The Rec Center #17
Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. I’m speaking to you from a life post-Captain America: Civil War. NO SPOILERS, but I very much look forward to the fanfic for this movie!!! In the meantime, we have Agent Carter recs by guest reccer Veronica, some thoughts on Star Wars shipping conflicts from Elizabeth, and your weekly dose of interesting fandom links & articles. — Gav
new stuff
“The most popular authors you’ve never heard of are finally getting their own book” by Caitlin Dewey in the Washington Post
“Imagine that your One Direction stories become popular. Popular beyond your wildest dreams.” An interesting exploration of “imagines,” a popular fic genre on Wattpad and elsewhere, and the collected book of them the platform published this past week.
“When Dungeons & Dragons Set Off a ‘Moral Panic’” by Clyde Haberman in The New York Times
Watch the video! Marvel at the hair of the late 70s and the direct parallels between the way the media talks about games and the way they’re played, then and now.
“Hugo Award noms include gay dinosaur porn due to 'Rabid Puppy' voter campaign” by Gav at The Daily Dot
For the past couple of years, the Hugo Awards (basically the most prestigious sci-fi/fantasy awards, especially for writers) have been hijacked by a gamergate-esque voting campaign. And guess what? This year it happened again! This corner of SF/F fandom is A Mess at the moment, and I feel truly bad for everyone involved. Hopefully this article provides a decent explanation for WTF is going on (along with links to what happened last year), so you don’t need to comb through hundreds of tweets to figure out why so many SF/F fans and authors are having a collective meltdown.
old(er) stuff
“A Game as Literary Tutorial: Dungeons & Dragons Has Influenced a Generation of Writers” by Ethan Gilsdorf in The New York Times
To be read in conjunction with the Times’s recent piece about D&D (both with bonus Junot Díaz!). (And then imagine a world where famous female writers talk about how fanfic did the same thing for them. :-))
tumblr and beyond
There’s already so much great fanart for the new Doctor Who companion, Bill! Really liked this one, by theartofdoctorwho.
Dudley Dursley v ~the SJWs~
LUV this post-Lemonade fic about Beyoncé, Jay Z and co. (It got a lot of ~mainstream media~ attention this week, which I’m kinda mixed about because like... fic by some dude gets widespread acclaim, while normal RPF fangirls just get mocked and ignored. BUT! Still a good fic.)
“Fangirl,” a short film by Liza Mandelup
fanfiction
Veronica Horwell writes (fact: no gift for fic) and broadcasts for her living in London; she has been over-invested in Agent Carter since Peggy walked onscreen in The First Avenger and slugged a loutish soldier for disrespect.
The second ABC series of MCU’s Agent Carter ended in March with no hope of a third—undeserved low ratings. The writing team granted it a Hollywood ending—after saving Los Angeles (and New York in series one), war-veteran espionage agent Peggy Carter snogged disabled ditto Daniel Sousa with determined affection. And then 18 episodes of female-lead screwball comedy/action with period-accurate fisticuffs, a super-de-luxe supporting cast and a complete MGM dream-dance number were gone, pfft, just like that. So the show now lives in the brains and on the keyboards of a smallish roster of fic-writers. Three of these recs invent the future fans won’t see; one imagines a backstory viewers were never told; and there is of course a Jane Austen AU. I apologise that so many are WIPs, but fans are deprived, voracious, wanted, want, so much more. Especially from Peggy’s POV—so far, a lack of that in fic. — Veronica
“The Dazzling Lights Beckon” by LadyWillow. 6K words, rated (almost) Gen.
The most direct pick-up from that—too awkward for Hollywood, they fell over—finale kiss, in which a wary, damaged Peggy and Daniel try to deal with the carousel’s-worth of emotional baggage loaded on them by the show’s writers room. and nearly back away from each other. POV of both, cleverly looped.
“Renegades” by Inkdust. 46K words, rated Mature.
Plottier pick-up from the same moment, ample cast, LA and NYC locations, barges into all the ramifications of the original storyline, with the colleagues/lovers each other's only safe place in a 1947 America of conspiracies and witch-hunts. Even this us-against-the-world wonderful team fractures under pressure. Darker, tenser, by the chapter.
“All In” by Sholio. 2.4K words, rated Gen.
