May 27, 2022

The Rec Center #334

Hello all! This week we have articles about Star Wars LARPing, publishing unionization, and the late, great sports writer Roger Angell—along with Barbie fanart, a rec list of soulmate AUs, and more! — Gav

new stuff

“LARPing Goes to Disney World” by Neima Jahromi at The New Yorker
A fascinating deep dive into the development of Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser—a two-day immersive experience at Disney World—that places it within the history and current global context of live-action roleplaying.

“Our Flag Means Union” by Graeme McMillan at Comics FYI
Seven Seas is a manga publisher, and the English-language distributor for several popular danmei novels including MDZS. It’s pretty prominent in certain fandom spaces, with a track record of hiring fanartists and fan-translators. But the publisher’s reputation is far from rosy. Right now, Seven Seas workers are attempting to unionize due to poor labor conditions. This interview digs into the problems they currently face. (As of yesterday, Seven Seas is refusing to recognize the union.)

“Real life ‘Witcher school’ shuts down over organizer’s ultra-conservative political ties” by Sisi Jiang at Kotaku
Yikes!

older stuff

Legendary New Yorker editor and writer Roger Angell died this week at the age of 101. As a writer, he was best known for his work on baseball, and as sports writers memorialized him this past week, I was struck by how often they praised the fact that in addition to his deep knowledge and skill as a writer, he was also writing as a fan.

We only occasionally touch on sports fandom in this newsletter, but I wanted to share one passage I’ve seen quoted a few places, from Angell’s book Five Seasons: A Baseball Companion. It’s beautifully articulated, and I think it will resonate with many types of fans:

It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look—I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring—caring deeply and passionately, really caring—which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naïveté—the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball—seems a small price to pay for such a gift.

You can read more of Angell’s work in his many books, or in the complete archive of his writing for The New Yorker, all the way back to his first piece, published in March 1944. — Elizabeth

tumblr & beyond

Elina from Barbie Fairytopia by emsartwork

A rly sweet anecdote about Leonard Nimoy’s positive relationship with IRL scientists!

“if you level up your eevee while listening to a-ha it evolves into takemeon”

some world-class writing advice over here

“The different Star Trek doctors and how they would react to you walking into sickbay with something vaguely phallic stuck in your butt, a thread.”

“No reason why the next Overwatch character can’t be a Greek Orthodox priest”

fanfiction

This week we have the ever-popular soulmate/mark trope; if you want even more, here’s another list we ran last year. Thanks so much to everyone who sent in a rec. — Elizabeth

“its derek hale wtf” by bleep0bleep. 39K words, rated Explicit.
Fandoms: Teen Wolf; Ships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, minor Allison Argent/Scott McCall
Recced by: anatsuno
Backstory: A Teen Wolf AU where Stiles discovers famous actor Derek Hale has the same soulmark as him, then enters his employ without telling him. Played “straight”, i.e. no subversion of the trope. Just reluctant skeptics falling in love.
Rec: I love Actor AUs in general, I love Stiles and his sarcasm, and I love the story, pining and reluctant schmoop in this! A trusty feel-good fic for me (with bonus masturbation voyeurism).
Content warnings: N/A

“Dear Pen Pal” by SilvorMoon. 22K words, rated Gen.
Fandoms: 美男高校地球防衛部LOVE! | Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei-bu LOVE!; Ship: Platonic soulmates: Beppu Akihiko & Hakone Goes & Beppu Haruhiko
Recced by: Rose
Backstory: Aliens are trying to take over the earth, and make a TV show about it. Two earthlings far from home are convinced that the villain of the show is their soulmate.
Rec: Great characterisation of the Beppus and Gora, interesting AU executed well, Gora and the Beppus Deserve Good Things and they get them! l am trash for soulmate AUs.
Content warnings: N/A

“An Ever-Fixed Mark” by AMarguerite. 191K words, rated Teen.
Fandoms: Pride and Prejudice; Ships: Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam, Jane Bennet/Charles Bingley
Recced by: thelittlestbird
Backstory: A Pride and Prejudice soulmate AU. The author’s summary: “One would think that having the name of one’s soulmate appear on one’s wrist on one’s sixteenth birthday would make matrimony much less complicated. It mostly does not. And not at all for Miss Elizabeth Bennet of Longbourne.”
Rec: BRILLIANT soulmate AU! It treats the trope with fondness, but also deconstructs it, exploring every aspect of what having a soulmate can mean, and how it can mean different things even for a single person as they grow and change throughout their life.
Content warnings: Period-typical homophobia, biphobia, and sexism; battlefield descriptions; PTSD; miscarriage

“Hold It All At Bay” by psocoptera. 50K words, rated Mature.
Fandoms: Check, Please!; Ship: Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Recced by: sterekcollection
Backstory: This is a soulmates universe where the bonded (“locks”) share sensations, feelings, etc. So, for example, Jack can smell Bitty’s baking from across campus. But Jack and Bitty have specific (and opposite) issues that interfere with their bonding; Jack is especially sensitive to the feelings he receives, so he has to medicate to dull them; and Bitty has to be careful that his feelings don’t get pushed out too strong.
Rec: The first chapter was a tad confusing to me, but by the second chapter, everything slipped into place, and I found the story totally gripping how they navigated these soulbond-related personal issues to falling in love.
Content warnings: Mental health issues

“At Home (With You)” by TheDefenestrator. 2.4K words, rated Gen.
Fandoms: 全职高手 | The King’s Avatar; Ship: Wáng Jiéxī/Yè Xiū
Recced by: qkat
Backstory: TKA is a webnovel about a professional gamer who, after getting unjustly forced out of his team due to his lack of money-making potential, gathers up a ragtag group of players and fights his way to the championships. A huge cast of interesting supporting characters exist, including Wang Jiexi, a rival team’s captain.
Rec: A fun and cute take on soulmate AUs (soulmates can send small generic objects to each other). The intimacy between WJX/YX feels comfortable, quiet, and inevitable.
Content warnings: N/A

FINAL THOUGHT

Wishing everyone a safe and restful (and for some, long!) weekend. <3 — Elizabeth