Archive of Our Own and The Hugo Awards

After several years of dedicated campaigning and outreach by fans, Archive of Our Own was shortlisted for a Hugo Award in 2019 in the category of Best Related Work. The shortlisting was widely celebrated as a momentous achievement within fandom and a significant step towards acknowledging the worth and legitimacy of fanworks and fan projects by a major Science Fiction award and in the mainstream. 
This intensified when AO3 ultimately won the award for Best Related Work at the Dublin Worldcon, and fans celebrated the win as a joint victory for fandom. However, the Hugo Awards Mark Protection Committee subsequently requested that the OTW clarify that the win did not belong to individual fans, giving rise to an outbreak of wank and controversy as fans protested against the perceived gatekeeping of a Hugo Award which they felt belonged to all of them.
==History==
AO3's presence on the Hugo voting ballot in 2019 was the result of many years of campaigning by fans, in particular Renay, an OTW volunteer and contributor to the fanzine Lady Business (which itself won a Hugo in the category of Best Fanzine in 2019), who campaigned for multiple successive years to have AO3 shortlisted in the category of Best Related Work.Hugo Award Nominations: Best Related Work - Archive of Our Own by The Organization for Transformative Works. by heyheyrenay via Tumblr. Published January 18, 2014 (Accessed August 20, 2019).The Hugo Awards 2015: A Collection of Nominations, Lady Business. "Archive of Our Own — so this may be a pipe dream, as I was told last year in pretty frank terms this is a "platform", not a "fanwork" and thus I'll have a "hard time convincing the committee" it should be eligible, by someone who apparently "knew people on the Hugo committee" (seems legit)." Published January 15, 2015 (Accessed August 20, 2019).2016 Hugo Award Nominations: Best Related Work - Archive of Our Own by heyheyrenay via Tumblr. Published January 25, 2016 (Accessed August 20, 2019).2017 Hugo Nomination Recommendations, Lady Business. "Archive of Our Own — That's right, pals! I'm back and I haven't given up. Archive of Our Own continues to be one of the most epic pieces of fanwork that fans have shoved up their metaphorical sleeves to make and maintain." Published February 16, 2017 (Accessed August 20, 2019). In 2018, AO3 missed out on the shortlist by a single vote.For Your Consideration by zz9pzza via Tumblr. Published March 11, 2019 (Accessed August 20, 2019) Archived version. 
===The Nomination===
When AO3 finally made it onto the ballot for one of sci-fi's most prestigious awards in 2019, it was considered hugely significant for fandom and in particular the legitimacy of fanfiction as a medium, and resulted in a flurry of media coverage and delighted responses from fans.
Much of the media coverage highlighted the significance of the AO3 nomination as a sign of changing attitudes towards Transformative Work fans within Science Fiction Fandom.
While the Hugo Awards committee were quick to point out that the nomination was specifically for the underlying structure and code of the Archive, and not for all the individual fanworks hosted on itAO3’s Hugo Award win is a long time coming for the fanfiction community. Polygon.com Published April 2019, Updated August 19, 2019 (Accessed September 22, 2019)., some of the media coverage, including on Vice and Syfy, took a broader view.
Some fans credited the nomination in part to the increased interest in the Hugos after Puppygate:
Ellen Fremedon questioned whether it was possible to separate the Archive structure from the fanworks hosted on it:
On Tumblr, OTW Founder astolat posted that "we deliberately refused the lie, from the beginning, that a space like the AO3 was or could ever be the work of one or even a few people," and compared the the AO3 to a garden:
Many reactions focused on the significance of a fanfiction archive being nominated for one of the biggest genre awards.
Author Seanan McGuire, herself nominated for a Hugo for "Best Series" posted to twitter:
And the sentiment was echoed by other fans on twitter, tumblr, and in blogs. Twitter user @elvenjaneite posted a thread about how meaningful she found the nomination:
Blogger ohioneedsatrain agreed:
The excited squee from AO3 users was seemingly everywhere, and overjoyed fans soon started making jokes on social media about being Hugo nominees:
===Objections to the Nomination===
Not everybody was happy about the AO3's nomination. Cora Buhlert and Ethan Wise were two of the fans who expressed the opinion that the AO3 did not qualify as a Related Work:
One fan who argued particularly strongly against the nomination was Contrarius, who would later feature heavily in the heated discussion at File770
At File770, a commenter named Kendell declared that, "not every concept needs a Hugo and not everything people love must be awarded or eligible for some Hugo.Comment by Kendall at File770.
