The Rec Center #44
Who’s ready for some multifandom recs? We’ve got a grab-bag of gen, dude/femslash, and het this week, along with articles about Star Wars fandom, political RPF, and more. — Gav
new stuff
“How Female Fans Made ‘Star Wars’ Their Own” by Amanda Hess at The New York Times
An exploration of female-built and female-dominated spaces in the Star Wars fandom.
“Trumped is the New Jossed” by Anne Jamison at Fansplaining
The author of Fic takes a deep dive into this year’s political RPF and the sometimes painful fictional reflections of this year’s presidential campaign.
“Roxane Gay details her new Marvel comic, World of Wakanda” at Entertainment Weekly
As a fan of the current run of Marvel’s Black Panther (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED), I’m hyped for Roxane Gay’s female-led spinoff comic. This interview shares some new details about what’s in store, including sample pages.
old(er) stuff
“On Tim Burton, Fanfiction, and Little Sisters” by Ash Davis at Bullshitist
“‘Be the change you wish to see,’ Gandhi said (sorta). So I wrote my change. I discovered fanfiction and wrote all the damn change. I went into the painfully white fandoms of the things I loved (Pirates of the Caribbean, Final Fantasy, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fantastic Four) and wrote black folk into every last one of them. If there were no black people, I made them. If they were tokens, I made them stars. Mary-sued the shit out of everything. It didn’t matter, you were gonna see me!”
tumblr & beyond
We love this Overwatch tarot deck by cappybara
You gotta listen to this Hamilton/Pacific Rim soundtrack mashup by sheehammer.
“one of the cutest/saddest things I ever did was write out the legal ways Ariel could have annulled her contract with Ursula The Sea Witch” — @shonfaye
ESSENTIAL SUPERGIRL GIF <3 <3 <3
Did you catch the nod to Superman in the new Wonder Woman trailer?
fanfiction
This week we’ve got a genuine grab-bag of fic from Gav and some of our readers—no theme, no single fandom or ship, just a variety! Thanks again to everyone who’s been submitting one-off recs. And, as always, if you have a one-off rec of your own to share, please use this form. Now with less confusing language about the “backstory” portion! :-) — Elizabeth
“What We've Become (the Mt. Saint Helens Remix)” by Vanitashaze. 10K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Doctor Who; Ship: Martha Jones/Donna Noble
Recced by: Chestnut_filly
Backstory: Doctor Who is a show about the eponymous time-traveling alien who likes messing up and then fixing history with his (usually young, comely, and female) companions. The ship is between two of those companions, both of whom got well fucked over by the narrative—two sharp, unique women with dreadful shared experiences who’ve saved the world more than once.
Rec: Like I said above, Martha and Donna’s narratives were so much less than they deserved. This fic is a great way to address the holes in their stories. It's also a beautiful character study of Martha specifically and her recovery from various traumatic experiences during her time with the Doctor.
Content warnings: Memory loss and all the consent stuff that comes with that
“The Ivory Horn” by kaydeefalls. 13K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Narnia/His Dark Materials crossover; Ship: Gen
Recced by: Gav
Backstory: You need to have read all of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy for this, but a cursory knowledge of Narnia is fine.
Rec: Will Parry goes to Oxford University, where he meets an elderly Susan Pevensie—one of the few other people in the world who visited another universe and lived to tell the tale. A wonderful epilogue to the HDM trilogy, with an appropriately mournful tone. It’s also an interesting look at Susan’s life after Narnia, one of my favorite topics in this fandom.
Content warnings: N/A
“Coffee, Black” by black_ink_tide. 133K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Dragon Age II; Ship: Male!Hawke/Fenris
Recced by: Kaleb
Backstory: In canon, Fenris is a former elven slave who has no memory of his past and carries mysterious magical tattoos; Hawke is a war refugee fleeing death with his family to the free state of Kirkwall where the he struggles just to survive.
Rec: Apart from being an incredibly cute and funny coffeeshop AU, the thing that Coffee, Black does incredibly well is incorporating and referencing canon setting details (things like art becoming a stand-in for magic or the King and Queen of Ferelden being owners of a bookshop). In addition it's just a very solid, well-told romance story.
Content warnings: Past Sub/Dom relationship
“Hollowing Stone” by shuofthewind. 44K words, not rated (I would say teen).
Fandom: Downton Abbey; Ship: Sybil Crawley/Tom Branson
Recced by: Laura
Backstory: This is a canon pairing, set during season 1 of Downton Abbey (so beginning 1912ish and continuing along from there). Sybil is a clever, stifled lady who finds herself covertly working with suffragettes and pursuing medicine—and Tom Branson, the family chauffeur and her marked soulmate.
Rec: Tom and Sybil are intellectual equals who encourage each other to pursue their ideals and interests, political and otherwise. Complex worldbuilding, historical and literary references, Bechdel test pass, what's not to love?
Content warnings: Canon-typical values and embedded misogyny (which Sybil rails against)
“Sweet” by Unpretty. 2.5K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: DCU; Ship: Gen
Recced by: Gav
Backstory: I’m a huge fan of Unpretty’s DC comics/animation fic, despite having relatively little familiarity with the characters outside of the movie adaptations. She has a very funny and thoughtful (and feminist!) attitude to Bruce Wayne’s characterization, and if you like this ficlet, I highly recommend reading her other stuff as well.
Rec: Batman wakes up after being kidnapped by Harley Quinn. Turns out she really isn’t intimidated by his Dark Knight schtick, like, at all.
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
OK! So forgive me one last time for the cross-promotion (which I know is causing some confusion, since multiple people have mixed up things from The Rec Center with things from Fansplaining in recent weeks, SORRY GUYS) but I wanted to make sure everyone who took Fansplaining’s Fic Preferences Survey saw our analysis of the final results (which includes the full dataset of yays, nays, mehs, and IDKs for our 144 fic tropes and themes). We discuss the results and some of the feedback in our most recent episode, and we’ve seen a lot of robust discussion on Medium, on Tumblr, and even YouTube! (!!!) We’re still looking for fics that are exceptions to your general rules, ie, “I hate fluff but I’ll always read X story,” or “Mpreg is usually a nope but Y story is incredible.” You can send them our way, or to fansplaining@gmail.com. — Elizabeth
If you liked this, please share it with your friends! https://thereccenter.substack.com/. And find us on social media: Gav (twitter/tumblr) & Elizabeth (twitter/tumblr)