The Rec Center #218
Hi folks! This week we’ve got soulmate AU fanfic recs, coverage of China’s AO3 ban (the biggest fandom news story of the week), Zelda fanart, and more! — Gav
new stuff
“China has censored the Archive of Our Own, one of the internet’s largest fanfiction websites” by Aja Romano at Vox
This was a big story last weekend, but if you haven’t seen it, this explains what happened with access to AO3 in China a week ago, contextualized amongst other crackdowns against Chinese fanfiction writers.
“Cameo Is Weirder Than Anyone Expected” by John Cullen and Stefan Heck at The Atlantic
Folks, Cameo is wild: “Fans pay anywhere from roughly $1 to $5,000 for a roughly one- to 5,000-second (the two amounts are not correlated) clip of their favorite celebrities offering a personalized message.”
“How Furby fandom became a haven for the queer and neurodiverse” by Siobhan Ball at the Daily Dot
An intro to the creative furby modding community.
older stuff
“The Empowered Stan” by Keidra Chaney at Fansplaining
“Fandom can be both identity and liberation—but how do we keep our joys from being co-opted by corporate interests?”
tumblr & beyond
Breath of the Wild fanart by karekareo
“Our hearts go out to the Artemis Fowl fandom in their time of horror.”
A wonderful Twitter thread exploring a WILDLY detailed homemade RPG manual including fictional maps, histories, and extensive worldbuilding. Oh my god???
“Thinking about how Geordi was surprised to find out that no one else sees Data glowing…”
Finding Nemo (2003) // Aquaman (2018)
The Internet Archive’s VHS Vault has been updated with hundreds of new digitized videos from the 80s and 90s since the start of the year! 21K and counting….
fanfiction
This week’s theme was inspired by a TikTok trend! Soulmate AUs (including stories where people recognize their soulmates by a word or mark on their wrist) are a long-running fanfic trope, and this week that concept became a TikTok meme. We put out a call for your favorite soulmate fics, and oh boy did you deliver! — Gav
“Gentle Antidote” by x_los. 11K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers; Ship: Harriet Vane/Peter Wimsey
Recced by: Allegra
Backstory: Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey enjoy an enthralling courtship over the course of four novels in Dorothy Sayers’ classic interwar detective series.
Rec: I do not normally go in for soulmate/soulmark AUs AT ALL, but I saw this rec’d as specifically doing something really interesting with the worldbuilding and ended up giving it a shot, and I’m SO glad I did. The story does something absolutely wonderful with the love-at-first-sight trope canonically present in the series, putting it in the context of a world where one’s soulmate’s name appears on your wrist when you turn 21. The voices of the characters are captured so perfectly, and all the brilliant little worldbuilding details are just the cherry on top of the romantic arc.
Content warnings: N/A
“survival is a talent” by ShanaStoryteller. 339K words (WIP), rated Teen.
Fandom: Harry Potter; Ship: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Recced by: Blythe
Backstory: It’s Harry Potter. It’s Drarry. It’s convincing and sweet and fluffy Drarry that made me like the pairing.
Rec: This really fills my need for “Harry Potter but enjoyable for a stressed, queer adult who doesn’t like JKR” fic. The worldbuilding is great, it strays FAR from canon but in a way that’s a joy to read.
Content warning: N/A
“Soloist” by Eccentric_Hat. 30K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Yuri!!! On Ice; Ship: Minako-centric gen
Recced by: Chestnut_filly
Backstory: Okukawa Minako is Katsuki Yuuri’s ballet teacher/mentor, who lives in Fukuoka as the teacher/owner at her own ballet studio, having retired from the stage after an illustrious career.
Rec: This fic follows Minako during that career, deftly weaving together real-world ballet history and fantastic character work with a wonderfully subverted take on the soulmarks trope. The ballet is note-perfect (a REAL rarity in fandom) and does an amazing job of demonstrating Minako’s character growth, tying together the story’s themes, and concretely propelling the plot. Inspirational!
Content warning: Racism in the context of European ballet companies
“Power of Three” by Sholio. 17K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Stranger Things; Ship: Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler
Recced by: singularsenary
Backstory: Stranger Things is set in the 80’s. A science facility accidentally unleashes supernatural horrors on a small town, and a mixed group of adults, teens, and kids get caught up in that secret. In canon, Nancy and Steve were dating then she broke up with him and started dating Jonathan.
Rec: An uncommon use of soul marks as a new phenomenon, necessitating society and the characters discover their meaning.
Content warning: Mentions of past character death
“set in skin” by Kahika. 18K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Mass Effect; Ship: Garrus Vakarian/Ashley Williams
Recced by: BookishDi
Backstory: Garrus/Ashley is very much a rarepair in the Mass Effect fandom, but I really like how writers explore the similarities between them and the prejudices each of them overcome over the course of their relationship.
Rec: Kahika does a fantastic job of exploring how soulmarks might affect life in the Mass Effect verse, from cross-racial soulmarks in the case of Ashley and Garrus, to the impact in the military to what happens when non-soulmarked individuals get together.
Content warnings: N/A
“Three Marks” by sanam. 114K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Teen Wolf; Ship: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Recced by: sterekcollection
Backstory: This is a soulmark fic where people form different kinds of bonds. For example, one person might feel another person’s presence and feel it if they get hurt or go too far away. Another might feel what the other person is feeling emotionally.
Rec: The worldbuilding is standout in this story. Many soulmate stories don’t really think through the implications of what a world with soulmates would really look like, and this fic did an excellent job of doing that. It’s also a lovely slow burn romance between Stiles and Derek because neither of them wanted the bond that spontaneously manifested between them. It takes them a good while to start navigating the way Derek can’t go too far from Stiles, and the way Derek always knows what Stiles is feeling. The bond feels like a constraint, a prison, to them at first. But they’re soulmates, and they do find their way to a very nice HEA.
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
As Gav hinted at in the fic section, you sent us far more soulmark AUs than we could use in a single list, so we’ll do another one soon for sure!
But right now I’m putting out a slightly more complicated call for recs: I’m looking to do a list of fic + remix of that fic, specifically as a pair, where both fics kind of enrich each other, in conversation. I have been reading fanfiction for like 150 years (uh, 22) and I can only think of a couple of examples—mostly I can think of remixes I prefer greatly to the original fic, or vice versa, OR pairs of stories that are both great but don’t really say much to each other—but I’m sure there are more in the world!
So if you can think of a pair, please send them in, via our standard submissions form—you can use the “backstory” field to briefly talk about both fics and how they connect to each other, and please tell us about why they really work as a pair in the “rec” section. And thank you! <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.
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