The Rec Center #200
Instead of our usual newsletter, this week Elizabeth and I answered questions from you, our dear readers. We covered a lot of topics here including political fanfic, our favorite AU subgenres, some behind-the-scenes Rec Center editorial stuff, and fandom advice. — Gav
ask us anything:
Q asks: Do you have any advice for someone who usually just scrolls through everything but wants to get more actively involved in online fandom life? (love your newsletter btw, thanks so much for making it!)
Gav: Yes! Start a throwaway Twitter or Tumblr account—whatever social media platform seems popular with authors or artists you like—and just start interacting with people in a fun (but respectful) way! Compliment them on their work! No need to announce any personal info about yourself—in fact, fandom-specific accounts are more and more popular these days, you can just go ahead and follow people you find interesting.
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geekingthething asks: What are your own main fandoms? Have they changed over time? Has making this tinyletter influenced this? What's your fave fic of all time? What are your plans, hopes, dreams of the next 200 rec centers?
Gav: I just posted a fic for the movie IT: Chapter 2, so I guess that’s my “main fandom” for like, one week lol. It was fun to write in, but my actual main fandom would probably be Star Wars? I read very widely in a lot of fandoms but I don’t currently have a central obsession in the way that I was really into Black Sails or Captain America in the past. And editing the Rec Center has definitely exposed me to a wider range of recs than I otherwise would’ve stumbled upon. As for my hopes for the future, I hope people keep enjoying the newsletter, and keep subscribing!
P.S. It’s VERY HARD to pick a “favorite fic ever,” but it might be one of the old Stargate: Atlantis classics “Freedom’s Just Another Word...” or “Written by the Victors”?
Elizabeth: First of all, I cannot get over the fact that Gav is officially in the IT fandom, this is amazing news. Second of all, let’s see. When we started the newsletter I was rediscovering my love of fic after some baaaaaad times in the Sherlock fandom (it’s legit taken me 5 years to even say those words out loud), first in Remus/Sirius, my longtime OTP, and then in Harry/Draco, my first HP ship. It’s still so active! There was so much! And early subscribers got to watch my journey in real time. Then Gav and I fell for Black Sails (a magical time in our partnership!). But then in the spring of last year I watched one of the current-franchise (well, RIP, it’s fine, time to go) X-Men films on a plane and was done for, so XMFC, as it’s broadly grouped on AO3, has been my main fandom since then. I read fic for it nearly every day.
Like Gav, I hope people keep enjoying the newsletter and passing it along to their friends. Not to pull away the curtain too much, but having worked on newsletters professionally and knowing broader industry stats, you are all a VERY active group, in terms of how often you click on stuff and the feedback you send us. I mean, maybe that’s because we’re not trying to sell you shoes or 12 weeks of a newspaper for $4.99 or whatever, but like, it’s really delightful to have such a wonderful group of readers (and writers, for those who send in recs).
My favorite fic...hmmmm. In Torchwood, probably “Intersecting Geodesics” by NancyBrown. For Remus/Sirius, argh this is hard, probably The Rising Storm series by Rosie_Rues? Harry/Draco has gotta be “The Pure and Simple Truth” by lettered. And X-Men, I cannot pick, but definitely one from the rec list I did with Morgan, these are all a delight in different ways.
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1degosuperego asks: The Rec Center has a pretty well-defined mandate: the weeks' fandom culture coverage, fun tumblr links, fan art, a rec list. If you could add a new section or topic to the slate, what would it be?
Gav: IDK, maybe a secondary fanwork category like cosplay or crafting? But really I think our current lineup is a perfect amount of work for us to do each week.
Elizabeth: I also think this is the exact right amount of work for us each week. 😹 BUT! When we started the newsletter we talked about the “final thought” section as somewhere to write little, like, blog post-type essays about topical fandom stuff, and we’ve certainly done that plenty over the past four years, we generally don’t have the bandwidth for it. So maybe not changing the newsletter, but being able to use that section that way more often? OH WELL.
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Anon asks: Hi! I'm a subscriber from South Korea :) Your newsletters are brilliant and I've been sharing funny tidbits with my friends, too.
