You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary...
It is August now. The Hugo voting is closed; the ballots have been cast, and what remains is fussing and fretting, putting on our finest things, and walking to the presentation room like Tributes to the Hunger Games (although we don't have to kill each other to win, which is probably* a good thing). Nothing we can do now changes anything.
I mostly haven't talked about my feelings about the Hugos, because it felt a little too much like campaigning to me, like even saying "I liked this" or "I didn't like this" would be casting too much weight behind an opinion. I'm not saying that my feelings are accurate; I've seen a lot of people dissect the ballot, and I don't think any less of them, and they didn't sway my votes. But it's hard to ignore the small, scared voice in your head that says "don't do that, it's not allowed," and I've been too tired to fight it.
I have strong feelings about almost every category. I have the Winners I Want, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the Winners Who Win. And no, I am not the Winner I Want in every single category. While I desperately want to win (please, Great Pumpkin, please), I actually want to be beaten in at least one category. I want to see people I love win. I want to see people I respect win. All the nominees are incredibly deserving of victory. Barring a statistically unlikely mass tie, not all the nominees are going to win.
And yes, I'm terrified. I'm the first woman ever to make the ballot four times in a single year, which is amazing, but if I become the first woman ever to lose four times in a single night, I'm not going to be in a very good mental place. More like a "hand me the port, lock me in the bathroom, and walk away before the crying starts" place. And it's not that I'm a bad loser, and it's not that I don't know every single winner will deserve it. It's that broken hearts are painful, and I've met me enough times to know that I'll be devastated, no matter how often I'm told not to be.
It is an honor to be nominated. I do, genuinely, want to win. I don't think there's anything wrong with my expressing that honest sentiment after voting has closed; it can't change anything, and no matter who does win, I know that they'll deserve it.
This is huge. It is amazing. It is an honor to be nominated, it is mind-blowing to look at the ballot and think, "these are some of the giants of science fiction and fantasy, and there I am, me, and my friends, some of my best friends, and we're with them, and to a little girl like I was, looking at this ballot in twenty years, we'll be them." When I was a little girl looking at pictures of Isaac Asimov's Hugo Awards, I asked Santa to bring me one (maybe I should have asked the Birthday Skeleton). Now I have the chance to get one the legitimate, non-supernatural-being-initiated way. And it's huge, and it's terrifying, and I have a very pretty dress, and two very pretty dates for the ceremony, and...
And it's August. It's almost here.
Oh Great Pumpkin who waits for Harvest, hallowed be thy patch...
(*Only probably. The Valente/Hines/Cornell/Bear/McGuire alliance would take out half of the science fiction community before we were forced to turn on each other. My dress has big skirts. You can hide a surprising number of knives under big skirts.)
I mostly haven't talked about my feelings about the Hugos, because it felt a little too much like campaigning to me, like even saying "I liked this" or "I didn't like this" would be casting too much weight behind an opinion. I'm not saying that my feelings are accurate; I've seen a lot of people dissect the ballot, and I don't think any less of them, and they didn't sway my votes. But it's hard to ignore the small, scared voice in your head that says "don't do that, it's not allowed," and I've been too tired to fight it.
I have strong feelings about almost every category. I have the Winners I Want, which may or may not bear any resemblance to the Winners Who Win. And no, I am not the Winner I Want in every single category. While I desperately want to win (please, Great Pumpkin, please), I actually want to be beaten in at least one category. I want to see people I love win. I want to see people I respect win. All the nominees are incredibly deserving of victory. Barring a statistically unlikely mass tie, not all the nominees are going to win.
And yes, I'm terrified. I'm the first woman ever to make the ballot four times in a single year, which is amazing, but if I become the first woman ever to lose four times in a single night, I'm not going to be in a very good mental place. More like a "hand me the port, lock me in the bathroom, and walk away before the crying starts" place. And it's not that I'm a bad loser, and it's not that I don't know every single winner will deserve it. It's that broken hearts are painful, and I've met me enough times to know that I'll be devastated, no matter how often I'm told not to be.
It is an honor to be nominated. I do, genuinely, want to win. I don't think there's anything wrong with my expressing that honest sentiment after voting has closed; it can't change anything, and no matter who does win, I know that they'll deserve it.
This is huge. It is amazing. It is an honor to be nominated, it is mind-blowing to look at the ballot and think, "these are some of the giants of science fiction and fantasy, and there I am, me, and my friends, some of my best friends, and we're with them, and to a little girl like I was, looking at this ballot in twenty years, we'll be them." When I was a little girl looking at pictures of Isaac Asimov's Hugo Awards, I asked Santa to bring me one (maybe I should have asked the Birthday Skeleton). Now I have the chance to get one the legitimate, non-supernatural-being-initiated way. And it's huge, and it's terrifying, and I have a very pretty dress, and two very pretty dates for the ceremony, and...
And it's August. It's almost here.
Oh Great Pumpkin who waits for Harvest, hallowed be thy patch...
(*Only probably. The Valente/Hines/Cornell/Bear/McGuire alliance would take out half of the science fiction community before we were forced to turn on each other. My dress has big skirts. You can hide a surprising number of knives under big skirts.)