Vulture: Portrait of an Influential Fan

Earlier this week New York Magazine’s culture Vulture section did a profile of the 25 fandoms with the most devoted fanbases. They ranked Twilight number three right behind Game of Thrones and Star Wars.

Today they are putting up interviews with people running websites in those fandoms, and they profiled the Lexicon and Laura. Here are two brief quotes, but the whole article is cool.

ÜBER-FAN RESPONSIBILITIES: At least twenty hours a week go into maintaining and updating the site — more when a movie is in production or about to hit theaters (as is the case right now). With the Twilight saga completed in print and soon to be finished in theaters, the site is dedicated to covering all new works in Stephenie Meyer’s oeuvre, along with any Twilight references that crop up in the news. Cristiano explains her criteria thus: “If it’s Taylor Lautner Goes for Coffee Day 552, I’m not wildly interested in that picture. If one of the actors is doing another film, that’s fantastic; but if they name-drop Twilight, then that article is newsworthy for me.” Cristiano works in marketing, and the ad revenue from Twilight Lexicon pays site-related costs. “We certainly haven’t quit our day jobs,” she notes.

HITTING THE BIG TIME: Having long been in touch with Stephenie Meyer, who participates in Q&As for the site, Cristiano was stunned to learn that she had a fan in the director of Breaking Dawn. “In the months leading up to the Breaking Dawn premiere, a bunch of the Twilight sites were invited to do a Q&A with Bill Condon in his edit bay for a half-hour. We’re going around the room introducing ourselves, and when I get to myself, Bill Condon goes, “Oh! We love the Lexicon! We used it on set!'” When the November premiere rolled around, Cristiano was camping out near the red carpet with other fans when “someone taps me on my shoulder, and I turned around, and it’s Bill Condon. And he said, ‘Hi Laura, how are you doing? This is just amazing. Is this really surreal for you?’ And I said, ‘To be honest, what’s surreal to me is that Bill Condon just tapped me on my shoulder and asked if being at a Twilight event is surreal.'”

(Personal note from Laura: Talking to a reporter is always a crapshoot. You can spend an hour and, if you’re unlucky, they’ll misquote you and take a 30 second sound bite. On a good day, they quote you correctly but make judgmental commentary on fangs, tweens and twimoms. This writer was teh exception. She did a great job and didn’t make the people she was profiling in over 25 fandoms look like morons. It’s easily my most favorite interview that I have ever participated in since starting the site in March 2006)

 

We also wanted to give a shout out to our friend Kimmy who runs His Golden Eyes, she was profiled for her Hungar Games website called Mockingjay

Also another shout out to Kallie from Twilight Series Theories who took the at the New Moon premiere