The Rec Center #216
Hi everyone! We have a great rec list for this week’s instalment of Femslash February: Guest reccer queersintherain wrote an f/f-centric primer for a/b/o fic, exploring the history of the trope. Next week’s list will cover how f/f a/b/o is used to explore queer themes! Plus, we have an interview with a 1960s Star Trek fandom veteran, a truly unique cosplay project, and more. — Gav
new stuff
“After 50 years of Fandom, Beatrice Scroggin is Still in Love With Trek” by Emily L. Hauser at StarTrek.com
A wonderful interview with a 90-year-old Star Trek fan who has been watching the show since day 1.
“The Quest for the Best Amusement Park Is Ever-Changing and Never-Ending” by Hal Sundt at The Ringer
An interesting longread on the past, present, and future of amusement parks (and the fan experiences within them).
older stuff
“For Women of Color, the Price of Fandom Can Be Too High” by Angelica Jade Bastién at the New Republic
“Perhaps this reveals the heart of the matter—that white viewers are forced to empathize with characters that don’t look like them in a genre they thought they owned.”
tumblr & beyond
Coming soon: this 50+ page Deep Space 9 fanzine!
“Coffee shop AUs are the 21st century version of the pastoralist fantasy.”
A thread on how Māori traditions fed into Mandalorian worldbuilding in Star Wars.
“I’m a serious cosplayer, I say as I make a worm on a string cosplay.”
“i can’t believe that both voldemort and palpatine canonically fucked.”
fanfiction
queersintherain loves cats and rainy days and is working on getting back to that writing thing!
A/B/O is a trope most often seen in m/m, but there is a small yet mighty tradition of it in f/f too, and this is the first of two rec lists celebrating that!
Really basically, A/B/O, referring to alpha, beta, and omega, is based off of a deeply incorrect conception of wolf pack hierarchy (don’t think too hard, I know it doesn’t line up at all), where alphas are typically dominant and make the babies, omegas are typically submissive and have the babies, and betas… well, it really varies. Sometimes betas are standard humans, sometimes they’re all sorts of other things.
Alphas correspond most closely to ideas about masculinity, and omegas about femininity, but where it gets really interesting is when this doesn’t match up. Male omegas, female alphas… with three “genera” that interact with and don’t correspond to different genders, you can get some really interesting and queer writing. You can also get reinforcing of some really not great stereotypes, with “alpha” used to just make one half of a same sex couple “the man” and the other half “the woman,” but this list is about the interesting stuff.
Specifically, this rec list is a history of some of the interesting stuff. Not “the” history, because there’s never only one, but this is one path by which A/B/O came from m/m to f/f.
(A note: a lot of f/f A/B/O involves female alphas having dicks or dick-like organs, sometimes referred to as cocks or knots. I find this sensitively done (like not in a fetishizing way) by all of the authors on this list, but your mileage may vary. Specifically, the first two fics on this list don’t involve it (sometimes female alphas do fisting instead) and the latter two do.)
Supernatural fandom was where the A/B/O trope was popularized (source), and in this fic, Chash applied it to an f/f Supernatural RPF couple.
“A Fine Job of Bending All the Rules” by Chash. 4K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Supernatural RPF; Ships: Genevieve Cortese/Adrianne Palicki, Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki
Backstory: College AU of Supernatural actors! No real backstory needed. Adrienne is a female alpha who has just started college, Gen is interested and has never met a female alpha, and sort of has to figure out what to do about that.
Rec: Awesome A/B/O worldbuilding that gets into the social aspects of female alphas and a bit about male omegas. Also, this is the first part of a short series—there is no porn in this one, but that’s in a later work!
Content warnings: mentions of discrimination based on genera, some discussion of A/B/O-typical consent issues (dubious consent because pheromones want you to do it)
From that fic, Alsike was inspired to start writing f/f A/B/O, starting with this one for Victorious, a Nickelodeon show about teens attending a performing arts school. (Source: author’s note). (Note: this fic is not actually from 2016, that’s just when it was moved over to ao3 from ff.net).
“Animals and Prizes” by Alsike. 43K words, rated Teen (thes sequel is rated Explicit).
Fandom: Victorious; Ship: Tori Vega/Jade West
Backstory: Tori is the new student at a performing arts school, a female alpha and trying to hide it because of all of the social consequences, and biology isn’t destiny, right? Jade is an omega who hates being an omega and hates alphas more. She is not having any of Tori’s clueless attempts to be friendly. They sort of crash into each other.
