July 2, 2021

The Rec Center #287

Hi everyone! This week we’ve got multifandom longfic recs, some fascinating articles about wuxia and queer subtext in Lord of the Rings, some cute Fran Fine fanart, and more! — Gav

new stuff

“Queer readings of The Lord of the Rings are not accidents” by Molly Ostertag at Polygon
A beautiful and keenly-sourced analysis of The Lord of the Rings, digging deep into the romantic subtext between Frodo and Sam, and its roots in J.R.R. Tolkien’s life.

“How Twitter can ruin a life” by Emily VanDerWerff at Vox
A must-read article looking back on last year’s controversy over the SF/F short story “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter,” written by transgender author Isabel Fall. The full story is too complex to summarize here, but Fall ended up suffering greatly as a result of backlash against her work. This article examines what happened, illustrating how Twitter can amplify negative opinions and remove nuance—an important issue for all fandoms right now, not just this specific controversy.

“The History and Politics of Wuxia” by Jeannette Ng at Tor.com
A detailed and very informative examination of wuxia’s history as a genre and cultural force.

older stuff

“How a game about making zines helped me recapture my creativity in lockdown” by Sarah Maria Griffin at The Guardian
“These were intimate envelopes: tiny pieces of people’s lives, distributed with intention to a select few. Slowly, zine by zine, my burnout began to heal.”

tumblr & beyond

Fran Fine fanart by stephpeppery

What are your takes on shipping and the discourses that surround it?

“I scam my way into the Supernatural 2 writers room.”

Congrats to Star Trek: Voyager on its bold attempt to make Neelix seem important.

“Telling my kids this was Stargate SG-1.”

A perfect summary of Bertie Wooster’s deceptive himbo vibe.

fanfiction

Because some folks in the U.S. have a long weekend, we thought it was a good opportunity to run some looooong fic. Today we set the minimum at 100K words. Thank you very much to our guest reccers! And if you want more long recs, we’ve run a fair number of longfic lists in the past, including issue 144 and issue 204. — Elizabeth

“Make A Thing Go Right” by hansbeckhart. 100K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Captain America; Ship: Bucky Barnes/Sam Wilson
Recced by: Alex de Campi
Backstory: This is a modern AU with Bucky and Sam as veterans, with a transmasc, small Steve. They meet after a queer burlesque show in Brooklyn; complications ensue.
Rec: Hansbekhart is one of my favourite fic authors (if this is too long, their 4K Sam/Bucky fic “I got you babe” is great, and they also have a fab Untamed fic called “the roots grow riotous.”) This story is fully grounded in realistic depictions of the queer scene in NYC and also PTSD/recovery, and there’s such depth to these characters they feel like wholly real people you could bump into on the street. It’s just a lovely story, thoughtfully written. For someone like me who was not a fan of F&WS, going back to this fic reminded me what could be done with these characters.
Content warnings: Recreational drug use, trauma/PTSD and panic attacks

“Purple Days” by Baurus. 810K words (WIP), estimated rated Mature.
Fandom: Game of Thrones; Ship: Joffrey Baratheon/Sansa Stark
Recced by: Marina
Backstory: Joffrey Baratheon dies at his wedding—and then wakes up in Kings Landing before the Starks left Winterfell. He first uses this quasi-immortality to seek petty revenge but as he lives his life over and over again he grows as a person, forms a true partnership with Sansa and discovers the terrifying threat that the White Walkers pose.
Rec: I mainlined 650K of this fic over the course of three days and emerged wanting to read more. The version of Joffrey that Baurus wrote undergoes 810K (so far) worth of character growth and transitions from a contemptible villain to a character that I would support in a bid for the Iron Throne. The length (and its WIP status) is intimidating but because it is a time loop story it has multiple well contained loops that are nearly stand-alone so I think you can enjoy the fic without needing to read the entire thing.
Content warnings: N/A

“Tempo Rubato” by Spodumene. 108K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: The Untamed/MDZS; Ship: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Recced by: tropes
Backstory: This is a high school AU that is also a Persuasion (Jane Austen) AU, and a powerful depiction of the agonies of family duty versus self-determination.
Rec: A gorgeous and carefully-wrought love story spanning years. Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel and this does it real justice.
Content warnings: Off-screen self harm, fairly heavy angst in the middle, frank depiction of depression and minor substance abuse

“No Man’s Child” by Anoriath. 347K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Lord of the Rings; Ship: Aragorn/OFC
Recced by: anon
Backstory: A prequel to the Lord of the Rings, this is the story of the Dunedain folk led by Aragorn prior to the creation of the Fellowship, through the eyes of the woman who becomes his wife.
Rec: An incredibly rich epic that examines one of the corners of Middle Earth generally passed over for tales of Rohan and Gondor. The lives of the ordinary folk of Arnor, all richly drawn OCs, are told through the narration of Nienelen, who is one of the best OFCs I have enjoyed in any fandom. The author spent years on this story and the work and care is evident in the characterizations and plot, and the skillful way she brings the story to a conclusion that is both emotionally earned and canon compliant.
Content warnings: Canon-appropriate violence, famine, illness, death of a child

