It's a magical world

Many other people have said things I agree with, especially fairestcat, about the bullshit from the WSFS about how AO3 contributors shouldn't refer to ourselves as winners of a tiny fraction of a Hugo Award. The short answer is they're wrong, we are, and we already got our fangirl cooties all over their serious phallic rocket. And they can't change that AO3 did win and we are here; their own fucking members, many of whom are AO3 contributors themselves, voted us the award. Die mad, assholes.

But. I do want to specifically say that the WSFS claims about their trademarks and about U.S. trademark laws are a steaming pile of horseshit. Trademarks are specifically different from copyright and the standards for their use and violation (or "dilution," depending on the case) are in many cases much more stringent. I am not a lawyer, and even I know this. There's a post made on AO3 by a dude who is apparently a trademark lawyer which attempts to obfuscate the specific argument about dilution of trademarks that the WSFS is trying to make, and it's a bunch of unrelated examples that don't apply to this situation. (I also strongly question his professional judgment in making that post; it seems unwise, and he's also specifically not counsel for the WSFS so can't actually comment on specifics.) Furthermore, a trademark cannot be used to compel protected speech (i.e. jokes on Twitter). This is another piece of WSFS' history of overreaching on trademarks, but here's the thing: we don't have to be cowed just because of random dudes making long, serious-seeming posts, even if they have a JD. If there's one thing the OTW and the AO3 have stood for and proved over the past decade and change, it's that we can do things for ourselves. And we can do some pretty amazing things!

I'm not even getting into the fact that as far as I can tell the WSFS has registered its precious trademarks only in the U.S. and the EU (which undoubtedly has different standards for trademarks that I don't know, and I'd bet a good chunk of change the WSFS has no idea about either). Despite the fact that they're allegedly so concerned about these trademarks' dilution, they haven't even registered them in the country hosting the next Worldcon, and they've apparently let them expire in Canada. They're also not registered in Australia, which has hosted Worldcon four times already, the most recent in 2010.

All of which is to say that their claims about this whole kerfuffle being about trademarks are obviously bullshit--Kevin didn't even start mentioning trademarks until the comments on the AO3 news post--but also that merchandise, whether it be pins, T-shirts, badge ribbons, or whatever, using the phrase(s) "Hugo Award(s)" is totally legal in most of the world. Including New Zealand. And that even though they're trying to gatekeep us out of their precious science fiction, we're already inside the gates. And this too shall pass. And in the meantime, we are still all winners of a tiny fraction of a Hugo Award, because we built the AO3 ourselves, whether as volunteers or creators. Here's to us. We're pretty damn awesome.

Yoinked from were_duck and longwhitecoats.

Fanworks! I love them! And despite thinking about vids constantly (hello, vidders I've recently subscribed to!) it feels like it's been a dog's age since I've posted anything. (This isn't actually true, but like I said, it feels that way. Particularly for fic.) So:

I currently have 47 works archived at the AO3, including fic and vids. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 47 (the first thing I posted), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it!

There will be actual content again soon, I promise.

When Fics Take on a Life of Their Own (4359 words) by storiesfortravellers
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Critical Theory RPF, Feminist Ryan Gosling
Rating: Mature
Warning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Michael Fassbender/James McAvoy
Characters: Feminist Ryan Gosling - Character, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Original Female Character, Fanfic Writer
Summary: A fanfic writer and Feminist Ryan Gosling discuss celebrity culture, gender and theory, and the political perils of Fassavoy fic.

Without taking any kind of epistemological stance on RPF as a phenomenon, I will say this is definitely a fic to be read and contemplated by people in fandom--our peccadilloes and our predilections and the reasons for all of them turned over and exposed to inspection. It's knowing and self-critical and consciously caught between and a rock and a hard place, and also frequently hilarious. (Feminist Ryan Gosling will do that.)

The follow-up rec is not a fic but a post, namely hey girl it's feminist fandom by metaphortunate:

Everybody makes their own erotic compromises with the patriarchy. We're going to die while the world is still fucked. We can't put our libidos on hold until everything is sorted out. And to sort out our libidos we'd not only have to sort out the world but we'd also have to hop in our imaginary time machine and go back and fix it so that we grew up in a fair world where people cared about what happened to people who weren't rich white men and that is also going to happen on the twelfth of never so you will forgive me if I say that there is nothing wrong with the way we live with our oppression by eroticizing it.

I would wager that all or most of us have had the experience of enjoying some piece of media that our higher cognitive functions find intensely problematic, and like the man said, I would hope that we not judge ourselves too harshly, or solely on the basis of what is said or even done in public about sex and sexuality. (Remind me to tell you the story of the prof I'm teaching for dropping surprise!Greek love into the lecture on the Hellenization of the Roman Empire into lecture yesterday. Hilarious, if you're me and knew what was coming.) But hoping for that degree of absolution doesn't absolve us from the obligation to keep questioning where we're at, as M and this fic both make clear.

