August 9, 2024

The Rec Center #449

Greetings from Worldcon!

This week we have articles about the SAG-AFTRA video game performers strike and cooking via fanfiction, along with some amazing Interview with the Vampire fanart, multifandom fic recs, and more! — Gav

P.S. If you want to drop in on one of my Worldcon panels this weekend, you can find my schedule here—and IWTV fans, I’m also hosting a meetup tomorrow at 2 PM!

 

new stuff

“At SAG-AFTRA’s First Picket, Video Game Performers Say ‘People Are Realizing They Can’t Just Be Beaten Around By The C-Suite Anymore’” by Kazuma Hashimoto at Aftermath
"If those simple jobs are taken away, there is going to be an entire generation of performers that won’t have the same opportunities we had.” A report from the picket line of the SAG-AFTRA video game actors’ strike, now in its third week.

“Glasgow 2024 Worldcon Disqualifies 377 Fraudulent Hugo Votes” by Vanessa Armstrong at Reactor
Two weeks old but entirely topical for this weekend: It wouldn’t be Hugo Awards season without some kind of drama. (Handled smoothly this time, it seems!)

“How Sharing Recipes Brings Fans Together” by Elizabeth at Atlas Obscura
Elizabeth’s latest AO column is about food and fandom—especially writers and readers who include or cook from recipes in fanfiction. Many thanks to the near-dozen folks quoted in the piece, all of whom volunteered via this newsletter!

 

 

older stuff

“Son, your mother and I are worried about the quality of your Supernatural slashfiction” by Nathan Kamal at McSweeney’s
“First of all, we want you to know that you have great taste in your source material. Many people use the CW’s roster of teen-oriented melodramas as a source of creative fuel. Once you get that writing bug, you see inspiration in every pair of wandering demon-fighting beefcakes you see. I know I did.”

 

tumblr & beyond

Interview with the Vampire fanart by abelko

brace yourself for the poetry of Brazilian IWTV fandom.

“i’m not a beatles rpf ‘fan’ really like i firmly believe some gay shit was happening”

amazing fanmade book cover for IWTV’s in-universe book of Interview with the Vampire!

“if i was famous and no one was writing fanfiction about me i would be devastated”

ok what DID he mean tho??

 

fanfiction

We’ve got another grab-bag of fic this week! Thanks to everyone who sent in a rec. — Elizabeth

“The Name in the Mouth” by Rave. 21K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Captain America (Movies); Ship: James “Bucky” Barnes & Steve Rogers
Recced by: Jamie
Backstory: The Winter Soldier escapes from Hydra and runs to Romania, where he attempts to deprogram himself. Many flashbacks to the war, including very authentic-feeling letters from Bucky to Steve in the 1940s.
Rec: This is a story about Jewish Bucky Barnes and the story of the golem. It’s a deeply, deeply sad fractured narrative about war, hard choices, self-loathing, bodily autonomy, the Holocaust, and God, and it’s incredibly well written. It’s the most real-feeling take on Bucky Barnes I’ve read.
Content warnings: War, trauma, PTSD, war crimes, graphic violence

“This love like a flood, a fire, a fear” by natcat5. 57K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: 魔道祖师- 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV); Ship: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian
Recced by: MJ
Backstory: MDZS follows the rise, fall, and resurrection of Wei Wuxian as he pioneers demonic cultivation (think necromancy). Lan Wangji, the love interest, mainly watches quietly during Wei Wuxian’s downfall, but he devotes himself to protecting him when he unexpectedly returns to life.
Rec: This is both a detailed character study and a beautifully written retelling of the story from Lan Wangji’s POV, and it absolutely devastates readers in all the right ways. I’ve never seen a fic portray such an intricate psychological profile of Lan Wangji in a manner that feels so true to canon while also filling in a lot of the gaps that canon leaves.
Content warnings: Major character death (he comes back though), violence

