The Rec Center #196
Hi everyone! This week we’ve got an interesting article about how fanfic improves writing skills, along with an Aristocats fanvid, some more of the ubiquitous Goose Game content, and multifandom "friends to lovers" fanfic recs. — Gav
new stuff
“What Fan Fiction Teaches That the Classroom Doesn’t” by Julie Beck at The Atlantic
A well-researched exploration of fanfic as a communal learning environment, centering on a new book from researchers at the University of Washington about younger fans on FFN.
“The not-so-secret life of a TikTok-famous teen” by Rebecca Jennings at Vox
A deep dive into teenage TikTok stars; especially recommended for the 8 bazillion people who tweet some variation of “I’m old what’s TikTok” every day (you know who you are!!).
“Professor Minerva McGonagall’s Letter to the Tenure Committee” by Alyse Knorr at McSweeney’s
“The fact that I even lesson plan at all is a true testament to my time management capabilities, because in addition to offering independent studies in the Revelio Charm, inspecting student mail, recruiting Quidditch athletes, writing letters to parents, emceeing Dumbledore’s funeral, and decorating the Great Hall for Christmas, in my upper-level courses, I teach teenagers—and I can’t stress this enough—how to fucking vanish.”
“Joker isn’t as smart as it thinks it is” by Gav at the Daily Dot
Joker is the biggest fandom & pop-culture story of the week, so here’s Gav’s review. It digs deep into the political controversy surrounding Joker, along with the film’s problematic queer-coded subtext, and the director’s choice to copy two classic Scorsese movies in the hope of being ~taken seriously.~
older stuff
“What It Feels Like for a Fangirl in the Age of Late Capitalism” by Keidra Chaney at Uncanny Magazine
“It does make me uncomfortable that fan communities are encouraged by companies to embrace our online fannish activity publicly—discuss! create! share! vote!—at a point where our activity and content are easier to observe and use by the companies that create the pop culture we love.”
tumblr & beyond
Michael B. Jordan is taking anime fandom to a whole new level.
This goose game fanart is positively hieroglyphic.
“Being in a long-term fandom really makes me wish we had like, Fandom Supreme Courts.”
Check out this Aristocats/Lizzo fanvid!
fanfiction
This week we have a multifandom collection of friends to lovers recs. If you love this trope, we’ve done a few other lists of this nature, including “friends with benefits” last year, and a straight-up “friends to lovers” list the year before that. — Elizabeth
“An Unruly Sun” by Quakey. 5K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Sense8; Ship: Sun Bak/Capheus
Recced by: blackestglass
Backstory: Written pre-season 2. Capheus asks Sun for self-defense lessons and in the course of teaching him, Sun develops inconvenient feelings.
Rec: This is a beautiful, heartfelt, and sensual story. The author understands Sun and Capheus so well, and the interactions with the rest of the cluster are pitch perfect. A delicately written story that lives and breathes with Sun’s quiet strength and guarded vulnerability. There’s also a multivoice podfic.
Content warnings: N/A
“Heart Like a Socket” by Kyra. 34K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: New Girl; Ship: Jessica Day/Nick Miller
Recced by: celeryy
Backstory: When Nick has a health scare, Jess agrees to marry him so he can use her insurance. But the longer they keep up the ruse, the more complicated it becomes.
Rec: This fic entirely sold me on the Jess/Nick ship before I’d watched a single episode of New Girl! It springboards off of a canon episode premise, mixes in the tried-and-true fake married trope, and runs with it to the greatest possible effect; the story retains the levity of the show, and best of all, the character voices, while venturing into slightly more serious emotional territory.
Content warnings: Hospitals, cancer-related health scare
“you can’t explain away the poetry” by kaydeefalls. 3.7K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The History Boys; Ship: Posner/Scripps
Recced by: Jamie
Backstory: In Dakin’s attempt to out Scripps and/or get him laid, Scripps reflects on his relationship with God and sex. Posner has a time with Scripps’ coming out timeline and relationship with God and queerness.
Rec: Complex queer personal timelines! God! Under the surface shame!
Content warnings: N/A
“I Remember Touch” by FeoplePeel. 16K words, rated Teen.
Fandoms: Dragon Age, Dragon Age 2; Ship: F!Hawke/Varric, Bethany/Isabela
Recced by: Raizel
Backstory: Leandra Amell, long estranged from her family after running off with a soldier named Malcolm Hawke, inherits their Kirkwall estate upon their death. It’s a chance for the commoner Hawke family to play dress-up in Kirkwall society, although their eldest daughter has never been any good at playing along.
Rec: The author does an excellent job taking the misfits of the original game and making them high class misfits of English nobility instead, and plays into one of my favourite Hawke/Varric dynamics: people technically of high society who have no taste for the manners everyone else pretends to.
Content warnings: N/A
“Natural Selection” by wintergrey. 14K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: MCU; Ship: Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Recced by: roane
Backstory: Steve has to pick two people to join him in the new program with the rediscovered super-soldier serum. He doesn’t want to risk the two people he loves, even though they might be the best candidates.
Rec: Wintergrey does a fantastic job writing all three characters, but their Sam Wilson will always be one of my favorites. They’ve written him pretty regularly and he’s always wonderful, no matter the pairing.
Content warnings: N/A
“torch this place we know” by theundiagnosable. 50K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Hockey RPF; Ship: Mitch Marner/Auston Matthews
Recced by: Dot
Backstory: Mitch Marner & Auston Matthews are two of the star players of the Toronto Maple Leafs. This is a future fic in which one of them gets traded, resulting in pining, emotional growth, and one (1) manly tear being shed in the gym.
Rec: In my admittedly unreliable opinion, this is The Ultimate Hockey Fanfic. The pacing and characterisation are brilliant. If 50K of pining for your best friend floats your boat then this is for you—doesn’t matter if you like hockey or not. Also features the best AO3 tag ever: ‘the real villain is patriarchal sports culture and the fear of growing up and changing.’
Content warning: Some internalised homophobia
FINAL THOUGHT
OK so! In the course of putting the newsletter together this week we came across a few themes that we’d like to do in the coming months, so this is a THREEFOLD call for recs:
From Jenny, who sneakily tries to get as many of her preferences into our newsletter as possible via innocent “have you thought about doing x theme” queries, we are trying to put together a RAREPAIR list.
This one’s a little tricky because “rarepair” (can be more than just a pair btw!) is fairly subjective, so we’re proposing “ships with fewer than 100 fics on AO3 (or wherever)” as a general rule of thumb. That might mean a relatively unpopular ship in a juggernaut fandom, or it might be the main pairing in a very small fandom.
(Please include “rarepair” in the tropes field on the submissions form!)This week we tried to put together an epistolary rec list, but we wound up not having enough fics to flesh a full one out. But this is definitely a popular enough trope that we’d like to do it in the future! We’d especially love stuff that’s formally innovative, though any sort of correspondence-based stories are more than welcome.
(Please include “epistolary” in the tropes field on the submissions form!)FALL IS FINALLY HERE, or it is where I live anyway, sorry to everyone not experiencing the glory of the greatest season while wearing a light jacket. Since we haven’t done one in a while, we’d like to do an autumnal and/or Halloween-oriented list at some point in October.
(Please include “autumn” or “fall” in the tropes field on the submissions form!)
As a reminder, the one-off rec form always sits at the bottom of the newsletter—we always want more recs, no matter the trope/theme. We also always encourage volunteers for full lists and explainers—if you’d like to write one, hit reply or email us at elizabethandgav at gmail dot com. <3 — 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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