Selenay's Ramblings

Yup, the Hugo finalists are out and the Archive of Our Own is on the list for Best Related work: http://www.thehugoawards.org/2019/04/2019-hugo-award-1944-retro-hugo-award-finalists/

I'm actually delighted about a large chunk of this year's ballot. There are works on there that I nominated (yes, including AO3) and works on there that I've heard a lot about and I'm looking forward to digging into. The Best Novel list is an incredibly strong field this year - no novel stands out as a run-away winner because they're all excellent. Or I assume they all are, because the ones I haven't read are either books I've been saving for a rainy day because I loved their other books (Record of a Spaceborn Few) or books friends have raved about (Trail of Lightning).

The commentary about the list has reinforced my belief that this is a really strong Hugo year.

Except for AO3, which is understandably controversial and it's annoying to see so many people already declaring it doesn't deserve to be there so they will be No Award-ing it.

Ugh.

Firstly, we know it's not on there purely for the content. I know a lot of us were having fun with being "Hugo nominated fic writers" after the announcement, but we are aware that the nominations weren't about the fic.

Hypable has a great article about AO3, the Hugos, and why it deserves to be there. It discusses the importance of transformative works in the larger fandom discourse, the fact that a lot of (Hugo finalist) writers started out in fanfic and have works on AO3, and why it's great to have the public acknowledgement out there.

I'm not pretending that AO3 is perfect. It's not (yet). It's code infrastructure is still a mess despite a lot of work last year to clean it up. That work led to the big changes in search that fans had been asking for (which, IMO, is a good argument for why it's on the ballot this year in particular) but there's still a lot more work to do. There are issues with racism and other -isms in corners of the site, and those problems are hard to tackle. It relies on unpaid labour, then again, so does much of fandom's infrastructure (including many of our biggest conventions), so I can't take issue with that part.

But.

AO3 is an incredible feat of community and engineering. It's weathering a storm of anti and purity policing that we've never seen before in fandom.

It's a resource, a community, a place for serious work and silly fun, and we built it. So I'm pretty happy to see it - and transformative works - hitting the ballot of a major award this year.

This quote for ULTRAGOTHA on File770 delighted me:

You know what? Let’s be joyful alongside everyone associated with AO3. I was joyful when File 770 was nominated and I’ve got a heck of a lot less invested here that many in the Transformative Works community have in AO3.

No, everyone involved doesn’t get 1/2,000,000 of a Hugo nomination, any more than I had a fraction of Mike’s nominations.

But that reaction is joyful! Let there be Joy! It’s a community that gets a lot of disrespect and the Organization of Transformative Works and Archive of Our Own has done titanic work in not only bringing respect to that community but ALSO creating a space that nurtures a pool of damned good SF/F/H writers.

AO3 is a vital part of Fandom and the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror community. They did stellar work last year and we should not disrespect them, their work, and the space that they’ve provided for this community, by voting them below no award. They don’t deserve that from us.

Let's celebrate and be proud of what we've achieved. Let's explain to people why AO3 deserves to be on the ballot. AO3 isn't perfect, we can critique it and work for further changes and developments, but it's still an incredible piece of work built and maintained by fandom.

It's January 8th, and people are already talking about Hugo nominations. Which is both good and not so good.

( Slightly wordy discussion of pros and cons of early Hugo discussions )

What I will say, is this:

Everyone who was at Loncon/Worldcon last year has a right to nominate for the Hugos. All of you. Even you.

The best way to get things onto the ballot that you loved? Is to use that nomination. What did you read or watch or listen to last year and love the fuck out of? Don't think "is this really a Hugo thing", just think "did I love that and want to see it rewarded?". Because that's what the important bit is: you loved it, and you want to see it acknowledged.

There were eleven thousand of us at Loncon. Biggest Worldcon in history. Let's make this year the largest number of nominations received, okay?

And then I'll start pimping supporting memberships for Sasquan, so you can all vote in the Hugos and get some rockets given out to some amazing stuff :-D

I wrote a long blog post about Deployment Day Take Two and then I deleted it all because man, it was loooooong.

Almost as long as Deployment Day Take Two. Which ended up taking 30 hours (I took a five hour nap in the middle) and much of that time was spent typing frantic IMs and listening to conference calls where the team deploying the source application tried to rollback the deployment for entirely ridiculous reasons.

I'm still trying to process the concept that it's done. This is proving difficult for a variety of reasons.

This week I'm mostly bug fixing, working on the extra features requested for the end of the month, and sticking my fingers in my ears every time someone mentions rolling back the source application. Mostly because my part works, damn it, and it's being used by major clients already who will scream bloody murder if I have to pull it.

Anyway.

I'd reached the slightly hysterical stage of exhaustion on Monday, which may explain the flurry of bingo card posts (ALL THE BINGOS!) and the whole of Tumblr that day. Er, I tried to kill my beta reader with threats of what I'd write for kink_bingo. Heh ;-D

I've been trying to watch Looper as part of my Hugo voting prep and I'm starting to think I'll have to call it quits on that. So many nightmares and I'm only halfway through the two hour film. My imagination is too strong, it hits a few of my squicks, and I'm afraid to see how much worse it can get.

The idea is brilliant, the writing is strong...it's just not good for my mental health. At least I tried?

The shortlist can be found here and it's a pretty good list, IMHO.

