Nevanna's Forest of Stories

I am pretty sure what, when I first started watching Heated Rivalry,, I said to myself, "I'm enjoying this series so far and I'm glad that the fandom is so active, but I'm not really into sports or sports romance so I don't think I'll be fannish about it." Possibly I also told you something to that effect. Time makes fools of us all, I suppose, because here I am, two months later, spending some time writing my own fanfiction (although that's set in an AU that makes shameless use of my favorite tropes) and a lot more time admiring the immense talent of other writers in this fandom.

Here are five fanfics that I've particularly enjoyed. Please heed the ratings and warnings in the AO3 headers.

1. other forms of intimacy by ultravioletdaydream

Shane and Ilya taking care of each other.

The four installments in this fanfic - two set during the show's first season, and two after - perfectly capture a series of moments in the evolution of Shane and Ilya's relationship and the growing affection and understanding between them. (Fun fact: the third section appeared on my radar because of a post about How To Believably Torment Shane Hollander, which I have kept in mind as I've set out to do exactly that.)

2. Mr. Emergency Contact by fandom_commitment_issues

Ilya Rozanov realizes he's an emergency contact in the exact moment he needs to act like an emergency contact. Hayden Pike has to release a statement about it.

"Kidfic" isn't exactly one of my go-to fannish tropes, but I was both entertained and moved by the way this story took a premise that even the writer admits is "crack treated seriously" (Ilya has to pick up the child of Shane's friend and teammate from school in the middle of the day) and ran with it. In addition to Ilya's grouchiness at Hayden for putting him in this position, and the adorable moments in which he and the sick little girl negotiate snacks, movies, and medicine-taking, I always like when fanfic delves into the public perception of the Hockey Lads and the lives that they lead, and that's a big part of how this fic unfolds. I also love how readily Ilya calls on Shane's mom for advice, and how she helps him without hesitation.

3. Knowing by toomuchplor

Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov are not Scott's problem. That's all there is to it.

I always love a well-written outsider POV, and this story explores Scott Hunter's perspective on Shane and Ilya's (very unsuccessful) attempts to be sneaky, while Scott himself is falling for Kip and dealing with the pressure of the closet. Their scenes together are sweet and sexy and funny, but also include a very believable argument and attempt at compromise. Also, Ilya continues his tradition, established in the books (none of which I'd read when I first encountered this fic), of showing up in the middle of other hockey players' romantic drama to be a hilarious menace.

4. hayden needs to take a minute by profdanglais

Hayden's curiosity gets the better of him and he ends up learning more about his best friend than he needed to know.

At the end of Heated Rivalry The Book, Hayden figures out that Shane and Ilya are together, but it has yet to happen in the show, so in the meatime, fanfic writers have, naturally, taken it upon themselves to write their own versions of how it might happen. I love all of the character voices in this little story, and although Shane is not the Game Changers character whom those in the know would likely associate with Steve Rogers, the mention of his "Captain Frown" inevitably reminds me of The Ballad of Captain America's Disapproving Face.

5. knockout by PenAndInkPrincess

(in which Ilya learns that being a passenger in the car knocks Shane tf out)

I was completely charmed by this post-canon character and relationship study, which affirms that even long-established partners can learn things about each other.

I wrote about the time my girlfriend's online RPG became my primary fandom.

I am not immune to the sentimental allure of a fandom anniversary, and I'd hoped to post this entry last fall, roughly 20 years after the events that it describes. But in October, my offline life became very chaotic, very quickly, and I didn't have nearly enough energy to decide what I wanted to say, or - just as importantly - what I wanted to leave out.

If we know each other offline, and you have some idea of "Briar's" real identity, please don't bring it up here. I gave her a pseudonym, and ultimately cut out a lot of what I'd written about the progression of our relationship, for a reason.

I followed up on a previous TBT entry by writing about my urge to rescue a stranger's original character from the narrative in which she found herself.

Happy new year, my friends. At the beginning of 2025, I talked about some of my creative plans for the year. There are certainly fanfics that I want to write, but for various reasons, I haven't had a lot of energy for it lately and am hesitant to commit to even one project, let alone several.

But that doesn't mean that there's nothing in the fannish world to which I'm looking forward. Here are some of those things, in no particular order.

