Nevanna's Forest of Stories

When listing five of the authors whom I most admired in the early years of the X-Men movie fandom - the ones whose work I am most likely to recommend to viewers experiencing those first movies for the first time - I ended up sourcing some links from fanfiction.net and LiveJournal, because some of these authors had their Moments before AO3 became the fandom hub that it is today. Also, I'm referring to all of these authors by the gender pronouns that they used when I knew them; if anybody has more recent information, please feel free to share it.

1. Andraste

Andraste’s love for and fascination with Charles Xavier – not as a saint or a monster but as a well-intentioned, flawed individual – captured my attention even when I still thought I hated that character. She’s written in both the movieverse and the comicverse, but my favorite of her works will always be “Ten Thousand Candles,” a character study of Charles after the events of X2.

2. Minisinoo

I talked about Min’s An Accidental Interception of Fate in a previous TT5 entry, as an example of what make her writing exceptional. (I will refrain from making the obvious “X” puns. You’re welcome.) Her characters and their world feel multidimensional and immediate, whether she’s writing high drama and action (which find their way into Accidental Interception, as well as Climb the Wind, Special, and Grail), or slice-of-life vignettes like “Of Teletubbies and Mutants on Saturday Mornings.” The latter is not only funny and sweet, but also stands as an interesting time capsule of fannish attitudes toward queer interpretations of characters.

3. Penknife

(Most of this author’s work is locked to AO3 users, so you need to have an account and be logged in if you want to read it.)

All of Penknife’s fic is wonderful, but I am usually most likely to recommend “Children’s Crusade” and “Twenty Random Facts about Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.” (Are “Twenty Random Facts” fanfics still a thing? I’ve always liked that format.) Both works – like Min’s – portray daily life at Xavier’s School in really compelling, believable ways. She’s another one of the writers who made me appreciate Charles as a character (and Charles/Erik as a pairing) more than I might have otherwise.

4. Sionnain

Sionnain sold me on Magneto/Rogue, a pairing that I would never have considered if we hadn’t gotten to know each other. When I watched X-Men ’97, in which that pairing is very much canon, I hoped that she felt some lingering sense of vindication.

5. Trismegistus/Vagabond Sal

Eighteen-year-old Nevanna was absolutely stunned by this author’s command of descriptive language and dialogue, which I might have tried – with varying degrees of success – to emulate. Of the stories that I’ve been able to find, Wayward, which was actually co-written, was the first one that I remember reading; Infinite Regress was the most intellectually engaging and made the most intriguing use of a character from the comics, and Caducity (to which I should add a content warning for physical and mental decline due to illness) show how skilled and inventive Trismegistus could be when writing telepathy.

What are some of the most memorable stories from your early days in fandom?

Here are five books about young writers that I loved when I was a young writer - and reader - myself.

1. Seven-Day Magic (1962) by Edward Eager

On a routine trip to the local library, five children discover a mysterious book that can transport them to other times and worlds, as long as their chosen destinations are somehow connected to literature.

My mom read this book aloud to me (along with its predecessor, Half Magic) when I was around seven or eight years old and already just as invested in fictional worlds as the main characters. They might have, in fact, been the first explicitly genre-savvy characters I ever encountered. (“The best kind of magic book… is when it’s about ordinary people like us, and then something happens and it’s magic.”) In what is both the funniest and the creepiest chapter, a disagreement causes Barnaby, the resident “person with ideas,” to split off from the rest of the group and seek refuge in a story that he’s been secretly writing (and in his dashing fantasy persona, “Barnaby the Wanderer”). However, he nearly loses himself to an eerie corner of the world that he’s imagined until his friends show up to rescue him. I’m making that sound like the climax of a story about how Imagination Is Bad And Dangerous, Actually… but I don’t think that’s the message that this book, or even that particular section, is sending. Instead, Seven-Day Magic is about how powerful and transformative stories and imagination can be, even when they lead us to unexpected places that we shouldn’t have to face alone.

