The Rec Center #21
Hello! It’s been A Week. Thanks to everyone who wrote enthusiastically about Gav’s potential Person of Interest primer—that’ll be in next week’s letter (along with her POI fic recs) because this week she wound up writing about Captain America. You know why. See the final note for her expertise on the subject. We’ve also got Star Wars fanart, a glimpse into my deep-level lurking history, and guest reccer Ravelqueen, who brings us fic about (and an intro for anyone who’s unfamiliar with) the anime/manga Kuroko no Basuke.—Elizabeth
new stuff
“‘My words stayed in folders’: life as a fandom lurker” by Elizabeth at the New Statesman
“I was listening to the conversations of other fans, but I wasn’t talking. For years—for more than a decade, in fact—I didn’t say a word.”
“Inside The Surprisingly Big Overwatch Porn Scene” by Nathan Grayson at Kotaku
“Overwatch porn combines the popularity of a multiplayer game with the character-rich nature of a single-player one, and this makes it perfect for porn.”
“The Pitch Meeting for Animaniacs” by Abbey Fenbert at The Toast
Elizabeth was going to reject this suggestion for being ~not fandomy enough~ but then came around because 1) it’s essentially fanfiction 2) IT IS A WORK OF GENIUS.
old(er) stuff
“How fangirls changed the future of publishing” by Aja Romano at The Kernel
The professional publishing boom that emerged from the Twilight fandom was so much more than 50 Shades of Grey. “And they did it all amid a tremendous amount of negative pushback from all sides—most of all from members of their own community.”
the remembrall readathon
I know some of you like Harry Potter? Mostly because every time I mention it (well, a few ships in particular) I get 18,000 cheerful messages. But! Maybe you are like me: you read Deathly Hallows in July of 2007 and you were like, “Ooooo-K I’m DONE with these books.” And you’ve read so much HP fanfic that you sometimes go, “Wait, did that happen canonically, or have I just read it in a thousand fics?” (And perhaps you’ve had that embarrassing experience of citing something “from the books” to a non-fanfic fan that was just ~a fic trope~.)
I’d been thinking of rereading HPB and DH because I’m working on a fic of my own and I’m having that WHAT IS CANON EVEN!?! experience, so the Harry Potter Alliance’s Remembrall Readathon arrived at the *perfect* moment. They’re rereading all seven books in advance of The Cursed Child, led by my friend Jackson Bird on YouTube. (Is this going to lead me to...leave comments on YouTube???) Watch the intro video here, and let me know if you have any interest in rereading the books (or hopping on for the later ones). And while you’re on the site, check out the HPA if you’re unfamiliar with them—they do amazing work.
tumblr and beyond
MEN!! by dustzinn
“Powerpunk Girls” by Jasemine Denise: Awesome punk Powerpuff Girls team cosplay!
Fine art fanart.
“Rainspell,” an evocative Supernatural fanvid by Liza Barker. This isn’t really a narrative vid, or character based—it’s more about the atmosphere of the show, and it’s excellent.
fanfiction
Ravelqueen grew up with anime, waking up every morning to watch Sailor Moon and programming her VCR to tape every episode of Detective Conan and Dragonball. Harry Potter was her entry into Western fandom, but even her first fanfic was based on her favourite manga. She’s active both on AO3 and tumblr.
“Kuroko no Basuke” (The Basketball which Kuroko plays) is a manga/anime nominally about high school basketball—but it's about as much about basketball as “The Winter Soldier” was about spying and government conspiracies. It’s really about boys and their feelings, and instead of punching the person you love, you play basketball with them. It features a huge cast of memorable characters, magic basketball moves, and a lot of high drama, because BASKETBALL IS EVERYTHING. It's also a meditation on growing up, responsibility, tragedy, friendship, teamwork, and most of all, trust. (Obviously all of these can and will only be expressed through basketball. Because it is everything.)
There are A LOT of shippy dynamics. In the first episode, the two main characters are canonically referred to as each other's “light and shadow.” We can easily read the basketball games as Kuroko defeating all of his ex-boyfriends (and indeed, people have). This leads to a lot of possible ships and fic with every dynamic you could wish for. My rec list is a potpourri of a lot of different ships (though my bias shines through^^). And I've tried selecting fics that should be understandable without too much prior canon knowledge. — Ravelqueen
“Bird on a Wire” by Lysapadin. 41K words, rated Explicit.
