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the AO3 Hugo Related Work nomination
Apr. 14th, 2019 11:36 pmI've been dragging my feet on trying to turn my feelings into actual words but the IIHF officiating fiasco this afternoon has reminded me that there will always be new competitive-sports developments to be pissed off about (FINLAND WAS ROBBED) and so I should probably get on with it before it's ancient news.
To sort of come at this backwards, the experience of baffled opposition to what I consider a nonsensical nomination has not been a lot of fun. Most of the discussion about it that I've seen - certainly all of the fannish glee - seems to assume that the only people who aren't happy about this are people who dislike or disapprove of fanfiction (or perhaps are cishet men who dislike that AO3 is mostly women/LGBTQ). Chuck Tingle wrote a story in which a dude is "belligerent with jealousy" until he "begins to see that his anger towards this handsome website might have more to do with his own shortcomings than anyone else's." Ha, ha. I'm not the only person with a foot in both worlds who's not thrilled about it (and boy do I appreciate that, thank you) but I have been feeling at a loss for how to talk about this in fannish space without just getting bogged down in "no look I'm not saying the AO3 isn't a shining beacon of awesomeness, but."
I've tried to reach out to a couple of people to see if someone would be willing to talk about the thinking behind nominating it as a Related Work specifically, but I've had no success engaging anyone about that. I feel like you could maybe make the case for fanzine, if you wanted to - fanzines have founders, volunteer labor, contributors, they're often ongoing projects, whereas works are usually something cohesive and finite - but I can only assume that this was considered and rejected for reasons that I can't independently come up with but might make sense if someone explained them. I did look in the WSFS constitution and as far as I can tell we don't ever actually *define* "work" so I will accept that if enough Hugo voters think something is a "work" then it technically is one, in the same way that if enough voters think something is science fiction or fantasy then it is, but I think that stretching the definition of work this way is unfortunate and incoherent.
Beyond that, though, I feel like it's a weird subjugation of fic-writing fandom to put one of our major organs up for a single award in a parallel fannish universe, and since most people don't seem to share that sense of inherent incongruity, I wrote a short fic about it, to try to translate it into a different frame of reference.
Imagine that the Vulcans give out the Vulcan Design Awards every year for spacecraft designs. There's a starship category, a sub-warp category, an atmosphere-capable category, there's even a "related designs" category for things like space docks and space elevators. And one year, a while after first contact, we hear that Earth's aerospace industry has been nominated as a related design.
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah, isn't it so exciting? The Vulcans are recognizing all the amazing spaceship work that's been happening here on Earth! It's an incredible honor!"
"But... 'Earth's aerospace industry'. Like, the whole thing."
"Yeah! NASA, Zefram Cochrane, all the recent developments, there's been so much innovation, and dedication..."
"No kidding, we're talking about, uh, two hundred years? Three hundred? Doesn't that seem like... a lot?"
"Well, it's not like they're including thousands of years of boats and land vehicles and stuff."
"But isn't Vulcan kind of sparsely populated, compared with Earth? I would guess there are actually way more people working in Earth's aerospace industry than in Vulcan's."
"Hm, maybe... so what?"
"So... doesn't it seem weird to you that they're nominating Earth's entire aerospace industry for one award? What else is nominated?"
"Let's see, there's a shuttle bay on a Vulcan moon base, a warp core design, and a new airlock cycling protocol."
"So the judges are comparing everything humans build in space to a shuttle bay and some airlock code."
"Really elegant and efficient airlock code, actually. I think Ceres is already adopting it."
"... so Earth's entire aerospace industry might lose to airlock code."
"Well, sure, you know, lots of Vulcans are prejudiced against humans and all our touchy-feely emotions and stuff. But there are lots of pro-collaboration Vulcans too."
"So Earth's entire aerospace industry might win. And then we'd be, what. The best related design of 2118, and then next year there'd be a different shuttle bay and some different code up for it?"
"Sure, I guess. We can always decline if we keep getting nominated. You know, they checked with United Earth Star Command and they accepted the nomination. I guess they think it's pretty neat."
"Neat. Okay, I give up. I guess this is just how interplanetary diplomacy works! Let's start a move to nominate Vulcan's music industry for this year's World Music Grammy."
"What, all of it? The Grammys are for albums."
And, scene. I know this isn't an exact analogy... in the actual circumstances, lots of Vulcans are also Earthlings (and don't think I haven't been trying to figure out how we can possibly estimate that number... traditionally Vulcans do not let on that they spend their vacation time on Earth, it makes it tricky), but, like, the idea that we are two planets, both alike in dignity, if different in customs, and big, exciting, important things are going on all the time on both planets... I don't know, is this really how interplanetary diplomacy works?
