The Rec Center #43
Hello! Happy Halloween/less than a fortnight until this godforsaken election is over. (Hooray to all of you early voters!) This week’s Rec Center a longish one: more articles than usual AND more fic recs than usual, with a mix of fluffier Halloween stuff and straight-up horror. Enjoy! — Elizabeth 🎃
new stuff
“Richard Sherman Names His Seven-Man Quidditch Squad Made Up Of Seahawks Players”
From the official Seahawks website, this is the best possible marriage of fandoms.
“Looking for Bookworms in a Sea of Superheroes: What Happens When BookCon and Comic-Con Join Forces” by Elizabeth at Brooklyn Magazine
Exploring the sometimes precarious position of books (both their publishers and their fans) in the world of big media conventions.
“‘Never Been Touched Like This’: The Teens Who Write Erotic Metalcore Fan Fiction” by Thea De Gallier at Broadly
“‘I didn't really know it was a thing that other people did until I found some stories online one day,’ she said. ‘It made me feel a lot less strange that there were other people doing the same thing.’”
“United Nations Staff Members Aren’t Too Happy About Wonder Woman Being an Honorary Ambassador” by Devon Ivie at Vulture
Following on from last week’s “Wonder Woman is a UN ambassador” news, some UN employees staged an in-person protest of this rather bizarre decision to give a real job to a fictional character.
“Marvel Comics writer driven off Twitter by sexist harassment” by Gav at The Daily Dot
If you’ve seen a lot of angry tweets about sexism in comics this week, well...okay, that’s a pretty normal week in comics fandom, unfortunately. But right now, there’s a big conversation happening about Mockingbird writer Chelsea Cain, who was harassed off Twitter because her comic featured a piece of feminist cover art. This article explains what happened, how various famous comics creators responded, and how it all ties into ~capitalism.
On the bright side, Mockingbird is now at #1 on Amazon’s superhero comics chart? :-/
old(er) stuff
“In Praise of Fanfic” by Cory Doctorow at Locus Magazine
“Our field is incredibly privileged to have such an active fanfic writing practice. Let's stop treating them like thieves and start treating them like honored guests at a table that we laid just for them.”
tumblr & beyond
“Lady Sybil Vimes (née Ramkin) Duchess of Ankh” by enigmaticagentalice
Luv this Very Intense rant about Draco Malfoy’s accent in the HP movies.
(when Elizabeth reblogged this, she wrote “CO-MOTHERFUCKING-SIGNED”)
An important thread about Tumblr Shitposter Bucky Barnes
Some A++ fanart for anyone who enjoyed the joke about Trump’s horcruxes
fanfiction
These stories are a mix of Halloween fun and horror, which is obviously the correct genre for this time of year. In addition to reader submissions, we asked friend-of-The-Rec-Center and super-passionate horror fan Aja if she had any recs. Unsurprisingly, she got *very* excited and offered up several, so we’ve got a little mini Aja horror section for you. :-) — Elizabeth
“The Masque of the Red, White, and Blue Death” by Bopeep. 3K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Avengers/MCU; Ship: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes
Recced by: Robbie
Backstory: A Halloween one-shot places Poe’s classic costume masquerade at the Avengers Tower in 2016, where the offending plague isn't red with blood so much as it is politically red. Tony’s charity ball takes a sharp turn towards actual horror due to a very tacky mystery guest and only Steve knows why.
Rec: It manages to mimic the Poe style while telling a funny Halloween story with a little dose of the ol’ kisseroo. Weirdly excellent balance of trick and treat.
Content warnings: Republicans
“Who Reaps a Human Harvest in Alien Fields” by annakovsky. 16.7K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: The Martian; Ships: Chris Beck/Beth Johanssen/Mark Watney, Chris Beck/Mark Watney, Chris Beck/Beth Johanssen, Beth Johanssen/Mark Watney
Recced by: Kay
Backstory: A Martian film/book AU hybrid, based on the premise that when Mark was stranded on Mars he wasn’t truly alone.