“I’d Trade My Life for Yours” by grayimperia. 398K words, rated Teen.
Fandoms: Dangan Ronpa, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone’s New Semester of Killing; Ships: Kaede/Tenko, Kaito/Kokichi
Recced by: Lauren
Backstory: Dangan Ronpa is a series of murder mystery video games in which you are a student attempting to end the killing game you’ve been forced to play. The characters are all “Ultimates” with special talents and eccentric personalities, making great fodder for odd-couple ships and chatty ensemble cast stories alike.
Rec: This epic tale nails the tone of the thrilling mysteries of Dangan Ronpa, creating grisly murders, tense investigations, and rollicking trials that feel like playing the same game with a totally different outcome.
Content warnings: Canon-typical violence

“Next Big Thing” by earlgreytea68. 283K words (plus prequels and sequels), rated Mature.
Fandom: Inception; Ship: Arthur/Eames
Recced by: cupidsbow
Backstory: Arthur and Eames are TV stars on a home improvement show, also co-starring Eames’s ex-boyfriend.
Rec: This is one of the most delightful confections I’ve ever read. The relationship between Arthur and Eames goes from strength to strength, the antagonist Alec Hart is a truly hilarious villain, and the fandom commentary as the episodes of the show airs is so on point and funny that it elevates this fic to a re-reading fave.
Content warnings: N/A

FINAL THOUGHT

We recently got an email from a reader about our one-off rec process, asking how we choose the recs that go in these multi-author, themed lists. I’ve mentioned bits and pieces over the years, but never explicitly spelled out how it works, so it felt like a good time to do so!

We introduced our one-off rec form about a year into publishing The Rec Center. Prior to that, the only way for guests to rec was to compile a full list of 5-7 stories, but that didn’t make sense for people who only wanted to rec a single story or two. The copy on the form has evolved over the years to try to stop some of the patterns we were seeing early on—we need folks to include content warnings, for example, and we don’t accept self-recs or fic that an author has clearly taken offline—but the fields have stayed the same, for the most part. So far, we’ve received close to 2,000 submissions.

Every few weeks, I transfer our newest submissions into a big spreadsheet with a column for each field and do a little cleanup. A handful of stuff has been pulled for misuse of the form (a reminder that elizabethandgav at gmail is a much better place to complain lol) and a few dozen have been flagged because they were missing huge components (some people literally only send in a link, no rec).

(I should pause here to reiterate something we try to remind folks semi-regularly: we are not reading these recced fics, which is why we really urge people to use the content warnings field correctly and try to represent the fic accurately. The time component aside—we put this together each week on top of our full-time jobs, and there are many weeks when I don’t even have time to read fic for myself, let alone for reccing—I think it’s important that these are recs coming from a wide pool of fans with different tastes and preferences. I’m always a little puzzled when people assume that we read them, because there’s no way we could know all these source materials and characters, and then at that point, what are we reading them for? If it’s style, let me assure you, folks rec fic where I do not love the writing style all the time lol. To each their own!!!)

Each week, Gav and I decide what we’re doing for the fic section of the newsletter—regular readers will know we do calls for recs around specific themes/ideas, but more often, I’ll go through the spreadsheet and see what themes we have a fair number of fics for. Once we settle on the theme, I do a search in the sheet for relevant terms. I should note at this point I’m not reading the recs at all—I’m looking purely at the metadata and trying to make a relatively balanced list. Not all dudes, not all white people, not all Western media. Depending on the theme, not all romance/shippy. Big fandoms versus more obscure fandoms. If possible, a mix of lengths. Just, ya know, variety.

Once I move these selections into the week’s newsletter doc, we do read them, but just to copy edit. We don’t make any judgments about the quality and style of a rec—like the fic itself, I think that what makes a good rec really varies. I also have no idea how many folks are choosing to click based on the recs themselves versus, say, being interested in a fandom or a ship. That being said, I know anecdotally that we have a lot of readers who are somewhat fandom-agnostic, and truly are drawn in by specific recs. (As we know from Fansplaining’s recent survey on fic and source material, behaviors and preferences around fic reading vary wildly.)

The multi-author rec list has its benefits and drawbacks. I love a single-author list that feels carefully, intentionally put together; we can never recreate that by pulling stuff from a spreadsheet. But it also gives way more of our readers a chance to contribute to The Rec Center, and it lets us include a much wider variety of voices than we envisioned when we started the newsletter. I hope that by sharing this, I can clear up some of the questions people have had about our process, and also let folks know that we have a deep backlog, in case anyone has been eagerly waiting to see their rec in the newsletter. We’re so grateful so many of you have sent stuff in—we couldn’t do this without you. — Elizabeth