The Rec Center #59
CONGRATS! YOU SURVIVED THE WEEK. :-)
It’s still Femslash February, and we have multifandom guest recs from nolongerwolfalice. Plus a link to Bruce Springsteen’s secret Harry Potter song (finally!!), Beyoncé fanart, and more! — Gav & Elizabeth
new stuff
“Hear Bruce Springsteen’s unreleased ‘Harry Potter’ song” at Rolling Stone
Springsteen wrote a song for the first Harry Potter movie, but it remained an internet myth until last year when he confirmed its existence. And now you can finally hear it online!
“Philip Pullman unveils epic fantasy trilogy The Book of Dust” by Danuta Kean at The Guardian
This news was basically everywhere this week, but on the offchance you missed it: OMG! We’re getting a companion trilogy to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials! [Ed. note: Gav has been waiting for this since she was 12 years old, and is Very Emoshe rn.]
older stuff
Fanhackers on Tumblr
I was going to reference a specific article I’d found via Fanhackers, but then I figured, why not rec the entire project in case people are unfamiliar with it! For anyone interested in fan studies or academic intersections with fandom, it’s an “experimental project” from the OTW that has fantastic resources. Check out their entire “about” page for more info. — Elizabeth
tumblr & beyond
Beautiful Beyoncé fanart by @jomerian
“If fandom were described the way an 18th century secret society was described.”
Dr. Crusher explains memes in a vintage Star Trek comic.
Check out tosquinha’s cute fan comic about Minako and Hiroko (Yuuri’s mom) from Yuri on Ice!
This Kirk/Spock fanzine cover is... truly a masterpiece of our culture.
fanfiction
nolongerwolfalice loves hanging out at the beach in the winter, making friends with strange cats, and analyzing the shit out of movies she’s just watched right after leaving the theatre. She can be sort of found on her tumblr, when she’s not barring herself from it to actually get writing done.
Back when I started reading fic, I would get REALLY involved in a fandom for months, or years, before completely moving on and then repeating the process with a new one. These days I’m pretty much reading anything and everything as long as the fic is well-written and I have some familiarity with the source material, which is my explanation *coughexcusecough* for why this list is multi-fandom. Plus, Femslash February!
Seriously though, this rec list is pretty much my top 6 femslash fic recs. I could give you a lot of reasons why (and some are below), but at the core of it is these stories have just… stuck with me for long after I’ve finished reading them—like all good fiction does. They delve into the main characters, really get at the core of why the pairing works, and as a bonus, explore the characters’ other relationships to varying degrees, which is big for me. Basically, fics that blew my mind. And there’s a Mean Girls fic in here, so get ready! — nolongerwolfalice
“These Strange Steps” by thememoriesfire. 272K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Glee; Ship: Rachel/Quinn
Backstory: Glee is a show about a bunch of dramatic high schoolers in a show choir. Rachel is a dorky over-achiever who wants to be on Broadway, is bullied, and only starts getting friends later in the show; Quinn is the head cheerleader dating the quarterback… before she gets pregnant by his best friend and loses everything and becomes sort of more human. In this fic, Rachel is famous but a complete mess, doing a show in Vegas trying to save her career. Quinn is a stripper at a club in Vegas, and they meet there after eight years.
Rec: What seems like the set-up for a PWP is actually a wonderful, nuanced take on two people dealing with separate mental health issues—the fic gives this the space it really deserves—and maybe coming together again. Cannot recommend highly enough. The other important thing about this fic is that the author has a wonderful, evocative way about talking about music, and the characters’ relationship with it, that really brings it into the story and is very important for a show that involves music so much.
Content warnings: well-done and not actually super explicit BDSM, depictions of anxiety attacks, some abuse of prescription medication
“somewhere, someone must know the ending” by maleficently. 133K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Once Upon A Time; Ship: Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Backstory: In Once Upon A Time, Regina (the evil queen) curses various fairy tale characters to small town Maine where they live for 28 years, never aging, until Emma, the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming who was sent to this world separately to escape the anti-aging curse, shows up to break the spell. The hitch: 10 years ago she had a baby she gave up for adoption, and the baby was adopted by Regina (the Evil Queen). So Emma and Regina are at odds a lot, but they share a son, Henry, and both love him.
In this fic, ‘fairy tale land’ is a product of Henry’s imagination during a difficult time.
