The Rec Center #3
Welcome to all our new readers! <3 After last week’s very ~contemporary rec list for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, we bring you a more vintage fandom: The X-Files. Also, Japanese boy band drama, fanfic number-crunching, and a delightful Poe/Finn fan song. — Gav
new stuff
“Gillian Anderson: I Was Offered Half Duchovny’s Pay for ‘The X-Files’ Revival” by Melissa Leon at The Daily Beast
Today we learned this RIDICULOUS news. Anderson negotiated it up (obviously), but it’s still wild to hear that this is still happening to her at the peak of her career. Also, in Gav’s words, “SHE'S GILLIAN ANDERSON.”
“Explaining the Biggest News in Japan: a Boy Band Apology” by Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku
This week one of Japan’s most massive boy bands crashed Japanese Twitter (which, as the article mentions, is not an easy feat). This explainer is a great place to start.
“It Suits You - 2016 Star Wars Single” by Kirby Krackle
Omggggggggg.
“So take my heart / It suits you”
old(er) stuff
“Fangirls in the Crosshairs” by Lori Morimoto at The Outtake
“When I put my fan-scholar hat on, I have one other response: anger. I’m angry that the lazy stereotypes of nearly a century ago continue to be cheap tabloid currency today.”
tumblr etc.
“Dealing with your inevitable crush on Poe Dameron” by bomberqueen17
“The title music swells, epic and orchestral, over a black screen. Fade in: a photo, taken outdoors, head and shoulders, of Poe Dameron, squinting slightly into the sun, jaw set in determination. His hair is tousled and he is in a flight suit and leather jacket, ruggedly attractive.”
“Wattpad vs AO3 Metrics” by flourish
Flourish details her experiences publishing on Wattpad and AO3—with CHARTS and GRAPHS—and kfan says some really beautiful things about fanfiction communities.
And this week in ~unproblematic faves, Mark Hamill confirms that he’s a beautiful human and a gift to fans. “a True Jedi TM respects all life” 😍
fanfiction
Our first guest reccer is Flourish Klink, Elizabeth’s podcast partner. She’s been in fandom since the dawn of time and is currently a partner in Chaotic Good, a franchise development company. Since she’s an old-school X-Files fan, we asked her for a few recs before the revived series premieres this weekend!
The X-Files was arguably the first “born-online” fandom, and if you missed it when it the show was originally on TV, that means that you have 25 years’ worth of fanfiction to catch up on! Here are five fics to get you started. There’s slash in X-Files fandom (mostly Mulder/Skinner and Mulder/Krycek) but it’s primarily been a het and gen fandom, and so are these recs. And I am a Scullyist (as opposed to a Mulderist) and that’s reflected here too. — Flourish
“Machines of Freedom” by Amal Nahurriyeh. Rated R.
Taking place as the alien colonization of Earth begins, this novel is completely canon-compliant (yes, including the second movie) and passionately engaged with the core issues of the mytharc. If you’re catching up on where X-Files fandom is today, read this story.
“Corpse” by Livengoo. Rated R.
The perfect early-series case-file story (it was written in 1995), told from the perspective of a small-town lawyer watching Mulder and Scully work a case. Like a real episode, but better.
“Strangers and the Strange Dead” by Kipler. 8K words, rated Gen.
Written right after the fandom found out David Duchovny would not be a lead actor in Season 8, this story is simultaneously about a particular moment in X-Files fandom history and also simply beautiful.
“This Her Fever” by Aloysia Virgata. Rated “Strong R verging on NC-17.”
This story isn’t about Scully’s cancer: it's about her remission, and the aftermath, and her relationship with her family. So much of The X-Files is about Mulder's family that it feels like a necessary corrective.
“Iolokus” by MustangSally and rivkat. 36K words, rated Explicit. (full series here)
This story is famous for being grim, bleak and life-ruining, with a Scully characterization that can only be described as “shocking.” But it’s unmissable. If you only read one X-Files fic, make it this one.
FINAL THOUGHT: On those “positive” rewrites
Elizabeth: OK! So I thought maybe we should cool it with the TFA stuff, but this week they announced that the next Star Wars installment will be pushed back to December 2017 for “positive” rewrites “based on audience reaction to the new characters.”
SO. Obviously this could mean one million things but clearly a lot of Poe/Finn shippers (or only-Poe-Dameron-is-gay hopefuls) are reading into this announcement. I’m skeptical on that front—I just wrote about this actually! It’s complicated!—but I think I am mostly just cynical??
Gav: As a fellow cynical tumblr crone, I think you are RIGHT TO BE SKEPTICAL. While I love the idea of Poe being rewritten as canonically queer, I think this is more likely to be the same kind of rewrites you see on a lot of movies—either in response to early test screenings, or as in this case, in response to a previous movie.
It seems like Disney was (inexplicably) surprised by how much people loved Rey, Finn and some of the other new cast members, and are adjusting certain Episode VIII scenes accordingly. This could be stuff like more backstory for Poe, a bigger role for Phasma, more fun/exciting interactions between Rey and Finn—or potentially a slightly scaled-down role for Kylo Ren, who people find interesting but doesn’t necessarily sell toys in the same way as Darth Vader (because he’s an emotionally complex dickwad, rather than just being cool and intimidating). For example, the stormtrooper Finn fights with a lightsaber was never intended to be a “character,” but after the internet made a meme out of “TR-8R”, Lucasfilm decided to retroactively make TR-8R into one of Finn’s squadmates from the prequel book Before the Awakening.
Elizabeth: OK so that’s super interesting, though. And it kind of speaks to a broader fan/creator interaction question, because people making films and television are clearly listening to fans these days, whether they do anything with that knowledge or not, lol. Like this week saw the return of “Agent Carter,” now with a more diverse cast in the wake of the #diversifyagentcarter campaign. Or like, fan reads of Hermione as a POC clearly influenced the casting of Noma Dumezweni in The Cursed Child. But these are smaller examples compared to what’s currently The Biggest Franchise in the World?
Gav: To a certain extent I agree—creators are more plugged into fandom’s desires than before. But with something like Star Wars, they were always going to cater to audiences, because it’s a colossal money-making enterprise and they want to capitalize on the strengths of TFA. As a fan, I think it’s better to assume that our opinions have less impact than we hope. The Hermione casting may be a response to the backlash against HP’s whiteness, but it’s also facilitated by a tradition of racebent and/or race-blind casting in British theatre. (Like, the online commentary on HP and race clearly made no difference to Fantastic Beasts, right?) And with Agent Carter, the showrunners received public pressure from the show’s lead actress to diversify the cast, which is a pretty rare scenario. So while the Star Wars rewrites may be somewhat influenced by what we'd think of as “fandom,” I’m guessing they're a result of a normal Hollywood production process, like the many times Mad Max: Fury Road was re-edited after test screenings.
Also, we have no idea how drastic those rewrites are. A 7-month gap doesn’t necessarily mean they’re spending that entire time rewriting and filming. Changing the release date to December was probably a good idea in itself, because it puts a full year between each SW movie (Rogue One comes out in Dec. 2016), and avoids the summer blockbuster period—when Disney will be releasing Pirates of the Caribbean, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Spider-Man.
Elizabeth: This is amazing, I feel like your cynicism is borne out of your massive knowledge of the film industry, and I just distrust everything and everyone. :-) I can’t wait...23 months to find out what happens.
And one final final note to take you into your (possibly snowed-in) weekend:
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)