those hard discussions to take additional steps.

(3) TALKIN’ ABOUT M-MY REGENERATION. Beware, this will make your head spin — a video of every Doctor Who regeneration at Yahoo! TV. (The only bad part is you have to watch at least 30 seconds of a commercial before the video begins.)

(4) CARRIE FISHER. Is there anybody who hasn’t seen the Star Wars tribute to Carrie Fisher yet? Or who doesn’t want to watch it a couple more times?

(5) ROLLING IN THE GREEN. You might have said that’s a lot of lettuce to ask for a 50 pence coin, but the Royal Mint’s offering of a Peter Rabbit 2017 UK 50p BU Coin for £10 has sold out.

The Mint also put out a set of coins in 2016 to celebrate Potters’ 150th anniversary –

Features four coins depicting some of her best-loved characters: Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck and Squirrel Nutkin

(6) PKD FILM FEST. The fifth annual Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival takes place May 25-30 in New York City.

The program showcases over 100 films, premieres, panels, virtual reality demonstrations and celebratory gatherings as the festival continues its salute to the master of science fiction, Philip K. Dick.

Highlights include the world premieres of Maryanne Bilham-Knight’s A Life Gone Wild (2016) and Jean-Philippe Lopez’s III (2016), North American premiere of Adam Stern’s FTL (2017), USA premieres of Caroline Cory’s Gods Among Us: The Science of Contact (2016), Rasmus Tirzitis’s Vilsen (2016) and Ove Valeskog’s Huldra: Lady of the Forest (2016), east coast premieres of Niall Doran/Justin Smith’s Sixteen Legs (2016) and Renchao Wang’s The End of the Lonely Island (2016) and NYC premiere of Bruce Wemple’s The Tomorrow Paradox (2016).

The festival will also launch PKD Talks: Conversations with Luminaries, Visionaries and Mavericks, a new panel series discussing scientific, inspirational and world changing themes with industry professionals including author and physicist Dr. Ronald Mallett, acclaimed directors Maryanne Bilham-Knight and Caroline Cory, web host Joe Cerletti, astrophysicist Rudy Schild, computer scientist Jacques Vallee and more distinguished guests.

Check out the full schedule here.

(7) ATWOOD STORY ON TV. The Verge has seen the first three episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale and gives the show an enthusiastic endorsement.

But The Handmaid’s Tale is more than a political jab. In the first three episodes provided to reviewers, it’s a dystopia that manages to stand out in a television landscape already full of apocalypses and oppressive imaginary societies. It’s a colorful TV series about a woman negotiating domestic drama, and judging from its initial installments — all three of which will be released simultaneously on April 26th — it might be one of the darkest shows on television this year.

(8) THE EVENING NEWS. Problems with a furry convention have made it onto TV. That’s not surprising anymore, is it? But this is still a story that makes a fan’s hair (or fur) stand on end — “Amid allegations of unpaid taxes, neo-Nazism, and sex offender, Denver furry convention canceled”.

Head of company that operates RMFC exposed

But the letter was not signed by an attorney, nor did it contain language or punctuation consistent with those typically used by lawyers. But it did contain a red thumb print, sometimes associated with a movement the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as extremists.

And Kendal Emery, the man who signed the letter and the self-identified “Chief Executive Contract Law Officer” for Midwest Anthropomorphic Arts Corporation, is a convicted sex offender.

The Arvada man pleaded no contest to three counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor in 1993 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, near his native Carlsbad. New Mexico court records show he served at least probation and underwent out-patient counseling as part of his sentence.

But that isn’t the end of Emery’s issues: though he registered Mid America Anthropomorphic and Art Corporation in Colorado in 2005 at an Aurora address and also with the IRS, the IRS revoked the company’s status in May 2011 and has not reinstated it

(9) WHAT MAKES A WRITER REAL. Sarah A. Hoyt’s inspirational column “You’re real” ends:

A contract won’t make you real.  Writing more will make you real.  Indie and traditional both thrive on content.  The more you write the more you’ll make.  And in indie, this is all in your hands.  You don’t need anyone to give you permission.

Go write and publish.  Stop obsessing about being real.  I say you’re real, and in proof thereof, I’ve made the following certificate, which you can download, fill in and print at your convenience.

STOP GIVING AWAY part of you income for nothing, particularly to small presses of dubious value.  Write.  Publish.  Repeat.  Become a professional.