Are you interested in fanfiction culture in other countries/region, specifically northeast Asia? Shipping, slash, attitudes toward ‘problematic’ aspects of fanfiction (incest fics, non-con and such), even the way ships are named(and I remember you once included an article about linguistics and ship names) are quite different. Being a member of both South Korean fandom twitter and AO3 (although I don’t upload fics, just read them) I’ve noticed some interesting discrepancies between English-speaking fandom and South Korean fandom. Because I am a fairly recent subscriber, I don't know if you have already done an article or a podcast, etc. regarding this subject, but I'd like to know your background knowledge/interests about this! Thanks and keep up the fantastic work! Congrats for the 200th newsletter!
Elizabeth: So! As someone who studies fan culture broadly, I’m really interested in this topic (the cross-cultural discrepancies, and what happens when different fannish norms brush up against each other). It’s something we’ve looked at a bit on my podcast, Fansplaining (I’m thinking of our conversation on transcultural fandom with Lori Morimoto).
Because of the nature of The Rec Center—Gav is Scottish, I’m American, and we’ve mostly been in Western fandoms over the decades—I’ve tried to clarify from the start that we’d be curating through that lens. We’ve had a fair number of guest explainers and rec lists for East Asian fandoms—anime/manga and Kpop groups, specifically—and some of our articles have been about them as well, though admittedly much of that is transnational, especially now that Kpop is so rapidly mainstreaming in the U.S. But most of the fandom coverage, like the articles we post, is through a Western lens, not least because we only consume English-language media. All that being said! If any reader has any great articles about these cross-cultural fandom differences, please send it to us, because we’d love to include it.
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fredfinch asks: Hi guys! I was wondering if either of you miss any old fandom spaces? Nowadays I feel like everyone is on twitter/tumblr, but I know personally I miss the experience of highly specific forums/chatrooms (tamatalk...my og homeground) so if anyone's got some fandom space nostalgia I’d love to hear it! (Thanks so much for the newsletter, it's a great way to end the week!)
Gav: In some ways I (like many millennial fandom people) do miss the more interactive and non-public environment of Livejournal, and I know a lot of older fans feel the same way about messageboards and chatrooms. That being said, I’ve actually found it pretty easy to interact with people in a fandomy way on Twitter, and as I mentioned in an earlier answer here, private chatrooms and groups are back in a big way. A lot of people use Discord now, setting up private chat communities instead of using public social media handles. So I’d recommend looking for Discord or Slack channels about your favorite fandoms, if that’s something you’re missing.
Elizabeth: Well, for me, it’s more mixed feelings about older platforms—I was a lurker for my first 15 years in fandom, and when it comes to my actual fandom activity, not, like, talking about capital-F fandom, which I do loudly and with my actual name, I still do things pretty privately, in texts/DMs mostly. So I actually get a little frustrated when people trash Tumblr (not that you are doing this, fredfinch! But people def do) and say smaller, closed spaces were better across the board, because Tumblr was the first time I really felt like I had some tiny stake in fandom that wasn’t just in my own head—the power of liking a post when on LJ you could only ever look at it! Or even, if I was feeling wild, reblogging it! The same with the AO3 and kudos—people complain about fans who kudos and don’t comment, but like, that intermediate space is incredible when in the past it was just a small percentage of people speaking up and the vast majority of people remaining totally silent. (The classic rule of thumb in internet communities is 1% create, 9% comment, and the remaining 90% lurk.)
(That’s all to say, I have total respect for people who miss old spaces, and for people who want something smaller that’s not as small as DMs. But Gav’s right—we have more spaces for that than we did a few years ago. So hopefully we’ll stop this binary swing between closed/small and big/open, and have, like, lots of ways to do online fandom going forward….)
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elainasaunt asks: Is there/will there be a Rec Center index so we can see if a particular fandom has already been featured in the fic recs?