Rec: This fic is such a unique blend of psychological horror and ‘wait, there might actual be some sort of eldritch alien stalking Mark Watney, he might not just be space crazy.’ It’s an engrossing read, making you wonder if Mark is spiraling into madness or if there’s truly a dark menace following him. There’s also some incredibly steamy Ares3some sex, which is a bonus.
“Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc” by etothepii. 20K words in the series, rated Teen to Mature.
Fandom: BBC Sherlock; Ship: Mostly gen with a bit of Johnlock at the very end
Recced by: CleverManka
Backstory: Pretty sure everyone knows this fandom. But a Sherlock crossover with the Addams Family? NICE.
Rec: John and Harry grow dismembering themselves (and each other), and delighting in eating arsenic and antifreeze until they have to learn to be normal. I have never read another story quite like this. I love this John Watson so much.
Content warnings: There's no explicit sex, but plenty of explicit descriptions of physically gruesome stuff.
“Scare Me Up A Little Bit of Love” by 100percentsassy. 2K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: One Direction; Ship: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Recced by: akikotree
Backstory: Harry is a ghost and Louis is a teenage boy. It’s Halloween night and there is ~*MAGIC*~ in the air!
Rec: It’s short, sweet and silly, a perfect Halloween candy of a story.
“Can We Please Not Talk About Halloween” akikotree. 21.6K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: One Direction; Ships: Liam/Zayne, Harry/Louis
Recced by: akikotree
[Editor’s note: we don’t usually do self-recs, but it was akikotree’s submissions that inspired me (Elizabeth) to do a Halloween list in the first place!]
Backstory: Harry and Louis are already in an established relationship at the beginning of the story, while Liam and Zayne at still at the mutual pining stage. This story is part of a series but stands alone.
Rec: It’s a love letter to San Francisco. The main themes are Halloween, costumes and cross-dressing.
AJA’S HORROR RECS
(Aja writes about internet culture for Vox, ships Arthur/Eames on AO3 and Tumblr, and yells at people about Harry Potter on Twitter.)
“The Boy Who Spoke With Ghosts” by AvocadoLove. 22K words, rated Teen.
Fandoms: Inception/The Sixth Sense; Ship: Arthur/Eames
Backstory: Inception is a futuristic sci-fi heist film about dream-sharing and mind crime. Arthur and Eames are played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy, respectively. The Sixth Sense is a classic 90s horror thriller about a boy who can see ghosts.
Rec: Arthur is Cole Sear as a grownup, still able to see ghosts—including the ghost of his friends. You probably have no idea how a crossover between Inception and The Sixth Sense would work, but AvocadoLove takes little details from both canons and weaves them together until it feels utterly plausible—a still-terrifying ghost story with a ring of sadness and, ultimately, hope.
“Flesh Mechanic: Not an AU” by Kel and Lise. About 20K words, rated WRONG.
Fandom: Popslash/N*SYNC RPS; Ship: None (but background hookups between every member of NSYNC)
Backstory: Before today’s bandom, popslash was a thriving fandom in the early 2000s that primarily centered around N*SYNC and the Backstreet Boys.
Rec:
“Justin,” Chris said slowly. “You don't want to sleep with Justin.”
Flesh Mechanic is a true fandom classic, a dark multi-media fic told through flashbacks, Internet snapshots, and found media coverage. I could tell you that by the end of it you’ll come to believe Pharrell Williams is a terrifying cult leader inserting subliminal messages into all of his songs, and that Justin Timberlake is... something even worse... but you won’t believe me until you've read it. Just remember: this fic is not an AU.
“The Labyrinth” by Eustacia_Vye. 7K words, rated PG-13.
Fandoms: Inception/House of Leaves; Ship: Gen
Backstory: Inception is a movie about dream invasion where the mind is a metaphysical labyrinth. House of Leaves is a famed postmodern meta-textual horror novel about a physically impossible metaphysical house with a minotaur at its center.
Rec: If you know anything about these two fandoms then you know how perfectly suited they are for a crossover—especially one where Ariadne leads the Inception team into the Navidson house. Eustacia_Vye has given us an incredible fusion in this fic, which uses all of the hidden messages, formatting, and stylistic embellishments of Danielewski's novel, including anagrams and hidden hover-text in the html code.