Rec: This is a wonderful, nuanced take on Once Upon A Time that plays with S1 canon to reimagine the show’s relationships in interesting ways—it’s just really lovely. OUAT is a fandom I love but a show I hate because the show took these fascinating, complex relationships and decided to do monster of the week instead (at least before I stopped watching). This fic is the antidote for that.
Content warnings: N/A
“Just A Little Insight” by random_flores. 89K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: Popular; Ships: Brooke McQueen/Sam McPherson
Backstory: Popular was a teen comedy-drama from 1999-2001 and it is incredible. Brooke McQueen is a popular cheerleader and Sam McPherson is an unpopular journalist, and their parents meet on a cruise and fall in love and move in together, forcing their friend groups to merge. They start off hating each other but in a really obsessive way. The show’s second and last season ends on a cliffhanger where Brooke is hit by a car on prom night, and that’s where this fic (and a lot of fic for this pairing) takes off.
Rec: Beautifully written fic about a complicated relationship where two characters admitting to being in love with each other doesn’t automatically solve everything. This one is hard to describe (there’s college, a betta fish, photography, an odd family situation, and an airport security cart), but really worth it.
Content warnings: off-screen animal death, not super-explicit discussion of car crash and related injuries and nightmares, references to one character’s former anorexia
“I’ve Been Trying to Reach You” by thememoriesfire. 152K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Glee; Ship: Rachel/Quinn
Backstory: The author describes this one as your basic world flip, which is pretty accurate. Quinn still gets pregnant sophomore year and plummets from the top to the bottom of the social hierarchy at McKinley, but in this AU, her liberal parents transfer her to Carmel, a private school with a good arts program. She immediately attracts the attention of Rachel Berry, the co-captain of the school’s glee club and on the top of the social hierarchy, and they become enemies pretty quick. She also joins a band, which is great.
Rec: The world flip is really great. You don’t need any background knowledge of Glee, but if you know what the characters’ canon selves are like, the differences are delightful. What really makes this fic stand out though is the careful attention the author pays to the music (again!) and its place in the characters’ lives, and the characterization is great too. I had to include two of their fics; they’re both just so good.
Content warnings: various types of homophobia (characters dealing with this is plot-related), mention of an abortion that didn’t happen, some violence, blackmail
“the electric soldier” by lupinely. 25K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: The Legend of Korra; Ship: Korra/Asami Sato
Backstory: In the Avatar series (Legend of Korra and the original series, Avatar: The Last Airbender), there are four nations corresponding to four elements, and benders have the ability to bend/control elements from their nation. Only the avatar can bend all four elements, and is supposed to bring balance to the world. Korra is the avatar in LOK, and she faces various enemies over the course of the series. At the end of Book (season) 3, Korra basically dealt with some really extreme trauma facing a powerful enemy, and this fic is an AU that takes place at the start of Book 4—after Korra spent 3 years away from the city recovering from this last fight. Asami Sato is a beautiful industrialist/engineer, and not a bender, and at the end of LOK is in a canon relationship with Korra, which is wonderful.
Rec: Captain America: The Winter Soldier-inspired Book 4 AU with incredible writing. An intense and really good read.
Content warnings: faked major character death, canon side character death, torture, amputation, brainwashing, violence, suicide
And one short fic!
“So Much More Than That” by brocanteur. 3.8K words, rated Teen.
Fandom: Mean Girls; Ship: Regina George/Cady Heron
Backstory: Cady Heron moves from somewhere in Africa to America and starts public school for the first time! She makes some friends who convince her it would be super fun to spy on Regina George, the mean popular girl, and then Cady becomes a mean popular girl, and then the mean things girls say about each other come to light, and then everyone apologizes, Cady grows as a person, and high school gets less clique-y. But really if you haven’t watched Mean Girls at this point, you really should!
Rec: Basically, post-film, Cady and Regina somehow become real friends, and then “so much more than that” and it is wonderful and hilarious and you should read it.
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
One more week of Femslash February to go! We actually already have more recs than we can include this month, but keep sending them in—this was all part of my sneaky plan to get more F/F into our general pool of recs anyway. :-D Please send one-off faves through our submissions form, and if you want to do a guest list like nolongerwolfalice did this week, write us at elizabethandgav at gmail! — 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)