mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2024-02-15 08:43 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2024-02-15 08:43 pm
So. How about that Hugo award drama?
The report written after one of the administers leaked the emails between the administrative team. Pretty sure everyone has seen it by now.
John Scalzi's blog post response to the whole thing.
And I'm biased, but I thought my younger sibling made a pretty good post about it.
(None of the above articles even go into what an absolute douchebag McCarty was to everyone asking them to elaborate on what made certain works ineligible. That's ultimately pretty small in the scheme of everything he did, but like, that wasn't completely nothing either.)
Like... what do you even say?
Certainly not the first time there've been issues with the Hugos or with Worldcon or anything, but... this is a real bad fuckin' look. Anything from this year certainly can't be viewed as completely legitimate (which is deeply shitty for all involved, including those who won awards this year!) Anything from previous years for as long as McCarty has been involved is also pretty suspect, since it's clear the integrity of the awards and the voting body's intent was not of primary importance to him. Is it even possible for the awards to reclaim any level of trust or legitimacy?
You can say what you want about awards in general: it's always the reflection of a certain group's opinions and sensibilities at the time, and it has elements of being a popularity contest, and it favors certain works over others... But it's also been a career-maker (or at least a hefty boost) to a lot of writers. Having something like this happen is very shitty.
(Jeff VanderMeer had a fairly snarky take, which was that the funniest outcome would be if the "Hugo Report" won a Hugo in the related works category, but nothing meaningfully changed. That would be a funny outcome, but only in the bitterest of ways, heh.)
John Scalzi's blog post response to the whole thing.
And I'm biased, but I thought my younger sibling made a pretty good post about it.
(None of the above articles even go into what an absolute douchebag McCarty was to everyone asking them to elaborate on what made certain works ineligible. That's ultimately pretty small in the scheme of everything he did, but like, that wasn't completely nothing either.)
Like... what do you even say?
Certainly not the first time there've been issues with the Hugos or with Worldcon or anything, but... this is a real bad fuckin' look. Anything from this year certainly can't be viewed as completely legitimate (which is deeply shitty for all involved, including those who won awards this year!) Anything from previous years for as long as McCarty has been involved is also pretty suspect, since it's clear the integrity of the awards and the voting body's intent was not of primary importance to him. Is it even possible for the awards to reclaim any level of trust or legitimacy?
You can say what you want about awards in general: it's always the reflection of a certain group's opinions and sensibilities at the time, and it has elements of being a popularity contest, and it favors certain works over others... But it's also been a career-maker (or at least a hefty boost) to a lot of writers. Having something like this happen is very shitty.
(Jeff VanderMeer had a fairly snarky take, which was that the funniest outcome would be if the "Hugo Report" won a Hugo in the related works category, but nothing meaningfully changed. That would be a funny outcome, but only in the bitterest of ways, heh.)
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I don't think the organization would survive having the sort of deep overhaul that it needs. Also, the Chengdu con no longer exists. They can't even hold responsible the people who messed up, and it's not the first time. They've been pulling a cup-and-balls trick when it comes to responsibility for anything that happens at Worldcons and Westercons for a long time.
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When I worked on the Worldcon 69 bid I heard people say 'Yes, we got rid of everyone involved in that situation at [previous worldcon]' because it's great PR and technically true.
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Because I agree: it needs a very deep overhaul of *how* it functions, not just in who is publicly involved, and I don't know how well it would survive what's needed.
That's very much the impression I've gotten: the fact that they're a separate entity every single year means that there's no accountability for the things that go wrong, at least not in an official capacity. In this case we know the names of the people who fucked up the hardest, and they're certainly facing a lot of anger from a lot of people involved in sff publishing... but they aren't Worldcon anymore, and so it really is just being angry at individuals now, with no organizational impact or accountability.
