Welcome to This Week in Fandom, the OTW’s roundup of things which are happening! Before we start, a quick PSA: Recently, a lot of fans have been concerned about US legislation known as SESTA/FOSTA and the effect it might have on fanworks. The OTW Legal committee is currently working on a news post to explain the legislation and what it means for fans and for the Archive of Our Own. This post should be available later this week on AO3 News and the OTW’s main website.
Some sad news this week about the passing of Isao Takahata, co-founder of Studio Ghibli. Comicbook has published an article stating that Takahata died at the age of 82: “Plagued with a heart condition, Takahata’s health began to wane last summer, and he passed away with his loved ones by his side not long ago.” The article also includes several tributes to Takahata from Twitter users.
Tumblr users have also been paying their respects to Takahata with posts about their favourite movies and art dedicated to him:
Urban fantasy author Seanan McGuire wrote an article for Tor.com titled The Bodies of the Girls Who Made Me: Fanfic and the Modern World. The article is a tidied-up and expanded version of her recent popular Twitter thread about the importance and legitimacy of fanfiction. It covers issues of representation, shame, and skill. The whole thing is quite engaging, but here are a couple of the highlights:
This means that you have, again, generations of female authors who have gone through the most rigorous writing school in existence, going pro and starting to publish. Yes: the most rigorous. FIGHT ME. Fanfic taught me pacing. Taught me dialog. Taught me scene, and structure, and what to do when a deadline attacks. Fanfic taught me to take critique, to be edited, to collaborate, to write to spec. FANFIC MADE ME. […]
I am supposed to be ashamed of my past. I am supposed to repudiate the school where I learned to hold an audience; I am supposed to bury the bodies of all the girls who made me. I refuse.
High five, Seanan.
Apparently Elton John has joined Tumblr? Or his publicity team has, anyway. In response to this, Noisey, a music-focused subdomain of Vice, has published an article warning Sir Elton about what to expect from the land of blue infinite scrolling. Phil Witmer, the author of the article, apparently frequented Tumblr from 2013-2015, and thus feels the need to warn about things such as SuperWhoLock, Homestuck, and vore. The article winds up reading like a bizarre time capsule from the seventh grade where that one kid in your class insisted on including something they’d printed from 4chan. You can check out the article here, if you like (but remember, warning for vore).
On a different topic, there have been many media properties that have been given revivals or reboots in recent years. WRAL, a news site from Raleigh, NC, USA, published an article about the trend, attempting to explain it using an episode of Futurama in which a god-like creature called Melllvar forces the cast of the original Star Trek series to participate in a never-ending fan convention.
This boom can’t just be about nostalgia generally. Netflix, Hulu and the like all provide everyone’s favorite bygone TV shows. If folks simply wanted something familiar, this abundance of old episodes would be more than enough. […]
Basically, we’re all Melllvar these days. A TV show’s continuation, even if it’s ill-advised and poorly executed, is still preferable to the alternative: a thing we loved existing only in the past, unchanged by time and circumstance, as life inevitably changes and ages the rest of us.
What do you think of the trend of revivals and reboots? Let us know in the comments!
And to round things out, here, have a meme:
if you then you
don't love don't deserve
me at my me at my pic.twitter.com/0FI1ND6gUi— Parks and Recreation (@parksandrec) April 3, 2018