Welcome to This Week in Fandom, the OTW’s roundup of things which are happening! Before we start, did you know that AO3 is eligible to be nominated for a Hugo Award? It’s true! Find more information here on Dreamwidth. If you’re registered, please consider nominating AO3 for Best Related Work!
So Critical Role broke the internet a bit this week. On March 4th, they opened a Kickstarter campaign to raise US$750,000 for an animated special called The Legend of Vox Machina As of the time of writing, the campaign has raised over US$7 million! According to Variety, the Kickstarter was created after major streaming distributors declined the project.
Fans are basically thrilled by this success. Most people are stunned and impressed by the speed of the fundraising. Others have some amusing ideas about stretch goals, while some people are just plain being silly.
Captain Marvel debuted this weekend to great success. According to Forbes, the film did very well, grossing roughly $US456 million worldwide in its opening weekend. It also broke some records, such as biggest opening weekend for a female-directed feature (and biggest opening weekend for a movie starring a cat).
But not everyone is happy about the movie. According to Vox, the movie has been a target of a continuing campaign: “It’s not difficult to see the common thread that superhero and other franchise movies with woman and people of color as protagonists are regularly met by toxic trolling online.”
In a move widely believed to be related to these trolling efforts, review site Rotten Tomatoes recently changed its policy on users leaving reviews before a movie has been released. Vox credits this with helping Captain Marvel win the fight against trolls: “Rotten Tomatoes tweaking its user review policy ahead of Captain Marvel’s release was a big step in addressing users who abuse the system, because it handicapped one of the trolls’ go-to behaviors.”
Rotten Tomatoes currently lists Captain Marvel as Certified Fresh, with an 80% approval rating from critics and a 60% approval rating from users.
In other news, there’s an exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that’s full of fanworks. The exhibit, titled The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated, showcases material inspired by the 11th century book The Tale of Genji. According to an article by Metro, “The exhibit brings together more than 120 relics from 32 collections in Japan and the U.S. inspired by the book — essentially an archive of one of the first fandoms to ever exist, whose fans continue to create fanworks of the book over 1,000 years later.”
The exhibit includes everything from fan art to fanfiction to trading cards and more, and is open until June 16, 2019.
Lastly, Sera Gamble, the former showrunner of Supernatural, has some advice about fanfiction. Well, sort of. Gamble is accepting of fanfiction, and according to an article by FanSided, when asked how to develop one’s own writing style, she suggested that people adapt their fanfiction into original fiction. What do you think? Have you ever done that? How did it work? Let us know in the comments!
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