2. Daphne’s Book (1983) by Mary Downing Hahn

Speaking of messages about the role of fantasy in children’s lives: some years ago, rachelmanija wrote a couple of thoughtful posts about middle-grade “problem novels” that used make-believe as a plot device:

The basic plot is that Protagonist Kid meets a kid (Tragic Kid) who claims that magic (elves, etc) is real. The kids do magic spells, make elf homes, etc. Protagonist Kid usually isn't sure that the magic is real, but wants to believe that it is. At the end it is revealed that magic is definitely not real, there are no elves, and Tragic Kid was making it all up to cover up for the fact that their father is abusive/their mother is an addict/they have no parents and are living alone/etc. Protagonist Kid is sadder but wiser.

I thought about those tropes when I was trying to write a summary of Daphne's Book, which does contain some of them, up to a point. Seventh-grader Jessica is paired with the class outcast in a storybook-writing contest, and their collaboration evolves into a genuine friendship that is jeopardized by revelations about Daphne’s unsustainable home life. However, Hahn ends her story on a more hopeful note than most of the books that Rachel references in her discussion, and Jessica and Daphne’s creativity is ultimately rewarded, not punished. There’s a lot of joy in the scenes where they’re plotting out their story together and sometimes even role-playing the characters, and the final pages reaffirm how important and even life-saving that shared imaginative space was to them.

3. The Girl in the Box (1987) by Ouida Sebestyen

The victim of a random abduction, sixteen-year-old Jackie struggles to hold onto her sanity with the help of a conveniently available typewriter, on which she touch-types journal entries, pieces of fiction, and letters to her loved ones.

Gabrielle Moss’s Paperback Crush – a book that I’ve referenced in a couple of previous TT5 entries – describes Sebestyen’s novel as:

...a Voltron made of the culture’s grimmest beliefs about child abduction. All the essentials are there: a kidnapping that occurs while the child is innocently walking through the streets of her hometown; a hideous and insensible crime that pushes the limits of human understanding; an ambiguous ending that implies but never states that the heroine is dead. No wonder so many of this book’s GoodReads reviews are written by adult women who are still traumatized by having read this in middle school.

I’m including The Girl In The Box on this list, not because I found the story that Jackie was writing to be particularly compelling (it mostly consisted of teenage drama, implied to have been inspired by a falling-out that she had with her friends), but because I’m absolutely one of the adult women that Moss describes. Even though I didn’t talk about my reading experience on GoodReads, I vividly remember bursting into hysterical tears when I read Jackie’s farewell letter to her parents, possibly causing my own parents – not for the first time – to wonder what I’d been reading that upset me so much.

4. Libby On Wednesday (1990) by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

After years of home-schooling with her eccentric relatives, Libby attends public school for the first time, and has trouble fitting in until she starts meeting regularly with a group of fellow student writers.

Snyder dedicated Libby On Wednesday to readers who told her, “I write, too.” Like Daphne’s Book, it veers at one point into “Problem Novel” territory, involving the abuse that one member of the group is facing at home. However, most of the plot focuses on the kids getting to know each other, reading their work out loud, and talking about storytelling. (I learned the phrase “constructive criticism” from this novel.) I loved every glimpse into every character’s creative process, and I enjoyed reading about Libby’s quirky household almost as much.

5. Three Lives to Live (1992) by Anne Lindbergh

Assigned to write her life story as a school project, Garet finds herself chronicling the unexpected appearance of a girl named Daisy who tumbles into her basement from an old-fashioned laundry chute. Her grandmother (and guardian) encourages the girls to present themselves as identical twins, but Garet suspects that the woman who raised her might know more than she’s telling.

Lindbergh’s novel takes the form of Garet’s autobiography, and there’s a lot of metatextual fun to be had amidst the weird setup, weirder reveals, and the thematic explorations of sibling rivalry, identity, predestination, and the malleable nature of time. Garet’s straightforward narration occasionally takes a left turn into experiments with more stylized writing, and she devotes several hilarious pages to the advantages and drawbacks of overly descriptive dialogue attribution. I can also probably blame this book for my onetime fascination with soap operas as a cultural institution.