To sort of come at this backwards, the experience of baffled opposition to what I consider a nonsensical nomination has not been a lot of fun. Most of the discussion about it that I've seen - certainly all of the fannish glee - seems to assume that the only people who aren't happy about this are people who dislike or disapprove of fanfiction (or perhaps are cishet men who dislike that AO3 is mostly women/LGBTQ). Chuck Tingle wrote a story in which a dude is "belligerent with jealousy" until he "begins to see that his anger towards this handsome website might have more to do with his own shortcomings than anyone else's." Ha, ha. I'm not the only person with a foot in both worlds who's not thrilled about it (and boy do I appreciate that, thank you) but I have been feeling at a loss for how to talk about this in fannish space without just getting bogged down in "no look I'm not saying the AO3 isn't a shining beacon of awesomeness, but."
I've tried to reach out to a couple of people to see if someone would be willing to talk about the thinking behind nominating it as a Related Work specifically, but I've had no success engaging anyone about that. I feel like you could maybe make the case for fanzine, if you wanted to - fanzines have founders, volunteer labor, contributors, they're often ongoing projects, whereas works are usually something cohesive and finite - but I can only assume that this was considered and rejected for reasons that I can't independently come up with but might make sense if someone explained them. I did look in the WSFS constitution and as far as I can tell we don't ever actually *define* "work" so I will accept that if enough Hugo voters think something is a "work" then it technically is one, in the same way that if enough voters think something is science fiction or fantasy then it is, but I think that stretching the definition of work this way is unfortunate and incoherent.
Beyond that, though, I feel like it's a weird subjugation of fic-writing fandom to put one of our major organs up for a single award in a parallel fannish universe, and since most people don't seem to share that sense of inherent incongruity, I wrote a short fic about it, to try to translate it into a different frame of reference.
Imagine that the Vulcans give out the Vulcan Design Awards every year for spacecraft designs. There's a starship category, a sub-warp category, an atmosphere-capable category, there's even a "related designs" category for things like space docks and space elevators. And one year, a while after first contact, we hear that Earth's aerospace industry has been nominated as a related design.
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah, isn't it so exciting? The Vulcans are recognizing all the amazing spaceship work that's been happening here on Earth! It's an incredible honor!"
"But... 'Earth's aerospace industry'. Like, the whole thing."
"Yeah! NASA, Zefram Cochrane, all the recent developments, there's been so much innovation, and dedication..."
"No kidding, we're talking about, uh, two hundred years? Three hundred? Doesn't that seem like... a lot?"
"Well, it's not like they're including thousands of years of boats and land vehicles and stuff."
"But isn't Vulcan kind of sparsely populated, compared with Earth? I would guess there are actually way more people working in Earth's aerospace industry than in Vulcan's."
"Hm, maybe... so what?"
"So... doesn't it seem weird to you that they're nominating Earth's entire aerospace industry for one award? What else is nominated?"
"Let's see, there's a shuttle bay on a Vulcan moon base, a warp core design, and a new airlock cycling protocol."
"So the judges are comparing everything humans build in space to a shuttle bay and some airlock code."
"Really elegant and efficient airlock code, actually. I think Ceres is already adopting it."
"... so Earth's entire aerospace industry might lose to airlock code."
"Well, sure, you know, lots of Vulcans are prejudiced against humans and all our touchy-feely emotions and stuff. But there are lots of pro-collaboration Vulcans too."
"So Earth's entire aerospace industry might win. And then we'd be, what. The best related design of 2118, and then next year there'd be a different shuttle bay and some different code up for it?"
"Sure, I guess. We can always decline if we keep getting nominated. You know, they checked with United Earth Star Command and they accepted the nomination. I guess they think it's pretty neat."
"Neat. Okay, I give up. I guess this is just how interplanetary diplomacy works! Let's start a move to nominate Vulcan's music industry for this year's World Music Grammy."
"What, all of it? The Grammys are for albums."
And, scene. I know this isn't an exact analogy... in the actual circumstances, lots of Vulcans are also Earthlings (and don't think I haven't been trying to figure out how we can possibly estimate that number... traditionally Vulcans do not let on that they spend their vacation time on Earth, it makes it tricky), but, like, the idea that we are two planets, both alike in dignity, if different in customs, and big, exciting, important things are going on all the time on both planets... I don't know, is this really how interplanetary diplomacy works?