“The Scene is Dead” by Synchronik. About 15K, rated V for Vampires.
Fandoms: Bandom/Fueled by Ramen RPS (My Chemical Romance, Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy); Ship: Frank Iero/Gerard Way
Backstory: Because these bands all shared the same record label, they are all heavily intertwined, and fanfiction tends to treat all band members as an ensemble cast.
Rec: In this multi-media, metatextual fic, the members of My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy are beset by the Vampire apocalypse—specifically, by a pack of bloodthirsty fans while on the Warped Tour. Everything about this fic is a fucked-up, mesmerizing thrill ride, but the best part for me is the way in which Synchronik makes it so believable that a fandom frenzy could so easily become a feeding frenzy. The love Frank and Gerard find at the end of the world, plus Pete Wentz as a ravenous vampire!, are icing on the cake.
FINAL THOUGHT
Elizabeth: OK Gav! I want to ask you a few questions about Doctor Strange, because I know you’ve seen the movie and have some strong critiques of it. So here’s what I know, let’s start from there: Cumberbatch (who I used to like *a lot* and now can’t stand the sight of) does a bad American accent, Tilda plays a character who was canonically a Tibetan man (TILDA WHY), the filmmakers have responded to whitewashing complaints by saying you can’t acknowledge Tibet in the Chinese market, which is integral to a blockbuster’s success these days...oh! And I was in Hall H for the Marvel presentation at SDCC and no one mentioned a word of this and Tilda wore a majestic green velvet suit. Is that all correct?
Gav: You’re mostly right! One of the screenwriters kinda-sorta admitted they changed the character’s Tibetan background for political reasons, while the director said they rewrote Swinton’s role to avoid the racist stereotyping of the original character, a Tibetan man. (The film now takes place partly in Nepal, with Tilda’s character described as “Celtic,” although there’s nothing “Celtic” about the role, and also no Nepalese characters.)
They also rebooted Strange’s sidekick, Wong, in a way that actually DID work, but ultimately it’s still a movie about a white guy going to Nepal, learning “the mystic arts,” then becoming The Best In The World. There’s a lot of cultural appropriation folded into the story, which was easily avoidable. They could’ve explained his origins in like 10 minutes and devoted the rest of the film to psychedelic CGI instead—which is what most critics highlighted as the best part of the film, anyway.
Elizabeth: Ugh isn’t that what they said about Iron Fist? Can you please explain to me why the solution to “the original seemed kinda racist” is to only cast white people? And from a fandom perspective, I’m curious about how DS will affect the rest of the MCU, on the fan level or the broader level.
Gav: Yeah, it’s a similar situation to Iron Fist. I get the impression the DS director is marginally more clued-in than the Iron Fist showrunner, because he actually recognized there was a problem...but attempted to solve it in a stupid way. IMO it’s a direct result of having an entire creative team of white guys, basing their work off source material from the 1960s.
Re: the rest of the MCU...Stephen Strange is in the next Thor movie, but I suspect he’s not gonna be tremendously influential on fandom—kind of like how people watched Ant-Man, but kind of forgot about it afterwards. Doctor Strange doesn’t offer much to engage with on an emotional level, and you usually need that (or a compelling OTP) for something catch on in fanfic fandom.
Elizabeth: OK, so I guess I’m curious about whether you think Marvel learned from the pushback against this—and if they even care. It felt really weird to watch the Doctor Strange part of the Marvel presentation at SDCC, with everyone cheering and all. But if people still go to see the film, does Marvel just get to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and do this all over again?
Gav: I get the impression the director has absorbed some of the criticism, but doesn’t want to discuss it in depth because he’s still promoting film. (I should add that while I gave the movie a broadly negative review, it currently has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.)
Judging by past experience, I’m not optimistic about Marvel Studios learning anything from this as a corporate entity. This kind of change often has to come from individual filmmakers, which is why I’m more optimistic about Thor: Ragnarok (directed by Taika Waititi) than the future of the MCU as a whole.
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