March 26, 2021

The Rec Center #273

Hello and welcome to the New New Rec Center! We’re actually exactly the same as ever, but now we’re on Buttondown for reasons we explained last week, and Elizabeth will extrapolate upon in the outro.

In this week’s issue we’ve got multifandom fic recs where reccers don’t know the source material, an article about what the Snyder Cut campaign means for fandom, and a whole section dedicated to The Problematic Ship stuck in the Suez Canal. — Gav

new stuff

“The Falcon’s GoFundMe Page” by Orli Matow and Aliza Small at McSweeney’s
An amusing response to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s rather poorly-conceived revelation that Sam Wilson wasn’t paid to be an Avenger.

“The Extended Universe: What the Snyder Cut Means for the Future of Fandom” by Ben Lindbergh at The Ringer
Elizabeth is quoted at length in this great piece connecting the Snyder Cut to the future of fan/creator interaction, including the sentence “I love the X-Men” and her most important suggestion to Hollywood: “Figure out ways to make these movies more coherent before you put it out.”

https://twitter.com/random_8tor/status/1370818583228346369

older stuff

“The Chaotic World of ‘90 Day Fiancé’ Fan Art” by Quinn Myers at Mel Magazine
Sadly, Mel magazine announced this week that it’s closing up shop. They’ve covered plenty of niche & nontraditional fandom stories over the years, and this article is a great example.

tumblr & beyond

Genderbent f/f fanart for The Untamed by shotce.

“supernatural is like the opposite of an edible.”

TikTok: What if Star Wars was a Western?

An iconic tale of a middle-schooler’s Fullmetal Alchemist fanfic.

“i wish the pedro pascal dilf extended universe a very pleasant evening.”

“i can’t help it that i go apeshit for men in formal 18th-19th century naval dress.”

the problematic ship

“The strange curse of being a geography major and seeing commentary about ‘shipping’ on this site…”

#alpha ship knotted the ground

The LAYERS of meme here: the ship as…Patricia Lockwood’s cat

Everyone’s talking about Ever Given/Suez Canal, but if that isn’t to your taste, don’t worry—there’s also Suez Canal/Reader.

steal his look: cargo ship edition

Not to me. Not if it’s you.

“rip james flint youd have loved the ship stuck in the suez canal disrupting global maritime trade”

fanfiction

Following Fansplaining’s fic + source material survey, we asked readers to send in recs for fics that they read without knowing the source material first. Last week, we had fics that led reccers to seek out the source material; this week, we’ve got fics where reccers still haven’t consumed the source material. We got many, many submissions for both asks, so there will be more of these lists in the future! And thank you very much to everyone who sent in a rec! — Elizabeth

“Psmith Pops In” by KannaOphelia. 4.5K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Psmith (P.G. Wodehouse); Ship: Mike Jackson/Rupert Psmith
Recced by: Orangistae
Backstory: Wodehouse’s Psmith novels follow the adventures of eccentric, erudite Psmith and his loyal himbo BFF Mike. In this fic, set shortly after they’ve graduated from school, Mike is visiting Psmith’s family home and trying to deal with certain ~feelings that he’s lately become aware of.
Rec: I stumbled onto this fandom last Yuletide and immediately fell in love with the combo of Wodehousian nonsense + roommates + two idiots who refuse to talk about their feelings. This one is a particularly charming example, a getting together fic with a nice mixture of humour and pining.
Content warnings: N/A

“Girl Boss Destiny” by thingswithwings (podfic by: growlery, olive2pod (olive2read), sophinisba). 31K words (or 3:41:13 podfic), rated Explicit.
Fandom: Schitt’s Creek; Ship: Alexis Rose/Stevie Budd/Twyla Sands
Recced by: Shadaras
Backstory: Schitt’s Creek, to my understanding, is a very queer sitcom about found family and finding yourself in a small town. I’m pretty sure it’s centered on two men? This fic is centered on women, though. (I have not seen the canon, but I’ve read fic, and that’s what I’ve gotten out of it.)
Rec: This fic is about characters figuring themselves out! I love seeing aromantic and polyamorous representation, and characters dancing around each other awkwardly because they both have strong drives towards material accomplishment but also want each other and don’t know how to reconcile those desires. The way that all three women slowly figure out what they want individually, and how they can have both the businesses they want and the relationship they want, is beautifully done.
Content warnings: Use of alcohol, weed

