The Rec Center #108
Welcome to the end of the week! We’ve got new Harry/Draco recs (from H/D Erised 2017!) from guest-reccers 1degosuperego & Helenahjay, Devilman Crybaby fanart, some very relatable fanfic satire, and more. Femslash February begins next month, tell your friends!!! — Gav
new stuff
“The Joys of Watching Friends Play Games” by merrit k at US Gamer
“So why do we watch people play games? To share in their triumphs, to explore genres we don’t care to play ourselves, to enjoy the thrill of high-level play.”
“This Woman Is Protesting The Wage Gap By Spending 23% Of Her Workday Writing Erotic Fan Fiction” by Sarah Aswell at Reductress
“Sure, she might be physically sitting behind her desk at a small medical tech company in Denver, Colorado, but for a little under one-fourth of her day, her mind is on her newest story, in which Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc make love on top of an enormous, unrolled chocolate Yule log.”
older stuff
“The Revolutionary Power Of Fanfiction For Queer Youth” by Jane Hu at The Establishment
On fanfic communities as spaces for young queer fans to connect and explore.
tumblr & beyond
Devilman Crybaby print by NAKI
Zinedom is a new (& awesome-looking) crowdsourced project to convert analog zines to digital text, and they’re looking for volunteers!
“The tags in The Exorcist fandom on AO3 are a fucking trip.”
“The best reddit thread I’ve ever seen was when someone asked if the gang from Always Sunny in Philadelphia could kill Darth Maul.”
Twitter user Rob Wesley workshops the idea of a Frasier franchise where Frasier regenerates into different actors like Doctor Who.
fanfiction
Last year, 1degosuperego brought us her favorite fics from H/D Erised 2016. This year she’s joined by Helenahjay to rec their favorite fics from this past year’s fest. You can scream about drarry, stucky, and gryles with 1degosuperego and Helenahjay on their Tumblrs.
H/D Erised is a long-running Harry/Draco fic and art exchange. The fics are posted anonymously each day over the Christmas and New Year period, and so it feels like a real holiday gift to wake up every morning to fabulous new stories about one of our favourite pairings. Or at least it did to us, if our chat logs are anything to go by:
helenah: 150k FORCED BONDING FAKE MARRIAGE ERISED?? Merry christmas TO ME
1degosuperego: HELENAH IT’S 4:20 AM HERE BECAUSE I COULDN’T NOT FINISH IT
IT WAS SO GOOD
brb going to sleep FINALLY
helenah: 1DEGOSUPEREGO. HAPPY NEW YEAR
ALSO 164k 8TH YEAR ROOM SHARING ERISED OMG IT BETTER BE GOOD
1degosuperego: AHHHHHH ok now I wanna leave the party I’m at to start thisssss
helenah: THERE IS SEX POLLEN it’s like all the tropes you want in one giant pile
We enthused, we nit-picked, we guessed which authors wrote which stories, and we had the best time. Here are a few of our favourites from 2017. — N & H
“Things Worth Knowing” by femmequixotic and noeon. 164K words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: McGonagall insists that everyone goes back for an eighth year at Hogwarts if they want their NEWTs. Brilliantly tagged “frenemies with benefits.”
Rec: An epic-length eighth-year fic with all highlights: Draco and Harry sharing a room, new teachers to get to know, the uncertain future of Slytherin House, and Harry grappling with his sexuality.
Content warnings: some homophobia/internalized homophobia, discussion of trauma
“dirtynumbangelboy” by magpie_fngrl. 39k words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: Harry’s ex has a hot new boyfriend, and Harry doesn’t want to be seen to be pining. Draco’s exhausted by his parents’ matchmaking attempts and needs a break. Fake dating seems like the perfect solution, if only Draco wasn’t already in love.
Rec: The perfect Fake Dating AU, with lots of heartbreaking pining from Draco, oblivious Harry, a charity quidditch match, and a gorgeous backstory about Draco’s new life.
Content warnings: recreational drug use
“Like Clockwork” by agentmoppet. 39K words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: With Ron trapped in a cursed sleep at St Mungo’s, Harry has to trust Draco with both Ron’s life and his own as they try to solve the mystery of a pair of exploding packages.
Rec: This story is remarkable for the complex and original way it depicts cursebreaking, as Cursebreaker!Draco needs Unspeakable!Harry to anchor him in a difficult series of spells to save Ron’s life. As they race against time they discover neither is whom the other expects.
Content warnings: N/A
“Blood and Fire” by lq_traintracks. 44K words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: Harry is called back to England after 12 years of working at Charlie’s dragon reserve in Romania to help plan Ginny and Pansy’s wedding as Ginny’s best man. Little does he know that this involves plenty of time with Pansy’s best man and his former lover, Draco.
Rec: During Harry’s long absence from England, Draco’s worked hard to redeem himself in the eyes of society and their (now) mutual friends. Being forced to work with his ex to plan Ginny’s wedding is Harry’s worst nightmare, but he begins to realise Draco’s definitely not the man Harry left behind over a decade ago.
Content warnings: N/A
“The Claiming of Grimmauld Place” by bixgirl1. 74K words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: Grimmauld Place isn’t just depressing, it’s downright dangerous. Harry advertises for a roommate with experience living in generational wizarding homes, and wouldn’t you know it, the best candidate turns out to be Draco.
Rec: We’ve been suckers for sentient wizarding houses since astolat’s remarkable “House Proud.” This take on Draco helping Harry reclaim his unruly house is excellent, filled with delicious angst and fabulous secondary characters (including, no lie, a gnome and a tortoise).
Content warnings: N/A
“Adventures in Solitude (Are You There, Sirius? It’s Me, Draco)” by oceaxe. 25K words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: A 41-year-old Draco unwraps his family’s portrait of Sirius Black, kept in storage for decades, and reckons with what he owes not just him, but Harry and the memory of Remus.
Rec: The actual mechanics of wizarding portraits are always up for debate, but this lovely story explores the idea that Draco grew up with a portrait of a young Sirius Black, who became his friend and confidant when he was at Hogwarts. As an adult, pressured by Scorpius, Draco needs to wrestle with the difficult decision to tell Sirius about his fate, and Harry about the portrait.
Content warnings: internalized homophobia
“For the Greater Good” by jadepresley, 62K words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: Draco and Harry find themselves the subject of a mysterious bonding spell, and with the help of healers and friends, try to disentangle themselves.
Rec: It’s hard to rec this one without giving too much away, so you should just read it! Features Blaise Zabini as Harry’s auror partner, a complex backstory told through flashbacks, and, of course, forced proximity!
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
February is almost here, which means it’s time for….FEMSLASH FEBRUARY. Last year around this time we put out a call for femslash recs and you all delivered (week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4). So we want to do it again this year! If you love a particular f/f pairing and want to do a whole list, please email us! And if you have a one-off rec, please submit it with “Femslash February” in the tags, to help make things easier for me. And just a reminder: please only tag stuff this way if an f/f pairing is centered in the story—obviously recs with f/f side-pairings are always welcome, but we’ll save those for March. :-) — Elizabeth
Have a favorite one-off rec? Please send it our way! We’ll use it in a future list. Other fanworks—comics, vids, etc—are strongly encouraged as well. And if you have any interest in doing an entire rec list or explainer, please get in touch! elizabethandgav at gmail dot com.
If you liked this, please share it with your friends! https://thereccenter.substack.com/. And find us on social media: Gav (twitter/tumblr) & Elizabeth (twitter/tumblr)