“Honoring Mr. Bridgerton” by winterschild. 18K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Bridgerton; Ship: Colin Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington
Recced by: Pam
Backstory: Modern AU where Colin Bridgerton celebrates his father’s life annually by making breakfast for his entire family (with a lot of help from Penelope). Colin and Penelope’s friendship grows and blooms over the years.
Rec: The author handles grief so beautifully, and the relationship between Colin and Penelope grows in such a natural and thoughtful way.
Content warnings: Death of a parent

“Sam nie pojmuję, jak w twe zajdę progi” by Mad_Maudlin. 3.1K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The Magnus Archives; Ship: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Recced by: Hannah
Backstory: Research assistant Martin has had a fairly obvious (to everyone else) crush on his boss, Jon, throughout their time working together. This story takes place after Season 3 of the podcast, when Jon has unwittingly gained some useful paranormal abilities due to his connection with an entity called The Watcher.
Rec: I love when other languages besides English are incorporated into fic, and I have enjoyed The Magnus Archives itself because of how it navigates the format of interviewing subjects about supernatural experiences and how it incorporates a range of people from many different places as storytellers. Absentminded affection is also something I find very sweet!
Content warnings: Reference to violence/bodily harm

“the course of true love” by bonnomiy. 8.4K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: SEVENTEEN (band); Ship: Kim Mingyu/Boo Seungkwan
Recced by: monster_bookworm
Backstory: SEVENTEEN are a K-pop group, with Mingyu and Seungkwan being two of the members. This is a Cherry Magic AU (explained in the A/N of the fic but essentially, if you’re a virgin at age 30 you gain telepathy) set in an office in which Mingyu and Seungkwan are co-workers.
Rec: This story is to me the platonic ideal of a rom-com, delivering pitch-perfect, laugh out-loud comedy alongside an extremely sweet and sincere developing romance. It also has the interesting twist of being a Cherry Magic AU in which the POV character has absolutely no idea he’s in a Cherry Magic AU—lots of really great moments of dramatic irony!
Content warnings: N/A

“by his blood-red mast” by scioscribe. 2K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: The Lighthouse (2019); Ship: Thomas Wake/Ephraim Winslow
Recced by: mackenzie
Backstory: A short and weird exploration of Thomas and Ephraim’s relationship. I hesitate to call it a curtain fic because there’s nothing really domestic about it, but...domestic for these two, I guess. Tucks neatly inside canon.
Rec: Unhinged, horny, and beautifully written with the same dark foreboding and fever-dream details as the movie. It’s also a bit nasty and will make your tummy feel funny.
Content warnings: Mpreg, semi-graphic descriptions of fellatio

And a vid!

“The Prophecy” by longnationalnightmare. 4:09, rated Mature.
Fandom: Interview with the Vampire; Ship: Louis/Lestat
Recced by: biblioriptos
Backstory: Vids for currently airing tv shows are always a difficult lift because you never know if they’re going to be completely jossed by the following week, but this is kind of a Louis de Pointe du Lac vid, about how much Lestat meant to him and how it felt like they were doomed from the beginning, and how he can’t make Armand mean as much to him as Lestat did, no matter how hard he tries.
Rec: This vid really spoke to me and I don’t really know where to go to talk about vids anymore! The cuts between the past and the present day were so powerful as well as the cuts between Louis interacting with Lestat and Louis interacting with Armand.
Content warnings: The typical IWTV warnings—domestic violence, gore, blood, sex

 

 

FINAL THOUGHT

We’ve had a few recent requests for rec lists that fall under the umbrella of “don’t need to know the source material,” which reminded me of a series of lists we ran a few years back around Fansplaining’s fic and source material survey. (If you never saw that one, the results are interesting! It basically confirmed what I’d been seeing anecdotally for years: a fair portion of fic folks don’t come to fic via the source itself. Couldn’t be me! But I respect our differences haha.)

Like those calls for recs a few years back—where we asked folks to send stuff in for “never consumed the source material” and “led me to consume the source material,” and sorry for the word “consume” here, not my favorite way to describe art—we’d like to collect more recs in this vein! Please send us your favorites that fall under these general categories:

• Never consumed the source material
• Led me to consume the source material
• No knowledge of the source material necessary

You can send those in via our handy form. — Elizabeth