The Rec Center #171
Hi folks! This week we have a very special Magicians fandom explainer (and rec list) from Pamphilia, along with some more coverage of AO3’s Hugo nomination, a piece of John Cho/Cowboy Bebop fanart, and more. — Gav
new stuff
“Why Archive of Our Own’s Surprise Hugo Nomination Is Such a Big Deal” by Casey Fiesler at Slate
On the significance of AO3’s Hugo nom—for the platform, the content, everyone who’s a part of the archive, and for fanfiction itself.
“Why the Cool Kids Are Playing Dungeons & Dragons” by Annalee Newitz at The New York Times
“Of course we’ll meet up again. The point of the game isn’t to win; it’s to go adventuring together.”
“The Tween-Girl Dreams of New Kids on the Block” by Erin Osmon at Jezebel
In praise of NKOTB’s fandom—and in defense of teenage girl music fandoms more broadly.
older stuff
“Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad at Uncanny Magazine
“During the wait for episode eight, Computron discovers a concept called ‘fanfiction.’”
tumblr & beyond
John Cho as Spike from Cowboy Bebop by Nikki Dawes
Tremendous respect for this bold & innovative fanfic concept.
Creating art for a popular ship vs creating art for a rarepair.
lmao wil wheaton u baby.
This thread of iconic clips/moments from the Avengers cast is like, THE thing on Twitter this week.
fanfiction + explainer: the magicians
Pamphilia is a multifannish and generally lurkery type, previously seen yelling with Elizabeth and Gav about Black Sails. Find her on tumblr or AO3.
The elevator pitch for “The Magicians” (currently approaching the end of its fourth season) is usually “Harry Potter meets Narnia”: Quentin Coldwater becomes a student at a magical university and then discovers that the fantasy world he’s read about since he was a child is also real. None of this solves his problems, and in fact creates a number of new ones!
The original trilogy of books by Lev Grossman tend to be marmite-y for people: they’re quite dark and spiky in tone. For me, they’ve been really important as an exploration of depression that’s maybe not situational after all, and of being young and smart but a somewhat unpleasant person (who isn’t!), and so I was initially reluctant to see what the Syfy Channel would do with them.
The good news, however, is that while the TV version adapts a lot of plot points from the books, it’s *very* different tonally and departs significantly as it goes on to become its own thing. For anyone who hated book!Quentin as a protagonist, show!Quentin grows to be considerably more likeable (partly because the actor who plays him, Jason Ralph, is absurdly charming) and the show is very much an ensemble, with a genuinely diverse cast. There are multiple queer characters and relationships, the dialogue is fully of snappy lines and pop-culture references (“Jesus-based-on-the-novel-Christ-by-Sapphire!”) as well as powerful emotions and fourth-wall-breaking absurdity, and did I mention the musical numbers? My own elevator pitch, in fact, is that this is what “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” would look like if it was airing in 2019.
As you can see by consulting the above hook-up-slash-murder chart, the characters are infinitely shippable in various combinations, but the pairing that’s been getting a lot of attention lately is Quentin/Eliot: a rare example of m/m subtext becoming (satisfying but also agonising) text! However, I’d particularly recommend watching for all of the amazingly complex female characters—the recent s4 musical episode, in which one of them got to scream out her frustrations in the desert, was a real standout. Platonic (or nearly-platonic) relationships between men and women are also at the heart of the story, in a way that’s rare and wonderful to see.
Warnings (this show needs them!): there is a rape that occurs at the end of season 1, with ramifications (including a magical pregnancy and abortion) that continue on throughout. I think it’s sensitively handled and find that character’s recovery arc extremely powerful, but it’s something you may want to avoid. Some backstory flashbacks in s1 involve child sexual abuse. There’s also quite a lot of graphic violence and some animal harm, including a very upsetting scene in 2x03 that I would just advise people to skip: it starts after Marina enters her apartment. It may also be reassuring to know that, what with magic and parallel-universe shenanigans, few characters are ever *permanently* dead.
