sff

Transformative fandom sees [social media] as a space for play, because if we’re talking about our fandom in a public space, that in itself marks it as a space we are not using professionally. So it’s a reasonable place to put “.000000000435% Hugo Winner,” or “30-50 feral hogs in a trenchcoat,” or “I am Batman,” or any of the other things we say in publicly-readable social media as jokes. They’re the kind of things we would have put in email sigs back when we were all on listservs, because they’re the kind of jokes that only really work in public or semi-public, where they can be seen by people who don’t already know you well and function as a tribal marker–like wearing your sports team’s jersey.

Putting that in an email sig, when most of us only use email today with friends who don’t need to have the joke repeated, or in our mundane, professional lives? Isn’t a joke. Can’t be. What you are suggesting is a serious attempt to leverage the cachet of the win into some sort of professional advantage, in contexts where that would be seen as pushy at best.

It’s the equivalent of That Guy who sits on a con panel surrounded by a wall of his own books and brings them up every time he answers a question.

Your well-meaning suggestion for how to “correctly” express our excitement? is coming off as telling us to be That Guy.

ellen_fremedon on culture.

For a longer comment thread (and in reaction specifically to this) about AO3/transformative versus con/oldskool fandoms.

Also kind of nails down for me why I find the whole AO3 Hugos wank debate so fascinating, since I am, indeed, someone who’s tried very hard to keep my fannish and “pro”/semi-pro identities very separate, and who found it very confronting to realize that was unusual in con fandom…1

1. To the point that it was actively detrimental to my career; my agent/publisher absolutely expected that I’d monetize my fandom base, even if it wasn’t outright stated in exactly those words, and the fact that I didn’t… was a problem. [↩]

But, says JJ at File 770: If the members of AO3 get to call themselves official Hugo Award Winners, then so do all of the commenters at File 770, and so do all of the people who’ve had works published in Uncanny Magazine — and at that point, the official term “Hugo Award Winner” has lost all meaning.

Does File 770 tell its commenters, “you are wanted; you are an essential part of this blog site; it was created so you would have a place to make these comments?” Does it say, “we have created tools that let you post and edit and seek out comments like yours; please send us feedback on how to improve the comment threading?”

Do the authors who are published in Uncanny, choose what they get to publish there? Are they welcome to join a committee and shape the rules for what Uncanny will publish? Does Uncanny say, “Please send your creative works to us; we want them all; this magazine exists to showcase as much of your work as you are willing to share?”

Neither File 770 nor Uncanny was created to support all of the people involved in it equally. Neither of them allows random people to become contributors to searchable, front-page content. Neither of them says: “Your works are welcome here, even the ones that are antisocial, even the ones we personally don’t like, because this is your home if you want it to be.”

AO3 is not a curated collection; it’s a community.

I am done with listening to gatekeeping men who want to put lines around our creativity, who want to declare that while yes, two authors can both win for “best novella” and a team of 6 can win a “best fanzine” or “best podcast” award, a team of a million can’t possibly win the “best related work” award.

elf on communities.

If a segment of fandom wants to come and tell me that my campaign to see the Archive of Our Own recognized as a marvel, a miracle of collaborative international action from thousands of fans across the world, after watching Livejournal blast my communities into nothing and AVOS rip del.icio.s to shreds, was somehow antithetical to what the Hugos stand for, come on. Bring it to me and make your case. If you want to compare my work promoting the Hugos to other communities outside the tiny circle of WSFS voters to the work of Nazis and fascists, come on, you bloviating fleshbags. I’m waiting. If you want to tell people that joking around about a Hugo Award win is somehow robbing the award of something irreplaceable, it’s on you to convince me how some fans jokingly writing “.0000000001% Hugo Award winner” devalues the Hugo Awards sitting on my mantle for the work I’ve done on Lady Business. Come on, if you’re so certain, so sure, that the joy and pleasure I’ve watched fans experience after being recognized by other fans, is somehow harmful to the Hugo Award—tell me just how the undermining of the award is going to go. Show me where other Hugo Award winners have expressed the dire prediction that their award is now worthless, just worthless! I expect citations of where they’ve tossed it in the trash. I’ve read lots of your very sad internet tears already and haven’t been convinced, and I’m pretty sure I have more Hugo Awards than most of the people complaining.

renay is part of the .0000000001%.

renay, of course, has been championing the AO3-for-Hugos push since 2014.

See also:

And for lolz:

(“World” Science Fiction Society. Uh-huh…)