somniloquence

Day 03

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I think pretty much everything I've ever made public defines me as a creator, unless it was a collaboration that was very heavily someone else's work. There were definitely a few Media Cannibals vids that did not turn out how I saw them! But overall, if I've done it or been in charge of it, it would define me, even with the vids I've made for auctions and gifts/challenges.

So these are a very random assortment of things wot I made.

Mercy Street (12957 words) by gwyneth rhys
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Angel: the Series
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Spike & Dana, Angel & Spike
Characters: Spike (BtVS), Dana (AtS), Angel (BtVS), Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Charles Gunn, Illyria (AtS), Harmony Kendall, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce
Additional Tags: Redemption, Vampire Slayer(s), Insanity, Atonement - Freeform, making amends, Training, Male-Female Friendship, Understanding, Episode: s05e11 Damage, Damaged
Summary:

When Dana returns to LA looking for Spike, they make a strange truce and find a way to help each other with their damage.

I've always been really weirdly attached to this story, for a lot of reasons, but one of the things I especially loved was being inside Dana's head and trying to think of how she'd make sense of things, how someone like her would see that world. I was really proud of her interior voice, and also Spike's.


Shelter (179 words) by gwyneth rhys
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Natasha Romanov
Additional Tags: Video, Fanvids, Friendship, Shelter, Everything Hurts and I'm Dying
Summary:

All I know is to keep you close.

Most of my vids are not streaming anymore and only available via download at my vids site, which no one seems to want to do these days, so I tried to pick something streaming. And honestly, I think you couldn't get a more accurate picture of me as a vidder--very basic editing, none of the flashy stuff or voiceovers kids seems to like these days, good timing, and a clear narrative. Epic feels. A song that either most people haven't heard or would never think to use that way. And nothing probably says more about my love of Steve Rogers and the people he loves and wants to protect than this vid.


Dark Approach (93073 words) by gwyneth rhys
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson
Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Natasha Romanov, Peggy Carter, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Pepper Potts, Clint Barton, Thor
Additional Tags: Memory Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, World War II, Flashbacks, Soooo Many Flashbacks, Identity Issues, Find Bucky, Everybody Just Wants Steve To Be Happy, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Implied/Referenced Torture, Longing, Pining, Found Family, Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Recovering
Series: Part 2 of Dark Approach
Summary:

I have loved you across decades and centuries, over countries and continents and oceans.

Honestly, I couldn't decide what to pick for a third. Mostly I just loved writing this over the Summer of Cap Love, and I often wish more people loved it too, but I was happy with it (and the whole series).


The Gift of Forgetfulness (6049 words) by gwyneth rhys
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Pacific Rim (2013)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Hercules Hansen/Stacker Pentecost, Chuck Hansen & Hercules Hansen
Characters: Hercules Hansen, Stacker Pentecost, Chuck Hansen, Tendo Choi, Mako Mori
Additional Tags: Grief/Mourning, Loss, Child Loss, Road Trips, Cage Fights, self-punishment, Drift Bond, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Eventual Happy Ending, Team Hot Dads, Drivesuit Scars
Series: Part 2 of All They Had Lost
Summary:

He’ll not be anybody’s fucking tragic hero who lost his son and his best friend and still won the fight.

Since it said at least three, and I couldn't decide between Dark Approach and this, I'll put this here. I am still really, really happy with the writing I did for this Pacific Rim series, and I think this story is some of the best writing I've ever done, real-world or fannish. But it's a pairing with few fans, woe.

Ugh, I knew this would happen. Whenever I have a book to edit, I fall behind on whatever project I take on. So I have talking meme points 6 & 7 to do today.

sperrywink asked: How about vidding in Buffy fandom: Likes and dislikes?

Buffy fandom actually helped me transition from being a VCR vidder to a computer vidder. I had done a vid on VCRs, Do What You Have to Do, that I decided to remaster as my first-ever computer vid when I got my first iMac. I had to record the dvds onto a digital tape using my dad's camcorder, then load the digital copies on to my Mac, and then the fun of editing in iMovie occurred. It was really hard for me to grok, but I was so happy with the results, especially because I had dealt with one of the worst aspects of VCR vidding -- trying so hard to get an insert edit to work, ruining both the master and source tapes -- on that vid, and I could not fix it. As much as many people I know loved that vid, all I could see was this terrible clip I'd had to use just so I could move on. It tortured me for years, man.