And, similarly,
Lee asks: Do you keep a list of all the fics you've recced? Is it something you'd ever make available? Thanks for your work, receiving the newsletter always feels like a gift. 💜
Elizabeth: So! I am the keeper of the submissions, and I *do* have a big spreadsheet has all your entries (more than 1,000 now) of one-off recs. It’s potentially something I could clean up and share with the world, but it’s not organized in any useful way outside the individual rows for each story—we’ll pick a theme or trope, say, “friends to lovers,” I’ll use readers’ descriptions to select a mix of stories, and then I just check them off. So it’d be one big jumble of hundreds of stories—but that’s only a portion of our recs, because plenty of one-offs come from one of us or directly from friends. And that’s setting aside all of our guest lists—the stuff authored by a single person—which come in via email. Which is a big portion of our recs!
Many people have asked about creating some sort of index or database and I would wholeheartedly support this—you can see all our back issues on TinyLetter—but it’s not something we have the bandwidth to put together. There may come a time when we surpass TinyLetter’s subscriber cap (actually, this time is likely, since we’re only a few hundred people away) and we need to pick a new newsletter host, and they might have better ways of storing this data, week to week. But for now, no. :-/
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Anon21 asks: When you started this newsletter, did you see it lasting this long? What ways had it gone differently to what you expected? Do you think the politics is the US has impacted fics written, fics submitted, and trends in fandom?
Gav: I’m not much of a forward planner so I haven’t given much thought to the newsletter’s future. As for the politics thing, it ABSOLUTELY impacts fanfic tropes & culture. (This is something I notice consciously because I read a lot of fanfic that either has political themes, or interacts with pop culture in some kind of meta way.) The most obvious examples are how attitudes to LGBTQ rights have evolved in line with government policy. You can chart this through slash fanfic trends over the decades. For instance, fic I’ve read from the 80s/90s primarily featured closeted characters, which gradually tailed off by the 2000s, at which point we see more fanfic with same-sex marriage etc. Also, characters are less likely to have a lot of internalized homophobia (unless that’s something specific to the setting), and are more likely to be plugged into queer culture. In the past five years I’ve noticed an uptick in nonbinary and trans characters, although that varies from fandom to fandom.
In a general sense I think fanfic writers in 2019 are more open to far-left and/or anarchist themes than they were 5-10 years ago. In 2015 or so, you’d see plenty of stories where Captain America displayed progressive values, but it would be portrayed via him going on The Daily Show or arguing with a Republican. Whereas now you can easily see him throwing a brick at a cop, or supporting the downfall of the U.S. government.
Then there are political-specific tropes like people getting married for health insurance purposes, or having to deal with America’s dystopian healthcare system in an A/B/O context. I’ve noticed that some mainstream topics don’t make their way into fanfic trends, either because they’re too upsetting or because U.S. media fandom is so dominated by white (especially white male) characters. But overall I’ve seen fandom embrace more radical political ideas since 2016. At the same time, you’re less likely to see Trump directly mentioned in fic, perhaps because it’s a jarring reminder of reality. (Obama used to be namechecked quite often, and indeed had his own RPF fandom back in the late 2000s, bridging the gap between West Wing fans and people who now write RPF about Pod Save America podcasters.)
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Nicole asks: I’ve always been curious— when a rec comes in from someone else, do either/both of you read the fic too?
Gav: I almost never read any of the fic recommended by outside contributors, unless it’s something I actually want to read for fun based on the rec.
Elizabeth: But you do that, like, as a curious reader, not to vouch for something in advance, right?
Gav: Right! I don’t like, quality-check anyone’s recommendations, we just take that stuff on trust.
Elizabeth: Hahaha right. OK, so, I think this is a huge misconception even though I continually try to remind people: we are not vouching for these recs or reccing them ourselves, we’re just a sort of conduit between the readers of the newsletter. (Not to say we want to be some sort of message board, but you know what I mean.) On the practical side, even if we wanted to, there’s literally no way we could do this—we each take a few hours out of our week putting this together for free (and it will always be free! Not complaining about that) and we legit could not add reading peoples’ fic recs to that, it would be a full-time job.
I will say that the somewhat serious consequence of this is, as Gav cites, the trust factor. We’ve had a couple of incidents over the years where people haven’t tagged stuff well (like, truly bad examples, leaving out warnings for things that are widely considered things you should warn for) and I always try to stress that we are at your mercy here, which is a tricky spot to be in! So hopefully more people understanding we’re not fact-checking these (and like, there are things in recs that I disagree with lol—I have seen fics recced that I would not personally rec, that sort of thing, everyone has their own taste!) will strengthen that trust.
