Hello all! This week we have articles about text-based fannish roleplaying, Pokémon card collectors, and Pluribus. Also some amazing IWTV fanart, a selection of short fanfic recs, and more! — Gav

new stuff

“Alternate Universes” by Newt Albiston at Fansplaining
“Some people go to therapy, and some people write with their friends about semi-fictional pirates having sex. Some people do both!” In Fansplaining’s latest, Newt Albiston writes about text-based roleplaying in fandom—and using that practice to explore their gender identity.

“Pokémon Fans Are Redefining the Art of Card Collecting” by Ana Diaz at The AV Club
As scalpers make it harder to collect Pokémon cards, some fans are changing tack: “Instead of focusing on ultra-rare cards and the latest hype, fans are assembling collections of easy-to-buy and often playful cards and showing them off on platforms like TikTok.”

“Pluribus and Romantasy: Art at the End of the World” by Gav at Reactor
In just a handful of episodes, Pluribus has already cemented itself as the most thought-provoking new genre show of the year. In this piece, Gav explores the protagonist’s identity as a popular romantasy author, and how this plays into the show’s ambitious philosophical worldbuilding. (Spoilers up to ep 3!)

MR. KISSER: Welcome to my Labe-oratorium, Batman. It's too bad you won't survive my ultimate hot and heavy smooch on the mouth. It really is the KISS of death! ROBIN: Batman, let's get the fuck out of here. BATMAN: (batman voice) 𝗡𝗼.

— Mike.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ (@dumbmike.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 5:15 PM

older stuff

“This Woman Is Protesting The Wage Gap By Spending 23% Of Her Workday Writing Erotic Fan Fiction” by Sarah Aswell at Reductress
“‘I realized that the men at my firm were getting paid 23% more for the exact same job,’ she explains. ‘At first I was furious. But now I just spend the portion of my day that I’m technically not getting paid exploring what would have happened if Daenerys Targaryen gave up men and fucked her dragons.’”

tumblr & beyond

Interview with the Vampire fanart by lucas1113

don’t worry guys, stargate is making a comeback.

“This cast and movie would have done numbers on tumblr in 2015”

Penn & Teller’s Shithead Basketball

amazing tiktok of louis from iwtv choosing his mario kart character.

the x-files: “supernatural for people with retirement funds.”

fanfiction

We’ve got short fics this week (2K words or less), and we’ll have long fics next week for the long (American) holiday weekend. Thanks to everyone who sent in a rec! — Elizabeth

“Peach Roses” by meridian_rose (meridianrose). 1.2K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Santa Clarita Diet (TV); Ship: Gen, Eric Bemis & Joel Hammond
Recced by: What_we_are
Backstory: Santa Clarita Diet is a comedy about living with zombieism. Eric is a teen who idolizes his girlfriend’s dad, Joel.
Rec: This future fic is sweet and funny. The dialogue and details ring true as Joel helps Eric manage his pre-wedding panic.
Content warnings: N/A

“Last Stand” by Mithen. 932 words, rated Teen.
Fandom: DCU Comicverse; Ship: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne
Recced by: Dominique
Backstory: In an alternate timeline (no knowledge required), Batman and Superman face together the end of their era, the Age of Heroes.
Rec: Vivid, haunting, heartbreaking character study. Less than 1K words that feel like 100K. Content warnings: Major character death

“Call and Response” by Lisse. 1.1K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Star Wars; Ship: Gen
Recced by: KJ
Backstory: At the end of The Last Jedi, our heroes are down to basically a ship and some porgs. This is what happens next.
Rec: I walked pretty much out of the theater and into this fic, because it’s so dang hopeful. Also it’s a nice short one for when you need a quick pick-me-up.
Content warnings: N/A

“not gonna write you a love song” by Did. 1.4K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast); Ship: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist
Recced by: Beatrice-Babe
Backstory: Instead of focusing on scent, this fic focuses on subvocal communication between omegaverse types. Martin is at the Institute after hours, and as he relaxes into letting out his subvocal woes, he discovers—to his utter mortification—that his boss is a night-owl workaholic.
Rec: I really appreciate this story for being an omegaverse fic with little mention of sex. Instead, heat is treated like a menstrual cycle, and the sheer awkwardness on both sides is deeply adorable.
Content warnings: N/A

“Dear Mr. Oakenshield” by Ridel. 1.2K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The Hobbit; Ship: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Recced by: catchandelier
Backstory: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins writes a strongly worded letter to the scoundrel that married, bedded, threatened, disowned, and very nearly murdered her cousin.
Rec: If there’s one thing in this world I love, it’s a savagely polite strongly worded letter. Throw in some Fem!Bilbo and a viciously polite Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and I am already reading it.
Content warnings: Mentions of PSTD