What are some of your favorite stories about stories? Do you identify particularly strongly with any writers in fiction?

Artie and I had such a great time watching Young Justice together – largely because of its mind control storylines – that, a couple of months ago, I decided to show them an episode of another DC superhero series that I remembered loving for similar reasons: Batman Beyond’s “Spellbound.” They seemed to like it, so we agreed to start the series from the beginning, and are now finished with Season 1. I always enjoy hearing Artie’s media criticism, even – sometimes especially – when they’re criticizing media that has nostalgic value for me. We’ve already had some chewy conversations about how this show addresses gender, among other topics (I can appreciate a high school plotline in which The Real Supervillain Is Toxic Masculinity, which could apply to both “Golem” and “The Winning Edge”), and groaned about how much the cars on the show resemble Cybertrucks.

But, in a twist which will surprise absolutely nobody, “Spellbound” remains my favorite episode of the first season. Not all storylines in Batman Beyond take the Buffy the Vampire Slayer route of exploring adolescent drama through the fantastical, but some of them do, and I think this episode is among the ones that does it best… although, it must be said, I might be biased. In both this Tumblr post and this Tuesday Top Five list, I talked about the formative impact of a story in which teenagers were mentally manipulated by an adult whom they should have been able to trust. I can blame this episode, partially if not entirely, for the grip that this narrative premise had on my imagination from my own teenage years – when I deeply resented authority figures’ attempts to get inside my head – to the present day.

Ira Billings, a.k.a. Spellbinder, isn’t dangerous only because he has access to science fiction technology that traps people in illusions of giant bugs. He’s dangerous because he works in a high school and has positioned himself as someone whom young people can trust with their secrets, and someone whose authority and insights other adults trust in turn. The opening sequence, in which he lures a teenage girl to the edge of a cliff, is scary. The subsequent scene, in which he tells the police that Chelsea fabricated that encounter for attention, is scarier.

Spellbinder does return in future episodes, but he’s no longer the school counselor, and I told Artie recently that I wish previous episodes had given us a glimpse of his civilian identity – perhaps even as a somewhat sympathetic figure – before we saw him in costume. We talked about how he might have approached various teens who made Questionable Decisions in earlier episodes, and then I asked, “Am I going to have to write a Five Things fic [featuring different students’ sessions with Dr. Billings]?” and Artie said “HELL YEAH” and I admitted that I did not have “return to Batman Beyond fanfic” on my 2025 Bingo card. The last time I wrote about any of these characters, I didn’t even know that “fanfic” was a term that existed. At least, if I pursue this story idea, there’s a chance that more than two people will read it… but I might be tempted to pursue it even without that possibility.

I don’t remember when and how I first learned that the Indigo Girls were queer icons, but it was sometime after I first started listening to their music (and before I had more than the slightest hint that I myself might not be straight). They were, first and foremost, the group who performed some of the songs that Older Sister taught me, and whose CDs kept us, Younger Sister, and sometimes our parents company on road trips. At some point, I also started associating their lyrics with some of the stories that I was working on at the time, or that we were working on together (a habit that continued once I entered online fandom and started using lyrics to title my fics). Much later, I also learned that Amy Ray and Emily Saliers were and are involved in activism for a variety of causes, including queer rights. And my family and I were lucky enough to see the group in concert in 2004.

At first, I thought about creating a list of my top five Indigo Girls songs, but I think that would be prohibitively challenging: there are just too many of them! Instead, here are my favorite tracks from their first five albums – the ones that helped to form the soundtrack of my childhood.

1. “Strange Fire” (Strange Fire, 1987)

I first heard this song on the concert album 1200 Curfews. I remember reading somewhere – maybe in the liner notes for that CD, maybe from a fan – that Amy wrote this song about her relationship with the Christian Church, but I don’t think that interpretation is necessary in order to appreciate the powerful lyrics, the melody, or the way that the harmonies build throughout.

