July 5, 2024

The Rec Center #444

Hello all! This week we have articles about House of the Dragon, TV streamer release schedules, and (you’ll be shocked to hear!) Interview with the Vampire, along with a grab-bag of multifandom fic recs and more. — Gav

 

new stuff

“Interview With the Vampire Just Aired the Best Season Finale of 2024” by Gav at Inverse
Gav published a glowing review of the IWTV season finale, including some thoughts on the importance of this show’s weekly release schedule. (P.S. Scroll down to our outro section for... a lot more IWTV-related links lol.)

“Why does TV feel so underwhelming yet so overwhelming?” by Aja Romano at Vox
Speaking of weekly release schedules! An interesting piece on the broader streaming morass, with insights from industry analysts.

“Alicent and Rhaenyra’s Secret Love Is the Heart of ‘House of the Dragon’” by Kaiya Shunyata at The Daily Beast
A thoughtful manifesto for House of the Dragon’s continuingly popular Rhaenicent pairing. (Includes spoilers!)

 

 

older stuff

“The Plight of the Former Fanfiction Author” by Casey Fiesler at Slate
“These online communities can literally save lives, but choosing to share information in a public place comes with the trade-off of privacy risks.”

 

tumblr & beyond

House of the Dragon fanart by bismutting

“do you think lestat has spotify premium on his divorce ipad”

“y’all are thirsting after a man named herbert.”

yearning to see the Théâtre des Vampires production of Cats.

“ncuti gatwa is the most beautiful crier in the whole wide world”

check out these incredible location-specific Padme Amidala cosplays!

with the s2 finale, we finally have the answer to “did the vampire get the job?”

 

fanfiction

A multifandom grab-bag this week! Thanks so much to everyone who sent in a rec. — Elizabeth

“If Never Again, If Every Day” by gallifreyburning and takiki16. 179K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: The Old Guard; Ship: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Recced by: stars-inthe-sky
Backstory: The Old Guard features a found family of extremely long-lived immortals, including Joe and Nicky, who have been together for 900+ years and had a meet-violent during the First Crusade.
Rec: It’s a surprisingly fun read for what could be an angsty set-up of each half of a couple having to face their partner’s very un-loving past self. The story moves along with vigor, great dialogue, solid character development, and just the right amount of timey-wimey-ness.
Content warnings: Canon-typical violence, some internalized homophobia

“The Life That Is Waiting” by Lunabee34. 2.1K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; Ship: Benjamin Sisko/Kasidy Yates (but takes place after the end of the series, so Ben is not present)
Recced by: Flourish
Backstory: At the end of Deep Space Nine, Captain Sisko found out that he was always actually...possibly a god? Or a wormhole-dwelling alien? Anyway, he takes off to explore another plane of existence. Which presumably makes things a little tough for Kasidy, his wife, who’s very pregnant, not to mention his other loved ones. Rec: This story provides such a wonderful, loving button to Kasidy’s story, wrapping her in the love of everyone who lives on DS9 and pointing the way forward. Kasidy completely deserves it.
Content warnings: Childbirth

“a needle, a whisper, an insidious dream” by pale_and_tragic. 20K words, rated Mature.
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV); Ship: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn & Wēn Qíng
Recced by: anon
Backstory: This takes place shortly after the events of the Untamed at a point where the main couple (Wangxian) are nearly but not quite together. Most of the fic centers around a Sleeping Beauty inspired case.
Rec: This fic is scary, sad, funny and cute in turn and overall really a good read (although, mind the tags; your mileage may vary when it comes to the horror elements). But what elevates this fic for me is that the Sleeping Beauty in question is aro/ace and an entire chapter is dedicated to exploring that.
Content warnings: N/A

“The Temporal Tornado” by novembersmith. 3.6K words, rated Gen.
Fandom: Welcome to Night Vale; Ship: Carlos/Cecil Palmer
Recced by: beyondtherealm
Backstory: Welcome to Night Vale is a soft-horror/surreal podcast narrated by the (in-universe) radio host Cecil Palmer, and Carlos is his canon love interest. This story is written like an episode of the show and features a temporarily de-aged Carlos.
Rec: This short and sweet story perfectly captures the tone and style of the show.
Content warnings: Tornado-related damage/casualties, canon-typical violence (casual attitude to death), jellyfish