Rec: All of Alsike’s fics are wonderful, and this one is no exception. It does great things re: worldbuilding what an A/B/O society would look like, and the characters are all sharp edges clashing with each other in messy and super compelling ways.
Content warnings: forced marriage, attempted sexual assault, discussion of A/B/O-typical consent issues, A/B/O-typical discussion of pregnancy as breeding
Blackrising got into A/B/O by reading Alsike’s fic (source) and wrote a few A/B/O fics in the 100, the first one of which is below!
“(Baby) I’m Preying On You Tonight” by Blackrising. 4.6K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: The 100; Ship: Clarke/Lexa
Backstory: Clarke is an alpha, and has grown up being taught the usual genera stereotypes about alphas and omegas. Lexa is an omega (as Clarke finds out when she goes into heat), and conforms to none of these.
Rec: For whatever reason, fandoms seem to gravitate toward an understanding of who is the Alpha in the relationship and who is the Omega for any given ship. For The 100, consensus landed on Lexa as the Alpha and Clarke as the Omega, which is why it’s interesting that the story which kicked off A/B/O for the Clexa fandom is the reverse. This story also speaks to the concept of control in a playful way—who has it, who doesn’t have it, and how common wisdom on the subject can lead you astray.
Content warnings: A/B/O-typical dubious consent
The 100 was (and is) a huge f/f fandom, and Blackrising’s popularity was instrumental in bringing A/B/O here. From The 100 fandom, the trope proliferated and got into other fandoms. A/B/O works differently everywhere—doing different worldbuilding around genera and social roles is one of the appeals of the genre for a lot of authors queering it—but here is a primer on the trope more broadly, which also inspired Blackrising (source—author’s note).
“Alphas, Betas, Omegas: A Primer” by norabombay. 10K words, Not rated—no explicit sex but a lot of discussion of explicit sex things.
Fandom: N/A (various fandoms mentioned); Ships: N/A
Backstory: Basically an explainer on the A/B/O trope.
Rec: Very m/m centric, but it is EXTENSIVE! All you wanted to know and beyond about the nuts and bolts of the A/B/O trope, and I found it an interesting read in terms of which parts of the trope stuck around (/stuck around in my fandoms at least) and which really didn’t.
Content warnings: discussions of A/B/O-typical consent issues including non-con, probably read the fic tags too!
And finally, a bonus rec, also by Alsike! This is the fic that introduced the term “genera” as a way to refer to someone’s alpha/beta/omega status. It’s a bonus rec because genera is by no means a universally used term—so it’s not quite part of this history in the same way the other fics on this list are—but the term has proliferated since this and has been a great way to get into further discussions of the intersections between A/B/O status and gender in A/B/O!
“Symmetry” by Alsike. 18K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Supergirl (TV); Ships: Lucy Lane/Alura Zor-El, Alex Danvers/Kara Danvers
Backstory: Canonically Lucy Lane is an army major and a lawyer, and Alura Zor-El is Kara (Supergirl)’s mother. A great ship between two characters who have never met in canon! In this AU, Alura (alpha) is a justice of the peace who’s never had much time for omegas, and doesn’t know what the social rules for interacting with them are. She ends up taking on Lucy as her intern and then accidentally sort of ruining this relationship. But when her daughter Kara and her friend Alex (canonically her foster sister, but not in this fic) get into trouble, Lucy is the last place Alura has to turn.
Rec: This fic has some wonderful worldbuilding! An A/B/O AU set on a Krypton-style world where while some folks live in mated pairs, old Houses are more of a pack-style family structure. It explores the history and tension around these two family styles, and also, A/B/O and the law!
Content warnings: A/B/O-typical consent issues, A/B/O-typical discussion of pregnancy as breeding, semi-forced marriage and some dubious consent there, dubiously consented to gynecology visit (briefly mentioned)
Stay tuned for part two of this rec list, which is a lot more f/f that uses A/B/O to do some fun and queer shit!
FINAL THOUGHT
Not to ~get into it~ in this space (tune into the next Fansplaining for an in-depth discussion of fair use/copyright law, technology, and fic!) but if anyone hasn’t seen the OTW’s official statement re: the recent spate of unofficial AO3 apps, it’s worth checking out. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Fanlore page is being updated as we speak and is already very comprehensive.) Sites and apps that strip fic off AO3 and repost it (rather than re-skin the site, as some of these were doing) have popped up a lot over the years, so the OTW’s guide to issuing a DMCA takedown request—you own the copyright to your published fic!—could be helpful when it comes to that precise legal language. — 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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