The Rec Center #72
Hi folks! This week we have Haikyuu!! recs from guest reccer Marina, some wonderful Korrasami fanart, Justin Timberlake fanfic reminiscences, and something to get you in the mood for the new series of Twin Peaks. — Gav
new stuff
“I Found My Voice As A Writer In Justin Timberlake Fanfiction” by Arianna Rebolini at Buzzfeed
A lot of pieces about youthful fic fumblings wind up making the writer’s teen self the butt of the joke, but this piece does the opposite! More “my early fanfic shaped the writer I am today” pieces, please. :-)
“Dragons Are for White Kids with Money: On the Friction of Geekdom and Race” by Daniel Jose Ruiz at The Millions
“With the expectation that geekiness is an embrace of whiteness, what happens when you are in fact not white? … How can I justify my geek-cred while also maintaining my street-cred? Often, I cannot. I am a geek, and I am a brown man, and this has earned me a lot of shit from both sides.”
“Just wondering, what is Twin Peaks about?” by Rachel Handler at MTV
A film journalist went to an “immersive Twin Peaks experience” and asked fans what they thought the show was about. Their answers were fascinatingly varied. (The new Twin Peaks begins in two days, everyone!!!)
older stuff
“Finding Yourself in Fandom” by Michi Trota in Uncanny Magazine
“There’s incredible power in not only seeing yourself reflected in media, but seeing that representation done right as well.”
tumblr & beyond
Korra/Asami painting by audkoch
The creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion had a...unique attitude to fans criticizing the end of his show.
“What’s the most useless Star Wars fact you know?” A vital Reddit thread.
The lyrics of Hamilton’s “The Room Where It Happened” rewritten around the past week’s news: a total masterpiece. (Content warning: Donald Trump)
fanfiction
Marina is an artist and the Panel Program Manager with GeekGirlCon. She can be found on twitter blathering about anime, quidditch, and fanart.
Haikyuu!! is an anime/manga about volleyball; more specifically, it’s about the Karasuno High School volleyball team and their journey from fallen champions to the best in the nation. It features a large cast of characters from both the Karasuno team and the players on the rival teams in Japan. The anime focuses specifically on the Kageyama Tobio and Hinata Shouyou, two freshman at Karasuno who had intended on being high school rivals after competing against each other in middle school but have now ended up on the same team. It turns out that Hinata is the only one who can hit Kageyama’s incredibly fast toss and the two become a powerhouse duo, giving Karasuno an unstoppable attack and a chance at regaining their former glory. It’s about FEELINGS and FRIENDSHIP and most importantly, VOLLEYBALL!
All of the characters in the show are really well developed (we get special episodes about them when they level up in skill!) and there are a lot of shippy dynamics to chose from. My rec list focuses on Kageyama and Hinata, who have a friendship built on rivalry, a desire to win, and above all an obsessive love of the sport they play. — Marina
“love and victory” by bigspoonnoya. 20K words, rated Explicit.
Ship: Kagayama/Hinata
Backstory: Kageyama and Hinata lose against Shiratorizawa, graduate high school, and go off to college. Then they team up again for intramural volleyball.
Rec: Confession: I read this fic before I started watching the anime and I have read it multiple times since I finished. The partnership between the two is so well developed and there are nice cameos from upperclassmen and side characters, which makes this feel like a natural progression of the story. The sequel is really good too!
Content warnings: N/A
“by this time next year” by reeology. 28K words, rated Explicit.
Ship: Kagayama/Hinata
Backstory: In their third year (Japanese high school is three years) Kageyama gets scouted by two colleges and Hinata is determined not to get left behind. Kageyama helps Hinata stay alive between studying, volleyball practices, and cram school. Along the way they fall in love.
Rec: Canonically Kageyama isn’t great at verbally expressing his feelings. Here, his actions capture perfectly what he can’t articulate. There’s also a terrible haunted house.
Content warnings: N/A
“stay stay stay” by deanpendragon. 28K words, rated Teen.
Ships: Kagayama/Hinata, Tsukishima/Yamaguchi
Backstory: This is a companion piece to “campfire in your chest” but it stands alone. Kageyama and Hinata navigate the space between best friends and more than just friends.
