The Rec Center #469
As is traditional, we’re joining you this week with our fandom year in review! Unsurprisingly, Interview with the Vampire is a major player in both of our retrospectives—and in our year-end collection of fandom coverage, which we’ve included at the bottom of the letter.
Happy New Year in advance, everyone! — Gav
year in fandom: Gav
No longer an obscure underdog, The Rec Center’s beloved Interview with the Vampire ends 2024 on approximately 15 bajillion best-of-the-year lists—as well it should!! This show occupied an impressive proportion of Elizebeth’s and my editorial chatlogs over the past six months, not to mention my own mental processing power.
(To offer a recent example: My brother was talking about Coriolanus yesterday, and I felt duty bound to inform him that Assad Zaman once had a minor role in an RSC production he may or may not have seen. This kind of behavior makes me unbearable to be around, but I’m powerless to stop it.)
My only regret is that I couldn’t persuade more editors to let me write about this damn show, although I had a great time posting obsessive screeds about costumes and production design on Tumblr. Returning to my fannish roots!
As an unrelated postscript and callback to 2023’s year-end newsletter, I’d like to add that my beleaguered Pittsburgh Penguins are once again having “a very dynamic year” and “losing in a narratively compelling manner.” Believe it or not, this is an upgrade from two months ago, when they were simply losing. Thank goodness we have sports to look forward to in these trying times.
xoxo Gav
year in fandom: Elizabeth
Gav speaks for us both re: IWTV: when I look back at May through July, I only see a deep fandom black hole (don’t worry, a mostly fun one??). I also remain in the X-Men fandom, because, amongst other reasons, I am a Magneto loyalist. :-) This year I was startled to see a massive influx of new Cherik fans, most of whom seem to have come in via Deadpool & Wolverine, a route that slightly confuses me—but what a rare pleasure to suddenly have a deluge of fanart for your ship more than a decade after the “height” of the fandom!
At the risk of repeating myself from last year’s letter, I’ll also highly recommend my favorite non-IWTV show once again, HBO’s Somebody, Somewhere, which wrapped up its third (and unfortunately final?) season a few weeks ago. You’ve likely seen it on literally every best-of list this month, and deservedly so—it’s such a beautiful show. And just like last year, I got to see Murray Hill (and Jeff Hiller) in his holiday show “A Murray Little Christmas” earlier this month, and once again, I wept with laughter.
And outside my personal fandom stuff, 2024 was a year of big changes: after nine years, Flourish has left Fansplaining, and the podcast is on hiatus. Since Flourish’s last episode, I’ve been using the Fansplaining platform to publish some wonderful writers (including Gav!) on a wide variety of fandom topics; I’ve put together a round-up of those pieces and my own fandom reporting here. I do hope to bring the podcast back in some form before too long—and if any of our Patrons are reading this, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the continued support during the transition period! — Elizabeth
year in shared fandom: IWTV :-))
Since we (well, mostly Gav lol) published SO MUCH on IWTV season 2 this year, it seemed prudent to round it all up in one place. And in case anyone missed our original (non-spoilery) explainer/recommendation for the show, you can find that here. — Elizabeth
Reviews
“Interview with the Vampire Season 2 Review: Another Triumph for TV's Greatest Gothic Drama” by Gav at TV Guide
In retrospect it’s a disgrace that I gave this season a mere 9/10.
“Interview With the Vampire Just Aired the Best Season Finale of 2024” by Gav at Inverse
A correct opinion.
Interviews & Analysis
“Interview with the Vampire Costume Designer Carol Cutshall Delves Into Season 2's Best Looks” by Gav at TV Guide
I obviously loved interviewing IWTV’s costume designer, and I only wish I’d been given more time with her! They only gave me 20 minutes!!
“Anatomy of a Vampire’s Lair: Inside the exquisite production design of AMC's Interview with the Vampire” by Gav at Popverse
Thanks Popverse for letting me publish this absurdly in-depth analysis of Louis and Armand’s penthouse apartment.
Reporting
“Interview With the Vampire Fans Say the Stakes Have Never Been Higher” by Elizabeth at WIRED
Halfway through the airing of S2, fans worried about low viewing numbers started to panic that IWTV was going to get cancelled—and went to war with AMC’s marketing department. An illustrative tale of the broader fan anxiety created by the erratic streaming age.
Podcasts
“Review: Interview with the Vampire season 2” by Gav and Claire Biddles at Overinvested
In a tremendous stroke of luck, one of Gav’s podcast co-hosts is a longtime Vampire Chronicles fan, joining the show for a very enthusiastic review of the show’s second season (and one of Overinvested’s most popular eps this year!)
“Interview with the Vampire: Season 2” by Elizabeth and Flourish Klink at Fansplaining
Flourish returned for this special episode after departing from the podcast in May! On IWTV S2 as a very metatextual and transformative adaptation.
Meta
“Gav’s IWTV meta posts” on Tumblr
For anyone who wants to read more of my thoughts on IWTV’s costumes and production design, you can find all of my meta posts on this tag!
FINAL THOUGHT
Yuletide 2024! As always, we want your recs. Please use our one-off submissions form, and be sure to put “Yuletide 2024” in the themes/tropes field so I can spot it. It’s totally fine to submit before author reveals are up; we will add them later!
One side note: last year we had some folks who were seemingly confused and maybe thought “Yuletide” meant a kind of seasonal theme and not a specific event. Here’s a primer for anyone who isn’t familiar.
Happy New Year! <3 — Elizabeth