“three more stories” by besselfcn. 1.1K words, rated Mature. Fandom: House M.D.; Ship: Gregory House/James Wilson
Recced by: anon
Backstory: A fic with an unconventional format, where the story happens pre-canon, during the series and after the show ends. “The first time it happens is (New Orleans, 1991 | Albany, 2009 | Augusta, 2012) and they are (drunk | sober | out of time).”
Rec: Fascinating and heart-breaking fic, written in a very interesting format. Almost a “choose your own adventure,” and it’s beautiful.
Content warnings: Terminal illness

very little brings me as much joy as explaining the plots of romance novels to my husband. no one is more earnestly appalled. "he made a BET to marry her? but that will hurt her feelings when she finds out!" yes beloved

— alix e. harrow (@alixeharrow.bsky.social) November 20, 2025 at 10:27 AM

FINAL THOUGHT

The latest ep of my podcast Overinvested is an in-depth review of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein! This was a tricky one for me, because as a longtime GDT fan, I feel like I have a deep understanding of his craft and creative intentions... while also finding this film pretty disappointing. (Although my co-host was much more enthusiastic!)

During this conversation, we dig into Frankenstein’s role as an adaptation, its sumptuous visual style, and its sympathetic approach to Frankenstein’s Creature, tying into familiar themes from many of GDT’s earlier films. — Gav

FINAL FINAL THOUGHT

Last week, we included a fic rec which listed a (canonical m/m) ship in the “content warnings” field. We received quite a few messages about this, so we felt it was worth addressing in the newsletter itself. One of those messages was a Tumblr ask, if you want to see my initial response.

Briefly: Rec Center subscribers likely know that at this point, 99.9% of our submissions come from readers. We tend not to edit them outside typos—we don’t read any of these stories, nor are we familiar with the vast majority of the source material. (Neither of us have seen the show in question with this particular example, and we do not have any feelings about its characters.) There’s plenty of stuff in these recs where I’m like ??? … ¯_(ツ)_/¯; we don’t have the bandwidth to follow up on each rec (if people even leave contact info at all). But frankly, with this example, neither of us clocked this warning as potentially contentious or hurtful before sending out the newsletter last week, and we apologize for that.

Doing a little digging after the messages came in, I found the reccer had written many fics for the ship she was in fact warning for, and guessed that putting this canonical ship in the warnings field was some reflection of the contentiousness of the fandom (while Gav and I have not seen the show, we do see some of the fandom by sheer osmosis). The reccer then wrote about what happened on her own Tumblr, and tbh it seems like it was more of a slip-up than anything else; she graciously said it was OK to link to her response here.

As I mentioned in my reply on Tumblr, the “content warnings” field is not used exclusively for commonly triggering and offensive topics. There are hundreds (thousands?) of recs in the bank we haven’t run yet, so I can see far more submissions than you’ll have seen as readers. People have warned for bittersweet endings, for example, or that a character is shown in a poor light. At least a few people have written warnings with a bunch of plot details that wind up longer than the recs themselves. That being said, the majority of people do use that field for things like violence, sexual assault, etc. Readers don’t have hundreds of recs side by side like I do in my spreadsheet, and in the context of 5-6 recs where everything else is “violence” etc, it’s clear why what was meant as an informational tag looked like a value judgment.

I’ve been mulling over the warning vs information question this week, and I don’t have any answers. I do think it’s helpful, in a fandom with strong feelings about ships, to say one ship or another makes an appearance; similarly, it can be helpful to say a story is very critical of a character, or that an ending is bittersweet. Obviously these things can go in the text of the rec, but people often don’t do that—for example, people put stuff in the themes/tropes field (which is for my reference alone) that you’d get no indication of from the rec itself. I imagine some of that would be nice if it were public-facing, too! One possible idea is an “additional info” field; another is explicitly broadening the content warnings field to be something like “Additional info & warnings.” The latter could be a bit like AO3 tagging outside the major archive warnings: a flat list of elements in the story. (There’s also the idea of a “side ship” field, though I do think these questions are a bit broader than ships.)

Gav and I are going to continue chatting about this, and we’ll let you know if there’s a change to the rec form/format. This is also a good moment to underscore: We do not read these recced stories!! We’ve said it many times before, but we have new subscribers every week, so FYI to anyone who wasn’t aware haha. Thank you for being such an enthusiastic, community-minded group of writers and readers, and for continuing to share the stuff you like with everyone through our platform—we could not have a “fanfiction” section in this newsletter without you all, and we’re so appreciative of that. — Elizabeth