Because I was still working on VCRs, I never got into a lot of the Buffy vidding fandom community -- I came late to the party in that respect, even though I'd been making Buffy vids from a lot earlier than, say, most of the people on Nummy Treat. That was hard, because I felt really isolated and one of the most important aspects of vidding, and of fandom, for me, is being part of a community. When I'm in a fandom of one, or isolated from most of a community, it is really hard to motivate myself. I think that's a lot of why I despair of the level of communication (everything from mailing lists and LJ to comments on stories and vids) in fandom these days; without the community and the participation, my enthusiasm dries up and wafts away.

But anyway, like I said, I came to computer vidding in Buffy later than most, but that's not to say I didn't have a lot of vids in the fandom already. For some reason, it was Spike that got me started in writing fic and most of the vidding. I wouldn't have expected that at all, he's not my usual type of character, but I fell hard for him, and his story once he came back to Sunnydale really made me want to create fannish things.

And that was a whole other problem in itself. I was...kind of shocked at the animosity toward Spike vids or Spuffy vids. Especially after S6 and that whole execrable attempted rape scene. I mean, OK, I get it when a fandom erupts around a character you don't like, especially when said fandom is a lot of people turning a rough character into a woobie. I've been there -- I watched all the excuses everyone made for Krycek, and the way the fans turned him into poor wee ickle Alex. But wow, I still was somehow not prepared for the nastiness you got when you vidded Spike, especially after S6.

Because for me, that was a goldmine of vidding subjects. One vid that isn't online that I should really remaster, I think, was 3 Libras, which was my way of trying to make sense out of the whole wretched season (I really hate S6, if you can't tell), and it made me terrifically happy when I showed it at Escapade and a couple people commented on how it was the first time the season made sense for them. There was just so much you could do with Spike in a way you couldn't always with other characters, and I really loved that flexibility and that depth of creativity I could find in vidding him. His story inspired me a lot.

Not that that was all I vidded, I've done lots of other Buffy characters, but I stopped after a while because of some concerns that I was focusing too much on a couple fandoms. I loved vidding La Femme Nikita and Buffy so much that really, outside of Firefly and the other other fandom, I could have done nothing else and still been happy, but that monomaniacal focus can turn into a joke pretty easily. I still have some songs that I want to do for the show, especially Giles because there never were enough Giles vids. Maybe at some point I will go back to it, even if I do worry that that might seem odd. I miss the show and I would love to see if I can recapture the magic that was lost with the souring of my feelings about Joss.

van asked: The best thing you ever ate!

This is so tough, because I have a really hard time remembering things like this. I mean, I remember lots of wonderful meals and menu items, but I have this nagging feeling that there's something really important to remember out there that I can't. I have been to some amazeballs restaurants and had astounding meals cooked by people I know, but I forget all those things quickly.

One meal I do remember was going to a super-exclusive private club at the top of the Columbia Tower, at that time the tallest building west of Chicago, with our new CEO at the association I worked for, who was a member of the club and who had invited us all to dinner to celebrate his new position. It was an amazing meal, just amazing, but I remember the lobster bisque before dinner -- it was simply incredible and I've been searching for a lobster bisque as good ever since. Never found it. Everything that came after was superb, as well, but that lobster bisque...oh, man, was that fine.

Another really wonderful food night came just recently. When I was visiting therienne, arduinna, and mollyamory last May in Boston, they took me to this basic, nondescript Mexican place near their home. It wasn't a special place or anything, had previously been a chain restaurant, but they made guacamole at your table to your specifications, so I could get it without onions tainting it, which was awesome. It was salty and delicious and fresh, and so wonderfully avocado-y, and I nearly cried when it was gone (which it was, right away). I wanted more and more and more. Then we followed that up with some queso, and I about died and went to heaven -- it was so fresh and tasty, not like what I was used to with queso at all. Really, that was just the best dinner, even though it wasn't some special hard to get into restaurant that would cost you $500 for dinner. (I'm sure the company didn't hurt, either!) I can't find anyplace like it around here, and really, I would consider flying out to Boston just to go to this restaurant again.

Catching up!! (But hey, how 'bout that World Cup, huh?)

Day 19 - Best TV show cast
I could say a lot of things here about some of my favorite shows, because I discovered long ago that what often cements my feelings about a series is the cast, and how they interact. So you got your Buffys, your Fireflys (which is probably the first time I have ever loved every single character in a show with an ensemble with equal devotion), your Deadwoods (which was so expertly cast that I sometimes felt like I was in a time machine -- I mean, I have one word for the incredible verisimilitude of that cast: Richardson), your Treks... but I'm not sure I've ever seen such a sprawling cast handled as well as The Wire did.

The cast was also constantly changing, and made up frequently of nonactors, and yet it was one of the most well-oiled machines ever, and all of them, newbies and old pros alike, brought such life and depth to the scripts that you felt like you were in the middle of their lives each episode. Like most people, I expected to hate S4, with its focus on kids in an inner city, crumbling school, and yet that is still one of the most powerful and affecting stretch of episodes on TV ever. Maybe THE most powerful.

