The Rec Center #112
Welcome to the final week of Femslash February! Celebrated additionally by these two awesome new songs and videos by Janelle Monae. We have multifandom f/f fic recs, some more Black Panther coverage, Sailor Moon fanart, and more. — Gav
new stuff: black panther!
“The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger” by Adam Serwer at The Atlantic
A deep look at Erik Killmonger and the anti-colonial politics of Black Panther.
“Why not Queen Shuri?” by Salamishah Tillet in The Hollywood Reporter
A celebration of Black Panther’s many female characters.
“‘Black Panther’ and the Invention of ‘Africa’” by Jelani Cobb in The New Yorker
“In Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, the hero and his antagonist are essentially duelling responses to five centuries of African exploitation at the hands of the West.”
“Black Panther’s Breakout Star Winston Duke is Here to Call You Out,” an interview with Joshua Rivera at GQ
Luv this quote from M’Baku actor Winston Duke:
“The idea that your hero is using kinetic energy that’s meant to harm him, and he redirects it and uses it as his power—if that’s not an allegory for oppressed people, I don’t know what is. [laughs] Internalizing negative energy and using it for your empowerment.”
older stuff
“Fan is A Tool-Using Animal” by Maciej Cegłowski
This talk by the founder of Pinboard is a classic. “As I’ve gotten to know fandom, I’ve grown convinced that they have a lot to teach us all. Fans are an example of real people using machines to talk to one another, rather than a manufactured and engineered attempt to graft social life onto a single website.”
tumblr & beyond
Sailor Moon fanart by Crestomancer.
Oscar Isaac continues to be a Finn/Poe shipper IRL.
“time to address the elephant in the rink”
A sweet story about two WWII veterans discovering Star Wars tabletop gaming.
fanfiction
This week’s guest reccer is a friend of the newsletter who spends a lot of her time in academia, and a nontrivial amount in corners of the Marvel comicsverse.
“dying to see how this one ends” by reachthetree. 4K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: popstar RPF; Ship: Taylor Swift/Halsey
Rec: What if Tay spirited you away to her secret island? What if you were Halsey? Could you keep a secret? Why is there not more femslash RPF? Why can’t we write more agency for lady popstars? Some neat thoughts about the difference between being famous (Halsey) and being so famous you can’t have anything close to a regular life. You need to know that Ashley Fragipane is Halsey’s real name, and it helps if you like her music or know her life story, but I’m pretty sure those things aren’t required.
Content warnings: anxious courtship; faint potential for blackmail
“Wilder Than Her” by GrayJay. 724 words, Not Rated.
Fandom: X-Men (comicsverse); Ship: Ororo Munroe/Yukio
Rec: Antiheroine turns out to be very right for one of this universe’s most heroic heroines; a quick hit with an unusually strong noirish/tough-lady voice and a verrrrry deep knowledge of canon, plus the flight-as-sex metaphor taken for all its worth. This fandom has a lot of f/f ships that are only just barely not canon (do not confuse it with the male-dominated X-movieverse, where I truly can’t even). You need to know that our narrator is Yukio supposed to be part of a love triangle with Logan and Mariko (who don’t appear), and that we’re in Japan; you also need to know that Ororo Munroe is Storm, and can fly.
Content warnings: unsafe flight; clearly consensual, described very fast and mostly with metaphors but pretty rough sex; surprise haircut; some people think this part of canon is pretty bad cultural appropriation, but the fic definitely doesn’t make it worse, and I think avoids all the most problematic parts.
“Heat” by mac012. 6.7K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: The 100; Ship: Clarke/Lexa (Clexa)
Rec: ABO with a lot of detail about what goes where and who does what to whom—and beautifully done. I think I understand better now why people write ABO. For one thing, it lets you disconnect body parts from hormones from pronouns and labels, while using a vocabulary that’s not the same as the modern vocabulary for actually existing trans and intersex people. For another, because you’re writing about people who aren’t quite human as we are human, it’s probably easier to do a lot of really serious psychological work that I associate mostly with progressive sex educators in a nonfiction space.
The 100 is about teens who have dangerous adventures and live in a camp on a devastated future Earth; before the show began, they were cared for by grownups in a big satellite called the Ark. I wanted to stretch *myself* here by finding and recommending something really well done in a fandom where I don’t know canon well, and to my surprise: this. (Thanks to the friend who found it!)
Content warnings: ABO (alpha-beta-omegaverse) (other mammal mating cycles applied to human bodies, in a way that changes not only gender and sexuality but also the meaning of consent); very explicit!
A double rec:
“We look twenty five but we’re sweet sixteen” by MarauderCracker. 1.3K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Marvel comicsverse, Young Avengers; Ship: Kate Bishop/America Chavez (Amerikate)
Rec: Stakeout leads to kisses leads to successful completion of stakeout: skillful narration and just lots of fun, from the pov of a teen detective who normally (like her older counterpart) gets the short end of the superhero stick. A model.
Content warnings: not really, although title suggests that characters are underage (they could be, but could also be late teens/traditional-college-student age). Title comes from this song, relevant to Kate’s life in ways you don’t really need to know to enjoy the fic.
and
“Freeing” by SalmonPink. 839 words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Marvel comicsverse, Young Avengers; Ship: Kate Bishop/America Chavez (Amerikate)
Rec: Different take on the same ship: this time the clothes are already off. A literary model for an almost-all-sex scene. Part of a cluster of Amerikate fic that appeared a few years, when Kate and America were in the same comic (and living in the same dimension, which helps). Some of it’s linked, and discussed, at this now-dormant tumblr, which concludes by asking for more.
Content warning: not really, though see above.
Another double:
“Pieces” by cosmic_llin. 884 words.
“Senza Misura" by cosmic_illin. 1.5K words.
Both rated Mature.
Fandom: Seraphina; Ships: Seraphina Dombegh/Princess Glisselda, Seraphina Dombegh/Princess Glisselda/Lucian Kiggs
Rec: Canon is the first in a series of delightful and profound high fantasy novels. Takes place after the first novel but before the second. Seraphina was music tutor for the princess; Seraphina has scales, because she’s half dragon, which their mostly human society considers dangerous and gross. Lucian is hot, Seraphina is canonically into him, but he’s supposed to marry the Princess.
Content warnings (also a reason to read it): beautiful, gentle polyamory negotiations; also, the comment thread for “Senza Misura” contains very serious spoilers for the second novel. If you read high fantasy at all, I recommend reading the first novel, then the fic, then the second novel, then the comments. If you don’t, I thiiiiinnnnk the fics still work as standalones.
FINAL THOUGHT
Thank you again to everyone who contributed to Femslash February this year. As I said in last week’s newsletter, we got far more f/f recs these past few weeks than we could fit in 4 lists, so we’ll have plenty of femslash for all our grab bag lists in the coming months! I was especially excited to have guest reccers doing full lists, something we’ve had less of in the past few months. If anyone is interested in doing a full list or explainer—around a ship, a fandom, a theme, or...some other way to arrange it that hasn’t occurred to us yet—please get in touch: hit reply or email elizabethandgav at gmail dot com. We’d love to feature more singly- or co-authored lists! — 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.
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