The Rec Center #201
After last week’s reader Q&A issue, we’re back to our regular programming! We’ve got fanfic for Stephen King’s IT, recommended by yours truly! We’ve got articles about stan culture! We’ve got Wonder Woman fanart! We’ve got some truly impressive cosplay! And Elizabeth will be at GeekGirlCon soon, so watch out for that. — Gav
new stuff
“Stan’d off” by Claudia Williams at Tortoise
On the complicated dynamics of “unstanning”—especially when your identity is wrapped up in a fan community that you can no longer be a part of. Content warning: the main interviewee describes how she was targeted with explicit and graphic racist abuse.
“The Therapeutic Potential of Stanning” by Olga Khazan at The Atlantic
A growing number of therapists are using patients’ feelings about fandom and the characters/narratives they love in their practice. (Don’t be fooled by the title...in context it’s not a great use of the term “stanning”!)
“Umbrellas Up” at This American Life
In the same vein as the previous piece, TAL’s recent on-the-ground reporting from protests in Hong Kong are really interesting from a fandom lens—if you’ve seen Twitter threads about protesters using MCU and Harry Potter characters as inspirational symbols, this digs into how protesters are using those stories to construct their personal narratives and actions.
older stuff
“Small, But Mighty: How Local Cons Are Made” by Kristina Manente at SyFy Wire
“But as major corporate-sponsored conventions grow, how do smaller ones survive in a world that is suddenly okay with being geeky (or, at least, way more chill with it than it used to be)?”
tumblr & beyond
Wonder Woman fanart by Hammer_moon, DFrankfield, portela_francis, FernandoDagnino, ToniFejzula, and Moy_R
A gorgeous thread of portraits that look like people posing with their daemons in His Dark Materials.
This Margaret Thatcher fanfic tag is striking fear into our hearts.
“dark children’s literature, show me the forbidden butch & femme couple”
“You ever see a kind of discourse you were previously unaware of barrelling past you?”
This TikTok parody of One Direction fanfic........ Sublime.
fanfiction
I dipped my toe into the fandom for Stephen King’s IT this month, and was surprised to learn from Elizabeth that it’s been the top fandom on Tumblr for weeks and weeks!! Apparently this is the ultimate non-RPF shipping fandom of the season, replacing Good Omens over the summer.
I won’t bother with a full primer, but the fandom appeal is obvious: The two IT movies are about a group of weird outsider kids (the Losers) who are best friends in middle school, defeat a supernatural menace, and then forget each other when they grow up. The second film covers their reunion 27 years later, and (spoilers!) features a poorly-handled unrequited love story for a gay character whose childhood crush gets killed off. In other words, it’s all ripe for fix-it fic, and features two built-in amnesia romances. These recs are all Richie/Eddie-centric—ie. the closeted gay comedian character played by Bill Hader, and his neurotic childhood BFF. I actually wrote one myself, in the format of a Rolling Stone interview with Richie! — Gav
“for better, for worse” by kaspbrak_kid. 26K words, Unrated.
Backstory: Taking place after IT: Chapter Two, this fic begins at Ben and Beverley’s wedding. It’s told from Eddie’s perspective.
Rec: Like a lot of fic about Eddie and Richie, this story is partly about the closet. Their childhood in homophobic small-town Maine made it hard for them to acknowledge their sexuality—not helped by the trauma of IT screwing around with their memories. This fic is a sweet but intense love story with a lot of ~pining as Eddie works through his feelings, complicated by the fact that Richie recently came out himself.
Content warnings: N/A
“RICHIE TOZIER IS... THE COMEBACK CLOWN” by owlinaminor and tinypersonhotel. 12K words, rated Teen.
Backstory: Richie is a professional stand-up comic, but the movies make it clear that he’s kind of a hack and doesn’t write most of his own material.
Rec: I love the trope of Richie deciding to revamp his comedy career after IT: Chapter 2, writing his own material and being more open about his personal life. This multimedia fic is delightful and cleverly conceived, consisting of podcast transcripts, interviews, pop culture coverage, and similar documentation of Richie’s life as a celebrity.
Content warnings: N/A
“not exactly where i need to be (and yet it seems so close)” by varnes. 49K words, rated Mature.
Backstory: This fic covers both movies, using time travel and alternate timelines to explore the Losers’ lives as both kids and adults.
Rec: With Teen Richie and Adult Richie swapping places in slightly different timelines, this is a fix-it fic with a twist. IT naturally lends itself to thoughtful stories about childhood trauma and how our adult lives don’t match up youthful expectations, so an adult/child body-swap takes those ideas to their logical extreme. The two versions of Richie learn more about themselves by living each others’ lives—and get closer to Eddie in the process. (P.S. Don’t worry, this doesn’t include any weird situations with body-swapped adults getting into relationships with underage teens.)
Content warnings: N/A
“hit me baby one more time” by theapplepielifestyle. 11K words, rated Teen.
Backstory: Takes place during the final day of IT: Chapter Two, when the Losers reunite to defeat IT.
Rec: A great little time-loop fic, what more can I say? You know the drill—the only difference here is that after Richie stops living the same day over and over again, we also get a sequel exploring his new life with Eddie.
Content warnings: N/A
“Things that Happen after Eddie Lives” by IfItHollers. 108K words, rated Explicit.
Backstory: Starting off at the end of IT: Chapter 2, this is a long and realistic look at how the Losers recover from their ordeal and move ahead with their lives.
Rec: As is often the case with this kind of movie, a lot of fix-it fics follow similar paths to resurrect dead characters and tie up loose ends after the movie. This one stands out because instead of just handwaving some of the harder stuff, it confronts the reality of what might happen after Pennywise was defeated—starting with the fact that Richie technically murdered someone, and Mike would likely be penalized by Derry’s racist local police.
This fic has everything—excellent characterization, smart treatment of Richie’s career, a slow-burn romance, and a sensitive depiction of the Losers’ shared trauma.
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
I’m headed to Seattle next week for my first-ever GeekGirlCon! Here’s my schedule:
Saturday, November 16th, 11:30 A.M.
“Research & Data Science in Fandom”
Flourish and I will present some of our survey work, with a focus on the big shipping survey we did earlier this year.
Sunday, November 17th, 10:00 A.M.
“Fansplaining Live at GeekGirlCon!”
We have never done a live episode before so WE SHALL SEE HOW IT GOES hahaha. We’re very excited to interview Kristine Hassell from GGC about diversity and inclusion in the con space.
Hope to see some of you there! Come say hi. :-) — 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)