Rec: There’s a lot of really sweet hand holding, dense idiots, and hugs. I love how this captures the feeling of being a teenager in love and not really knowing how to get from being friends to more. I read this three times in a row and never want to stop reading it.
Content warnings: underage drinking
“Stop My Bones From Wondering” by cerasi. 10K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Asahi/Nishinoya
Backstory: Gentle giant Azumane Asahi is Karasuno’s ace (player who score the most points), Nishinoya Yuu’s best friend and now his boyfriend. Asahi graduates and ends up hiding in town working at a convenience store instead of leaving as originally planned, then Nishinoya finds out.
Rec: This fic is a great exploration of how Asahi’s cowardly behavior affects his relationships, future, and love of volleyball. I love getting to see a character grapple with loving something that has an expiration date and having the gentle guidance of those who have come before was really refreshing.
Content warnings: N/A
“one’s not half two/ it’s two are halves of one” by orphan_account. 3K words, rated Teen.
Ship: Kagayama/Hinata
Backstory: Kageyama’s middle school nickname was “King of the Court” because of his selfish and tyrannical attitude while playing. In high school Kageyama, thanks to Hinata, learns what it means to play as part of a team
Rec: Kageyama learns how to be a human capable of emotions and gains a boyfriend in the process. This fic is pure fluff and is the equivalent of hugging a puppy while eating a marshmallow.
Content warnings: N/A
FINAL THOUGHT
This week we have a rare Double Final Thought because both of us are very excited about something in this Hell World!! First off, I (Gav) am ridiculously hyped for Star Trek: Discovery. I’ve been waiting 150 years for this show, and they FINALLY released a trailer this week, and IT!! IS!! BEAUTIFUL!!
I’ve already analysed the trailer in intimate detail and am HYPED to see more of everyone, plus (I guess) all the men they didn’t bother to show because they’re not as important as Sonequa Martin-Green hangin out with Michelle Yeoh in space. YOU GUYYYYS. WE’RE GONNA GET A NEW STAR TREK! — Gav
~*~
Man, Gav set the bar high for enthusiasm here. I (Elizabeth) am equally enthusiastic about Zan Romanoff’s Grace and the Fever, a YA novel about a One Direction-like boyband (and, importantly, that boyband’s FANS and FANDOM). It came out this past week and you are *strongly* encouraged to get your hands on a copy asap. You might have seen that Flourish and I talked to Zan on Fansplaining a few weeks back; we also commissioned Allyson Gross to write about this and a few other boyband novels. If you’re curious, I’d check those out. And then go read the book!!
I rec GRACE with the caveat that I am not, have never been, and likely never will be in boyband fandom and I *loved* this book—like, I actually chose much slower routes home from work so I would have more time to read on the train. I’ve read a fair number of fandom and fandom-adjacent novels over the past few years, and some of them have been pretty good as books, but it’s been frustratingly rare to find one that captures some experience of fandom that I recognize. This book does that, I think partly because it approaches fandom with the same ambivalence I do—there are great bits, there are miserable bits, but in the end, it’s just a part of you. I loved this bit of our conversation with Zan, where she says as much:
My hope really was to have this be important to people who have been in fandom and who’ve been confused by these feelings, and who’ve had worries about their relationships to RPF and to celebrity fandom and to fandom in general, to writing fic, is this crazy, what am I doing?! To say both that you meet an incredible community and it is creatively amazing—and I think it’s no coincidence that the way that I wrote my book about fandom was while emailing it to a friend, in conversation, wasn’t like Me As The Author Creating My Work, it was like posting chapters every week. “Here’s my WIP! Here’s my work in progress, here you go!” To say both really incredible things can come out of this and also it’s dangerous. And not to get too deep, but I think that all the best things are dangerous. That’s what makes them good. I love fandom and I think fandom’s really fucked up.
I can’t wait until you’ve all read it so we can ~discuss. :-) — Elizabeth
Have a favorite one-off rec? Please send it our way! We’ll use it in a future list. Other fanworks—comics, vids, etc—are strongly encouraged as well. Also a note: we’re a few weeks behind on correspondence, so thank you for your patience. We’ll write back asap!
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)