The Rec Center #26
This week we’ve got Once Upon A Time recs from guest reccer Brenna, a quick primer for DC’s premiere gay superhero dudes Apollo & Midnighter (who are getting a new comic this year!!), and some thoughts from Elizabeth re: the reader survey we sent out a couple of weeks ago. — Gav
new stuff
“Where Have All The Good Men Gone And Where Are All The Gods? Reflections On The Rifts In Superhero Fandom” by Andrew Wheeler at Comics Alliance
“It should be no surprise that groups of people that possess an acute and personal sense of injustice and oppression should be drawn to the fantasy of justice offered by superheroes at their most optimistic.”
“The secret life of K-pop fans over 30” by Colette Bennett at The Daily Dot
A report from a panel for K-pop fans over 30 at KCON. One participant says, “When you are older and have more things going on in your life you understand the value of being respectful of other people.”
“Fandom Didn’t Make Me This Way, It Just Gave Me Someone to Talk To” by Undie Girl at The Geekiary
“This is what makes pop culture fun for me. Just watching, reading, listening to something is fine, but it’s not what I’m here for and it never was. Fandom just gives me someone to talk to so I don’t have to yell at my grandma over Christmas lunch.”
old(er) stuff
“A Future for Books Online: Tumblr’s Reblog Book Club” by Elizabeth at The Millions
One survey respondent requested more book fandom stuff, and if there’s one thing Elizabeth has written about, it’s book fandom! (Er, and yelling at media figures for showing actors fanfic.) The subject of this piece, Rachel Fershleiser, left Tumblr a few weeks ago, so this serves as a look back at the wonderful fannish book community she fostered there.
apollo & midnighter explainer
If you’re interested in queer superhero comics, this is the best fandom news of the week: Apollo and Midnighter are getting a joint series from DC, starting in October. FINALLY!! For new readers, here’s a quick guide:
Apollo = like Superman, but blond. Solar-powered super strength and the ability to fly, along with that whole ~heroic/iconic persona.
Midnighter = visually comparable to Batman (their characters are intentional analogues for the Clark/Bruce partnership), but with fewer similarities than Apollo and Superman. He’s a scarred, cynical warrior whose key superpower is the ability to predict his opponent’s next move during combat.
Created by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch in 1998 for the superhero team comics Stormwatch and The Authority, they’re among the first canonically queer superheroes in mainstream comics. They eventually get married and adopt a child, but DC canon being what it is, their continuity is a little patchy.
The Authority has a darker, more cynical tone than team comics like Justice League, and Apollo and Midnighter are less ~sanitized than most gay characters during that early 2000s period when pop-culture was just starting to realize that queer people exist. So while their relationship is definitely an OTP true-love situation, they’re not shining beacons of perfection. For instance, Midnighter frequently (and violently) kills his enemies, and Apollo has no moral qualms about his behaviour. P.S. They live in a spaceship with the rest of their team!!
COMICS RECS: It’s a while since I read The Authority, so I’m just gonna give a general rec for Volume 1, written by Warren Ellis. Avoid issue #14 in Vol. 2, in which Mark Millar felt the need to include a rape scene. (IIRC, a lot of Mark Millar’s run is... unpleasant. Sorry, folks.) Here’s Tor.com’s take on the 2011 relaunch of Stormwatch, and if you just want a timeline of Authority story arcs, Wikipedia is your friend!
I highly recommend the 2015 Midnighter solo series, which is just 12 issues long and leads directly into the upcoming comic, with an overlapping creative team. The art is fantastic, Midnighter’s characterization is really strong, and it focuses specifically on him instead of being a team comic with an ensemble cast. It’s my favorite action comic of the past year.
Midnighter #11 (2015)
THERE IS FANFIC! However, it isn’t all on Ao3, so you may have to do some googling. Try this Dreamwidth community, and cthonical’s LJ primer, which is a few years old but includes lots of great panels from A/M comics. And get thee hence to Tumblr, obvs.
tumblr and beyond
Tumblr user batmanisagatewaydrug wrote an INCREDIBLE fanfic/headcanon idea detailing how the next High School Musical movie should go, and honestly: Disney should get on this. It’s perfect.
Petition for more obnoxious trolls’ comments to be turned into awesome fanart.
“I Am What I Am” by thingswithwings—a deliciously campy fanvid for the 1966 Batman TV series.
fanfiction
You can find Brenna on Tumblr as geckospeaks and on AO3 as mlraven, where she has Feelings about femslash, Star Wars, and pretty much everything else.
Even though my love for the actual show has waned, I still hold the Once Upon a Time fandom (and more specifically, the SwanQueen pairing) in my heart as one of my first positive femslash experiences. I love SwanQueen fics for their deft weaving of humor and angst, their frequent disavowal of canon bullshit, and the excellent AUs.
In the show, Emma and Regina clash over everything from parenting styles to car maintenance, but in fic, they always get together by the end. SwanQueen fics often contain some combination of boss/employee relationship, soulmate AU, dealing with complicated family histories, and co-parenting. I had an intensely difficult time cutting my recc list to only 5 fics, so please check out this list of runners-up for more! — Brenna
“Imagine The Rock Came to Storybrooke” by amycarey. 3K words, rated Gen.
