Twitter Thread on AO3 and the Hugos

This the text of a twitter thread that I posted yesterday about the current mess with AO3 users being told not call themselves Hugo winners. I wanted to save it somewhere more permanent than Twitter and also share with people here who don't follow me on twitter


I have a lot of feelings about the current mess with AO3 users being told not to call themselves Hugo winners.

I've been a Hugo voter for longer than I've had an AO3 account. I got started in part because marginalized people where encoring me to take part and represent the diversity of the genre.

So I've always seen the Hugos as flawed and in need of improvement, but still its been an important community for me. I've bounded with people and discovered works that I love. I wouldn't read so much short SFF without the Hugos

Some of those people are AO3 users, and they've slowly gotten me more and more involve in the transformative side of fandom. Which has been amazing.

I'm also one of the people who helped create the Lodestar Award -- the-not-a-Hugo YA award. We hoped that the Lodestar would honor diverse works and also be a bridge between WSFS and the YA community

I was so pleased when AO3 won the Hugo this year. I watched on the livestream as so many in the audience stood up because they where part of the AO3 community.

All those people who stood up are WSFS members. Everyone who nominated and voted for AO3 to win a Hugo is WSFS member!

Some of us have been working to make the Hugos more inclusive for a long time. It feels shitty to have the Mark Protection Committee come gatekeep all over our efforts