Fandom: Oh, Hugo, Where Have HuGone

[escritoireazul]

If I had an active fannish Twitter or Tumblr, I would have added to my profile: 100% Absolutely Positively Not a Hugo Award Winner. But I don't, so I shan't.

The Fanlore write-up of the controversy.

This is really putting me off the Hugos and Worldcon. Feels like another cultural clash in SFF, and I am really fucking tired of them. They're necessary and good changes can come out of them, but so tired.

Comments

[escritoireazul]

I definitely understand this feeling, but I think in a lot of ways, the horse is out of the stable on that one. So many of the people who use AO3, even people who created it, are a part of the pro SFF scene, too, and many are outspoken about and proud of their fic roots (or current fic writing). I think it's still possible to keep an individual distance between your work (generic you) and pro spaces, but as a whole, we exist in a public way that is becoming more public all the time.

That is a hard transition for a lot of people, and I hope everyone can find their way to getting what they want from their fandom experience.

Fanlore's doing the dirty work collecting stuff for sure.

[havocthecat]

Like. I don't need the old guard SFF WSFS validation, but it sure is fun to see them huff and puff about the AO3 ruining science fiction by getting its cooties all over everything.

[rhoda_rants]

Yeah, it's hard, especially if you came to the "scene" by exchanging fics chapter by chapter over emails like I did, just to a handful of people as opposed to the internet at large. There's no stopping it, and intellectually I get why having this type of transformative work recognized is a good thing, but I also feel very, very protective of my particular corner of it and don't want it publicized. I don't know how to join to those feelings together nicely.

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