Before I get started, a disclaimer: The closest connection I have to Irish fandom is that I've flown over bits of Ireland from time to time. And, when I was a kid, I saw a lot of commercials for Lucky Charms. So I'm probably going to be missing a few subtleties. Also, this is something that happened recently, and recently . . . recently isn't really the decade that I'm best at.

With that said, it seems that there's a guy named Pádraig Ó Méalóid. Who's active in Irish con-going fandom. Or at least, he's active in large parts of Irish con-going fandom. But not Octocon, the Irish National Convention, which is going to be held next weekend. You see Pádraig got a letter the other day, that went a little something like this:

Hello,

I'm writing on behalf of the 2009 Octocon Committee. I am the Co-Chair.

Due to your behaviour at the convention some time ago and your online behaviour earlier this year we have come to the unfortunate decision to ban you from this convention. We believe that your attitude towards us has been far to aggressive both online and in the past at the convention.

This matter is not open for discussion and we will not enter into any online discussion regarding this nor will we discuss this with any other persons. This decision is final.

We are deeply saddened by this as this is the first time a committee has had to ban someone. We will of course will refund your money; if you reply to me with your address I will forward this onto you as soon as possible.

Regards,

Nichola Hannigan

Now, if you're like me, you look at a letter like that, and think "she probably meant 'far too aggressive'." Also, you'd find that third paragraph amusingly repetitive. (I have to warn you, if that was actually your reaction, you're going to want to lay some tarp around your work area, as one of the links that comes later is going to make your head explode. And that's hard to clean up.)

And, if you're someone like Pádraig, you'll go ahead and post the letter to your livejournal. I mean, I'd have done that as well, but with far more mockery.

But Pádraig wasn't the only place in which this news was broken. Cheryl Morgan happened to mention it as well. To quote the seemingly innocuous paragraph:

In less good news my email is currently buzzing with the news that my good friend Pádraig Ó Méalóid has apparently been banned from the convention. I know that Pádraig has been rather critical of the Octocon committee this year, and perhaps rather more aggressive about it than he should have been, but I know my fan history well enough to remember that banning people from conventions rarely ends well. The right way to deal with one’s critics is to prove them wrong by running a great event.

Comment 3 is by one James Brophy, who was, at that point, on the Octocon committee. And he's there to link to the convention's Code of Conduct, and defend the committee's decision. Against all challengers.

The first one he takes on is Pádraig. To his protestations of "I don't know what the hell they're talking about," James replies with "You turned your ignorance of your own actions into a press release." Zing!

Then there's another challenger. Gary Farber replies in his own, inimitable fashion. And at great length. And other people agree with him. Also, Chris O'Shea points out that the code of conduct in question wasn't actually put up on the web last week, which is apparently after whatever happened that made them kick Pádraig out of the convention. It also is in the realm of possibility that the code went up after they sent the letter.

Chris concludes with:

Octocon’s PR has the ears of the world at the moment, it would be a good time to explain what is going on, because in the absence of such, things will only get worse.

James isn't going to take that lying down! In the next comment, he announces his resignation from the con committee, and comprehensively flips his shit. This is where the grammar induced head-explosions are going to start, by the way, as his language skills seem to go at the same time as his temper.

I'm not a hundred percent capable of parsing the claims in the post, but as I understand them, they more or less go as follows: a) Pádraig is a mean guy. b) Also, he says mean things, both to people, and about people. c) One time, he took some prints from a photographer that he shouldn't have.

Rather than do a play-by-play for the rest of the thread, I'll summarize. Gary makes fun of James's difficulties both with the English language and with logic. James explains that one of the lurkers who supports him isn't speaking up, because he's a writer, and fears that Cheryl Morgan will ruin his career. Cheryl gets upset at that, and bans James from her blog, until she's contacted by the guy in question. Which, rather surprisingly, she is, so she un-bans him. Various other members of the committee show up, not so much to explain their actions, as to explain that they wanted this to be kept private, and they are saddened that Pádraig has put his own interests above those of a convention which he's not allowed to attend.

As one might expect, there's some discussion about there elsewhere on the internet; the one bit that jumped out at me as providing useful data was a comment on lj which suggested that one of Pádraig's major sins was founding a convention that's been more successful than Octocon over the last decade or so.

And that's all I've got.

I do believe this is my fandom's first wank! I'm oddly excited.

Hetalia: Axis Powers is a popular webcomic turned anime about personified nations of the world (yes, really). There has certainly been controversy over the series, but it's not too bad a fandom, considering the enormity of the fandom and its propensity for slash (Hetalia is full of canon slash after all).

Not today though!

hetalia, the main community, has over 13k members. Yet despite that (and its average thirty plus posts a day), there are just three mods. This a story of a_liger, midnightbanshee, two of those mods.

The wank starts when a_liger makes a post in her own journal about how the profile needs to be overhauled over at hetalia to cut down on unnecessary posting and such. This appears to be all fine and well, until a_liger insinuates that she feels as if she is the only mod who does work. midnightbanshee agrees that the profile page needs to be revamped, but is otherwise very displeased.

When a_liger asks if she has any other suggestions she eloquently replies with: Yeah. How about not acting like a self-important pompous ass? I'm sure mods who communicate with each other respectfully without making grandeous claims of LOL BEING THE ONLY ONE TO DO THE WORK would work better. Lots of good wank in that thread, as a few people duke it out with midnightbanshee.

midnightbanshee also takes a moment to ominously reply to a_liger: Next time - assuming there is a next time- please run through the proposals with the other mods before posting for opinions from your friends. I have gotten in touch with Youko. She is going to have a word with you soon, I expect.

Flit over to the Hetalia anon-meme, where the anons are quite annoyed (there are loads of threads, starting on page twenty). They like a_liger for the most part, and decide that the rational course of action is to troll the community. So they do, but according to the anon-meme, only one troll post is put through (also, many of them apparently did not even know midnightbanshee was a mod). This is a cap of it: Prussia has a nice butt.

Then midnightbanshee takes it to the community. She decides to lock down hetalia and put it on moderated posting for twenty-four hours due to 'various reasons.' In short, all hell breaks loose. grele calls hypocrisy, and it just goes downhill from there. Lots of tl;dr and skirting the issue from midnightbanshee, and lots of tl;dr from other posters as well in addition to members wondering why a troll is considered an emergency, beautiful voices of reason, a gold star, etc. And as much as this lockdown supposedly had little to do with a_liger's post, she keeps getting brought up.

midnightbanshee spends quite some time talking back and forth to a troll. A few more threads, then here comes herongale, a friend of midnightbanshee. She tells us that a_liger's post looked like a powerplay(!) and wonders if a_liger is scared of her fellow mods. Many people respond.

Wank is possibly still growing. We'll see how it turns out!

edit: Fixed the few errors in the post. Guh. That's what I get for writing this out at six in the morning.