Thread by @AlexandraErin

Reading this postmortem of the Hugo Losers Party where the explanation boils down to "we had to account for the people who just show up without an invitation" and "we expected the venue to let us overflow" and... some people really lead different lives.

file770.com/grrm-on-the-hu…

Last year in San Jose, a few people asked if I was going to the HLP. I said no, I wasn't invited. I was nowhere near the ballot that year; it was only through extraordinary circumstances I was back in Kansas City two years before.

And a lot of people told me they figured if I'd been once I could definitely get in again. I was like, okay, maybe if that's a thing, so I kind of put out some feelers to find out if there was any official kind of emeritus status, and it didn't seem like there was.

So I'm really, really... I'm not impressed with the impression that it's the hurt and angry invitees who took to Twitter who are being ungracious here. They weren't the ones who made assumptions or overstepped what they were told.

I would say that 90% of the people I know well enough to consider a friend, if they were on their way to a fancy semi-secret party with printed invitations and they realized their invitation had been left behind... they'd go back and get it, even if their name is on a list.

And we'd do this because we're not used to assuming a space, even a space with our name on it, will be held for us, that we will be recognized and admitted.

So in 2017 in Helsinki, the party had a venue that did let them overflow into an outdoor area, averting disaster. There's two ways to take that: one is to go, "Whoo, we dodged a bullet there. Never making this mistake again." and the other is to get more confident.

The explanation mentions the fact that the planners were nervous about the low capacity, but they assumed based on the example of Helsinki that this would be negotiable night of, in some fashion. They didn't check, didn't ask. They hoped.

There was no Plan B if it wasn't.

To the planners, it's just kind of obvious that you're going to go over your guest list. To a person handed an invitation they're told will be checked at the door (there was print on mine that it was required for admission!), that's less obvious.

In the five years since he's reclaimed the party, George hasn't encountered this situation before. If he keeps it going, he should be aware that it's almost a mathematical certainty that it's the guests of honor, the titular losers, who will be the ones shut out.

Because the nominees have the ceremony and the official after bits to get through. Photo calls. They probably want to get out of or transform their super formal garb before going to party.

Whereas the gladhanders can just show up.

Which means that to keep this alive as an institution, the planning will have to be a little more... rigorous. Strict headcounts in advance for luminaries and friends of the planners, for convention officials and guests, and for the Hugo nominees and runner-up losers (winners).

Which means the invitations have to matter, which means no more unofficial emeritus for life status or people finagling the meaning of "+1".

I mean, honestly, the idea of an invitee emeritus is just unsustainable. Every year the set of people who have been to one before is just going to get larger, and the longer you wait before you throw up your hands and go, "no, this won't work," the more people will be affected.

They could loosen up the restriction of actually having the invitation in hand by checking Hugo nominees names, as the nominees are probably the people most likely to have lost track of their physical invite... and the people you, in theory, least want to turn away at the door.

Anyway.

If anybody felt that the invitees who were turned away weren't being very charitable in how they expressed their feelings...

Imagine how obnoxious the people who expected to breeze in without an invitation would have been if that hadn't worked out for them.

I don't know if the fallout of all of this is going to be an end to the party, the party continues but completely decoupled from anything so public as the Hugo ballot, or the current organizers feel so burned out on it they hand it off to someone else to figure out. Or nothing.

But if it keeps going as George R.R. Martin's private party to honor the Hugos, the nominees, and the history of World Con by having all the nominees and a large selection of con and industry luminaries under one roof... he'll need to adjust his planning and assumptions.

Otherwise it's just going to keep happening. The club's going to get bigger every year while the clubhouse varies in size.

I mean, he can say this. But here's the problem with having a slightly arcane, tradition-bound institution that every year, without fail, inducts a crops of newbies:

The view from the outside isn't the view from the inside.

https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1168182619726651399

And if the newly-inducted members arrive to find the door shut in their face... which, again, mathematically is the most likely outcome as they're the crop of losers with the mot time constraints that evening... are they going to feel inducted? Welcome back for next year?

I may be in the minority here but I don't think it's a terrible thing that the party's host, one of the world's most famous authors, pulls in industry friends and celebrities to mingle at the party. That's part of the cachet of going. You may be a loser but look where you are.

And the thing is... I wouldn't be surprised if he has sort of built up the responses and mentions of "guests of honor" to the point where he feels like the people who got turned away were expecting too much and would have been disappointed and angry even if they made it in?

But having been to one, as a runner-up to running up who narrowly lost out on being even an official loser... being in the party is a prize in and of itself.

The one thing I don't think anyone can argue with is, it's not an easy problem to solve. Even tightening up the entry requirements and getting stricter with the invites would change the tone and tenor of the party. Not everyone feels comfortable going through a TSA line to hobnob

It's a difficult problem but I think the least disruptive solution would be, if there's a small venue or capacity worries, treat the party capacity as if it's actually [Capacity - N], were N represents the number of Hugo Nominees and their Plus Ones, who are checked off a list.

It might gall George as host to treat one class of invitees as being a higher priority than others, especially if that's not been his conception of the party... but... the freshman losers are the viewpoint characters for the story of the party as it gets told to the world.

Nobody's going to talk about the experience as much as them. No one's going to get listened to as much as them. Nothing that happens that night will matter to anyone as much as it matters to them. They're not jaded about any of it, they're looking forward to everything.

And I know that so much of his response rests on "this is my private party with my money and you have the gall to tell me what to do?"

I mean, literally no one has the power to make him do this.

I just think it's a good idea.

Anyway.

The way he's been talking, I'll honestly be kind of surprised if the same party happens in the same way next year, but the way he closes it off by talking about coordinating with Washington next year, it sounds like he's still committed for now.

Again, I was invited to the party in Kansas City, through circumstances that I regard essentially as a lucky fluke: I was knocked off the Hugo ballot by one space by machinations of alt-right ballot stuffing, but I was only in the running because of my commentary on the same.

It was hard for me to feel cheated when no one would have been paying attention to my writings on science fiction and fantasy fandom if I hadn't been doing a running commentary on the cheating.

So the whole thing felt to me like an amazing stroke of luck.

I'm not a Hugo loser because I was never on the ballot, hence it never occurred to me to press my luck at the door in San Jose. I had an amazing time in KC, it remains one of the signature moments of my very unconventional career.

I think every Hugo Loser should have that.

It's not George R.R. Martin's job in particular to deliver that experience for everyone indefinitely, and I do think we should keep that in mind.

I'd love it if we could figure out a way to make it happen that's not wholly dependent on Fandom Santa Claus *or* the local con.

Now, the obvious solution of pairing the efforts of the outside beneficiary and the local con contributed to the outcome in this case, but I think maybe that happened because the two sides didn't share the assumptions they were working under?

So I guess just to wrap up this thread before it gets any more rambly or tangential, I'll just say - communication. Nothing good happens without it.