The Rec Center #191
Hello all! This week we have a piece about Seinfeld fanfic, a look at The OA fandom’s rather unusual campaign to save the show, a rec list of fusion fanfics, and more! - Gav
new stuff
“The #SavetheOA Movement Is About More Than a TV Show” by Rachel Handler at Vulture
We’re going to say a bit more about The OA next week, but there’s been a fair bit of thoughtful and empathetic reporting about the people protesting its cancellation, including this piece!
“I’ll Be Loving You Forever” by Rebecca Schuman at Longreads
“There is a drug infinitely more potent (and more lucrative) than teenage desire: Nostalgia.” On revisiting the object of your teenage fandom (in this case, New Kids on the Block) close to three decades later.
“What’s the deal with Seinfeld fanfiction?” by Miles Klee at Mel Magazine
A look at the crossover between Weird Twitter and traditional fanfic in Seinfeld fandom, and how writers play with the sitcom format. (Note: We’re briefly cited in this one, but we promise that’s not why we shared it!)
older stuff
“Missing Time” by Marissa Brostoff at n + 1
“Fandom was a way of organizing knowledge and desire, a kind of epidemiology. You learned from the cluster of objects that drew near you what kind of person you were.” A fantastic essay on, amongst other things, teenage fandom, the X-Files, belief, and history.
tumblr & beyond
“Miles, the hero” by Devin Elle Kurtz
“do the spiderverse kids all have. slightly different meme cultures.”
Absolute dynamite Hawkeye fan theory over here.
“me shipping characters from different works of fiction that have no correlation whatsoever to each other”
Hello yes we’ve found the best “not if it’s you” post.
fanfiction
This week we’re recommending fusion fanfics, which take the characters of one fandom and shift them into the setting/concept of another! I’m a big fan of this subgenre (in fact, I once co-wrote a fusion between Hannibal and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy) and I love that we got such an interesting range of crossover ideas for this list. And if you want more fusions, we did another list of these last summer. — Gav
“Highwaymen” by orange_crushed. 66K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Supernatural (fusion with Harry Potter); Ship: Dean/Castiel
Recced by: Ladylark
Backstory: Dean and Sam’s dad has gone on a curse-breaking trip and hasn’t been home in a few days. It’s up to Dean to leave his job dealing with dragons, and sort out the mess.
Rec: This is a unique fusion that takes the central narratives (and some familiar characters) from Supernatural and Harry Potter and weaves them into a new shape. While the leads are from Supernatural, there is some particularly excellent worldbuilding on the Potter side; especially since the focus is very much on the wider wizarding world rather than what wizards and witches do at school. With some Welsh mythology sprinkled liberally through for good measure, this is a lyrical and beautifully written story.
Content warnings: N/A
“Echoes in Our Minds” by Christinuke, Nonymos. 101K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: MCU (fusion with Sense8); Ship: Not a pairing fic but several pairings present
Recced by: Vaysh11
Backstory: This is a MCUxSense8 fusion fic. 8 characters from the MCU are reborn (by Nick Fury) and connected in a mind meld: Clint, Natasha, Steve, Bucky|the Winter Soldier, Loki, Bruce, T’Challa, and Tony.
Rec: This fic is so original; both the choice of the 8 characters and the way the authors change the MCU to make it work for the Sense8 premise. The plot does not simply follow Sense8; it’s original in a way that lets you recognise the canon inspiration behind it AND be blown away by how the authors took a wholly different path.
Content warning: Graphic depictions of violence
“Zero Gravity ’Verse” by xylophones. 73K words over 7 works, various ratings.
Fandom: Yuri on Ice (fusion with Star Trek); Ship: Victor/Yuuri
Recced by: Gav
Backstory: The cast of the figure skating anime Yuri on Ice are Starfleet officers on a ship in the Star Trek universe.
Rec: This series is a really delightful romcom/ensemble sci-fi adventure, with Victor and Yuri both pining after each other, in Victor’s case to a characteristically melodramatic degree.
Content warnings: N/A
“Made Out of Blood and Rust” by chash. 31K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: The 100 (fusion with Temeraire); Ship: Clarke Griffin/Bellamy Blake
Recced by: Kay
Backstory: A novella-length Temeraire AU (think Napoleonic War, except with dragons forming an Aerial Corps), featuring proper Victorian lady Clarke secretly hatching an egg and running off to join the Corps.
Rec: An excellent universe fusion that takes the best bits of both fandoms and lets The 100 characters really shine, with lots of thought put into the depiction of class, race, and gender. Also lovely Clarke and Lexa friendship and a fun slow build romance for Clarke and Bellamy.
Content warnings: Victorian attitudes and canon-typical violence
“Boden’s Mate” by kaydeefalls. 79K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (fusion with Inception); Ship: Charles/Erik
Recced by: Elizabeth
Backstory: Yes, that’s right, I am a time traveller from the year 2011. Look, in all honesty: I saw Inception exactly once, in an old-timey theater in the north of England, and afterwards my mother and I walked in the dark along a rural road and said to each other, “Are we...in a dream right now?” That is to say, I had to get a little refresher on the various roles in a dreamsharing team but other than that, this was perfectly easy to follow. While it plays with Inception’s conceptual ideas—specifically about dreams, as you can imagine!—and its general ~heist vibes~, it’s first and foremost an X-Men AU, twisting some of the events from First Class. The basic set-up: the CIA turns to Erik for an extraction from a very difficult target.
Rec: This might be my favorite type of fic: novel-length and tightly plotted, with small but v sharp emotional interludes laced throughout. It’s a rare XMFC non-powered AU that does interesting things to evoke the canonical powers and all the characterization tied up in them, and it’s a true ensemble piece, something I really love in this fandom in particular. The sequel is also fantastic, and even more heisty. :-)
Content warnings: Violence, kidnapping and imprisonment, trauma and its aftermath, discussions of rape (re: mind and body control)
“It’s Always Sunny In Another Dimension” by attheborder. 4K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (fusion with The OA); Ship: Gen
Recced by: Gav
Backstory: In The OA, people gain supernatural powers through interpretive dances called “movements,” which they can only learn via near-death experiences. This fic sees the cast of Always Sunny cynically attempt gain those powers by (temporarily) killing themselves.
Rec: I cannot fucking believe this crossover is a thing, but it is GENIUS. Attheborder is one of my fave Good Omens writers, and this fic perfectly captures the humor of Always Sunny’s cast and characters... and precisely what they’d do with the phenomenons we see in The OA. (As a bonus, I can’t think of two shows with such polar opposite tones and creative philosophies.)
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
If you’re celebrating Labor Day in the U.S. this weekend, have a wonderful and safe holiday! — 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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