Tag Archives: Brianna Spacekat Wu

The Culture Wars Come To RavenCon

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RavenCon attendees witnessed a flash of drama at Brianna Wu’s GamerGate panel on Friday evening, but it had nothing to do with the unnamed Hugo “hijackers” she publicly disinvited in a Tumblr post on Thursday. SP3/RP nominees in Richmond barely acknowledged Wu in social media during the first day of the convention.

Instead, the tweets exchanged by an attention-seeking GamerGate blogger and a RavenCon committee member throughout the afternoon promised a skirmish was brewing.

TheRalph, author of The Ralph Retort, announced on his website he was on his way to RavenCon looking for a confrontational interview with Brianna Wu. Once he arrived he continued to dispatch tweets about his plans.

The committee responded with its own ominous message:

The Ralph Retort countered —

https://twitter.com/TheRalphRetort/status/591710605997932544

Whoever was handling RavenCon’s social media replied with a mocking tweet that included a clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail about “the repression inherent in the system,” and it was game on.

A lot of vicarious Twitter activity followed. As more people piled on the committee explained the interview was denied because it had not been requested in advance.

The response snowballed. RavenCon sent out the text of its Con Rules, with its anti-harassment policy and other guidelines.

Come evening, TheRalph planted himself in the audience of Brianna Wu’s GamerGate 101 panel and got to work getting himself kicked out.

He wrote in the “Full Account of Big Baby Brianna Wu Having Me Tossed From Panel” —

I surreptitiously took few pictures, and decided to tweet one of them out. Now, I’m not a stupid man when not blind drunk, so I knew there was a chance someone would see this on Twitter. But, I did that shit anyway. Why? Well, I knew that they would look terrible for kicking me out over taking a picture of a panel speaker at a public convention. How big of a fucking baby do you have to be to kick out an adversary?

https://twitter.com/TheRalphRetort/status/591768129040154624

… Anyway, back to the story. Wu starts loudly bitching about them not having a DVI connection. Check your DVI privilege, bitch. But after that, she was looking hard at her phone. She then surveyed the room and locked eyes with me. She came up to my table and said “Are you the one who sent this?” I didn’t event try to deny it. I said yes, I was.

Wu had a member of the convention staff tell TheRalph to leave. He complied, while another person in the row behind him shot video of the episode.

TheRalph promptly retired to an Arby’s near the hotel to draft a story about this latest chapter in his epic journalistic career.

Don’t Invitems at RavenCon

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RavenCon cranks up this weekend in Richmond, VA in a rather literal way.

Artist Guest of Honor Frank Wu and Gaming Guest of Honor Brianna Wu issued a statement disinviting six unnamed people accused of “hijacking this year’s Hugo awards” from attending Brianna’s solo Gamergate panel which is scheduled in prime time Friday evening (April 24).

Sadly, the same reactionary anger has spread into the science fiction community with the hijacking of year’s Hugo awards, deliberately sabotaging them for bitter, regressive political purposes. Many of the forums that orchestrate harassment against Brianna and other women in the game industry have avowed supporters of the Hugo hijacking, many of whom participated in the voting and strongly support Vox Day.

What makes RavenCon particularly uncomfortable for us is that a number of those attending directly orchestrated or benefited from the hijacking. We’ve heard numbers as high as six.

Frank Wu has won four Hugo awards. They are near and dear to our family. And we agree with John Scalzi, Connie Willis, George R. R. Martin and others about the travesty this has been. The hijackers have contempt for the awards while also desperately wanting the legitimacy they feel it would grant them.

To put it bluntly, attending this con makes us tremendously uncomfortable. But we agreed to attend, long before Gamergate, and we will follow through with that professional commitment.

Neither of us wish to discuss the Hugo hijacking with any person responsible for this atrocious action. Both of us would consider it a professional courtesy if you didn’t attend Brianna’s Gamergate panel tomorrow.

“Don’t invitems” is how the late columnist Walter Winchell used to describe people you should not ask to the same party. Scanning the RavenCon guest list, one could make an educated guess that Brianna Wu may feel that way about Lou Antonelli, Jim Minz, Gray Rinehart, Michael Z. Williamson, and John C. Wright, Hugo nominees on the SP3/RP slates, Wright’s spouse L. Jagi Lamplighter, and Kate Paulk, organizer of Sad Puppies 4.

The same day the announcement came out, Lou Antonelli told his Facebook readers that RavenCon has abandoned all thoughts of running a panel about this year’s Hugo nominations:

I am in Virginia getting ready to head to the Ravencon convention in Richmond. The convention had floated the idea a short while ago about throwing together a panel on the subject of the current Hugo nominations.