“They Call it Undercover Work for a Reason (But Not That Reason)” by greywash. 8K words, rated Explicit.
Fandom: Spy (2015); Ships: Susan/Nancy, Susan/various others
Recced by: haygahr #9190
Backstory: “‘Cooper,’ says Crocker. ‘We’ve had word of an agent trying to undermine the American bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics.’ ‘Do we care about the Olympics?’ asks Nancy.”
Rec: It manages to be actually as batshit as the actual movie was, and as good.
Content warnings: N/A

“strong medicines against stupid pride” by rain_sleet_snow. 102K words, rated Mature.
Fandoms: Rogue One (Garth Nix’s Abhorsen fusion); Ships: Galen Erso/Lyra Erso/Saw Gerrera and all permutations therein
Recced by: Chestnut_pod
Backstory: The Star Wars prequel Rogue One’s protagonist Jyn operates in the shadow of her parents—dead rebel, collaborator/mole, extremist—to achieve her goals. These figures have relatively little screen-time but loom large over Jyn and the narrative. Meanwhile, Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series follows the Abhorsens, well-intentioned necromancers tasked with keeping the dead down, not raising them, in a portal fantasy world slightly offset from our own.
Rec: This story is an absolutely top-tier fusion, where the author manages to use each canon to illuminate and extrapolate from the other. It follows Saw, in this case a soldier guarding the border to the Old Kingdom, as he tries to navigate an increasingly fraught and deadly political situation, and also his feelings for his counterparts across the wall: Galen and Lyra, the Abhorsen. It’s a wonderful approach to worldbuilding, characterization, and tragedy.
Content warnings: Violence, character death

And a vid!

“The Wonders I’ve Seen” by Freckled Dragon. 3:58, rated Gen.
Fandom: Farscape; Ship: Gen
Recced by: Mysterytour
Backstory: Farscape was a show in the late 1990s/early 2000s about an astronaut who falls through a wormhole and finds himself in another part of the universe with lots of weird and wonderful aliens (many of whom are puppets), and unfortunately a fascistic military force who look rather like humans. Farscape delves into Bush-era political metaphors, like many shows of the time, with a focus on WMDs. The song is Adiemus by Karl Jenkins.
Rec: This video was uploaded 14 years ago, sometime after the heyday of the contemporary Farscape fandom, but nonetheless an interesting window into fandom history and a celebration of the beauty in what was often a dark show. The crossfades are also really effective.
Content warnings: N/A

 

 

FINAL THOUGHT

I joked the other day that mere weeks after writing an article that was, in part, about the lack of media coverage of Interview with the Vampire, the post-finale press was almost too voluminous to keep up with. NOT A BAD PROBLEM, FOR THE RECORD. If you don’t care about this show, this will not be the outro for you haha, but since Gav & I intersect fandoms once every six years (and rarely are either of us this wild about a show, full stop), I suggested we do a big round-up of some of the best press this past week. “new stuff: iwtv edition.”

(Obviously tons of spoilers for the whole show here—I know people are picking it up now that the season has concluded, so bookmark this and come back to it!)

First, start with this characteristically bananas interview with showrunner Rolin Jones, in which he says that if the show makes you feel unhinged, that is by design. :-))

Speaking of making you feel unhinged, TV Insider's set visit has, among other great details, the specific wording in the script about the final whispered exchange in That Scene.

Vanity Fair sat down for a very thoughtful convo with Jacob Anderson (which you can also listen to in the embedded podcast).

Armand Enjoyers must read this interview with Assad Zaman!! The layers!!

And rounding out that particular ~trio is of course an interview with Sam Reid, which includes one of my favorite details of all this press—he wanted to go full ghoul with the SFX makeup in That Scene lol, bless him.

Not from this week because she wasn’t in the finale of course :-( but this interview with Delainey Hayles after episode 7 is also fantastic!!

Ben Daniels has done very little press because his long-term partner recently died. In a beautiful interview with Times, he discusses resonant themes of grief in the show. (There are also moments of incredible levity in this one—get yourself a show where the showrunner asks his actors, “sorry, but are you OK playing straight??”) (and the actors are like, “...actually, no!”)

It’s been fitting that Playbill has been covering the show, since the writer’s room is mostly playwrights—and so is Eric Bogosian, of course. This interview ties the rest of his career to his work on IWTV.

And finally, not an interview, but some super-sharp critical writing on the show as a capital-R Romantic work (aka Romanticism). Here’s hoping the continued momentum of the show means we can get more critical analysis in the media coverage for season 3!! — Elizabeth