Note to interested readers: neither of these pieces contain any actual RPF.

Dept. of Oh Snap
New Delicious has killed old Delicious.
bookshop, reaction post
epershand, Pinboard elving exchange brainstorm post (soon to be a reality)
facetofcathy, rundown part 2
unjapanologist, fannish bookmarking service = want, also, Diigo censors bookmarks
somnolentblue, linkspam

Other people have had a lot of good things to say about this; I've been very happy with Pinboard since I joined six months ago (I'm starlady on Pinboard; also, I highly recommend adding the Pinboard buttons to your browser bar), and the owner pinboard has been nothing but welcoming and responsive to fannish users. Yes, it costs money, and I know it is therefore beyond the reach of some people, which I find incredibly frustrating and obviously makes it not the best long-term solution as things stand. But I'm by no means wild about Diigo's silent censorship, TOS, deciding its users are spammers, and account deletion. I don't think AO3 bookmarks will ever be a replacement for Delicious, either, but I'm not averse to seeing them gain more functionality.

anatsuno has a link to a public Google document listing requested Pinboard features
and via copracat, the Great Delicious Migration spreadsheet

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Dept. of Transformative Works
Speaking of the OTW, the Board Election chats have been scheduled.

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Dept. of Miscellany
Alex Ross is just a fantastic writer in general.

I'm going to Minneapolis tomorrow and am basically completely unprepared. I'll see you when I see you.

L'shanah tovah! Eid mubarak!

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Speaking of Eid, eid_ka_chand is running its Eid-al-thon fanworks challenge, which is being sponsored to raise money for flood survivors in Pakistan. There's a little less than 48 hours left--if you can contribute a drabble, or a microvid, or some icons or meta focusing on Muslim characters in fandom, please do!

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Also, wistfuljane is organizing a Most Awesome Asian Characters & Celebrities fest in honor of Trung Thu, the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival. Go check it out! Comment! Contribute!

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And finally, the OTW will be hosting a one-year birthday party for the Archive of Our Own on September 13, midnight to midnight UTC. More details at the post--party attendees will get commemorative graphics and door prizes, and there will be cool new features launched too. I'll be there at some point myself.

I've put up an offer for help_pakistan:

Japanese to English translation, opening bid $10 -- Japanese to English manga translation of up to thirty (30) manga pages; this can be one manga of 30 pages, five manga of six pages, or any combination of pages that doesn't exceed 30. Doujinshi are fine; hentai is not. I am open to translating a few more pages if the bidding goes higher.

Bidding closes Saturday August 28th at 23:59 EST.

I thought I might see some posts about the 20th anniversary of the ADA on my reading page today, but instead it's full of the awesome news that the Library of Congress has granted a DMCA exemption for vidders, media studies scholars, and cell phone jailbreakers! (Link goes to otw_news, the DW mirror of the Organization for Transformative Works' blog). The OTW was the major proponent of the explicit language in the decision that acknowledges many aspects of vidding as fair use, so hooray for fair use, the OTW, and the LoC! \o/

More links about the decision, and the text itself, are collected here.

That said, let me just quote the last paragraph of the initial blog post (emphases mine):
Fair use has to be defended, and the OTW can't do it without you, fans and vidders.

I was just going to leave this lie, because I find the arguments of Diana Gabaldon and other pro writers against fanfiction to be boring, untenable, offensive and deeply un-original, but there are some good posts being written by other people that really do merit linkage.

Via jonquil, Rudyard Kipling says you're full of crap, Diana, GRRM! Also see my comment and its thread in queering_holmes on fannishness in ancient Europe. I am dead serious.

cofax7's linkspam yesterday linked to Nick Matamas' post eviscerating some of George R. R. Martin's whackier anti-fanfic arguments, but check out the original linkpost too; cofax has a great few paragraphs of analysis between the links.

Hilarious and on-point as always, thefourthvine posts some good reasons for pros to fear fic and introduces Captain Copyright, who seriously needs to be a Yuletide fandom. Given the power dynamics involved, I think Captain Copyright's archnemesis is Fangirl; when Fanboy is introduced mid-series it throws the Captain into a dark night of his heroic soul.

Cat Valente has a great post from her midlist author's perspective dealing with some of the more abstract points involved (hint: she's for fic).

Last but not least, kaigou has a poll asking writers about writing fic, with follow-ups here and here.

And since this is a post about fandom, I recommend bookshop's post on fandom and women to everyone, particularly those who've been following the recent imbroglio over what happened at WinCon 2008: inkstone's post on the whole thing is a good digest; this followup is also relevant.

And now that I've successfully worked myself into a lather of WTF, world, why!? I am going to post something happy next.