They’ve decided not to go ahead. Here’s the official statement:

After careful deliberation, the staff of RavenCon have decided to not host this panel due to the late nature of its proposal and the volatile nature of the subject matter. RavenCon is not the appropriate… platform for this subject matter, and we do not wish to provide a platform to any side in this controversy. If, however, panelists feel the need to discuss this matter in further detail, the bar is always open.

Love the last line…

Supanova Boycott Controversy

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Adam Baldwin’s scheduled appearance at the Supanova Pop Culture Expo in Sydney this June has prompted a call for fans to boycott the event. Conrunner Daniel Zachariou, who announced he is keeping Baldwin as guest, is trying to navigate through the protests.

Baldwin, tagged the “celebrity face” of #GamerGate, is an effusive source of trolling political tweets. Last October File 770 reported fanartist and #GamerGate target Brianna Wu leveled this accusation against him: “Actor @Adam Baldwin defamed my character, publicized a libelous video about me and sent an angry mob of 200k people after me.” They exchanged several verbal salvos through Twitter.

Apart from his profile in social media, Baldwin is best remembered from the TV series Firefly and its continuation film Serenity. He also has done voice work in many games. And lately he’s appeared in TNT’s post-apocalyptic drama The Last Ship. It’s for this work he was invited as a Supanova guest. But it’s Baldwin’s support of #GamerGate that has roused opposition to his appearance at Supanova.

Albert Santos started an online petition asking Supanova to revoke Baldwin’s membership, justifying it with these arguments:

Baldwin has a history of calling for aggressive action, including doxxings, on others. He has called people “dipshits” and “morons”, has aggrivated key GamerGate tagret Zoe Quinn directly, has threatened former Supanova guest Wil Wheaton, has called Thanksgiving “Victory over the Savages Day” and has suggested that antivaccination campaigners all be “doxxed and tortured”. These are all things that he has said and done, primarily through his twitter handle, which he regularly wipes clean. These go directly against the code of conduct of Supanova, which they kindly in the statement supporting him.

Over 6,000 have signed the petition at Communityrun.org. Brianna Wu tweeted her support: “This is very straightforward: Are you comfortable with bullies in geek culture? Because @AdamBaldwin is a sexist bully. He needs to go.”

Also, cosplayer Eve Beauregard claimed in a widely-quoted comment to a Kotaku.com writer that Baldwin’s appearance might lead someone to attend whose conduct would somehow jeopardize attendees’ personal safety:

“From my perspective, the moment a guest or their supporters makes a considerable portion of your attendees feel unsafe, you have a very cut-and- dried decision to make. You either remove that guest from your event or you send a very public message that you’re comfortable with your attendees fearing for their personal safety and in turn not attending out of fear.”

Zachariou offers two main reasons for sticking with Baldwin: Baldwin’s past track record as a guest, and their binding contract with him:

Zachariou defended his decision to allow Adam Baldwin to attend, stating that Baldwin had already previously attended a Supanova event (“Adam was previously our guest and as strident in his opinions then as he is now”). He also made mention of the fact that he had “no knowledge of Gamergate” when Baldwin was originally booked and Supanova has a contract that they’re “legally beholden to”.

The con is four months away but the decision to keep Baldwin is already having consequences. Supanova was dumped as a major sponsor of The Ledger Awards, an Australian award for excellence in comic arts and publishing. The awards team has returned Supanova’s sponsorship money.

Supanova’s Daniel Zachariou on February 12 posted a lengthy comment on Facebook in an attempt to mediate fans’ concerns. It says in part:

To exclude someone from Supanova for their views, even if we don’t share them, goes completely against the spirit of the expo that we’ve presented all these years as all our stars appear to discuss their work in pop culture, not their personal political or ideological viewpoints. We similarly embrace all our fans, whatever their various pop culture passions may be, and that inclusiveness is at our very heart.

And it includes a statement from Adam Baldwin:

The harassment and threats being made on both sides of the #?GamerGate debate shame the games industry and make it extremely difficult for casual observers to see the merits of arguments about corruption, ethics or journalism.

Threats of violence and/or “doxxing” should be reported to law enforcement and handled at their discretion. Such threats are reprehensible and have no place in any debate.

Obviously, I condemn harassment. The YouTube videos linked on Twitter at the outset last September contained no personal information of any individual. I had zero knowledge of what might be in their comments sections. No one can honestly be expected to check vast comment threads below articles or videos before linking to them.

Lastly, I believe that pop culture conventions are inappropriate venues for controversial topics, so I will respectfully not be discussing them at Supanova, or its related events.