Even though this video is about the 100 greatest quotes on the show, I think it's a great example of the incredible range of the cast, and how brilliant this show is. And the fact that it starts with Omar, maybe the greatest character ever created for TV, whistling Farmer in the Dell, is bonus points.



Day 20 - Favorite kiss

Oh wow. I have a lot of these. But it's pretty hard to decide if the Buffy -Spike kiss in Tabula Rasa wins, or the kiss Omar gave Brandon in the "dirty language" scene in S1. Don't ask me to choose! The former left me pretty much breathless when it happened, and the latter just surprised me so much, because it came in the middle of a scene when two drug thieves are preparing for a raid, in a culture that is hugely homophobic... just so surprising, and I thought showed what kind of guy Omar really was.

I can't find a Buffy clip with the original music by Michelle Branch, and a lot of the power of that kiss was the way the music was building up, and the camera came sneaking around the stairway to find Buffy and Spike kissing so passionately. It was all so cinematic. I assume that every clip a fan has put up with music has been taken down by the evil powers that be.

I can, at least, show the Wire clip.


And a recent one I might consider adding to the kiss pantheon (I love a good kiss, I really do) is Nate kissing Sophie at the end of the S2 Leverage episode. That was just hot. It's been a long time since I saw a kiss on TV that didn't feel rote or forced or actorly, and that one succeeded on all levels.

Favorite episode. Jeez! Why not make you pick your favorite kid or something? (Not that I, you know, have kids, but I'm just saying.) I think most people go for Once More, With Feeling -- I've seen a couple other Buffyites mention it. But I have some issues with that one, and the other related possible candidate, Tabula Rasa. I think I might pick Intervention, just because it subverted so much of the expectations (I defy anyone to say they didn't cringe when they first heard it was going to be a Buffybot created by Spike).

But then... I go back to season 2, and Becoming, and how amazing that whole story was, not the least of which was Giles being tortured and Buffy and Spike forming their strange alliance (see icon), and that unforgettable ending. It seemed as if everyone got something spectacular to do in those episodes.

And there was evil Angel, and that one final glimpse of good Angel, and my favorite thing in the whole world, thwarted love and supreme sacrifice of the "killing you means I love you" variety... and bonus Sarah McLachlan at the end. It was all good, and operatically tragic, leavened with moments of wit and brilliant action, and I never get tired of watching it.

Hey, remember when Spike and Joyce first met, and sat there in the living room, trying to make small talk? Good times.

It is more joy day! Yay! I have a very meager entry for more joy, and it's probably only going to give me joy because these are some of my favorite grrls out there. BUT. I have long enjoyed other people's Fights Like a Girl icons, and have wanted to make some for my favorite ladies, many of whom have sadly been kind of forgotten these days. I have some more I want to make a little later, but my arm is killing me at this point, so here are just 8 girl fighting icons with some current and distant faves. Take, share -- I'm not the best artist in the world and not very skilled with p-shop, but I love playing around anyway.

( Fight like girls )

Okay, so here are the vids. Links to the high quality files first (my main vids page, please follow the links there, and it is no longer password protected btw), followed by embedded Imeem streams. Squee, criticism, general blathering, linkage or pimpage are all terribly welcome.

For Club Vivid 2008

Jump Around
Artist: House of Pain
Fandom: Angel
File: QT Divx avi, 28 MB
Get out your seat and jump around!
Streaming: here

( Jump Around behind the cut )

For Premieres

Try Not to Breathe
Artist: R.E.M.
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
File: QT .mov 40 MB
Who remembers the rememberer?
Streaming: here

( Try Not to Breathe behind the cut )

Week before last, I had posted a new Buffy- and Angelverse vid, though all I could get was a regular small QuickTime window, unfortunately, and feochadn was going to see if she could get a better compression for me with her apps. Even though I was unknowingly shortly to be on my way to emergency surgery, I was busy bemoaning the fact that I keep getting less and less feedback the more I vid. Wah, woe was me, and I was crying in my beer and Jo told me she couldn't get a better large file for me (I think it's the same iMovie filters I used on this vid that have caused me such a headache, too) and it was very woe, woe, woe. I promised people I'd try to get a bigger, better file if I could. But then I got kind of... you know, sidetracked.

Sorry for the delay if you were waiting for that larger vid file. Female of the Species is there now in a Divx avi file, mostly toned down on the pixelization problems but at the expense of a large file -- it's about 60MB, I'm afraid. I've got both the smaller QT file there as well if you'd rather grab that.