(10) EUROCON NEWS. The first announcement with details of 2017 ESFS Business Meeting has been made available on the European SF Society website.

The ESFS General Meeting for 2017 will take place at U-Con, the Dortmund (Germany) Eurocon, on June 16-18.

(11) TODAY’S DAY

Scrabble Day

By far the best way to celebrate Scrabble Day is with Oxyphenbutazone. That’s right, Oxyphenbutazone is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug – you already knew that – but it’s also the word that, in a single play, can give the highest possible score on a Scrabble board. The chances of it ever coming up are similar to the chances of winning this week’s lottery, as you’d need to join all seven of your tiles with eight already on the board across three triple word scores. Still, it’d be worth waiting for, scoring 1,778 points. You’d almost certainly win the game with that.

(12) TODAY IN ALTERNATE HISTORY

April 13, 1967 — In another reality, 50 years ago today would have been the end of Star Trek. The final new first-season episode, “Operation — Annihilate!,” aired April 13, 1967. Only an unprecedented letter-writing campaign, spearheaded by Bjo Trimble and other science-fiction writers and fans, got the show renewed for a second season.

(13) TODAY IN REGULAR OLD HISTORY

April 13, 1970 — …disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days before for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive.

(14) MATH OF KHAN. Why, this is heresy! Space.com says “Redshirts Aren’t Likeliest to Die – and Other ‘Star Trek’ Math Lessons”.

Grime first focused on an age-old assertion: that crewmembers wearing red shirts in the original “Star Trek” series, which denote working in engineering or security, are far more likely to be killed off than any other shirt color.

That claim, in fact, is false — more “redshirts” died on-screen than any other crew type (10 gold-shirted, which are command personnel; eight blue-shirted, who are scientists; and 25 red-shirted, Grime said), but that calculation fails to take into account that there are far more redshirts on the ship to start with than any other crew type.

In other words, we’re looking at the probability that you are a redshirt if you die (58 percent) — what we want to know is the probability that you die if you’re a redshirt, Grime said.

Grime used the “Star Trek” technical manual to find out how many of each crew type there were, which painted a different picture: out of 239 redshirts, 25 died, which is 10 percent. Out of 55 goldshirts, 10 died, which is 18 percent! So you are more likely to die as a goldshirt, Grime said.

Oh, so it’s actually true – this is just a lawyerly exercise in lying with statistics.

(15) FAN MAIL. Alastair Reynolds praised Erin Horakova’s Strange Horizons article article about Captain Kirk:

If you have a little time on your hands I commend this excellent Strange Horizons article by Erin Horakova on our changing (and inaccurate) perception of the character of Captain Kirk…

Regardless of the quality of the individual episodes, though, I quickly found myself wondering when this legendary bad Shatner was going to turn up, because all I was seeing – right from the outset – was an efficient and convincing portrayal of a man in a complex, demanding position of authority. Shatner isn’t just much better at playing Kirk than the popular myth would have it, but the character itself is also much more plausibly drawn than the supposed brash womaniser of the insidious meme.

Erin Horakova dismantles this false Kirk in expert fashion, while lobbing a few well-earned potshots at the reboot films.

(16) THE NEW NUMBER SIX. John  Scalzi continues Reader Request Week with “#6: Reading as Performance”.

  1. Recognize it is a performance. Which is to say that you can’t just go in front of a room, mumble your way through fifteen minutes of text, answer a couple of questions and go home (I mean, you can, but it won’t turn out the way you want it to). You actually have to be up and on, from the moment you get to the event until the moment you’re done. Which is draining, but can also be fun. When you read, don’t just read the text, act it. When you’re answering questions, don’t answer quickly, answer completely. When you’re signing, work to make it so the person you’re signing for feels like that those 30 seconds with you is a pretty good 30 seconds of their life. Know all this going in, and prepare.

(17) WAITRESSING FOR GODOT. Ann Leckie was prompted by Scalzi’s post to add her own thoughts – “On Performance and Sincerity”.

Now as it happens, I have a tiny bit of theater experience, along with that music degree, so I’m actually pretty comfortable onstage. But you know what else I think has helped me–years of waiting tables. I am a serious introvert, but working at waiting tables gave me practice interacting with lots of strangers for hours at a time, keeping my demeanor pleasant and mostly cheerful. It’s practice that has stood me in good stead for a lot of my non-writing-related life, actually. In a lot of ways waiting tables can be a really miserable job, but that aspect of it, learning how to be “on” very pleasantly and confidently, has been super valuable to me.