Ships: Kuroko/Aomine, Kuroko/Kagami
This is one of the absolute best fics in the fandom and totally AU, meaning you don’t need any canon knowledge at all—and it still captures every character's essence beautifully. It's an achingly wonderful look at growing up, trying to manage your relationships despite being a complete mess, and how to (not) get over someone.
“Man to Man” by half_sleeping. 6K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Takao/Midorima
This one makes you feel good, and there’s even basketball playing! Of the ‘oh yeah, come here and teach me’ variety. If your favorite dynamic is a sweet guy who hides behind arrogance and aloofness being wooed by a laughing trickster, this is your ship.
“Bright-Line” by Branch. 2.4K words, rated Explicit. (part of the “Have and Hold” series, 22K words in 8 parts)
Ship: Aomine/Kuroko/Kagami
Branch has been one of my favourite authors for years and this is one of her best works. If your kink is loyalty porn, then this is for you. A wonderfully heartfelt look at a D/s dynamic not built on excising strength, but on willing, gentle submission—trust and this shines through in every word here. I’d recommend reading the whole series for the full experience (and the frankly breathtaking porn).
“Drop Rule” by ouvre. 12K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Akashi/Midorima
Warnings: character death and suicide
If you feel like crying your eyes out, look no further: A story about the almosts, the regrets, and inevitability of a young, fragile relationship. Heart-wrenching, poetic, beautiful.
“A Natural Progression” by daphnerunning. 9K words, rated Explicit.
Ship: Kuroko/Kagami
An extremely cute get-together with our extremely adorable main characters. This shows the Light and Shadow, the perfect team complementing each other, their dynamic fun, and fundamentally just sweet. Also one of the few stories that touches on the fact that being a gay couple in Japan is not easy.
“High and dry” by kittebasu. 2.6K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Kuroko/Kise
If absolute devotion and a hilarious amount of thirst is your thing in a ship, then I have good news for you: there is noone more thirsty than Kise Ryouta and this fic perfectly illustrates this. Funny, short get-together.
FINAL THOUGHT: GAV ON CAPTAIN AMERICA
Captain America has had kind of a wild week. First, Twitter was all #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend, inspiring even the damn BBC to make a shippy fanvid. Then within 48 hours, Marvel published a comic that “revealed” Steve Rogers as (apparently) a lifelong Hydra double-agent, a plot twist that basically amounts to him being a Nazi.
This twist was pretty successful in the sense that ~there’s no such thing as bad publicity~, because it ended up trending on social media all day. Which brings me to some thoughts on why this comic was so controversial, and why I personally think it’s garbage.
Taken at face value, “Hydra Steve Rogers” is a blatant shock tactic, and potentially very offensive given the character’s history as an anti-Nazi hero, created by two Jewish men in 1941. (For more on this, I recommend Jessica Plummer's post.)
The comic’s writer and editor have done several interviews promoting this as an earth-shattering change to Captain America canon. They want readers to take it Very Seriously, both in terms of Marvel canon, and as a work of political fiction.
Except there’s no way Marvel would permanently ruin one of their most popular characters like this, so OF COURSE this plotline will be reversed or explained away by the end of the comic’s run. This means Marvel used “Captain America is a nazi” as a publicity stunt.
Some people are saying that it’s stupid for fans to pre-judge an entire comic by its first issue, especially when superhero comics have a long history of using gimmicky plot twists to boost sales. But if fans decide to avoid this comic because they feel it betrays the integrity of a beloved character, they’re entitled to do so. Regardless of where Steve Rogers stands in a few months’ time, Marvel chose to market issue #1 as a story about Captain America being a secret Nazi, promoting this as an insight into IRL political issues.
As @fangirlJeanne put it on Twitter, “We don't have to eat an entire shit sandwich before we can officially pronounce it to be shit.”
I was interested to see the Twitter response from the comic’s writer, Nick Spencer, because to me it felt... mildly troll-y, I guess?
He seems excited about how much attention the comic is getting—which is fair enough, but I can’t help but suspect he misunderstands the impact of that negative attention. I’m sure most comics creators are familiar with fandom’s backlash cycle, where fans routinely freak out about everything from costume redesigns to the new Thor being a woman. But there’s a difference between petty complaints, bigoted nonsense (ie people getting mad about Miles Morales as Spider-Man), and people’s criticism of Hydra Steve Rogers.
On the bright side for Marvel, this comic successfully overshadowed any coverage of DC’s “Rebirth” event, which launched on the same day. Score one for controversial publicity, I guess? — Gav
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