“begin the end” by dustofwarfare. 94K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Final Fantasy VII; Ship: Cloud Strife/Sephiroth
Recced by: gracelesso
Backstory: Cloud finds himself responsible for babysitting/bodyguarding his nemesis, who has no memory of his several attempts to destroy the world.
Rec: You really don’t need to know anything about FFVII canon (I don’t, anyway) except that Sephiroth is an unhinged villain with a flair for drama. dustofwarfare manages to extract so much humour and some really poignant character work (Sephiroth cooks tofu and builds a gazebo!) from his memory loss and its impact on his relationship with Cloud.
Content warnings: N/A

“Linger in the Sun” by etymologyplayground. 39K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The Untamed; Ship: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Recced by: Kate
Backstory: Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are cursed so they can’t hear or see each other, but the students/trainees with them can hear and see both of them and have to run messages between them. It is very cute and funny.
Rec: So I have never watched the Untamed and probably never will, but I’ve read a few stories and I really enjoyed this one. I got a primer on the pairing through a podcast and some tumblr posts and I think that was enough? I don’t know who any of the other characters are but it was fine.
Content warnings: Minor character threatens to kill herself (does not do anything), non-fatal drowning

“Crash Into Me” by nirejseki. 6K words, rated Teen.
Fandoms: The Flash (CW), Supergirl (CW); Ship: Kara Danvers/Mick Rory
Recced by: Kelsey
Backstory: Teenage alien Kara Danvers and her baby cousin Kal-El escape from government oversight after arriving on Earth following Krypton’s destruction. They get tangled up in the lives of teenaged Mick Rory and Leonard Snart, and never quite untangle themselves.
Rec: I generally find the CW superhero shows painfully awkward to watch, but their casts are beautiful. This fic takes a lot of high level character concepts (alien orphans, criminals with hearts of gold) and throws them into a fun AU.
Content warnings: Anti-immigration policies, imprisonment

“Twenty-Year Man” by ellen_fremedon. 25K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold; Ship: Lord Ivan Vorpatril/Byerly Vorrutyer
Recced by: anon
Backstory: A political intrigue brings two men together—By (intelligence worker) and Ivan (upstanding party man)—after a party ends up with several members drugged. In getting to the bottom of this mystery, they uncover a fascinating plot involving the upcoming mayoral race.
Rec: This is maybe the most interesting universe I’ve ever stumbled across, and it’s written with all the style of legendary pulpy thrillers. Ivan’s personal and political interests collapse, folding seamlessly into the narrative, weaving all the ends together for a mystery that keeps me up to 4 am to finish it, every time I reread it.
Content warnings: Homophobia as the political norm, and from the fic: This story contains both consensual and non-consensual drug use; however, all the sex in it takes place under circumstances of unimpaired consent.

FINAL THOUGHT

First of all, thanks so much to everyone who wrote in in support of our switch off Substack last week—changing platforms was important to us, but we were glad to hear it was important to a lot of readers, too. We’re very excited to be here at Buttondown, though it’ll take us a few weeks to get everything cleaned up (particularly internal links!) so we appreciate your patience. Because we were asked about it, I should clarify that I’ve made sure tracking is turned off—we’ve never had any analytics about our subscribers other than email addresses and an aggregate number of opens and clicks, and there’s no reason to change that!

And finally, the big thing we should address: $$, namely Buttondown’s yearly hosting costs. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate everyone who got in touch to say they’d be willing to donate. Luckily, though, an anonymous and extremely generous benefactor offered to cover the costs for a whole year! This simplified things a great deal and let us get off Substack much more quickly than anticipated—thank you so, so much, anon. <3 — Elizabeth