2. “Secure Yourself” (Indigo Girls, 1989)

I think that this is one of the songs that I learned from Older Sister before I heard the recorded version. The final line, “Now we all are chosen ones,” resonated deeply with me as a young, socially awkward reader and storyteller who had tired very quickly of Chosen One stories. (“Closer to Fine,” which opens the same album, is probably more well-known, definitely more fun to sing, and I love that one, too. I just don’t love it in the same way.)

3. “Hand Me Downs” (Nomads Indians Saints, 1990)

No question about this one. The urgency and background drumbeat that kicks in on “...and you’ve become the saint somehow” makes me catch my breath every time.

4. “Ghost” (Rites of Passage, 1992)

Or, as my mom calls it almost every time she brings it up, “that one about the Mississippi being mighty.” (“Galileo” and “Love Will “Come To You” are also strong contenders from the same album.)

5. “Dead Man’s Hill” (Swamp Ophelia, 1994)

Swamp Ophelia has such a strong concentration of songs that I absolutely adore, that my choice is almost random, based on what I’ve been listening to the most recently.

If you’re an Indigo Girls fan, what are some of your favorites? Whether you are or not, do you recall any songs that captured your heart or imagination before you knew who originally performed them? What are they?

Here are five of my favorite Young Adult books with queer protagonists to be published within the last ten years. I am very lucky to live in a world where I had a hard time choosing.

1. Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (2016)

After coming out to her close-knit Puerto Rican family, Juliet travels across the country for an internship with a feminist writer whom she idolizes, leading to a transformative summer that shatters some of her illusions but gives her a better understanding of her own identity, creativity, and strength.

As far as this book is concerned, I echo pretty much everything that skygiants said in this 2017 review. Juliet is a wonderful narrator, and her experiences with white hippie feminism and with the kindred spirits that she finds among her fellow queers of color read as very authentic even to someone with only secondhand understanding of a lot of those communities and philosophies. Rivera is just that good at conjuring settings and subcultures. I love how complicated all of the relationships in this book are, and the sense of possibility with which the story ultimately leaves both heroine and audience.

2. Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand (2018)

Young women have been vanishing from the island of Sawkill Rock for many years. Zoey’s best friend was one of them. New girl Marion’s sister might be next. Popular Val and her family have played their own horrifying role in the disappearances. But these three girls, working together despite their pain and secrets and distrust, might be the only ones who can stop them.

The only speculative fiction work on this list, Sawkill Girls is a wonderfully atmospheric horror story with memorably complex relationships between the three main characters. Zoey’s asexuality is only one of the reasons why she feels like a perpetual outsider, while the attraction between Marion and Val is shadowed by Val’s connection to the island’s supernatural secrets. If you like scary stories set in close-knit communities, and books about super-powered teen girls who fight evil forces, you might want to give this one a try.

3. Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli (2023)

A chronic people-pleaser, Imogen often finds herself scrambling to be the perfect straight ally to her queer sister and closest friends, even when her efforts (such as the time that she spends online, reading strangers’ arguments in order to figure out whether she’s “allowed” to enjoy a movie like But I’m A Cheerleader) cause her excessive amounts of stress. When a college visit leads to an unexpected flirtation with another girl, Imogen has to overcome her insecurities for a chance at real happiness, not only with Tessa but with herself.

I liked Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and Leah on the Offbeat, but Imogen’s journey resonated with me even more deeply as someone who still second-guesses her own identity – and tends to interpret online discourse in the most self-critical way possible – even in adulthood. Also, the dialogue and characterizations pop off the page, and Imogen’s relationships with her family and friends are given as much weight and texture as the romance. (I also found her yearning for inclusion in a potential friend group to be Extremely Relatable Content.) In particular, her longtime friend turned antagonist, Gretchen, could come across as a mean-spirited caricature of a smug Tumblr-poisoned social justice warrior, but Albertalli is careful to present valid reasons for why Gretchen is the way she that she is, and also why she and Imogen have remained friends up until this point, without suggesting that Imogen owes her forgiveness.

At the time of writing, I’ve just finished reading the new companion novel, Amelia, If Only, and I am happy to report that it is equally delightful.