I'm very excited that four of the novels I nominated are on the ballot. Woot! They're all phenominal so working out what to vote for there will be difficult. I've only got one left to read (2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson) so this year I'll have more time to read the other fiction categories. Last year I had so much novel reading to do that my reading in the other categories was sketchy to say the last. I'm pretty damn excited about being able to read so much of the other stuff. I may already have ordered a couple of the novellas and novelettes for my Kindle to get ahead of the game...

The film category also made me very happy. I nominated The Avengers, not really thinking that it would end up on the ballot but I wanted to give it a go and look! It's on the ballot! Another tough category and I've only got two to watch here (again, last year I hadn't watched anything on the list) so I'll be tracking down Cabin in the Woods and Looper to watch. The hard bit will be staying objective and voting based on the writing and not the "OMG SQUEE!" that tempts me to vote for The Avengers regardless :-D

I actually did a fist pump and cheer when I saw Mark Oshiro's name on the best fan writer list. WOOOT! He really doing what I think that category should be about - a fan with no professional ties, writing insightful and fascinating posts about the books, movies and tv shows he's absorbing. If you haven't found Mark Reads and Mark Watches yet, go out and find them. Seriously brilliant stuff.

My only disappointment is in the graphic novel category, where neither Hawkeye nor Captain Marvel made it. Considering they were both being talked about by a lot of people during the nomination process, the only thing I can think of that happened there was that they were both nominated under so many different names (specific issues, series in general, plus the relevant arc name) that other things nominated more consistently topped them. It's happened before and I wouldn't be surprised if it's happened here. I'm actually kind of surprised Fables isn't on the list - isn't there a rule that Fables has to always be nominated or something? This is the category where I'll have the most extra reading to do because I haven't read anything on that list. Time to put some stuff on hold at the library, I think.

I'm incredibly pleased to see Chicks Dig Comics and Chicks Unravel Time on the ballot and to see Squeecast on the fancast list again as well.

The part where Seanan McGuire has a record-breaking five nominations on the Hugo ballot? That's just the icing on the cake.

Seriously, look at that list. It's the most diverse Hugo list I've seen. The ration of white dudes to everyone else is much lower than in the past, which I think is wonderful.

Now, onwards. To read new stuff! To watch new stuff! To be very very excited at everyone about how much amazing stuff got nominated this year!

( Cut for more mother weirdness )

Today it is Friday and OMG it couldn't come too soon. M and I have spent most of the week fighting Oracle's random weirdness and the frankly insane data that we're supposed to turn into a report on Project Doom. This should have been the easiest phase of Project Doom. I should have known that anything that looked simple wouldn't be.

For stress-relief, I've been committing insane silly fic. I've also worked on the stuff that I have actual deadlines for, but I'm finding that silly stuff is perfect when my brain has been fried by data that breaks all the rules of sense and nature.

Tomorrow I'm going to see Spiderman, finally. Yay.

Also, I read a couple of Hawkeye graphic novels this week and wow is he ever sassy and snarky. And apparently not above movie quotes and random Les Mis quotes (which Natasha totally calls him on, yay Natasha), which I find both adorable and wonderful. The comics canon is better than I'd hoped for! Except for that silly costume :-D

This weekend I'll be putting in my Hugo vote and then I'm free to run off and read all the Scalzi and Lackey my heart desires. Woo! I've got such a big post-Hugo reward pile to play with :-D

I'm watching the fallout from Christopher Priest's comments on the Clarke Awards with a degree of enjoyment and fascination. His comments seem to boil down to "it's not my kind of sci-fi so it shouldn't be nominated", which is fair enough. Everyone has a right to their opinions. The list doesn't really do much for me this year, either.

His snotty delivery and dismissive, rude comments about the nominated works? Yeah, that's where it all went wrong for him, methinks. No awards shortlist can ever make everyone happy, but there are ways of expressing opinions and then there's Priest's rant.

One thing (of several, but I'm limiting myself to this one) that I need to take exception to is this idea that 2011 was a dismal year for SF. If you're talking about hard sci-fi, then maybe it wasn't a great year. It's not my thing so I don't seek it out and the books that people were talking about and pimping around definitely weren't hard sci-fi. If you're talking about superb, inventive, compelling speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, all the things in between) then I'd say that 2011 was a very good year.

I only have to look at all the books that have been discussed in relation to the Hugos to know that and my "must find it and read it!" list as a result of that is insane.

Priest's opinions might have been better received had he couched them in better language, not demanded the resignation of the entire judging panel, and been a bit less snotty about the state of current SF just because it's not *his* kind of SF.

Ah, awards season. So much excitement. So much potential for being an idiot on-line.

I am in the home stretch on Mockingjay and it's still thoroughly engrossing. Not Dickens-level of literary genius, definitely, but it's compelling enough to keep me awake and reading all evening despite my tendency to nod off in the evenings.

I need to go through my list and decide which book, out of the 100 that I want to read right now now now, will actually be my next book for the Kindle. Oh, the decisions are tough some days.

Today's discovery: nachos are rather tasty. Staff association at work did them as our spring treat, forgoing the usual healthy 'appreciation' breakfast (bacon makes me feel far more appreciated than granola, particularly when I make better granola than the bought stuff) and I enjoyed them a lot. We had to heat them in the micro to melt the (real!) cheese and I opted out of the jalapeno peppers. Suspect they're even better under a broiler with more of my own choice toppings. Think I'll be investing in some tortilla chips and some salsa to make my own at the weekend. Hey, I need a tasty snack supper on Sunday. Perfect!