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Paracelsus asks: I’ve recently fallen down the fanfic rabbit hole ever since summer started and now I have an interest in writing, but have learned through osmosis as well as podcast episodes that constructive feedback in that space isn’t really a thing; coming from an artistic background, where constructive criticism is both common and helpful for improving the skill, and being someone for whole gradual improvement until proficiency is gained is a goal, what’s the best way for a prospective fanfic writer to actually get better at the craft? Or just even a writer in general? Or is not helpful to treat it the way I treat art and unlearn those expectations? (Beyond showing it to his irl friends and then having to explain his fandom and deal with the #optics of being a straight black dude who all of a sudden wants to start writing fic).
Gav: Well, “practice” is the boring answer, but also lots of people use beta-readers! Plenty of people show their fic to fandom friends and ask for editorial feedback before posting. If you don’t know anyone in the fandom then you can put out a call for betas, although you’re more likely to find someone if you’re somewhat plugged into the relevant community. There’s also the option of posting whatever you want (under a new pseudonym if you’re nervous) and explicitly stating in the end notes that you want constructive feedback in the comments.
Elizabeth: Yeah I mean, practice is definitely the answer, both reading and writing (and reading with a critical eye, and trying to deconstruct what you think works in fic and what doesn’t, though, like, keep it to yourself lol). But I also understand the challenge of coming into a space that’s kind of collectively down on critique, at least in a public-facing capacity, when so many other corners of the arts are like, Critique City.
I agree that beyond that, betas are definitely the answer. Put out a call for one, or if there’s a writer you admire, start talking to them about their writing—not every writer wants to or has time to beta, but you never know. And make it clear that you want actual substantive feedback, not just encouragement—even outside fandom stuff, when I’m asked to read a friend’s work or ask them to read mine, I clarify what they want/I want, like, validation, critique, some combination of the two, etc, because being on the same page with this stuff is vital.
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Nicole asks: What’s your personal favorite fic someone else has submitted as a rec?
Gav: I can’t remember.
Elizabeth: My answer is cheating because I’m once again going to cite the X-Men list I did with Morgan last year, because her favorites are also some of my favorites, but also like, is this “someone else has submitted” when we collaborated on a list together lol. Whatever, these are great fics!!!
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1degosuperego asks: Without getting ~into how you actually feel about said fandom discourse, what are some of the wankiest bits of discourse you've decided to skip coverage of in the newsletter over the years?
Gav: Come on, now.
Elizabeth: I actually think your anti-discourse stance is interesting and the readers might like to hear about it.
Gav: Do I have an anti-discourse stance?? I guess my stance is that it’s surprisingly easy to avoid toxic fandom controversies by filtering which people & platforms you follow, although there are obviously real structural problems within fandom that do need to be tackled. From an editorial perspective, I only like to include ~discourse content in the Rec Center if something constructive can come out of it. I don’t want to become the equivalent of Fandom Wank or a gossip blog, and honestly I would find it demoralizing if I had to spend a bunch of time each week reading about emotionally exhausting flamewars.
Elizabeth: lol no I love it, I’ll be like, “should we talk about…” and you go, “i simply cannot be bothered” (is that a good impression of you?!?!). In all seriousness, like, this all sort of falls into a kind of Justice Stewart “I know it when I see it” (he was referencing porn, fyi) grey area, because the lines between wank and discourse and, say, political stuff, or all the other topics we certainly highlight in the articles sections is fuzzy. I think we’re both really wary of posting fandom-specific discourse, because 99% of the time we will not be in those fandoms, and we don’t have the full context or the capacity to really get that context. But something that might be framed as discoursey within fandom that seeps into media coverage—anger at showrunners for decisions, representation conversations, etc—we often include. It’s just a hard call to make, and we may not make it correctly 100% of the time, but it is what it is.
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princehal9000 asks: If you could read only one type of AU (coffee shop au, high school au, everyone lives no one dies au, etc), what would it be?