4. Emmett by L.C. Rosen (2023)

Emmett isn’t interested in a romantic relationship before he turns twenty-five (and has convinced himself that his reluctance has nothing to do with the fear of having his heart broken), but that won’t stop him from trying to find a boyfriend for Harrison, his friend and occasional hookup. What begins as a matchmaking mission, with all of the humor and angst and misunderstanding that implies, leads Emmett to question what he really wants and what he’s willing to risk for love.

Having never read Jane Austen’s Emma (or seen Clueless), I still enjoyed this modern take on the story, although if you’re not interested in reading about relationship drama among glaringly privileged teens, this might not be the book for you. Emmett might be insufferable, but the narrative recognizes that he’s insufferable, and his character arc involves a reconciliation between the “nice” persona that he projects and the genuinely kind and decent man that he’s capable of becoming. The slow-burn romance is lovely, and will probably appeal to readers who enjoy watching a protagonist slowly figure out what they themselves have known for many chapters, but – similarly to Imogen – I was equally charmed by the relationships among Emmett’s social circle, as well as his loving but fraught relationship with his father and their close bond with his late mother’s best friends. It’s the kind of intertwined family experience that I remember very fondly from my own formative years.

5. The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall (2024)

When Hollis’s boyfriend excludes her from his Dungeons & Dragons Secrets & Sorcery campaign, she joins a diverse all-girl gaming group in order to experience the activity that means so much to him and his friends. She doesn’t expect to find true friends of her own, to enjoy the love story that develops between her paladin character and Aini’s bard, or to discover a spark between herself and Aini outside their imaginary world.

I’ve never gotten involved in tabletop role-playing, but I’ve done some LARP, and dabbled in online role-play, and I have friends with plenty of experience in all three. Randall fully captures the creative and emotional synergy and excitement that friends can create when they’re telling a story together (and the confusion that can arise when the lines blur between in-character and out-of-character relationships). It’s aspirational in all the best ways.

I shared what I once imagined to be a stereotypical hero/villain confrontation, which involved mind control because of course it did.

Wearing: Denim shorts, blue tank top, and a button-down shirt printed with foxes.
Reading: I finished Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang. It has elements of horror and sci-fi, like her first book, but that one seemed to lean more into the former while this one leaned more into the latter. And although there were very satisfying amounts of Mind Stuff in Immaculate Conception, and I think it did a good job of examining the art industry and dysfunctional friendships, I think that I still liked Natural Beauty more.
Writing: Still, alas, between projects!
Planning: I'm spending a couple of days with my parents, and we'll hopefully pick strawberries with my sister and cousins.

What about you?

In which Nevanna overthinks children’s cartoons, in ways that probably won’t make sense unless you’ve watched the Craig of the Creek prequel movie.

( Go forth, following dreams! )

Wearing: A dress printed with cats wearing neckties or sunglasses. Today's storytime theme was "Clothing." I read this book in a pirate voice.
Reading: I finished Blazing Eye Sees All, which was excellent, and am about to start Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang. Her first book, Natural Beauty, blew me away, and her new one seems like it'll be even more up my alley. I also recently read a fantastic essay by Jude Doyle about Watchmen and Gritty Reimaginings in general.
Writing: Still between projects!
Planning: I'm going to a friend's Pride brunch tomorrow! Planning to start a batch of mini quiches as soon as I finish this post. On Sunday, I'm volunteering for a few hours in the afternoon, but hope to attend at least one craft market before or after.

What about you?

“Guilty pleasure” can be a loaded term, especially when it comes to media consumption. When compiling this list, I avoided titles that fell into the following categories.

A. The pleasure of the book is “guilty” because I am not its target audience (children or young adults).
B. The pleasure of the book is “guilty” because I am its target audience and we’re socially conditioned to think of fiction marketed toward women as frivolous.
C. The book was good but the author Did A Problematic Thing (or was Insufficiently Marginalized to tell the story they were telling). Those conversations aren’t without value, but I’m much more interested in discussing the actual text.

Instead, I decided to look at titles that I enjoy even though I disagree with something fundamental about the creative choices that went into them.

( Some examples! )