The Rec Center #304
Hi folks! This week we’ve got articles about Myspace and cancelled fandoms, posts about Hannibal and Star Trek, our final multifandom rec list of paranormal fanfic, and more! — Gav
new stuff
“The Buffynaisance: why we’re newly obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer” by Roisin Lanigan at i-D (Vice)
“24 years since it first aired, the show is still recruiting an army of superfans, many of whom weren’t even alive when Buffy was saving the world.”
“When ‘cancel culture’ means letting go” by Andrea Grimes at Dame Magazine
An interesting new angle on the endless (and often bad-faith) discussions about “cancel culture,” interviewing fans who chose to break ties with their problematic idols.
“The Myspace Top 8 is destroying society” by Ryan Broderick at Garbage Day
On “technopanics” and the way adults’ cultural anxieties manifest in attempts to control teens’ behavior online, from Myspace to TikTok.
https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman/status/1451654367744954372
older stuff
“Sick of ‘Buffy’ Cultists? You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Emily Nussbaum at the New York Times
As a new generation of fans embrace Buffy, an interesting look back at coverage of the fandom as the show was wrapping up.
tumblr & beyond
Star Wars/Star Trek fan comic by curiouscurio.
congrats to this naive sweetheart who has simply never encountered the concept of tv fandom.
“gonna stop defending hannibal’s actions and instead just claim he didn’t do anything. he’s innocent.”
awe-inspiring use of a perspex covid shield during a cosplay photoshoot.
fanfiction
And thus ends Paranormal Fic Month! We’re wrapping things up with a general list, plus a few bonus fics that were specifically tagged for Halloween, like, as a holiday. If you missed any previous installments, we had two other general lists (#300, #302), plus one about ghosts and one about vampires. And as a reminder, if we didn’t run your rec this month—we got so many!!—we will use it in a future list. Thank you very much to everyone who sent in a rec! — Elizabeth
“Devour” by ancient_moonshine. 29K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Guardian; Ship: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Recced by: Clever Manka
Backstory: Guardian is a Cdrama webseries based on a BL novel with 10,000 literal years of pining. This Coraline AU condenses those 10k years into a single lifetime of destructive obsession.
Rec: ancient_moonshine is great at engrossing, unhealthy relationships with hot (and inventive) sex. Making Shen Wei the monstrous Other Mother to Zhao Yunlan’s emotionally dependent Coraline is genius.
Content warnings: Many. MANY. Please heed the tags on the fic.
“like destiny?” by sixthlight. 35K words, rated Mature.
Fandoms: The Old Guard (Night World fusion); Ships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Recced by: stars-inthe-sky
Backstory: In the Old Guard, Joe and Nicky end up together after meeting on opposite sides of a religious war. In this AU, Joe is rather abruptly inducted into a hidden supernatural world that Nicky was born into.
Rec: Sixthlight’s Old Guard AUs are always delicious, but this one does a particularly good job of framing both the very legitimate nonsexual tension and the very real sexual/romantic attraction between the two men. The exposition of the fusion ’verse is also well done (no prior knowledge of either fandom needed), and the story employs the rest of the Old Guard gang quite well, too.
Content warnings:
“Fourth Floor” by dirtybinary, mithborien, picoalloe. 41K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: MCU; Ship: James Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers
Recced by: anon
Backstory: Bucky is the (spoiler) and HYDRA is a demonic New York real estate developer. Steve is a failing student of magic who sleeps in the library until his buddy Sam gets him a room in the Night Light, a spooky building where it always rains and every now and then you wake up somewhere else. Natasha is a spider without a web.
Rec: I don’t know, this one is just real cute. Steve figures out that he’s like, magically dyslexic. Bucky feeds everyone in the building and helps people with their homework and wants to lift their curses but doesn’t have the energy because HYDRA keeps inventing new floors and moving in. All the magic elements are a bit absurd and I like that it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Content warnings: N/A
“Impractically Magic” (and the rest of the fics in The Seelie Court series) by Deejaymil. 48K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: NCIS; Ship: Gen
Recced by: Celie
Backstory: Follows the plot of the early seasons of NCIS (a show about navy cops solving crimes) pretty closely, but almost everyone in the main cast is a magic creature of some sort.