1. Finally reading and sending feedback for my fandomgiftbasket gifts

2. The return of threesentenceficathon on January 17

3. Receiving my beta reader's feedback on a Five Things fic that I wrote months ago for The Hypnotists, which is still my small fandom of choice

4. Reading Through Gates of Garnet and Gold, the latest installment in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series

5. Talking about Stranger Things with anybody who has also finished the series, because I have feelings

What are some of your fannish hopes and/or goals for 2026?

Signups for fandomgiftbasket are open until Friday! Comment on this post, within the required format, if you want somebody to create something for you!

I will share my requests once they're visible on the comm, but there are already a lot of "gift baskets" available for your perusal.

I shared a tongue-in-cheek observation about fannish obsession that I scribbled in one of my notebooks as a teenager. I think that it might amuse some of you.

I wrote about the intersection of my shipping obsession and my music obsession in the early 2000s.

Until the concert in question, I did not actually know that "Savage Garden" was a reference to Anne Rice (I think that either Elle or my housemate pointed that out), so hearing the phrase in the recent Interview With The Vampire series was sort of a reverse "I understood that reference!" moment.

I don’t like April Fool’s Day, but I do like stories about scams and hoaxes. Here are five of my… well, “favorite” is a loaded word when talking about some of this subject matter. People were definitely or very likely hurt in all of these cases. People died in connection with some of them. I am not trying to make light of those tragedies when I say that I am fascinated by these accounts… but then again, maybe that’s how all the True Crime Girlies excuse their obsessions.

Anyway. Here are five scams or hoaxes that I find myself thinking and talking about a lot.

1. Beatrice Sparks’s Teen Diary Empire

I already alluded, in a previous entry, to the intersection of books like Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal with the War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic. I would still recommend Rick Emerson’s Unmask Alice to anyone who’s interested in those topics, or remembers picking up the supposed “diaries” of “real anonymous teenagers” from their local bookstore or school library.

2. MsScribe’s Fandom Social Climbing

MsScribe was a fanfic writer and LiveJournal blogger in the Harry Potter fandom of the early 2000s, who employed sockpuppets, weaponized existing ship wars, and almost certainly embellished the truth about her personal life, to gain sympathy and favor from the “Inner Circle” of popular fangirls. Part of why her actions remain a compelling and enduring part of fandom history was the deftness with which she understood and manipulated the expectations, grudges, rivalries, and allegiances of her community. In addition to the Fanlore article and the archived version of Charlotte Lennox’s “Unauthorized Fandom Biography,” you can watch Strange Aeons’ video on the topic if the audiovisual format is your preferred one.

3. Thanfiction’s Hobbit and Wizard Cults… And Beyond

I think that there are two reasons why I closely followed the fandom exploits of Andy “Thanfiction” Blake (as recounted primarily by his former partner, Abbey, and by The Tea Blogger, who has spent years building a massive timeline of Blake’s online activity), and they’re only tangentially related to his phony celebrity connections or attempts to scam people out of their money (and it’s been speculated that financial benefit was never even his primary objective anyway). The first reason is that I understand, on a very personal level, how the narrative that he offered his closest followers – including his supposed ability to “channel” characters from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, as well as his own OCs – might have been appealing. I’ve talked about fictional characters and worlds in some of the same ways that he did, and so have a few of my friends, but none of us have ever started a cult about it.

Secondly, Blake’s years on Tumblr, in which he often posted about Supernatural and current events (and appeared to over-identify with fictional characters but didn’t necessarily “channel” any), offer another example of how a bad actor can manipulate the norms of a subculture – in his case, the trappings of social justice and the revisionist version of his own mental illness and trauma history – to gain attention and power over others. The use of Tumblr (and other online platforms) for activism or for bonding over shared experiences is not an inherently bad thing, but I’ve long been skeptical of the social expectations that can develop in those environments and their vulnerability to exploitation.

4. TIED: Amanda Riley’s and Belle Gibson’s Fake Cancer Diagnoses

As far as I know, these two cases are unconnected, but they’re similarly horrifying when one considers how brazenly each woman took advantage of a religious community (in Riley’s case) and the already problematic world of complementary medicine and “wellness” trends (in Gibson’s), benefiting both financially and emotionally from their lies, at least for a time. Riley’s crimes are covered in a podcast called Scamanda; my primary understanding of Gibson’s story comes from a recent Netflix dramatization, Apple Cider Vinegar, but it’s based on a nonfiction book that I’ve requested from the library and am looking forward to reading.

