As we said in our closing message at the end of this year’s auction, we've become something bigger and better than we ever imagined we could be when our journey began in 2018. As we mark half a decade of Marvel Trumps Hate, we want to share a few milestones with you starting with this year's auction results, so if you're used to our auction results posts…well, this one will look a little different. 😉
This year, 152 "Marvel"-ous creators came forward to offer 264 auctions.
And this year, we raised…
Back in 2018, our first auction total of $19,262.52 blew our minds—and this is over $16,700 more than that! 😮💖🎉
This was a quieter year than most (surely we're not the only ones suffering burnout because this has been A Year), so we're extremely grateful and proud of what we accomplished together. We broke records, some of which we were aiming for and some which we weren't. Of the ones we didn't expect, the record for the highest amount donated to a charity, which we smashed in 2021 ($6,349.98 to Planned Parenthood), was shattered with a whopping $8,039.99 going to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). We also had the biggest amount raised by a single auction this year: an unbelievable $2,101.67. All hail the power of pods!
And the biggest record of all that we set in 2023…
With the help of 923 unique creators offering 2,217 auctions over the past five years, we raised a grand total of…
WE RAISED OVER $200,000, EVERYONE! No, we can't believe our eyes either. We're floored to say the least although maybe we shouldn't have been surprised. Every year, you manage to surprise us and set records, and this year was no different. You came out of the gate running and somehow you blazed right past our expectations, continued to make us adjust our stretch goals as bids and donations came in, and hit a number we weren't sure we'd reach even as we began to hope for it.
It’s been an incredible journey, with the mod chat pinging at all hours with excited gifs, effusive heart emojis, and inarticulate keyboard smashes as we expressed our love for the wonderful people in our fandom. It’s been very hard not blurting out the milestones as we reached them when we desperately wanted to share these amazing results with you all.
Creators, we couldn't have started this auction without you. We loved seeing so many veteran creators sign up again and were pleasantly surprised by how many new faces showed up to the party.
Bidders, as crazy as it sounds, most donations were small ones including a lot of those crazily high winning bids—so many of them were the result of people pooling their five dollars together! This has been consistently the case since MTH began. It just goes to show how much of an impact you can have when you’re part of something bigger than yourself. Each donation has a ripple effect, and enough ripples can cause a wave. You matter, and you can make a difference.
We also owe our success to our amazing signal boosters. There can’t be an auction without any participants, so to every fandom community Tumblr that agreed to reblog our posts, every Discord server mod who let us post announcements, and every person who shared our posts and encouraged their fandom friends to sign up and/or bid, thank you so much! Together, we reached hundreds of fantastic creators and bidders from all corners of the Marvel fandom, many of whom we didn't know and some who were hearing about us for the first time.
We’re so touched by the massive number of people who donated above and beyond their pledged amount, creators who took on multiple auctions and offered multiple winner slots, and bidders who accepted their second-place wins with such eagerness! We also had people make donations in the spirit of MTH even though they didn’t win an auction, which was beyond generous.
In addition to the astounding amount of money we were able to raise for charity, MTH was successful in other ways. We strove to be as inclusive as possible, determined to make this event a fandom-wide effort. Considering that the auctions covered over 381 unique platonic and romantic relationships and character-centric options (if we include "all ships/gen"-inclusive relationships, this number is even higher) across 36 universes within the Marvel multiverse, we can safely say that we accomplished our goal.
This spirit of inclusion also applies to our auctions and charities. Every one of 264 auctions was bid on, and every one of our 30 supported charities received donations. We’re in awe of your commitment to supporting all our creators and charities and thrilled that you spread all the love around, bidders!
Here’s our breakdown of the donations (to enlarge the image, click here and hover to see the donation amount per charity).
We’ve also listed the amount raised per charity on our 2023 auction results page.
From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you for helping us turn our sixth Marvel Trumps Hate auction and the celebration of half a decade of MTH into such a fantastic experience. We cherish every single message of love and support that we received and continue to receive on our Discord server and through DMs, Tumblr messages, emails, tweets, etc. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH! We wouldn't be half as good at this—we couldn't have done any of this—if we weren't doing it with you. And that's the truth. ❤️
To remember or learn why we created this auction in the first place, please check out our 2018 "thank you" post to all of our creators, bidders, signal boosters, and supporters.
If you'd like to stay updated on all of the 2023 Marvel Trumps Hate fills, follow us and/or check out the "mth 2023" tag on our Tumblr. You’ll also be able to find works posted on AO3 in our Marvel Trumps Hate 2023 collection and links to fills in our Discord server, which you can join to brainstorm prompts, chat about fills, and find out about other fandom events.
Thank you once again to everyone who volunteered their services, time, money, and platforms to spread the word. These are tough times we live in, and it's easy to believe that there's only so much you can do as an individual. But as Tony and Natasha realized throughout their years as Avengers, we become something more than ourselves when we're part of a team.
We may come from different walks of life and hail from different parts of the world. We may be part of different fandoms within the Marvel multiverse. Many of us don't cross paths except this one time of the year. But despite our differences, we share a common goal and because of our differences, we're capable of making the impossible possible. And the only way to do that is, as Steve and Tony learned over their years of knowing each other, together.
And with that, MTH 2023 has officially come to a close. We're so beyond grateful to you all and can’t wait to see all of your fanworks over the coming year! But first, we’re going to follow baby Groot and take a moment to relax.
Lots of love and gratitude,
Your 2023 MTH mods
