The Rec Center #509
Hello everyone: October has begun!! To celebrate the month, we’ll have a themed fic rec list every week; first up, vampires, in the coming weeks, werewolves, horror vibes, fluffy Halloween stories, and more. We’ve also got our usual batch of articles—on VTuber fandoms, playing Silksong with a nerve condition, and Luigi Mangione supporters—plus some beautiful Hadestown fanart. — Elizabeth
new stuff
“VTubers: how virtual stars are redefining culture, fandom and performance” by Yohji Lam at South China Morning Post
A video (naturally) report on the rise of VTubers—aka “virtual YouTuber, if this isn’t your corner of the internet—and the massive fandoms that have formed around some of them.
“A Condition Took Away The Use Of My Hands. Silksong Helped Me Rehab Them” by Nicole Clark at Aftermath
A beautiful essay about how the author has been playing Silksong after being diagnosed with a condition called double crush syndrome. “You can live life with this sort of condition in a state of grief, in constant fear of movement. Or you can celebrate every gain, knowing that you might not be able to consistently replicate it.”
“Inside the Contentious World of Luigi Mangione Supporters” by Melkorka Licea at WIRED
As we approach a year (?!) since Luigi Mangione’s capture and arrest, a very interesting deep dive in factions among his continued communities of supporters—and why they bristle at the term “fandom.”
it's called lotr because you can do a lotr of posts about it
— Saoirse Rescue (@cheatlines.co) September 22, 2025 at 11:02 AM
older stuff
“Korean Dramas Saved Me From Grieving Alone” by Jane Dykema at Electric Literature
“When a show ended, I felt a manageable loss, longing for fictional characters. I might think, how could I ever love anyone as much as Se-ri and Captain Ri?”
tumblr & beyond
Hadestown fanart by tsukihasnolife
“fascinated by this quora thread positing the bruce springsteen gay multiverse”
Freddy vs. Jason vs. Alien vs. Predator
“Steps to talking to your kids about the Beatles”
some advice for the aspiring martial artists.
This is what Moist von Lipwig looks like.
fanfiction
We got more than two dozen submissions to our call for October recs—conveniently enough to fill up all five (!) Fridays of the month. As we’ve done in the past, these will be sorted into broad themes. Of course I chose the best supernatural creature to go first: Vampires. (Yes, I am biased!!) Thanks so much to everyone who sent in a rec. — Elizabeth
“The Blood Contract” by ikft. 76K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Suits (US TV); Ship: Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Recced by: Grace
Backstory: Lawyers are vampires. A human named Mike gets hired as an assistant to the firm.
Rec: Excellent, detailed, complex worldbuilding.
Content warnings: Standard vampire warnings
“Koschei the Deathless & Marzena the Nightmare” by ChokolatteJedi. 12.K words, rated Mature.
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), John Wick (Movies); Ship: John Wick/Faith Lehane
Recced by: Goddess47
Backstory: John Wick is on the wrong side of town and finds himself fighting a vampire. He’s impressed (professionally and personally) by the slip of a girl that takes out the vamp. He offers her a partnership that quickly becomes more. He learns about the supernatural and she learns about being an assassin.
Rec: I love this John Wick, who is immediately interested in learning about the supernatural so that he knows more about what he is doing and what he is up against. At the beginning, Faith is unhappy with the Watcher’s Council and finds companionship, and more, with John. It’s an unusual pairing that ChokolatteJedi makes work well.
Content warnings: Canon-typical violence
“Blood on the Tongue” by FrostBlight. 51K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: RWBY; Ship: Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi
Recced by: twixtandshout
Backstory: In canon, Qrow and Clover are badass monster hunters and lucky/unlucky foils: an ex-bandit-turned-spy carting a crop of kid protagonists across the world, fresh off the latest worst moment of his life and newly sober, and the squeaky-clean propaganda piece for the world’s most militarized nation, who flirted with him at the same time he cuffed him for arrest. Here, Qrow’s a vampire who takes an interest in vamp hunter Clover, whose world is left shaken (in more ways than one) when a "leech" more powerful than he thought possible starts teasing him by leading other vamps to him to kill.
Rec: The developing Gothic romance between the two is dripping with ambience and dark-chocolate tension, and the vampire worldbuilding is rich and delectable enough to sink a pair of teeth into. I love how present other characters are past the main pairing; even if they don’t get as much focus and are clearly supporting elements, they complicate and inform the conflict in such a way as to set up real interest and... uh, stakes. (No pun intended.)
Content warnings: Blood and injury, implications of broader-scale background psychological horror, stalking, fearplay, split allegiance
“Bittersweet in the Sunlight” by 2bestfriends. 66K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe; Ship: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers
Recced by: Grace
Backstory: Bucky is a lonely vampire, and Steve is a happy albeit lonely leader of a werewolf pack, shenanigans ensue.
Rec: I love an urban fantasy story, and this is a good one.
Content warnings: Humiliation, sex work, daddy kink, knotting, blood drinking, non-con body Modification
“(heaven and hell) mere words to me” by thereisnoreality. 5.7K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Stray Kids (Band); Ship: Hwang Hyunjin/Seo Changbin
Recced by: LizzyPanic
Backstory: Stray Kids are a hyper-popular k-pop boy group consisting of eight members who often lean into the fact that they’re easy to read as queer. Changbin/Hyunjin is one of the "canon" pairings of the group, with a long-running dynamic between them in which Changbin has been trying to woo Hyunjin, and has recently succeeded. They now live as a pair in the same apartment and refer to themselves as newlyweds.
Rec: In this story, Hyunjin is a vampire who, after hundreds of years, has grown bored with living—until he meets Changbin. He spends much of the story trying to convince Changbin to let him turn him, so they can spend eternity together, and when he fails, determines instead to die when he dies. The prose is sparse and lovely, and the devotion Hyunjin shows is actually heartbreaking--his romanticizing of their future final moments together had me in tears. While there’s no actual character death in this story, it deals explicitly with confronting mortality. One could read Hyunjin’s determination to die at the same time as Changbin as suicidal ideation.
Content warnings: Grief (for someone who is not yet dead)
“la petite mort” by howlingmoonrise (TheDarkStoryteller). 1.3K words, rated Teen.
Fandoms: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Barbie; Ship: Barbie Roberts/Dracula
Recced by: anon
Backstory: Dracula is an immortal vampire. Barbie is Barbie.
Rec: This is an unhinged pairing taken absolutely seriously.
Content warnings: Blood, blood-drinking
Don’t get mad at the muppets for playing the Riyadh Comedy Festival, it’s the only way they can save the theater
— Mr. Chau (@srirachachau.bsky.social) October 1, 2025 at 8:16 PM
FINAL THOUGHT
For anyone planning a horror movie marathon this month, I put together a Letterboxd list of every horror movie ever reviewed on the Overinvested Podcast! Plenty of beloved classics in here, along with some excellent newer releases... and a few (like The Substance) that we hated but enjoyed analysing nonetheless.
And for everyone: Have a relaxing weekend! — Gav