The Rec Center #199
Hello all! This week Gav granted my request for a His Dark Materials explainer in advance of the BBC/HBO adaptation premiering next week (including, also by my request, an important gif of James McAvoy in a sweater). By pure coincidence, Nicasio Reed, who did a GoT list for us earlier this year, also wrote in offering up a multifandom list of daemon AUs! We’ve also got our usual mix of articles and tumblr posts, plus some awesome fanart from the new Watchmen show. — Elizabeth
new stuff
“How fandom won the 2010s and why it will keep on winning” by Alexis Nedd at Mashable
An interesting and nuanced piece about fandom’s intersections with broader pop culture over the past decade.
“Authors in Fandom: An Interview with Cat Sebastian” by Gin Jenny at Reading the End
Jenny has been doing a great series of conversations with pro-pubbed authors who are or have been in fandom, and this conversation with Cat Sebastian is a total delight, especially when she talks about the innovative things fic authors do with structure and form.
“An Afternoon at the Joker Stairs, New York’s Newest Tourist Attraction” by Nate Jones at Vulture
Joker fans are doing their best to gentrify a random staircase in the Bronx, one Joker-themed Instagram photoshoot at a time.
older stuff
“Gays in Space: How an Archive of Star Wars Fanzines Helped this Queer Woman Live Her Best Life” by Sarah Calise at Nursing Clio
“In 2016, I drove nine hours from Tennessee to Iowa during my spring break to research homoerotic Star Wars fanzines from the 1970s–1990s. … It became a much more personal and emotional adventure than I ever could have imagined.”
tumblr & beyond
Sister Night from Watchmen (HBO) by Trevor Fraley
The only worthwhile fan theory about Rey’s parentage.
Untitled Pokemon Goose Game fanart!!
The final word on sexy villains.
Wow this Doctor Who ep looks amazing.
fanfiction + explainer: his dark materials
Originally published as a trilogy, but with several spinoffs arriving later, His Dark Materials is a children’s fantasy series by Philip Pullman. Like Harry Potter it has a big crossover audience with adults, but IMO it’s more mature and thematically coherent. Acting as a kind of critical response to Narnia, it’s about a young girl called Lyra who grows up in an alternate-universe version of 19th century Oxford, and eventually travels to other worlds and befriends characters like her best friend Will, who is from our world in the present day.
HDM has an incredibly devoted following, although it’s not as fandomy as something like Harry Potter. Its main impact on fanfic culture is the “daemon AU” subgenre, inspired by a key element of HDM’s worldbuilding: in Lyra’s universe, everyone has a talking animal “daemon” who represents their soul. (I actually co-wrote one of these myself, a daemon AU for the TV show Hannibal.) Coupled with the books’ explicitly critical stance on organized religion/Christianity, the whole daemon thing is one of several reasons why the 2007 movie flopped. Basically mid-2000s CGI animals plus a cack-handed Hollywood bowdlerization of complex philosophical themes = a recipe for disaster.
The new BBC/HBO adaptation looks much more promising, starring Dafne Keen (the kid from Logan) as Lyra, James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, and Lin Manuel Miranda. The first episode airs next month so we thought it was high time for some fanfic recs and a primer for newbies. (I’ve watched the first episode already BTW, and McAvoy is perfect casting for Lord Asriel. Review to follow next week!)
I find His Dark Materials much more appealing to reread than a lot of books I loved as a child, an opinion shared by a lot of longtime fans, I think. Philip Pullman’s prose is wonderfully evocative and emotionally intense, and really gets inside a childhood mindset while telling a deceptively dark and political story. The second of his prequel novels came out this month, and while I haven’t read it yet, I can highly recommend the first volume La Belle Sauvage, which takes place when Lyra is a baby, and really digs into the authoritarian background of her world.
This week’s recs are from guest contributor Nico, focusing on the continuing popularity of daemon AUs. Talking animals are obvs an enduring fantasy trope, but the key appeal of HDM’s daemons is their emotional role in humans’ lives. Daemons act as a partner and occasional devil’s advocate, and since they’re literally part of a human soul, there’s a massive taboo against other people touching them—a taboo that’s implicitly akin to sexual assault. They also shapeshift until a child hits puberty, finally “settling” in a form that reflects your adult personality. This all adds up to some complex allegorical storytelling in the books, but for the purposes of fanfic, daemons are generally used as a deus ex machina in romances. Characters are brought together by their daemons, and often break the taboo of touching someone else’s daemon, discovering that it’s a beautiful experience when done with trust and love. (Yes, that particularly allegory is quite close to the surface lol.) — Gav
Fic recs from Nico
Nicasio Reed is a writer and poet who still insists on using the ’ in ’shipper. You can find him on twitter, arguing that any character he loves is a Leo sun/Scorpio moon. He previously wrote a Rec Center guest list + explainer for GoT ’ship Brienne/Jaime over the summer.
“Things” by Raven (singlecrow). 9.5K words, rated Gen.
