The Rec Center #478
Hello all! This week we have articles on digital media ownership, sci-fi history, and an exciting crossover event: the return of Gav to Fansplaining, with a fantastic piece on how the new Captain America movie fails both its characters and its fans. Plus some gorgeous IWTV fanart, and for the final week of Femslash February, a list of F/F podfic from guest reccer twtd! — Elizabeth
new stuff
“Sam Wilson Deserved Better Than Brave New World” by Gav at Fansplaining
As a longtime Captain America fan, Gavia digs into where the new movie Brave New World went wrong—both in terms of its incoherent political messaging, and its failure to engage with what fans enjoyed about earlier MCU spinoffs.
“The BBC’s library of classic sci-fi sounds is now available to sample” by Charles Pulliam-Moore at The Verge
For fans of classic sci-fi TV and radio! The library of electronic music pioneers BBC Radiophonic Workshop (responsible for the original Doctor Who theme song, among tons of other music and sound effects) has been made available by the BBC.
“The Digital Packrat Manifesto” by Janus Rose at 404 Media
Amazon’s recent decision to stop letting users download Kindle purchases to their computers is just one of many big-tech encroachments on “digital ownership” in recent years. This manifesto makes a stirring argument for digital packratting—and with all the limited space that entails, truly curating what you keep. “Every collection becomes deeply personal, and that’s beautiful. “
Every time a marvel movie ends my wife is like “do you wanna see what happens after the credits?” And I say “what is gonna happen is that one guy will be standing there and then another guy will walk into the room and I won’t know who either of the guys are”
— 🔪🔪🔪bryan 🔪 🔪 🔪 (@murderxbryan.bsky.social) 2025-02-22T04:05:15.556Z
older stuff
“Fandom under fire: how fanzines helped sci-fi survive the Blitz and beyond” by Isabella Kapur at Polygon
A fascinating piece of fanzine and SFF history, on the British zine Futurian War Digest, which was published during World War II.
tumblr & beyond
Interview with the Vampire fanart by zinyli
“like a solid 60% of weird fandom tropes were invented by women who needed slightly more avant garde ways to fuck spock”
honestly shocked that this post arrived to us via elizabeth’s timeline rather than gavia’s
“Anastasia (1997) deleted scene where the KGB tries to arrest dimitri for counterrevolutionary monarchist sentiment”
ok but what you need to understand is that Severance’s featureless offices are eerily evocative
fanfiction
twtd is primarily a femslash writer and podficcer. Her works can be found on AO3.
The simplest definition of podfic is fic read aloud. But like most things in fandom, there’s a whole community of people that congregate around podfic, whether that’s creating it or listening to it. I love both making and listening to podfic, and so, for this Femslash February, I wanted to provide a set of recs to some of my favorite femslash podfics. Some of them are very long and some of them are very short, but together, they’re a great representation of the femslash podfic offerings out there.
There is also the Femslash February Podfic AO3 collection, which you can find here.
In these recs, I’ve listed the podficcer(s) and the fic author, and I’ve given the length in terms of hours, minutes, and seconds instead of words. I’ve tried to give brief descriptions of the fics in the recs, but my recs are for the podfics specifically.
If you’d like someone to podfic your fic, there’s an easy way to make that more likely. Simply add a permission statement to your AO3 profile and then add yourself to the fps list. My permission statement is very simple: “I’m 100% down with podfics/fan art/anything else based on my work!” Yours can be as general or as specific as you like. Podficcers love to build things to make our lives easier, so there’s also a permission statement builder for all of your permission statement creation needs.
Now, on to the recs!
“when i die i’ll sacrifice (more than enough for the afterlife).” Podfic by quietnight; story by notcaycepollard. 4 hours and 21 minutes, rated Mature.
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe; Ships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov, Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers (background), Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson (background)
Backstory: Natasha Romanov died in Avengers: Endgame. This fic is about her coming back to life.
Rec: First, this fic is amazing. Natasha spends it rescuing her own damn self and making a better life for both herself and the people around her. It starts with her dying and ends with her living. The writing is spot on and it’s worth devouring even if you don’t want to listen to the podfic. The podfic, however, takes it to a whole other level. The author gives each character their own, distinct voice, so you can always tell who’s talking, which is so, so, so hard to do. The rest of the production values are right up there. I could listen to this podfic over and over again and find something new to gush about every time I listened to it. It is worth the four and a half hours of your life you’ll be devoting to it.
Content warnings: Archive warning for graphic depictions of violence. Other warnings for reproductive violence and harm/death to animals. If there’s something traumatic in Natasha’s background, it appears in this fic.
“the word is on the street.” Podfic by wilfriede0815; story by frausorge. 16 minutes, rated Gen.
Fandom: CLIO Ad: 30 Years in the Making; Ship: Gemma/Seza
Backstory: Renault released an ad about the relationship between two women as it changed over the years. I’m not sure if the names Seza and Gemma are canonical or if the author created them because they’re not mentioned in the canon. They started as friends as young girls who met through an exchange program. They got together again as teenagers and kissed for the first time, but one of their fathers forced them apart. Seza got married but was unhappy. Eventually, Seza left her husband and found Gemma again. The entire canon is just over two minutes long and can be found here.