(18) WHAT GOES UP… Just don’t ask for an explanation: “Mysterious X37-B ‘space plane’ stays in orbit for 677 days – and no one knows why”.

A mysterious robotic ‘space plane’ has now been in orbit for a record 677 days – and America is remaining silent about what it’s doing up there.

The robotic Boeing X-37B craft – also known as Orbital Test Vehicle 4 – conducts long missions in orbit, carrying a classified payload.

Observers have speculated that the Space Shuttle-esque vehicle might be designed to destroy satellites – or work as a ‘movable’ satellite itself.

(19) LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Evidently, Scotland’s witch prosecution records leave something to be desired. Atlas Obscura has the story — “Maggie Wall’s Memorial”.

A mysterious monument where a woman who records say never existed was burnt alive for being a witch.

…Outside of a small village of Dunning, nestled in the former parklands of Duncrub Castle, lies a monument. It’s a collection of stones about 20 feet high, topped with a cross and decorated with gifts left by visitors—pennies, feathers, shells, fluffy stuffed animals, and tiny tea candles. The stones bear the words in stark white lettering: “Maggie Wall burnt here 1657 as a witch.”

Scotland was home to nearly 3,800 people accused of witchcraft between 1500s and 1700s, the vast majority of whom were women. In the end, about 1,500 were murdered as a result of witch hunt inquisitions. However, mysteriously, there is no record of a woman named Maggie Wall being tried as a witch. What’s more, there’s no record of the monument itself until 1866, though a forest surrounding the monument called Maggie Walls Wood was documented as of 1829.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Carl Slaughter, Michael J. Walsh, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Steven H Silver, and David Doering for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contirbuting editor of the day Rev. Bob.]

92 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/13/17 Hark! What File Through Yonder Pixel Scrolls?

  1. @5 – The Peter Rabbit coins look very good.

    @14 – Wow! Who would have thought that gold shirts carry the death curse!

  2. (4) CARRIE FISHER. Is there anybody who hasn’t seen the Star Wars tribute to Carrie Fisher yet? Or who doesn’t want to watch it a couple more times?

    Well, I hadn’t seen it yet. It’s incredibly well-done, and made me a bit misty-eyed — especially when she repeated the “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi…” line.

    It would be cool if it were shown as part of the Hugo ceremony at Helsinki — but I doubt that they would be willing to give so much time to a feature about just one person.

  3. (17) WAITRESSING FOR GODOT.

    I was amazed and impressed by the huge amount of time Ann Leckie spent sitting in Awn Elming Memorial Park at MidAmeriCon II, conversing with fans. She was so incredibly warm and friendly and welcoming to everyone. It’s interesting to hear her talking about how she got those skills.

  4. (8) Should I ever find myself in a discussion with someone who thinks that furries are super-weird, I now have evidence that they are, in fact, extremely similar to the general population of the US.

  5. @2: there’s already a lot of information shared between conventions; what she requires is that every convention accept that every other convention’s decisions are valid. The Frenkel kerfuffle at Wiscon was noisy enough that Odysseycon couldn’t have not heard about it.

    @11: can someone more verbal than I am show how any 8 letters could already be legally in place to make that word? I can only find 7 (“hen” and “zone”), but I haven’t eaten the list-of-legal-words as I understand serious competitors have.

    @14: No, that’s not lying with statistics. As a redshirt, would you care more about whether more comrades than officers die (in absolute numbers, not percentages), or whether you are more likely to die than an officer? That’s a different question from “There’s one redshirt on that away team; how many script minutes until they die?” As yet unanswered is whether redshirts on away teams get hazard pay, since random planetside dangers are apparently attracted to red….

  6. @11: can someone more verbal than I am show how any 8 letters could already be legally in place to make that word? I can only find 7 (“hen” and “zone”), but I haven’t eaten the list-of-legal-words as I understand serious competitors have.

    It’s even worse, because to get all 3 triple word scores, you have to play the starting O, the central B, and the final E. All I can come up with is “hen” and “on” plus 8 letters that are either the first or last letter (depending on which edge you’re on) of words running perpendicular to this 15 letter monstrosity.