Hampus Eckerman, another fan who would later clash with AO3 users, stated that even if he agreed with the justification for the nomination, he would not have nominated the AO3:
 
Some commenters objected to the implications of the nomination on the ongoing makeup of the category. Greg Hullender went with the slippery slope argument:
Cora Buhlert was particularly upset on the behalf of those non-fiction writers who might have made the ballot in the AO3's place.
A sentiment that was echoed by fan Andrew M
Steve J. Wright, acknowledged that the AO3 was appropriate for the category, but did not consider it a worthy nominee:
The celebratory jokes about being "Hugo nominated fanfic writers," and being nominated for "1 millionth of a Hugo" particularly did not sit well with some long-time Hugo voters:
On the website Amazing Stories, Steve Davidson argued that the jokes diluted the prestige of the award:
Others, such as the editors of the Hugo Book Club Blog, argued that the people making jokes about being nominated for a Hugo were disrespecting the award:
Even the claim to a partial nomination was considered spurious by some, as evidenced by this comment by Xtifr at File770:
These objections would return in force after the Hugo win.
===The Win===
AO3's win was considered a significant step in the broader acceptance of fanworks fandom. Organization for Transformative Works co-founder Naomi Novik, accepting the award on-stage alongside three other OTW volunteers, acknowledged this significance in her acceptance speech:
Attendees at the Hugo Awards ceremony reported that "half" the auditorium stood up at this point - including many nominees from other categories. Aug 18, 2019 by @ben_rosenbaum
==Controversy==
Although AO3 co-founder Naomi Novik did not directly attribute the Hugo win to the entire community, in her acceptance speech on behalf of the project, she acknowledged the significance of the award to the whole community of AO3 creators and users:
A great number of AO3 users took to platforms like Twitter to express their excitement at being “Hugo winners” with sentiments such as, “PS hey y'all my fanfic won a Hugo asking with hundreds? thousands? of other fanfic. WHEEEEEEEE”Tweet by @NeolithicSheep. Many fans joked about having written Hugo-winning porn or contributed Hugo-winning comments. News websites like The Mary Sue further conflated the meaning of the Hugo win with headlines such as “Everyone Who Contributed to Fanfiction Site ‘Archive of Our Own’ Is Now a Hugo Award Winner”The Mary Sue, “Everyone Who Contributed to Fanfiction Site ‘Archive of Our Own’ Is Now a Hugo Award Winner”.
Some people questioned whether an entire project could be eligible for a Hugo Award, resulting in the WSFS stating that AO3 was eligible for the award based on “aspects other than the fictional text.”2019 Hugo Results 
On September 13, the OTW posted , stating that the World Science Fiction Society (who give the awards) had asked them to publicly clarify "that the Hugo was awarded to the AO3, and not to any particular work(s) hosted on it": 
Discussion ensued in comments to the post as well as on File 770 and elsewhere. Some AO3 fans concluded that WSFS was unable to tell the difference between a joke and a serious claim of being a "Hugo winner". Some people on the WSFS side seemed to be aware that it was a joke, but thought that the joke wasn't funny and would harm the Hugo Award's reputation. AO3 fans suggested that SF fandom was still anti-fanfic. One person wrote a fic parody entitled "Stanley Cup — What it Means", and that fanfic was then turned into a podfic; both were posted on the AO3.Stanley Cup — What it Means by Anonymous, posted 2019-09-17; podfic by FayJay, posted 2019-09-17. By the end of the day one fan counted at least eight transformative works in the AO3 comments section, noting that "the more they yell at us about it, the more fic we write!"
On a more serious note, another writer lamented: 
Initial comments on the news post pushed back lightly against the WSFS’s request for the news post:
===Kevin Standlee's Comments===
Kevin Standlee, a longtime SF fan, is Chairman of the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo Awards Marketing Committee.Kevin Standlee on Fancyclopedia 3 Within nine hours of AO3 making the post, Standlee began commenting on the post in response to other commenters whose replies did not align with the WSFS’s perspective.
Standlee also posted his perspective in a public LiveJournal post, comparing AO3 users to the Sad Puppies voting bloc scandal from the 2015 Hugo Awards:
Standlee also cross-posted this post to his Dreamwidth, where it attracted several more comments.