Zachariou added:

Given that we have Adam’s statement above verifying he will not discuss #GamerGate while stating categorically that he does not condone harassment, bullying or doxxing under any circumstances; given we as Supanova will not allow questions regarding the subject from the floor; given we as Supanova as a professional organisation must fulfil our contractual obligations; given Supanova will be providing the highest level of enforcement of our Code of Conduct (a condition of entry to the event) to ensure our strong anti-bullying and anti-harassment policies are maintained; and given that so many fans continue to support Adam’s appearance as part of our ‘Serenity’ 10th Anniversary celebration, we will be proceeding with Adam’s attendance as planned.

As we’ve already mentioned, Supanova Expo has an incredibly inclusive array of fans who kindly share the space with each other, based on their mutual passions for imaginary worlds. Our programming crosses all demographics, celebrating diversity and a wide variety of genres. Supanova does not condone or allow bullying or harassment in any way, shape or form at our events which ensures a friendly, safe and welcoming environment. Both the Code of Conduct and the spirit of Supanova are agreements to treat with honour and respect every single fan and friend at the expo. You’ve always made us so very proud with the positive atmosphere you have created at every event.

The statement empathizes with the concerns fans have voiced, and sets concrete behavior guidelines for Baldwin and attendees.

This experience underlines three things conrunners should take responsibility to do:

  • Know your guest’s act.

Adam Baldwin is a font of political opinion or an online troll, according to your tastes, but it’s inconceivable to me someone running a large pop culture convention would know nothing more than that he’s that guy from Firefly. (Inconceivable – yes, that word does mean what I think it means…)

  • Vet your guest’s act periodically.

Various celebrities are the subjects of gossip, controversy and bad news every day. Maybe one of them will be a guest coming to your con. Google people every once in awhile so these things don’t blindside you.

  • Decide at the outset whether you’re sticking with your guest.

A con committee should already have run its social media cost/benefit analysis before announcing a guest who has baggage or is controversial. Only choose people you’re prepared to stand by. In general, it should take something truly unexpected, like criminal behavior, or slandering one of your other guests, to reopen your decision.

Brianna Wu Plans Legal Defense Fund

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Game designer Brianna Wu, a GamerGate target driven from her home by threats in mid-October, has announced she is creating a legal defense fund to fund action against harassers who violate the law.

One of the biggest ways Gamergate operates is character assassination. Well, we have laws protecting you against that. I’m not a lawyer, but the fund will pay lawyers to find cases on libel and defamation and prosecute them in civil court. These cases might be mine, or they might be other women targeted by Gamergate. It will be cases the legal team feels they can win.

Sadly, fighting back is all these bullies understand. I’m in the process of making sure the fund complies with our legal and tax structure. My suggestion to anyone in Gamergate is to think very carefully about saying something libelous or defamatory about the women you target.

GamerGate, Wu in Washington Post

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Writers for the Washington Post decided this was the day to catch up on GamerGate with two news items and a background piece.

Not that they didn’t take their sweet time getting around to it. The contributor of The only guide to Gamergate you will ever need to read says —

Here at the Intersect, we have ignored Gamergate for as long as humanly possible — in large part because it’s been covered in enormous, impressive depth elsewhere, and in smaller part because we’re exhausted by the senseless, never-ending onslaught of Internet misogyny, which really can’t be explained in a blog post — or, frankly, anywhere else.

But that said, the disturbing, violent threats sent to [Brianna] Wu, the co-founder of an indie game studio, makes it all too clear that Gamergate is less a one-off scandal (as the obnoxious -gate suffix would imply), and more a long-term, slow-burning campaign. In other words, Gamergate is not going away.

Also, there was a fresh development involving an even more well-known target — ‘Gamergate’: Feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian cancels Utah lecture after threat:

Sakeesian: “I didn’t cancel my USU talk because of terrorist threats. I canceled because I didn’t feel the security measures were adequate.”

Feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian was forced to cancel a talk that would have taken place tonight at Utah State University after the university received a terror threat from someone claiming they would commit “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if Sarkeesian gave her lecture….

The Utah State threat is just the latest one in the ongoing saga of Gamergate, an increasingly nasty culture war between video-game critics like Sarkeesian and a mob of gamers…. Sarkeesian isn’t the only woman who has received death threats in connection with Gamergate. On Friday, game developer Brianna Wu left her home after alerting police that she received a death threat that included her home address. Zoe Quinn, an independent developer who was the original target of Gamergate, was also forced to leave her home because of death threats. In August, the threats grew so severe that Sarkeesian was forced to flee her home too.