Rec: The fic is about Gemma as she gets older. It’s beautiful and poignant and made me cry. The podfic made me cry even harder. The original commercial used a cover of the song Wonderwall by Oasis as a background. This podfic uses another, sparse, piano cover to delineate scenes. Between the spoken text and the piano you really get a sense of where Gemma is in her life and what she’s feeling. The narration is slow and deliberate and lets you soak in Gemma’s character. I was disappointed when it ended. Not because the narrative arc wasn’t great, but because I wanted to stay with it longer.
Content warnings: Period-typical homophobia
“Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Goncharov.” Podfic by collabs_georg (crackfics_georg), Dr_Fumbles_McStupid Collabs (Dr_Fumbles_McStupid), esbielle was also here (esbielle), Flowerparrish Pod Collabs (Flowerparrish), kittieclaw-pods (kittieclaw), korechthonia, MelancholyMorningstar, read by (horchatapods), semperfiona, with (ChaosKiro), with (jacks_long_coat), with (Tipsy_Kitty); story by berlincorpography. 47 minutes, rated Mature.
Fandom: Goncherov; Ship: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Backstory: Goncherov is a fever dream fandom made up entirely on tumblr about a fake Martin Scorsese film about Italian and Russian mobsters. There are two fake female characters in the fake film: Katya and Sophia. This fic is about two modern day academics arguing about various interpretations of the fake film.
Rec: A fic told through academic papers, emails, AO3 posts and comments, and phone calls. The fic is super clever using the various formats to weave the story of two academics and their enemies-to-lovers relationship. This is a multi-voice podfic that uses all of the voices to great effect and it made me laugh out loud many, many times, particularly at all of the “re:”s.
Content warnings: N/A
“No One Thinks About Eternity.” Podfic by exmanhater; story by impertinence. 4 hours and 16 minutes, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Women’s Hockey RPF; Ship: Amanda Kessel/Hilary Knight
Backstory: Everything comes back to Hockey RPF eventually, right? And the Professional Women’s Hockey League is now in its second season, so it felt like the right time to revisit this. And even though this podfic came out in 2014, Hillary Knight is still playing professional women’s hockey and Amanda Kessel is a hockey executive.
Rec: This is one of those RPF fics that convinces me that this is what these people are like in real life. And then I have to stop reading or listening and remember the fiction part of RPF. This fic is about Amanda Kessel becoming a professional hockey player in the NHL. It’s also about her relationship with Hillary Knight. The two things interweave in the best way and the recording of it makes it even better.
Content warnings: Sexism. It’s been a bit since I’ve listened to this and the fic is old enough that the tagging isn’t super robust.
“Once There Was, Once There Wasn’t” by AirgiodSLV, CompassRose, Elle_dubs (avril_o), Ellejabell, epaulettes, kitkat50311, mahons-ondine (mahons_ondine), and minnabird, sisi_rambles. Up to 6-7 hours, but also less depending on how you play it, rated Teen.
Fandom: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms; Ship: Gen, M/M, F/F, F/M, Multi, Other (all original characters)
Backstory: This is a narrative game/podfic/story that reimagines and reinterprets various fairy tales. It’s a choose-your-own-adventure fic. It’s hosted on AO3 and Twine. You can experience all of the stories on AO3 or play through them on Twine.
Rec: I haven’t listened to all of the stories yet or gone down all of the branches (there are many), but the ones I have listened to are fantastic reinterpretations of various fairy tale tropes. There is music and soundscaping, and filk, and clearly a lot of effort and care has gone into crafting this work. It is an incredibly imaginative experience.
Content warnings: Vary by storyline but include: Misgendering & gendered language, fairy tale-typical violence, mention of attempted assault, attempted assault, implied drugging, horror themes, bullying, and implied underage drinking
And a filk:
“i.f.y.d.i.a.m.p.l. || a song for beau” by Rootless_Lexicon. 2 minutes and 43 seconds, rated Gen.
Fandom: Critical Role; Ship: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha Nydoorin
Backstory: I went into this relatively fandom blind, so the backstory I know is that there’s a character called Beau and a character called Yasha and that Beau’s dad sucks. I’ve listened to some of that campaign of Critical Role, but I didn’t get far enough in to have a great grasp on what happens in it.
Rec: Even though I don’t know much about what happens in the canon, this filk is gorgeous. The imagery is so painful but also so lovely. It makes my heart break. The music is equally lovely. The whole thing taken together is a masterpiece and well worth listening to even if you don’t know the fandom.
Content warnings: N/A
danmei specializes in the fantasy that two people could have wild uninterrupted sex with that much hair flying around
— inknose (@inknose.bsky.social) 2025-02-11T03:13:48.753Z
FINAL THOUGHT
It’s Oscar weekend! If you’re interested in some fun and informative coverage before Sunday night, my film podcast Overinvested just published two (in my opinion!) great episodes.
The first is a trio of bite-sized reviews for three Best Picture nominees: The frontrunner Anora, the blockbuster musical Wicked, and the disastrously offensive and controversial Emilia Pérez (which somehow earned an astonishing 13 nominations). You can find that ep on all major podcast platforms.
Then over on Overinvested’s Patreon page, we recorded an overview of all the main Oscar categories, with insight from Oscar expert Morgan Davies on topics like category fraud and international censorship. This ep digs into some of the biggest titles and controversies, highlights some underappreciated nominees, and features some inevitable gripes about the Academy’s more underwhelming choices. — Gav