  7. Chip Hitchcock: The Frenkel kerfuffle at Wiscon was noisy enough that Odysseycon couldn’t have not heard about it.

    Were you unaware that some members of the Odyssey Con committee were PART of the Frenkel kerfuffle? I tried to make that clear in my post.

  8. You could have Ox, Hen and Zone as the 8 letters already on the board, but that would mean you’re only playing on one of the triple word scores…

  9. (2) TOOLMAKING:

    I think (and hope) that useful resources for managing safety at conventions will continue to arise, and become established.

    Bear in mind that even the most basic knowledge is still evolving. Even in cons working hard on safety and preventing harassment, this is hardly a solved problem (which is a lot of what Valentinelli is saying). And extending that knowledge — to different events, to different cultural idiosyncracies, and most particularly, to different conventions staffs. A lot of harassment-prevention teams are based strongly on trust in at least a few key people in charge, and that’s really hard to extend by teaching and training.

    And the process will necessarily be organic, more than authority-based — because each con makes its own decisions, and decides what to adopt and what not. So a good resource needs to not only have great answers, it needs to be persuasive and appealing, so it gets adopted.

    For myself, I can say that the Geek Feminism wiki and blog and staff were tremendously helpful when we were figuring out how to get a con safety team up in my neck of the woods. Good resources are of tremendous value.

    I think the next step is discussion — places to come together, treating this like professional knowledge to be discussed and refined. If there are any good watering holes on the internet devoted to this topic, I would love to find them. Conferences would also be amazing.

  10. @Nancy: I’m inclined to say “heck yes,” but it depends a lot on implementation, and what kind of audience they have and manage to build up.
    I’m way the heck away in Israel, and don’t know enough about SMOFcons to know whether the people handling con safety are already there, or what. 😛

  11. A lot of stuff I didn’t know.

    (1) ODYSSEY CON LOSES SECOND GOH. When someone mentioned in a thread that Tad Williams withdrew, I hadn’t realized he was a GoH.

    (3) TALKIN’ ABOUT M-MY REGENERATION. I had no idea Tennant regen’d an extra time without changing his appearance. They should’ve included the non-Doctor regens, e.g., River Song and Romana.

    (4) CARRIE FISHER. I don’t recall whether I’d seen it, so thanks for posting it.

    (5) ROLLING IN THE GREEN. AWWWWWWW! 😀

    (18) WHAT GOES UP… …must stay up?!

    My better half is on to book 2 of the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series. I’ll never catch up! 😉

  12. OK, with help of the online scrabble word finder, I’ve got this suggestion for a triple triple Oxyphenbutazone:

    _ _ _ _ H E N _ U T A _ O N _

    And I guess you’re playing with very very accommodating people if they are playing 2 and 3 letter words right next to the triples like that!

  13. 16)
    Definitely a performance. Last Fall, I watched Fran Wilde and Chuck Wendig do readings at a joint event. Both of them grokked it, and played off of each other as the other read. Was rather entertaining.

  14. (9) good for Hoyt. Nevertheless, don’t writers have to say, “I’m a real writer” to themselves?

  15. @kendall The extra regeneration is part of the reason why the Doctor ran out (the other being the War Doctor). That also blows up my theory that the Doctor isn’t as skilled in Regenerating as, say, Romana is. Or maybe he just was a slow learner.

  16. @Kendall: I think it was established in Matt Smith’s final episode that Ten came back with the same face after he was shot by that Dalek… which I find entirely credible (I’ve nothing against David Tennant himself, but his version of the Doctor was definitely very convinced of his own wonderfulness.)

    15) A pet theory of mine is that slightly theatrical actors like Shatner came over better on television, back in the day, simply because their performances registered better with audiences on the smaller screens. After all, when I first saw Star Trek on TV, it was on a fifteen-inch monochrome set – the screen was only a little larger than the one on the laptop I’m using now, and it was the other side of the living room from me, not at arm’s length. These days, I suspect we are more used to bigger images and more naturalistic* performances. (Another example might be William Russell, he of Sir Lancelot and early Doctor Who – by modern standards, he might be over-acting, but by 1960’s standards, well, at least you can bloomin’ see him.)

    *which does not necessarily mean better, just in a different style.

  17. (2) How does a person ever atone for harassment? Is there no path to forgiveness ever? What is to be done for a person who denies having harassed anyone?