5. Lani Sarem’s Attempted Bestseller List Coup

Handbook for Mortals – an awkwardly written “urban fantasy, paranormal romance” complete with a love triangle – appeared at the top of the Young Adult New York Times bestseller list in August 2017 despite nobody in the YA writing and publishing community ever having heard of it or its author before. It remained there for less than a day while booksellers and journalists pieced together writer Lani Sarem’s plan to buy her way into fame (and hopefully the production of a movie franchise). Although this scheme didn’t arise in transformative fandom, it’s come up in fandom history conversations because of a brief rumor that Sarem was secretly the author of infamous badfic My Immortal. There’s no evidence that this was the case, and part of me hopes that that particular mystery is never solved.

Are there any scams or hoaxes – within or outside of fandom – that have captured your attention?

Inevitably, my friends’ and my fannish interests and participation don’t always line up completely. I like to think that we can still support and even vicariously enjoy some of each other’s fandom obsessions… or, at least, I try to offer them that support, to the best of my ability, because I’d like them to do the same for me, to the best of theirs. Here are five fandoms to which I would consider myself “adjacent” even though I’ve never created any fic for them (which is how I personally define participation, for these purposes, though that’s obviously not a universal metric).

1. Star Trek: Voyager

I’ve actually seen a scattering of Star Trek episodes, across several eras, because I know so many dedicated fans, though I’ve never sat down and watched any series from the beginning. And, of course, I love any and all stories about the franchise’s place in overall fandom history. But one of my closest friends in college was especially fond of Voyager and showed some of our social circle a sampling of episodes; we shared an appreciation for the episode “Meld,” and I fangirled intensely over the descriptions of telepathic contact in the fic that she wrote as a result. Although that experience was only one tiny facet of a very long friendship that incorporated several fannish obsessions – shared and otherwise – it was an early sign that we interacted with stories in very similar ways, and when she confessed that Brad Dourif’s character was “eating her brain,” I understood exactly what she meant.

If anybody is wondering whether she also showed me and our other friends “Threshold,” she absolutely did.

2. Kingdom Hearts

I am not a video game person and never have been. I heard enough about Kingdom Hearts, from my two best friends at the time (one of whom was the Voyager fan that I mentioned above) to recognize the parts of the story that would likely appeal to me (possession! hidden memories! dual identities! an elaborate media crossover not unlike the ones that I scribbled on every available scrap of paper as a young teenager!). If it had been in any other format, I might have been right there with them. I did read some of the manga, just to gain some understanding of what they were talking about, and could probably pick out Sora, Riku, Kari, and Axel from a lineup, although I am led to understand that at least one of them has a metaphysical doppelganger. Or three.

3. Les Miserables

My high school choir practiced a medley from Les Mis when I was a freshman (I don’t remember whether or not we actually performed it), and the theater department at my summer camp staged the musical during my last year, but there were probably a few years in between when I had no idea what the story was about, beyond the general historical setting. If that.

Around the time that the 2012 movie was released, my then-housemate showed me a recording of the 25th Anniversary stage production and read me enough passages from the original novel to convince me of Enjolras and Grantaire’s tragic love. I enjoy reading what other people have to say about all of the characters – but especially those two – even if I have yet to tackle the book or develop any particular desire to write about them myself.

4. Glee

I’ve seen the first season and part of the second, I’ve liked some of the songs, and I’ve watched Mic the Snare’s outstanding video essay more than once. My impression of Glee is that it offered compelling characters who were often frustratingly underserved by the plot, which created plenty of space for transformative fanworks, including crossovers. Thus, about a decade ago, I spent a lot of time talking with my friend D – who was more invested in the show than I was – about AUs in which Kurt Hummel was (variously! not all at once!) a vampire, a magic user, and a mutant with psychic empathy powers.

5. Supernatural

It’s difficult to be involved in modern fandom and be entirely ignorant of this show, and I’ve enjoyed fanfic and meta about it despite only having seen a relatively small number of episodes, many of which I experienced alongside my dear friend Elle (who gave me permission to identify her in this post). I’ve happily beta read some of her fic, and since the final seasons of SPN and The Magnus Archives happened at roughly the same time, we shared some of the joys and frustrations and worries that came from witnessing the end of an ongoing, episodic story in real time. I might never commit to watching all or even most of SPN from the beginning, and I’ll probably never adore it like she does, but I love her love for it. Anyone who thinks it’s a cool and fun hobby to sneer at fans of the Winchester brothers can take it somewhere else.

I shared a list of the story ideas that I generated for ladiesbingo several ago, as well as what I eventually did with some of them.