Sarkeesian’s decision not to speak at Utah State provided background for a second news story — The game industry’s top trade group just spoke out against Gamergate:

That prompted the nation’s top trade group for video game companies to speak out Wednesday. “Threats of violence and harassment are wrong,” said a spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association in a statement. “They have to stop. There is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats.”

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster for the story.]

The Drink Tank’s Bicentennial Issue

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The double-century issue of The Drink Tank (#200), its fourth annish, is more than historic — it’s a hoot-and-a-half. Chris Garcia and a whole slate of interesting fans have packed it with laughs.

When Chris invited Cheryl Morgan to contribute, the word annish seems to have been garbled in transmission. But who could have done a better job than Cheryl of envisioning traditional Amish fanac?

A fanzine produced by science fictional Amish, therefore, would be composed on an Apple Mac, or a Dell running Windows XP (which, incidentally, is still on sale in the future because Microsoft still haven’t got the bugs out of Vista, or whatever they are calling the latest release).

Cheryl shows that being a fine writer can take you far. Beth Zuckerman proves that fine writing combined with advance preparation goes even farther toward ensuring your convention experiences will yield great fanzine material. No conreport of mine can ever hope to achieve anything like her account of Arisia 2009:

I did have to seek out a t-shirt vendor, because while my 51-lb suitcase was fully equipped with rocketship pajamas, the ostentatiously unnecessary coin bra, an entire No. 6 costume with eyebrow makeup, a veritable mountain of lingerie, and a generous supply of little rubber things, somehow I entirely failed to bring anything to wear during the day before the parties started.

Pro wrestling is one of Chris Garcia’s passions. In this issue, his friend Bobby Toland has a lot to say about professional wrestler Kurt Angle’s need to learn humility, and how those lessons might be imparted. One of the hallmarks of good fanwriting is its ability to make fascinating a subject that ordinarily would be of little interest, which is my default response to pro wrestling. Toland held my attention from start to finish.

I also admired the trivia quiz “Fantastic Fours” by Frank Wu and Brianna Spacekat Wu. I answered more than half of them wrong, but everyone reading this review should be able to name the foursome composed of Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, and Michelangelo.

Christian McGuire spends most of his time as one of the leading conrunners of the age, but thanks to Chris Garcia he hasn’t been completely lost to the world of fanwriting. Plenty of people will want to read all about McGuire’s adventures at Further Confusion 2009 once I mention that one of the lines in the report is: “A prurient Pink Panther holding up the tail of the Tiger before him offered Andy the choice to play jump rope with the tail. All I can say is that Andy can Double-Dutch with me any day.”

Leigh Ann Hildebrand is yet another friend of Chris’s with a great sense of humor. This is not even the funniest line in her list of “Five Things I’m No Longer Allowed To Do in the Fanzine Lounge”:

4. Not allowed to offer impromptu origami classes using materials at hand, even with the justification that it’s a form of performance art expressing my thoughtful critique of the phrase “core fandom.”

Every issue of The Drink Tank is highlighted by a combination of original art and assorted graphics liberated from the internet. An example of the latter, my favorite in issue #200, is the wry parody of RIAA’s anti-piracy ads showing a woman in a pre-WWI hairdo manipulating two Edison phonographs under the caption “Home Cylinder Duplication Is Killing the Music Industry.”

It doesn’t seem that long ago Chris was gushing poetically about what it might be like to produce his hundredth ish, at the time something only a select few active faneds like Arnie Katz, Knarley Welch and Mike Glyer could claim. Within five seconds after mentioning this in File 770, I immediately heard from myriads of offended fans who’d been left off the list, the most impressive being Mark and Evelyn Leeper who wondered what was the big deal, since their MT Void has published fifteen “one-hundredth” issues.

But the point is that it’s my turn to live vicariously through Chris’s experience. At the rate I’m producing issues there’s a good chance I will have to wait until 2028 or so to have a 200th issue experience of my very own. Great work Chris!

New File 770 Issue
Posted at eFanzines

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Cover of File 770 #154Now find File 770 #154 at eFanzines.com.

A cover collaboration by Brianna Spacekat Wu with Frank Wu adorns the issue. The news inside is complemented by Taral’s article about La Dolce Vita of being a fanartist. My Denvention 3 report is matched with Chris Garcia’s autobiographical explanation about “How to Present a Hugo.” John Hertz’ Westercon Notebook covering the con in Las Vegas, is followed with con reports by Martin Morse Wooster, James Bacon and Francis Hamit, and the collected Adventures in Speerology from Patricia Rogers.