At the 2019 WorldCon Hugo Awards, many amazing artists won, but what was the biggest feat of the night was perhaps the online database, "Archive of Our Own," winning a Hugo Award for Best Related Fanwork.

"The Hugo Awards, first presented in 1953 and presented annually since 1955, are science fiction's most prestigious award. The Hugo Awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention ("Worldcon"), which is also responsible for administering them," (The Hugo Awards).

If you don't know, "Archive of Our Own," (Ao3) is a website that harbors one of the largest catalogs of fanworks, written by millions of volunteer writers. They are not authors paid for their services such as someone who is published, but regular fans who have put forth the dedication to share their own creative ideas about their favorite movies, shows, books, etc.

Now, with the Hugo Award, that makes every person who has ever published their work on Ao3 a Hugo Award-winner as well, technically.

No, WorldCon did not send out millions of tiny trophies to each writer, but just to finally get some recognition for the hard work that they put into their writing is satisfying enough.

FanFiction was always sort of a thing, but the community of fan writers really began to grow in the late 90s, early 2000s. Unfortunately, fanfic writers have faced some challenges over the years, even getting to be as severe as legal action. Some authors would actually hire a legal team to search the Internet for fanfiction of their work and sue fan writers for plagiarism and copyright infringement. Thus, creating paranoia amongst writers and showering their works in disclaimers such as, "I do not own any of these characters, I just write about them." Some writers-- myself included-- still use these disclaimers in case anything like that ever happens again, even though it hasn't for quite some time now.

There is also a stigma surrounding fanfiction and fanfiction writers. Mostly, it is that the writers are horny, lonely, teenage fangirls who obsess and romanticize relationships that don't exist. Okay, well, maybe not the second part is entirely false, but not all fanfiction is just smut. Although, it's usually the smutty ones that get taken down, edited, and then made into best-selling novels and then movies. (see: "50 Shades of Gray." That's right, it was originally Twilight fanfiction)

Some fanfiction is just one chapter long and 1k words, and I've seen some as big as 100 chapters long and 100k+ words. The writing is still world-building, it's still character-development, it's still a plot and conflict and climax and resolution. They are sometimes the length of books and it's 2019 and people still underestimate the amount of passion and talent that goes into these?

With Ao3 and its writers winning a Hugo Award, this is hopefully a step in the right direction in terms of giving more acknowledgment and appreciation towards fan writers. So to all of the Ao3 authors, out there, congratulations on your Hugo Awards!

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