Fandoms: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager; Ships: Kira Nerys/Odo, Keiko O’Brien/Miles O’Brien (both background)
Backstory: Set during the height of the Dominion War, when the Federation’s paranoia about changeling infiltrators was at a fever pitch, this story follows the trial of Deep Space Nine’s own changeling, Constable Odo. Darker elements within Starfleet wish to imprison and study Odo, to probe at his lack of a daemon. Though this frame, the story describes his colleagues, friends, and colleagues-of-friends who step up to testify as to the infinite diversity of daemons within the galactic community— the ways each person has and shows their soul.
Rec: This is a beautiful story. On every level, it’s just astounding. The characterizations here are sharp, incisive, complex even within brief spaces—it’s a story of less than ten thousand words, but gives gorgeous life to Kira, Sisko, Picard, Bashir, Odo, both O’Briens, Crusher, Troi, Seven of Nine, Janeway, and two Daxes. It uses the conceit of daemons to further the conceit of Star Trek: a place where the respect for each person’s personhood is fundamental.
Content warnings: N/A
“His Red Right Hand” by M_Leigh. 11K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – John Le Carré; Ship: Bill Haydon/Jim Prideaux
Backstory: This fic spans the length of the novel and follows Bill and his daemon through all the stages of their association with Jim Prideaux, from the rush of young love, to the anxiety of a semi-clandestine affair, to the sickness of betrayal.
Rec: If you’re familiar with this canon then you know that its characters work in espionage. At first glance, daemons would be a liability in such a business, but as with Le Carré, this author goes to wonderful lengths to show that so much of deception rests on how eager we all are to believe whatever it is that we see at first glance.
Content warning: Canon character death
“A Life Undiscovered” by girl_wonder. 3.3K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Elementary; Ship: Gen
Backstory: Set somewhere in the first two seasons of the show, soon after Joan has come on board as Sherlock’s partner in (fighting) crime. Alfredo and Mrs. Hudson feature prominently here, and the four of them and their four daemons comprise a wonderful, cozy household.
Rec: Something I love about Elementary is how seriously and thoroughly it treats the idea of people who are well into adulthood doing the hard, everyday work of turning their lives around. All the show’s characters spend years in the process of making major changes, and in that process they screw up, succeed, screw up again, get burned, fail, and try again the next day. This story how the characters’ lives are written on the bodies of their daemons in various ways, and it’s a wonderful bit of worldbuilding that slips seamlessly into both canons.
Content warnings: Discussion of past addiction
“Something that ought to have lain there unnoticed” SecondStarOnTheLeft. 24K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: A Song of Ice and Fire – George R. R. Martin; Ships: Joffrey Baratheon/Sansa Stark, Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark, Petyr Baelish/Sansa Stark, Sansa Stark, Willas Tyrell, Wynafryd Manderly/Jon Snow
Backstory: Something The Golden Compass does is make the trauma of being severed from one’s daemon horrifyingly real. Lyra’s mortal terror of the idea, the break in Mrs. Coulter’s façade, and Tony wandering alone and bereft, clutching his frozen fish. And if there was ever a canon built on trauma, well, it’s ASOIAF. This story follows Sansa before and after she and her daemon are severed.
Rec: The characterization of Sansa here is fantastic. She’s proud, guarded, sharply observant, desperate for family, but ready to be alone. A great look at living with stigmatized traumas.
Content warnings: Physical abuse, psychological abuse
“The Fool You Need” by Brokenjaw (Vrael). 11K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Lucifer; Ship: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Backstory: When Lucifer came to Earth, he sprouted a daemon, but she didn’t settle for a very long time. The two of them didn’t need to be keep close together, so he mainly ignored her. And then the events at the end of season three happened, and his daemon settled, and he was forced to live with seeing her, this part of his soul who reflects him, rather than reflecting what he’d like others to think of him. She’s a dear, awkward, ungainly little soul. She’s a blue-footed booby.
Rec: So, my least favorite thing irl is of course The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, and the entire deal with daemons is that their existence means that everyone is constantly being submitted to that most horrifying ordeal 24/7. What a nightmare. It’s one thing to be born into a world where this is normal, but another to have such a thing thrust upon you as an adult of some several thousand years old. The conceit of this fic puts Lucifer in what’s basically the reader’s outsider position: learning how to live with your own soul laid bare, how to navigate a relationship with yourself, no matter how painful it is to look yourself in the eye. Also this one really cool thing happens in Hell. I don’t want to spoil it, but seriously: very cool.
Content warnings: N/A
Rec from Gav
You can find my previous list of His Dark Materials recs here, including HDM canon stories and crossover fusions like this one:
“Daemonology” by trinityofone. 8K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis; Ship: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay
Backstory: Stargate: Atlantis is a sci-fi show about an exploratory outpost in space. Sheppard is the military commander of the city, while McKay heads up the science team. Despite their clashing personalities, they’re best friends and were a massively popular ship in the late 2000s.
Rec: Posted in 2005, I think of this as the patient zero for daemon AUs. Sheppard’s emotional repression is a perfect fit for the genre, and this fic is a great example of why the trope became so popular.
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
Next week is our 200th issue (!) and we’ve decided to celebrate with our first ever AMA! So if you have any questions to ask us, please submit them here. Our answers will be published in next week’s issue! — Gav
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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