March 10, 2023

The Rec Center #375

Hello everyone! This week we have articles on streaming TV and IMDb superusers, fanart for The Last of Us, and guest reccer Orangistae with a dazzling array of SOULMATE GOOSE fics (inspired by Fansplaining’s recent special episode on soulmate AUs, the eighth installment in our Tropefest series!). — Elizabeth

new stuff

“Peak TV Is Over. Welcome to Trough TV.” by Sam Adams at Slate
If you’re a TV fan, you’ve probably noticed that the streaming industry is in a chaotic state right now. Here, Slate explains the demise of Peak TV—and why shows with seemingly impressive fanbases still get cancelled.

“Meet the Superusers Behind IMDb, the Internet’s Favorite Movie Site” by Stephen Lurie at WIRED
“Powered by obsessed film buffs, it’s a crowdsourced juggernaut that’s older than Google and Wikipedia. Now AI is threatening to steal the starring role.”

“Over $30 Million Worth Of Funkos Are Headed To The Landfill” by Ethan Gach at Kotaku
Funko Pop! announced last week that they’ll be trashing hundreds of thousands of figurines—because it’s cheaper to throw them away than to try and sell them. :-//

older stuff

“Meet the trans man who collected fan art of Kirk and Spock in love” by Kat Jercich at Xtra
At an auction Jenson Hillenbrand attended every week, the works of legendary Star Trek fanartist Barbara P. Gordon came up for sale—and even though he wasn’t a huge Trek fan, he knew he had to save them.

tumblr & beyond

The Last of Us fanart by zzztlk

please enjoy these lil Imagines about Chris Pine’s latest devastating photoshoot.

“Spiders Yuri gives a very different vibe tho.”

this jolene/dolly parton fanart [chef kiss emoji]

hot contender for the best use of tumblr polls.

THE WINCHESTERS.

Some interesting thoughts on Mycroft Holmes autistic headcanons!

fanfiction

Orangistae lives in Australia with her cat Zari and can be found on tumblr yelling about dumb gay vampires and sometimes writing about them (including in her own soulmate goose AU).

Soulmate goose AUs! If you’ve never heard of this most cracktastic of tropes, it originated in Check, Please! fandom back in 2017, when shitty-check-please-aus posted the AU suggestion, “soulmate au where one person finds a goose who leads them to the other person. the difficulty comes in not being mauled by a goose”. Boxstorm took up the prompt, and the trope quickly spread to other fandoms, spawning hundreds of fics; details vary, but they all share the same basic premise of a horrible goose who guides one character to their true love, usually with a lot of honking and violence along the way. That might not sound like much to sustain a story, but as you’ll see in the fics below, this trope, much like a goose, is surprisingly adaptable.

General content warning for goose-typical violence. — Orangistae

“OMG, Goose Please!” by Boxstorm. 4.1K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Check, Please!; Ships: multi
Backstory: The original soulmate goose fic, and it’s six stories for the price of one, with each chapter focusing on a separate character whose Gooseday plays out in a different way.
Rec: Boxstorm took the prompt and ran with it, and these fluffy ficlets cover a lot of ground in terms of worldbuilding, trope subversion, and questions like ‘how does consent work when a goose is physically bullying you into kissing someone?’
Content warnings: Panic attack

“if that red string could bite” by jaggedwolf. 3.1K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: The Strange Case of Starship Iris; Ship: Violet Liu/Arkady Patel
Backstory: Starship Iris is a podcast about a found family of space smugglers who get caught up in a mysterious conspiracy. In this fic, first mate Arkady is forced to confront her feelings for biologist Violet after being attacked by what resident alien Krejjh informs her is a ‘Dwarnian soulmate goose’.
Rec: A classic soulmate goose set-up with a xenobiological twist, this fic does a great job of capturing the podcast’s whimsical humour and cleverly uses the trope to support characterisation (e.g. Arkady’s admiration of Violet’s goose-wrangling skills).
Content warnings: N/A

“Red, White & Royal Goose” by fairestfaerie. 7.1K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston; Ship: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Backstory: Alex’s soulmate goose shows up on the day of his mother’s inauguration and has to be forcibly restrained from attacking any of the dignitaries at the event, including a certain British prince. It subsequently fails to lead Alex to his soulmate, condemning him to years of goose-related injuries and media attention.
Rec: This trope doesn’t usually lend itself to slowburns, but this fic has a good stab at it, which is unlucky for Alex but great for exploring all the possibilities of a soulmate goose in the White House.
Content warnings: N/A

“live goose do not eat” by afterism. 4.1K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death; Ship: Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet
Backstory: Stede has always believed that his destiny lay at sea, so when a goose finds its way onto the Revenge, he’s sure it’s just a matter of time until it leads him to his soulmate - if only he can keep the crew from eating it first.
Rec: Very fun and in character interweaving of the AU with canon. The snippet of Izzy’s interaction with the goose is *chef’s kiss*.
Content warnings: N/A

“The Forbidden Goose” by starblessed. 5.4K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The Terror; Ship: Thomas Jopson/Edward Little
Backstory: The crews of the Terror and Erebus do eat the goose, and quickly learn to regret it when they start coughing up feathers and being haunted by phantom honks.
Rec: A wild mix of supernatural horror and absurd comedy, I like that it spends as much time on the mounting panic of the ghost-plagued crew as it does on the thwarted soulmates.
Content warnings: Body horror

“Honkcharov, or, The Soft Animal of Your Body” by beautifulduckweed. 3.1K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Goncharov (1973); Ship: Andrey/Goncharov
Backstory: An alternate version of the belfry scene, in which Andrey and Goncharov’s confrontation takes a different turn when they’re interrupted by a goose with some very specific ideas about how to resolve their sexual tension.
Rec: This unlikely pairing of trope and source material successfully brings out the darker aspects of the soulmate goose concept, while still ending on a surprisingly positive note. There are also some fun author’s notes about the position of the belfry scene in Goncharov’s character arc and how that explains his skill at deepthroating.
Content warnings: Dubious consent

FINAL THOUGHT

Hugo Award nominations opened last week, so as always, please consider nominating The Rec Center in the Fanzine category! Elizabeth’s podcast Fansplaining is also eligible for Best Fancast, and I’m eligible for Fan Writer—particularly for my extensive coverage of Andor last year!

Have a great weekend everyone! — Gav