Glasgow is already super distancing themselves from everything that happened with Chengdu, and there's been a resignation... but that's still minimally consequential. Sure it's "good" that this is a whole different entity, except that's ALWAYS what happens, and then it's business as usual. Promises of transparency are well and good, but the *structure* hasn't changed, which absolutely leaves the awards open to this sort of interference/manipulation.
This particular implosion has just made the inherent structural problems more obvious to people less directly involved, I think. Is that enough to prompt change? If so, is the change enough to make a difference? If so, is it survivable for the organization? I'm pretty skeptical of all of the above, unfortunately.
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I feel bad for the upcoming Worldcons because they are separate, but yeah, being separate is part of the problem.
Also, with a group this old there is power and there is power. There are people without formal positions with lots of social clout. And honestly, even though I was supposed to be staff for Worldcon 69 I still don't know a lot about how things run. Everyone was so squirrely. I've been on multiple boards. I've last minute filled in for fired board members. I know how cons and con power structures work. I wasn't an outsider who didn't know the basics, I was an insider and really wanted an org chart because of all the fucking SMOFs without formal positions who were still treated like they had formal power.
But yeah, the basic problem is that they need to change on a structural level and I doubt it's going to happen. Lack of accountability for decades is... a lot.
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And trying to hold the upcoming Worldcon responsible is also difficult because it is a distinct entity, so how can they be accountable for things they truly had no part in? (Except in the broader "institutional problem" sense.)
That seems like one of the big aspects that a lot of people either forget about, or just don't quite grasp. There are people who aren't going to be counted as major organizational heads, but still hold a huge amount of sway. Those "unofficial" positions can be the ones behind a lot of the hinky stuff that goes on, yet their names won't be on any official documentation.
It'd be a huge undertaking to do that sort of massive restructuring. (And I can see there being a lot of resistance toward having to do so, and who wants to suddenly be the ONLY group in the history of the con to have to answer in some more permanent way, or wants long-term oversight... I do think it's what's most needed, but I can see how difficult (and therefore unlikely) it will be.
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[Edit] Went to double check myself on years and locations. I heard tons about Reno because they had either ran or been heavily involved in running Reno and were looking to do another, had the year set and were still picking a site. Or so they said. I left before Westercon actually ran here. So, all the details became irrelevant to me and honestly, I'd decided to not stay on to staff Worldcon pretty early on.
I went from deciding that Westercon then Worldcon would be my last cons as a con staffer. I wanted to get out, but while I had the know how and connections and trust, I'd do one more big thing and leave. But then early on I was like nope, not staying for Worldcon. And then I table flipped and left before Westercon. My con running years ended very differently than planned.
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I know that con-running, much like non-profit work, tends to be a horrible mess. It's such important work to make things happen, but I know it tends to be thankless at the best of times... and certain groups seem to lend themselves to absolute nightmares of internal politics.
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I mentioned once about some event runners actively telling people my wallet name and to call me that, so I couldn't get people to call me a gender neutral nick even though some in the local scene were only known as Dragon or Penguin of Doom? Yeah....
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And yeah, I remember you mentioning that. Deeply shitty! Geeky spaces have often been pretty favorable toward people choosing what to be called, whether that's silly (Penguin of Doom or whatnot) or super fanciful Elvish or mythical type names... but then SUDDENLY it's a "no nicknames" zone when it's someone who just wants a neutral name?
I've encountered similar attitudes before, though usually from the individual(s) who "just can't remember that name you go by, so sorry, tee hee" even though they don't have any trouble remembering that John goes by "Taco Lord" or whatever.
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It is *particularly* shitty for them to have given out your wallet name when that wasn't otherwise public knowledge. Taking info from registration data is a breach of privacy that should not have happened. Fuckers.
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Unfortunately, the way the con and the awards work has left them open to this sort of manipulation. I know some people have known that for a long time, but this has really made it obvious to a much broader audience. (Or highlighted the issues for people who knew it COULD happen, but always assumed the staff would care too much about the integrity of the awards to let it. Ha, if only!)