The fic:
“So It May As Well Be Me” by achray. 15K words, rated Explicit.
Ship: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Rec: The one story I’d recommend even to people who’ve never seen the canon and don’t currently plan to. It’s set sometime vaguely in s2, and involves Quentin and Eliot going on a quest with some...very familiar features. I don’t want to give away the twist, but it takes the hilariously meta aspects of the show and makes them even more hilarious and meta in a delightful way.
Content warnings: N/A
(two by the same author, I couldn’t help it—but they’re quite different)
“All Seems So Simple” by achray. 5K words, rated Explicit.
Ships: Quentin Coldwater/OMC, Quentin Coldwater/Alice Quinn, a bit of Quentin/Margo/Eliot, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Rec: There are a lot of pairings listed above, but this is really a series of vignettes that deal with Quentin’s (canon) bisexuality, how he comes to feel about it, and some of the weird/well-meaning/awkward ways that other characters react. All the voices in this are perfect, especially Julia’s.
Content warnings: N/A
“What doctrine call you this?” by greywash. 5K words, rated Mature.
Ships: Gen, Arielle and all the canon pairings from 3x05 “A Life in the Day”
(it’s complicated!)
Rec: Arielle is a single-episode character with just a couple of lines of dialogue, but this story does an incredible job of fleshing her out and making her situation feel almost painfully real—all leading up to a hard but entirely explicable choice that slots perfectly into canon. (This fic is loosely part of a series but stands alone.)
Content warnings: some consent issues inherent in magical marriage law
“Bright in the Day” by hetrez. 4K words, rated Gen.
Ship: Gen, Alice Quinn & Eliot Waugh (background Eliot/Quentin)
Rec: Alice may start out in the “love interest” slot but has always had too many edges to comfortably fit into it: she’s smart and kind and selfish and cruel, and has spent some time as an undead magical vivisectionist (she got better). I love how this story really *gets* Alice, in all her mingled self-assurance and self-hatred, and shows how Eliot might get her too, and what (apart from Quentin) they could have in common after the end of s4. It also has a fantastic sense of place and atmosphere.
Content warnings: N/A
And two vid recs:
“Breathing Underwater” by killabeez. 3:46, rated Teen.
Ship: Gen, Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker
Rec: This is the vid that originally convinced me to watch the show—it covers the events of s1 but not its tragic conclusion (“I can see the end, but it hasn’t happened yet”), and could be seen as a kind of extended trailer: it’s a perfect glimpse of all the characters’ stories and tangled relationships, with lovely musicality.
Content warnings: includes the sexual abuse flashback mentioned above (not graphic, but unambiguous)
“After the Storm” by Trelkez. 4:08, rated Teen.
Ship: Eliot Waugh/Margo Hanson/Quentin Coldwater
Rec: This is a song I’ve always wanted to see vidded, and it works beautifully as a meditative exploration of the different strands of feeling between these characters, and how Fillory changes everything for them. Particularly given where we are this season, the first Eliot & Margo section made me properly teary. The happy ending here is a bit constructed-reality, but it’s a reality I would very much want to live inside.
Content warnings: some blood/injury
FINAL THOUGHT
I am taking over the final thought for the SAME EXACT FINAL THOUGHT as last week: a reminder about the Fansplaining shipping survey, which so far has had 16K respondents and counting!! We’ll be shutting the survey this coming Monday, April 15th, so if you’ve been putting it off, please do it this weekend! You are also encouraged to pass it along to friends and family who aren’t in fandom, or for people in non-shipping-oriented fandom spaces—there are questions for all of them! — Elizabeth
Have a favorite one-off rec? Please send it our way! We’ll use it in a future list. Other fanworks—comics, vids, zines, etc—are strongly encouraged as well. And if you have any interest in doing an entire rec list, explainer, or ship manifesto, please get in touch! elizabethandgav at gmail dot com.
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