For those missing that troupe of more-than-support players: Ana, bohemian wife to Jarvis, paragon of butlers, pays a hospital visit (with a deck of cards in her handbag) to Agent Jack Thompson, recovering after being shot in the series-end tag scene. Goes in no likely direction whatsoever; rueful, funny.
“A Lady of Quality” by Eienvine. 149K words, rated Gen.
Regency AU (but quite a delicate mash-up). First season plot-line parallels, a compendium of romance tropes, with bit parts for Austen characters and deep swoops into unexpected 1817 detail—everything from the pantaloons dilemma to Russian politics under Tsar Alexander I-backed by copious footnotes. Unusual, sympathetic POV, with naval captain Sousa in emotional attendance on the unknowable Miss Carter; like Persuasion from Wentworth’s POV.
“Quo Vadis?” by Paeonia. 303K words (WIP), rated Teen.
Sousa’s backstory—a wounded officer’s incremental progress from Ardennes battlefield amputation through army hospital recovery, his huge losses, tiny triumphs, re-engagement with an altered future. Maintains a Patrick O’Brian-novel standard both of serious historical research and of feeling for the strong grid and close mesh of military institutional life. Paeonia’s creation of Sousa’s touching family background and war service have such conviction that QV has become more canon than canon (what little there is of it) to fic writers...
BONUS (RANDOM) RECS BY GAV
“Long Drive Home (Not Much of a Girlfriend)” by Damkianna. 34K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Avatar (yes, that Avatar). Pairing: Trudy Chacon/Grace Augustine
I rewatched Avatar for next Monday’s episode of my podcast, and while the film itself was FASCINATINGLY DIRE, I found myself wondering if there was any fic about Michelle Rodriguez and Sigourney Weaver’s characters. And guess what! There is! And it’s good, and long! Fandom #delivered once again.
“The Buried Treasure Racket” by Dorinda. 27K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The Sting. Pairing: Henry Gondorff/Johnny Hooker
I also recently saw the classic con artist/heist movie The Sting. which I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND, especially if you’re a fan of shows like Leverage and White Collar. It’s a very entertaining movie all round, and Robert Redford and Paul Newman are endlessly charming. Their characters are also such a clear OTP that I knew there would be some great Yuletide fic out there. This story by Dorinda has excellent characterization and follows smoothly from the events of the film, in exactly the kind of tone you’d hope to see.
FINAL THOUGHT
OK, so it started on Saturday with this tweet:
betty days, who is AWESOME, highly recommending her as a ~follow~, proceeded to make some observations and predictions about AO3-oriented fanfic fandom and of course I had to barge in and ‘well actually’ her—because I wanted DATA. So I roped in destinationtoast, surely you follow her, don’t you also love DATA??, and while a whole bunch of us spent all afternoon talking about fandom and feelings, Toast crunched some numbers.
The result? These stats about AO3 activity in the Star Wars fandom since TFA was released. The post has picked up thousands of notes over the past few days so it’s likely you’ve already seen it, studied it, puzzled over it, etc. But if you haven’t, the most interesting findings, to me, were the really dramatic drop in Finn/Poe (stormpilot, yeah, I’m a slash dinosaur, please let me use the actual slash) in mid-January and the fact that Hux/Kylo Ren (or kylux, which sounds like a fun fabric from the disco era) has now overtaken the former in popularity.
OK so like, there is A LOT going on here. I obviously have no definitive answers and this isn’t my fandom so I have no personal experiences, but I have been listening and observing this past week. I saw incredulity, celebration, and anger. Accusations of racism (“the space Nazis are more popular than the POC couple”) and misogyny (“why are you ignoring the female protagonist”). I heard stories of people who said they’d been policed out of pairings, which led me to the “trash ship v cinnamon roll ship” dichotomy, which after a week of arguing I now very much believe is a thing tha people subscribe to even if it BAFFLES me on a personal level because I want fanfiction where everyone is morally ambiguous and tortured about it.
I’m not here to make any proclamations about this stuff, though. I’m starting by interrogating myself and my preferences and my long loyalty to a couple of white guy ships (my loyalty absolves me of nothing but that’s my “I’m not like other girls” way of trying to get out of ~~Migratory Slash Fandom~~ accusations lol). But it’s all so interesting to think about! And I am under orders to direct anyone who wants to discuss this further to talk to ME, not Gav, because she has ascended to a post-CA:CW higher plane. :-D — Elizabeth
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