Rec: Impeccably written and characterized, this is a full AU in the sense that you need little to no canon knowledge to enjoy it! Though I do have that knowledge, I loved seeing where it diverged, and though I knew what was coming, I still cried at the end.
Content warnings: Major character death, fantasy racism, canon-typical levels of violence
“bluebloods” by erzi. 16K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Natsume Yuujinchou; Ship: Matoba Seiji/Natori Shuuichi
Recced by: jess
Backstory: Natsume Yuujinchou is mostly a slice of life story about a teenager who can see spirits, but it also has a large cast of side characters, including Matoba and Natori, rival exorcists with a history. In this fic, Natori begrudgingly asks Matoba to help him investigate a potentially possessed coworker at a work party, but things soon get out of hand.
Rec: It’s interesting to see Natori and Matoba work together in a supernatural (sort of) fake date scenario, and this story makes the most of the canonical tension between them. It’s an interesting but appropriately prickly slow burn romance.
Content warnings: Some possessed kissing
And two bonus Halloween recs!
“The truth won’t come from empty lungs” by El_em_en_oh_pee. 9K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: MDZS; Ship: Jiang Yanli & Wei Ying, (F/F) Jin Zixuan/Jiang Yanli
Recced by: phnelt
Backstory: A modern no-powers AU of MDZS where Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan are married lesbians. The only necessarily background is that Wei Ying is Jiang Yanli’s adopted brother.
Rec: A modern AU where Wei Ying burns out and slowly recovers and and grows closer to his sister and her wife (Jin Zixuan) through the medium of elaborate Halloween decorating. It’s a lovely meditation on family and loving someone with depression. Quietly funny and heart aching.
Content warnings: References to depression
“Seeing Double” by damaskrose. 12K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Young Avengers; Ship: Tommy Shepherd & Billy Kaplan, Tommy Shepherd/David Alleyne
Recced by: jules
Backstory: Tommy and Billy are identical twins who grew up in very different family situations and only met as teenagers when they joined the Young Avengers. In this story they decide to dress as each other for Halloween, which (as the author puts it) “unlocks a slight twin existential crisis and a lot of family feelings.”
Rec: Beautifully written and self-reflective and Tommy gets to explore his identity as a brother and being bisexual. Billy and David both have some great moments as two people who see and care for Tommy just as he is. Plus the end scene is so cathartic and I just want to give Tommy a big hug!
Content warnings: Teenagers drinking, mentions of past child abuse/neglect, slight mentions of past homophobic bullying and past human experimentation
https://twitter.com/MeganBitchell/status/1453621201360797696
FINAL THOUGHT
While we’ve got a couple of guest reccers lined up post-paranormal month to do explainers and fic rec lists, we wanted to put out an additional call re: a section we piloted a few months back: the “letter of recommendation.” As we wrote accompanying the first one:
Longtime Rec Center readers know that we run the occasional guest explainer, where people give overviews of their favorite books/shows/films/games etc (sometimes they also rec fanworks about the thing, sometimes they don’t). But this week we’re introducing a new feature to the newsletter that’s adjacent to explainers, but specifically about fanworks: a place to rec a fanwork or group of fanworks in more than the few sentences of our standard recs, and potentially talk about the fandom around it, too. We’re calling it “letter of recommendation.”
So! I have plans to write one in the coming weeks, but we’d love at least a few more of these, and we are soliciting volunteers who want to go deep on a fanwork (of any kind!) for a few paragraphs. Please email us at elizabethandgav at gmail if you’re interested, and as always, thanks to everyone who contributes to the newsletter—we couldn’t do this without you. — Elizabeth