===AO3 Discussion===
Backlash against Standlee’s comments quickly began to pour in from registered users as well as anonymous commenters, while a handful of commenters jumped in to support Standlee and the WSFS.
===File 770 Discussion===
File 770 reported on AO3’s news post, stating, “So far there are 80 comments, any number by Kevin Standlee making Absolutely Clear Everybody Must Understand Things Exactly The Way He Does. One reply says, ‘You aren’t doing a particularly good job of reading the room here.’”Pixel Scroll 9/14/19 We Are All In The Pixel, But Some Of Us Are Looking At The Scrolls
Many, but not all, commenters on the File 770 post were opposed to the attitudes of AO3 supporters against the WSFS in AO3’s news post.
See Archive of Our Own and The Hugo Awards/File 770 Discussion.
===Twitter Discussion===
By the Monday after the news post was published, wank about the meaning of the award and about the AO3 news post comments section had migrated to Twitter.
Supporters of AO3’s users included Andrea Horbinski, former member of the Organization for Transformative Works Board of Directors (see OTW 2015 Board Election), and Impertinence.
Chuck Tingle also defended AO3 users on Twitter.
===Further Discussions===
Several AO3 supporters defended AO3 users on their blogs, including RenayLady Business, "Fandom, Recognition, & Community" and Elf"One-Millionth of a Hugo".
Lawyer and AO3 user scifantasy published a work on AO3 entitled "HugO3" that summarizes their argument that "trademark rights owners, as a matter of law, must be diligent in protecting their brands from infringement or other misuse lest they risk weakening or losing certain legal rights to those marks... If the Worldcon-running community doesn't police use of the phrase, someone else--someone with less humorous, less celebratory, less free-spirited intent--might be able to plausibly argue that he can call his self-published book a Hugo Award Winner just because it was fanfic, or he has an AO3 account, because the term has lost all of its significance by not being protected.""HugO3" One commenter notes, "You're actually wrong about trademark not having fair use! Fair use is the first of six listed nonexclusive factors that prevent a particular use of a mark from being prohibited under a dilution argument in 15 USC § 112(c)(3). (Please also note that the WSFS cannot use a dilution argument as their mark is not "widely recognized by the general consuming public of the United States as a designation of source of the goods or services of the mark’s owner".) ... Will's invocation of his law degree and his area of practice to further this extremely common and extremely dangerous trademark myth without clarifying many of the ways in which trademark law does contain significant carveouts for noncommercial speech, parody, satire, fair use, nominative use, news reporting, and a dozen other forms of protected speech is why I objected to it on Twitter and why I object to it here.Comment thread, "HugO3"
Various anonymous users on Fail-Fandomanon wrote the following parody of the situation:
==Works & Memes==
Chuck Tingle wrote a short story, "Pounded In The Butt By Fan Fiction Hosting Website Archive Of Our Own's Hugo Award Nomination, which was published in April 2019.
===Inspired by the Controversy===
In true fandom fashion, the controversy generated a large number of transformative works, some of which one AO3 user using the pseud HugoWank2k19_Archivist has gathered into a collection, HugoWank2k19.
See Archive of Our Own and The Hugo Awards/Works & Memes Inspired by the Controversy.
==Further Reading==
*
* 2019 Hugo Awards Voter Packet: Archive of Our Own (AO3)
* (April 2, 2019)
* (April 3, 2019)
* (April 9, 2019)
* (April 11, 2019)
* (April 22, 2019)
* (August 16, 2019)
* (August 19, 2019)
* (August 19, 2019)
* More at OTW Press Room
* AO3 News: Hugo Award – What it Means (2019-09-13)
* File 770: Pixel Scroll 9/14/19 We Are All In The Pixel, But Some Of Us Are Looking At The Scrolls (2019-09-14)
* (2019-09-17) additional discussion here 
*(2019-09-17)
* (2019-09-18)
* they really should have known the one thing we know is how to bring receipts; archive link page 1; archive link page 2 (September 21, 2019)
* (Oct 2, 2019)
==References==
Category:2019 Events
Category:Archive_of_Our_Own
Category:Science Fiction Awards
Category:Fandom Occurrences
Category:Fandom Wars
Category:2019 Memes
Category:2019 Awards
Category:Science Fiction Fandom Occurrences