  18. @Greg

    Well, at the moment there seems to be a very easy path to forgiveness, which is to pretend you didn’t do it and get your friends to let you carry on regardless.

  19. @Greg: There’s a spectrum, and it depends heavily (IMHO) on the particular case.

    Big differences between “you need to stop hugging random people,” “you need to stop hugging this one specific person,” and “you need to stop hugging cosplayers with revealing costumes.” In what I’d require of them immediately, and in what I’d expect in the long run to be assured there’s no further issue.

    Likewise, HUGE difference between “This person says you harrassed them,” “No I didn’t,” ONCE, vs. three different times at three different events with three different people complaining. (Both need to be addressed, of course, but there’s a huge difference in magnitude and severity.)

  20. At this rate the Odyssey Con should be chancelled soon. They loose GoH at quite a rate.
    Perhaps Larry and Brad still have time.

  21. @ Aaron. I don’t have any answers. The only thing I would say is- if a con says ‘call the police if you feel threatened’ then call the police.

    @ Greg. I do think that after some period of time we should be able to say, sentence served, you can get a fresh start now. But only if there is some indication that they plan to change their behavior.

  22. Bookworm: Calling the police is last resort. A con should take care of problems that are not policematers.
    If the harrasmentpolicity said “call the police” that screams: Don’t go to this con.

  23. “How does a person ever atone for harassment? Is there no path to forgiveness ever?”

    That’s really up to the people who were wronged, if they think it worthwhile. It’s not a job of con organizers. Their job is to make sure their guests and attendees have a good time and are safe, not to give offenders another chance. No one asks banks, for instance, “is there no path to forgiveness?” when one of their officials has misappropriated funds. It’s generally understood that someone who does that cannot expect any bank to take a risk on employing them in a position of trust again. That’s not a punishment so much as it is prudence.

    Which I don’t see as a tragedy. Even less so is it a tragedy for a con harasser. There are plenty of other things they can do besides taking a position of responsibility at another con. Sometimes you just have to come to terms with the fact that you’ve burned your bridges and need to move on.

    “What is to be done for a person who denies having harassed anyone?”

    That’s a separate question, but in this case pretty straightforward, since the main principal’s guilt is quite well established, as I understand it. Again, in the bank case I wouldn’t expect a bank with solid evidence of embezzlement to treat the offender less severely if the offender keeps denying it.

  24. “How does a person ever atone for harassment? Is there no path to forgiveness ever?”

    I do not get this question at all. Why should there exist “a path”? How would that even work? Every case is different. Every person involved is different and so is their background. How can any such generic question have an answer?

    Some people may be forgiven. Somé may not. Some people may be forgiven by some people and not by others. And even when they are forgiven, people might still treat them differently than they did before.

  25. The “path” depends on the crime comited. And forgiven should mean welcome to a con not beeing a responsible for stuff on a con. Exspecially not if that means unavodible contact with their victims. The rights of one person ends where the rights of other person begin.

  26. @Greg H et al:

    been discussing this for a couple of days on FB: folks seem to want a path for redemption but also seem to think it nearly impossible to implement.

    Others pointed out that the party in question in this case has not demonstrated behaviors designed to show remorse.

    I believe that we’ll hit an edge case of some kind that will require a path back. One of those circumstances where rules must be obeyed but individuals are unlikely to engage in the violation again.

    On the other hand, serial offenders do seem to get worse with age, rather than better.

    What I do know is: all of this is becoming more complicated (potentially) legally and traditional conventions need “some” kind of system that allows them to communicate formally; allows alleged offenders access to claims against them, allows alleged victims the opportunity to make sure that their case is being handled properly…and that all of the above is potentially expensive.

    But if we don’t: someone is gonna get sued and or, worse, majorly hurt , because things were not handled “properly”.

  27. @Hampus: because people want “justice” not revenge (generally), because we want to believe that no fan is really a bad person, because we want to believe that everyone can learn to recognize the error of their ways and change to become a better person.

    And also because: there are and will be edge cases where no one is wrong and no one is right, the convention will have to implement their policies in order to maintain their credibility and the “offender(s)” are extremely unlikely to ever engage in the questionable behavior ever again.

    Legally, we sentence “life without parole”, but even those cases can be appealed. It seems ingrained in our jurisprudence.

