The Rec Center #4
Last weekend’s blizzard—and your blissful Netflix and/or fanfic binge—may feel like a distant memory, but we’ve still got all this snow on the ground and a ~wintry mix of snowy fic recs to accompany it. Plus teenage fangirls, political fandom, and Gav’s handy guide to Hugo nominations. And, as always, welcome to our new subscribers, and thanks to everyone who’s recommended us to friends so far! — Elizabeth
new stuff
“Swooning, screaming, crying: how teenage girls have driven 60 years of pop music” by Alexis Chaney at Vox
“Fans became the performers and the show. Being a bobby-soxer, a jive-bomber, a Beatlemaniac meant that you were part of something bigger than yourself; as a member of the group, you were as famous as the idol you cherished.”
“Maximum Cute: How Funko Conquered the Toy World” by Jake Rossen at Mental Floss
A history of one of fandom’s favorite toy manufacturers. “He showed his mother, pointing to them as the reason he had quit his job. ‘They’re wonderful,’ she said. ‘But no one’s going to want them.’”
“The Unprecedented, Unstoppable Fandom of Steph Curry” by K. M. McFarland at WIRED
“‘We’re seeing a lot of fandoms merging technologies and practices in the digital age...So what they might make for an X-Files fansite, they also might make for Steph Curry.’”
And it may still be January, but we’re calling the new Miike Snow video for “Genghis Khan”—which depicts the James Bond story we *actually* want to see—the first Yuletide microfandom of 2k16.
old(er) stuff
“Champagne From a Slipper: When Fandom Was Acceptably Male,” by Veronica Horwell at the Fan Meta Reader
After reading about teenage girl fandoms in the 20th century, read about what came before: “For more than a century before that, fandom and its familiar practices had been male. And there hadn’t been a lot of mocking going on.”
the hugos awards: explained
While Film Twitter continues to debate #OscarsSoWhite, sci-fi/fantasy fandom is revving up to begin its own awards season strife. The most widely discussed facet of this is the Hugo Awards, which gained some notoriety last year when they dissolved into Gamergate-infused chaos for reasons too complicated to explain here.
The Hugos are a longstanding benchmark of critical and commercial success in the SF/F genre, but the selection process isn’t widely understood outside the few thousand authors, editors, and ~serious fans who are already invested. Technically, anyone can nominate and vote. You just need to have bought a ticket to Worldcon 2016 or 2017 before Jan. 31, OR already attended Worldcon 2015, OR paid for a “supporting membership” (which costs $50 and includes ebooks for most of the nominated books and short stories.) Then you can nominate whoever you like in each category, and the ones with the most nominations are shortlisted for the final ballot.
Even if you’re not interested in voting, the Hugos are interesting for similar reasons to the Oscars: you get some recs for the "best" stuff of the last year, and can use the surrounding commentary to analyse which way the wind is blowing. (In 2015, the wind was blowing directly into the vortex of the Culture Wars, but this year it's still too early to tell.)
Around this time of year, authors and fans post lists of their eligible works—mine is here, because I’d like people to nominate me in the Fan Writer category—along with their own nominations, meaning the internet is swimming with rec lists for amazing SF/F books/authors/etc in Jan and Feb. To start you off, here’s a communal Google spreadsheet of potential nominees and eligibility posts. — Gav
fanfiction
This week’s theme is a little haphazard, but still very topical: blizzard fic! It’s still too early to see if we’re getting a major fanfic boom after everyone on the East Coast got snowed in last weekend, but we CAN give you some multifandom recs for stories about snow, ice, and all things wintry. — Gav
“With Open Hand” by K_dAzreal. 56K words, rated explicit. Marvel’s Thor/Norse Mythology
Loki learns that he is a Jotunn (ice giant) when the ice giant Thrym visits Asgard to ask for Loki’s hand in marriage. This is a very loose reimagining of “The Lay of Thrym,” from The Prose Edda, with Loki moving to Jotunheim and learning about his heritage—and then embarking on a fantasy epic that balances political machinations with historical romance bodice-ripping (except, you know, everyone is an ice giant or an alien Norse god.)
“Untitled Star Wars: The Force Awakens Tumblr ficlet,” by margotkim.
Poe, Rey and Finn get ready to go out in the snow. VERY CUTE.
“101 Ways to end up in a Canadian Shack.” Multifandom.
An extremely popular fanfic challenge from December 2001, explained here on Fanlore. Multiple authors from 62 fandoms got together to write their favorite characters in a Canadian shack (inspired by Due South—more on that in a moment), a trope that exists to this day.
“Locked Room Mystery,” by Speranza. 4K words, rated Teen. Due South, RayK/Fraser
You can’t have a snowday recs list without Due South, a fandom inextricably linked with very cold weather. There are a wealth of incredible stories about Fraser and RayK moving to the Northwest Territories to live in the snow, and this one is a great entry point: a short, episode-style story where Ray and Fraser are called in by a local Mountie to investigate a crime.
FINAL THOUGHT: Sorry guys! This is about the election. :-)
OK look, I know you thought that this newsletter would be the ONE PLACE where you were safe from the unending nightmare that is these primaries. SORRY. If you are not American (or if you are and are either willfully or inadvertently living under a rock) the Iowa Caucus, the first time any actual voters will cast any sort of vote in the 2016 presidential election, is on Monday. It’ll be our big moment to see that people really aren’t kidding about loving Donald Trump! Or maybe Ted Cruz? (When anxiety about either of these people actually being elected threatens to overwhelm me, I like to think about the words of Cruz’s college roommate: “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.”)
ANYWAY. Friend and fanthropologist Meredith Levine recently drew my attention to this post, from The Guardian’s Tumblr. “Should ‘fandom’ be the word to describe these kinds of followers/supporters?” she asked. If, like me, you enjoy mulling over *ideas* about fandom and what it means, this is a super interesting question! My cynical “the media still doesn’t get fandom” reaction was to look at the article itself, which was about the scared white guy demographic and its love of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. “Fandom” appears nowhere in the piece—just in the social media copy. So at the simplest level, it’s a media outlet blindly tossing a buzzword around for clicks?
Maybe they have a(n intended) point, though. Why aren’t Trump or Bernie supporters called the Trump and Bernie fandoms, respectively? They’re in the same online spaces, engaging in the same way as other fandoms—if your dash is like mine, it’s full of Bernie posts that don’t look much different to everything above and below them. I actually wrote about this during the brief, glorious rise of the #Milifandom before last year’s British general election.
But does political support actually equal “fandom”? I’m hesitating because it doesn’t feel quite right to me. Maybe it’s in the difference between the Trump/Bernie (hey wow there’s a pairing I neeeever want to read) camps and the others: plenty of people REALLY want their candidates to win, but it just feels...different. Or maybe it’s the gap between the politics and the person, like how I don’t agree with everything Obama’s done as president, but I will be in the Obama *the man* fandom until the end of time.
Or maybe this is just splitting hairs over rhetorical distinctions—this election is one big ship war, except not even remotely sexy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Either way, I’m already ready for it to be over! — Elizabeth
FINAL FINAL THOUGHT: “History” by One Direction
I love 1D’s latest video, not just because it's effectively a fanvid, but because it so consciously plays into the 1D narrative. Even as a casual fan, there are clips in here that I recognize from gifs or backstage footage over the years. Also, the song and video work on several levels: a simple love/breakup song, a conversation between 1D and their fans, an anthem commemorating the band's history, and message from the current bandmembers to Zayn, who only appears in archival footage. — Gav
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