Elizabeth: I will note that in the past four years of doing this newsletter I’ve gone from “not really an AU fan” to “depending on the fandom some AUs can actually be great…” That being said even in my anti-AU years (like...most of my time in fandom, all two decades of it) my favorite kind of fic EVER is the canon-divergent AU, and everyone lives—specifically coming-back-from-the-dead AUs—was in my top 10 (yes yes, long traumatized by Sirius falling through that veil).
Gav: Does this newfound love of AUs perhaps map directly onto your enjoyment of X-Men fandom, Elizabeth?
Elizabeth: But like, it’s SUCH an AU-oriented fandom, and there are so many good ones, and I don’t know why it just works for me there. I’ve tried AUs in every fandom I’ve been in and it just never works for me elsewhere. The idea of reading, I don’t know, a bakery AU in the Black Sails fandom makes me run for the hills. (Are there any bakery AUs in Black Sails? Let me state for the record that this was a random example and I love and support all Black Sails fic writers.)
You’ve always been more pro-AU right? Like, in the vein of coffee shop AUs, not canon-divergent.
Gav: Yeah I love AUs! I actually don’t like to read coffee shop AUs myself, although I obviously appreciate their popularity, which is why I wrote a whole article about them a while back. But basically I enjoy any kind of AU that doesn’t take place in a banal real-life setting like an office, coffeeshop, or college.
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Brigid asks: It's a rainy day and you have ample free time. What's your ideal fic set-up (reading or writing)?
Elizabeth: I actually don’t do well with the ample free time thing—for writing, anyway, I find I’m way more productive when I have a set time limit, or even some sort of limiting physical space (I work best in coffee shops, with all kinds of writing). I do most of my fic reading at night, though now that I read on my phone (a very recent development lol) I have started to read on the subway as well, though I really only feel like I can get deep into a story when I have privacy.
Gav: tbh I'm probably just sitting on the couch under a blanket with a cup of tea, but i applaud anyone who is out there with a more sophisticated set-up like a chic lady from a chocolate commercial.
Elizabeth: I also enjoy doing these things with blankets and tea, for the record. Whether I have time limits or not. :-)
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Anon asks: Please talk about Black Sails a lot.
Gav: Haha I would actually recommend Elizabeth’s & my podcast on this topic!
Elizabeth: Wait wait, there’s more. Before we did this, we went on Fathoms Deep, a Black Sails podcast, to mostly talk about Thomas Hamilton. :-))
But if you want EVEN MORE TALKING ABOUT BLACK SAILS, after two years of dragging their stupid obstinate feet, my podcast partner, Flourish, finally watched it and loved it, so our most recent patrons-only episode was about the show (and postcolonial literature!).
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1degosuperego asks: Roughly how many times would you estimate that Gav has been mistaken for Flourish, or that Elizabeth has been mistaken for Morgan?
Gav: There are semi-frequent mixups between various members of the Rec Center/Overinvested/Fansplaining family tree, but IDK what the breakdown is. IRL, I suspect Elizabeth and I could be mistaken for each other because we both have curly brown hair and glasses.
Elizabeth: AND WE BOTH PLAY THE CELLO. But just for clarity, since this is an a+ teachable moment, thank you:
Fansplaining
A podcast I do with Flourish Klink, who works in Hollywood, about fan culture. Like, the behaviors of fandom, the entertainment industry, intra-fandom dynamics, etc. Very rarely about the actual objects of fandom except by way of example. Biweekly!
Overinvested
A podcast Gav does with Morgan Leigh Davies (who is also my friend, let’s be clear, hi Morgan), who is a writer, about culture, specifically pop culture. They see all the movies and I don’t know how they do it. Weekly! Plus you can pay them to watch specific movies, it’s wild.
The Rec Center
You are reading it. Weekly!
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FINAL THOUGHT
If you’ve made it this far (OUR LONGEST WORD COUNT EVER) I just want to close out by saying: thank you thank you thank you to everyone who’s subscribed, shared, contributed to, and made this newsletter everything it is now over the last 200 issues. <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.
If you liked this, please share it with your friends! https://thereccenter.substack.com/. And find us on social media: Gav (twitter/tumblr) & Elizabeth (twitter/tumblr)