    I also worry about the actions of someone who has devoted their life to fandom and conventions being “banned for life” with NO opportunity to make amends, deciding that they’ve nothing left to lose and engaging in really bad behavior. That worry is not enough to justify a path back, of course, but the existence of a path (even if not taken) might be enough to deter such behavior.

    What I do know is that a system that bans someone from one con, but not from others, will NOT discourage bad behavior.

  28. On his non-blog, George R. R. Martin writes, “Jimmy Corey’s books and the TV series based on them have both gotten a fair amount of acclaim …”

    Corey is a two people — Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck — writing under a single pen name.

    Does anyone find it odd that people talk about James S. A. Corey as if he’s a person, even to the point of giving him the nickname Jimmy?

  29. About James S. A. Corey:
    Yepp it is, exspecially since it is not a secret pen name. Everone knows.

    About Discusion:
    Aaron: Can you write the name of the person you are replaying to in your quote, would make thinks easier.

  30. “Is there no path to forgiveness ever?”
    I would hope there would be, but it would not start with the transgressor loudly denying wrongdoing and/or going on as before. The standard path would be: recognition of wrongdoing by the perpetrator, apology and appropriate amends to the people wronged and a recognizably different pattern of subsequent behavior. As readmission to the community would require some form of re-establishment of trust, this would need to be relatively public, I would think. The forms would vary with the circumstances. Can anyone cite any real-life examples?
    In my experience, lousy behavior escalates if unchecked, so I’m not worried that action against it would be worse than inaction. In any case, the transgressor is responsible for their own behavior, not anyone else.

  31. If we are going to get all Shakespearean:

    Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
    Scrolls in this petty file from day to day,
    To the last pixel of recorded time . . .

  32. I believe that the redemption narrative is one of the reasons harassment is a major continuing problem. There are cases I’ve seen where the focus was on “apologize, promise not to do it again, victim encouraged to forgive, everything goes back to normal. ” And then people are surprised when it happens again.

    Honestly, the focus shouldn’t even be on the harasser, especially if it means reconciliation between the hauser and the. victim(s). The only real consideration should be the safety and comfort of the community.

    TL,DR: Once we’ve got out act together in protecting the community, THEN maybe we can worry about returning offenders to the fold.

  33. Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious pixel by this scroll of York.

    Now is the file of our fannishness made glorious pixels by this scroll of Mike

  34. I thought you became real when your readers loved you so much your cover came off.

  35. @Rose: I believe that it needs to be addressed simultaneously – if only because getting locked out permanently, forever, could be construed as business interference or other such legalities that could then turn a relatively simple incident into a huge and on-going one.

    I also believe that unless and until there is a mechanism for appropriately implementing sanctions &c across the board, the scenario you lay out will continue to happen, even if we focus our efforts on the victimized.

    If the ability to prevent harassers only extends to a single venue, what we’re saying to the victim is – you can go to this one con without concern…the others, we don’t know.

  36. @OGH: \part/ of the concom isn’t the concom as a whole; knowledge doesn’t always get distributed internally. Wiscon blew up publicly enough that the concom \should/ have all known from outside — but I suppose some don’t pay attention to any of the channels it would have come through.

    @Nancy Sauer: SMOFcon varies widely, but some of the most-likely-to-create-a-ruckus people are also ]conservative[ enough that I would not be surprised to see kickback if more than one panel covered harassment — and for some even that would be too much. Note that this is an observation from the outside; I haven’t been to an out-of-town SMOFcon in 17 years, so Kevin will have more-current data on what’s happened. (I will maintain my observation on personalities.)

    @Arifel: Bravo! (I had to look up uta, but dictionary.com defines it so I figure it’s legit.) And yes, verytolerant — a strategic player with an ‘E’ might do on->one just to make sure nobody did something perpendicular with a bigger payoff.

    @rcade: IIRC, Daniel Abraham is in the same social circle as GRRM; it’s possible “Jimmy” is carried from that, if only because ]his[ work is so radically different from Abraham’s that ]he[ seems like a separate persona. We also don’t know how close the collaboration is; Kuttner & Moore were notorious for picking up wherever the other left off, without leaving traces (not to mention producing similarly different-from-either-alone work).

    @Aaron: “for every problem there is a solution that is simple — and wrong.” IMO a disastrous solution (such as yours) is more destructive than the muddling-through we have now, so criticizing it is not “snark”.

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