(+sequel, “Imagine Guinevere Came to Storybrooke”)
(SwanQueen in background, Marion-centric/foreground Marion/The Rock)
If you’re anything like me—and amycarey—you’re frustrated (read: livid) at how the writers treat women of color on OUaT. This humorous fix-it soothes my perennial anger.
“Someone has already claimed that username” by coalitiongirl. 11K words, rated Mature.
I happen to love stories that mix Real Internet Culture(™) with canon, like this hilarious, screenshot-filled fic where Regina manages to stalk Emma on Tumblr whilst not realizing her angst over #bosslady might not be completely platonic. (Oh, Regina.)
“but what if the urn had wi-fi” by amycarey. 2.5K words, rated Teen.
(SwanQueen is background pairing, foreground is gen)
In a related vein, Ingrid had to have something to do while cooped up in the urn for 20 years. Who says that thing wasn’t binge-watch Gilmore Girls? Featuring Ingrid, Henry, and Elsa teaming up to get Emma and Regina together.
“Right There All the Time” by devje. 28K words, rated Gen.
In case you can’t tell, I love tropes like Capitalized Snarky Labels(™) and outside parties scheming to smush Emma and Regina together. Here, Henry keeps a field journal (“The Big Book of Gay”) of his moms’ behaviors in the hopes that confronting them will make them realize they’re in love. Shockingly, it doesn’t go to plan.
“you gotta know when to hold ’em” by coalitiongirl. 2K words, rated Teen.
A spin on the typical soulmate AU, I love this fic for its poignant descriptions of Emma as combination con-artist/foster kid/lover, and for its wonderful twist.
Bonus femslash rec:
“The Malteser Falcon” by Toft. 2.5K words, rated Gen.
(Great British Bake Off RPF, Sue Perkins/Mel Giedroyc, noir AU)
Someone is trying to poison Mary Berry! Only hardboiled detective Sue Perkins and cryptic crossword-solving assistant Mel Giedroyc can solve this mystery. A perfectly genre fic with Sue and Mel’s snappy banter, what could be bad?
FINAL THOUGHT
All right! With our poll out for two weeks, we got nearly 400 responses! Thank you, thank you, thank you. Getting a general sense of things with the multiple choice questions was so helpful! On the nonfiction side, people largely want the same amount or more of our sections. Interestingly, ship manifestos got the most number of votes in the “what do you want to see more of,” so you will be getting more of those. Gav wrote one last week, I’ll do one next week, and this might be something we want to crowdsource in the future. If you yearn to write a ship manifesto, definitely get in touch!
When it came to fanfiction, people were all over the map. We are especially curious about the 1.6% of you who ONLY read fic that you don’t know the source material for. :-) Dudeslash was the most popular, but femslash, het, poly, and gen all got TONS of votes, and lots of you requested more femslash and poly ships in the comments, so more of that on the way. More than half of you wrote in to say what you liked (interestingly, only a third of you wrote in suggestions) and it was both heartening to see what you’re loving and very helpful to hear what you want more of or additional things we can be doing.
I had a few general observations, especially when it comes to fic!
Be the list you want to see in the world
We got a fair number of requests for specific pairings or fandoms (this happens via our message box, too, sometimes with *incredibly* specific requests). There’s always a chance that one of us or one of our volunteers will do the list you’re after, but if you really love a pairing etc, I’d strongly encourage YOU to volunteer to rec it (or if you’re not comfortable, maybe a friend in that fandom, or a group of friends—that’s how I’ve done most of my lists, lol). If you’re nervous, I have BEEN there, I’d never recced a fic before this newsletter beyond that amazing poly Torchwood story I made a Powerpoint for two years ago that I rec every five seconds. I’ll be happy to work with you!
The East/West divide
Gav and I are *very* aware that this is a pretty Western-fandom-centric newsletter, and it’s something we want to fix. As I was discussing with Ravelqueen, who did one anime/manga list for us a month or back and has another one in the queue, this is a bit chicken-and-egg, because Gav and I—and most of our volunteer reccers, based on what they suggest—spend most of our time with Western fandoms, which probably ensures we’ll mostly have readers from those fandoms. But this is something we can be proactive about! We’ve been reaching out to friends to write non-Western lists, but also, just as the “be the list you want to see in the world” applies to everyone who requests something specific, I strongly encourage those of you who asked for more anime/manga (and games and other not-TV/film/book fandoms for that matter) to get in touch.
We are all different ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
When I first read the results and saw a person say they liked something and the next person say that hated that very same thing, I was like, “ARGH WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS INFORMATION.” But I’ve come around to a possibly healthier interpretation, which is that we’re all different and we all want different things and *hopefully* we’ll have something for everyone—though we’ll never have everything for everyone. I mean, it holds true for the two of us: Gav and I are pretty different and have different tastes! I think it’s actually pretty awesome that there are so many ways to do and enjoy fandom, and I’m going to stop now before I get really sappy.
So anyway, thank you times infinity to every single person who responded, and like, also to everyone else, for reading this newsletter and sharing it and giving us such positive feedback over these months and I’m venturing towards sappy again, aren’t I? <3 — Elizabeth
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)