I was also kind of making this the last vid of my yearlong experiment to see if putting your URL or email address will help with feedback. Everyone insists that it does, but I've never believed it at all, and I can now safely say that it makes no difference whatsoever. I've done different approaches in subsets of different vid types: large, relatively current fandoms with mixed-interest followings, small fandoms with mixed-interest followings, large fandoms with devoted vid followings, small fandoms with devoted vid followings, and small fandoms with nearly no vid following, and not one subset has shown a difference in response. And maybe it's just that I suck and make bad vids, or whatever, but the only noticeable difference in feedback levels have come from... recs or links. This has been especially borne out by a vid I made in a super small fandom with a not very big vid audience (After Rain), where I did not put a URL or email address -- I've received more feedback on the vid because it's been recced in a couple of LJs by people who did not know the series at all, and was mentioned in a lot of Escapade review panels. Many of the feedbackers were fans of the series, but did not watch vids in it; a lot of them just tend to follow any of the recs made by certain people, and one of the recs was pretty awesome.

So, my theory was proven (you can announce a new vid till the cows come home, but it makes almost no difference unless your friends and viewers mention your vid in their recs or LJ space), but that is not exactly satisfying. I hoped I'd be wrong, that putting the URL at the end of the vid, or an email, would cause a significant result, but it hasn't. Nor has making my password more readily available made a difference as everyone insisted it would -- it just reminds you how many *more* people access your vid and will never say anything to you about it one way or another.

Of course, I suppose if I could ever care for a show like Supernatural, maybe that would change, since that seems to be all anyone wants to watch these days. One shot of the burning woman on the ceiling, and I'd be golden...

For gelasius
( 5 things Xander wishes he didn't know about Anya (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) )

For rainkatt
( 5 things about Nikita that Spike would love (La Femme Nikita and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) )

I should know better than to post on weekends. Or maybe it's just that no one really loves me. Sniff. I asked for clip help for a Buffy and Angel all-cast vid, but only three people responded and either no one saw it or no one wants to help me or no one likes me or everyone's forgotten all their stored up Buffy and Angel clips too. Or and stuff! All the times I've responded to people's pleas for clip help, but I can't get help when I ask?

::cries::

Okay, seriously, I really do need help. I have a LOT of repeating lines to fill, and already scanning through just first and second season Buffy is getting hard to avoid repetition of the same characters doing the same things. And I still have 5 more of Buffy and 5 seasons of Angel to go! ::cries again::

So I'm reposting my plea for help -- when you're bored at work, take a trip down memory lane and see if you can recall anything that fits these: I will love you forever, and also, it will help me make the vid, and it will light and fun and cute. But only with your help! Otherwise it will be left to my own lame devices. And then it will suck!!!!!11!!OMG

- Any clips where guys are in danger from women, preferably if the women are supernatural (along the lines of Xander and the preying mantis teacher/ inca mummy girl/Drusilla in BB& B). Bonus points if the women aren't just kicking their asses, but about to eat/torture/kill in some elaborate way, and if the clips seem visually funny, that's great (like the way Xander panics in BB&B). I don't want to use anything that's painful or sad, like Gunn killing his sister -- this is for a lighthearted vid.

- Clips where guys are reacting in a shocked -- shocked! -- or scared way. Facial reactions are often the hardest to scan for when you're looking for clips, and 7 and 5 seasons' worth of scanning for looks of surprise or horror are hard! The funnier the better -- early Wes is obviously going to be a good resource, as is Xander. (I need a LOT of these, so feel free to suggest like mad.)

- Clips where anyone's kind of skulking around or using funny physical motions (a la Spike's mugging for the cameras in Restless)

More specific:

-something/someone that would work for "Jekyll" and a different one for "Hyde"

- Some kind of "zapping" kiss -- stunning or knockout or something a long those lines

- A guy shouting loudly, or longly

Much to my dismay, I recently found a glaring number of boo-boos in my Spike-moves-on-from-Buffy-to-Angel vid Santa Monica. Like, a lot of them. I never saw them (flash frames from the interlaced edit points) before in the countless checks, but they seem to appear only on the Mac DVD player, which I guess I never checked it on. Even though lots of discs are already out there with the vid on and it's been up for nearly two years, I couldn't stand the thought of it looking like that. So, since all Angel and Buffy eps are now on DVD, I figured I might as well remake the whole thing. I know there is probably even less interest in this than in the other old remastered vids, which is already pretty low, but I posted it anyway. Password is the same as always; if you don't have it, you can get it via the email link on that vids page.

The new, improved Santa Monica
Fandoms: Buffy and Angel
Artist: Everclear
File: QT Divx avi 21.9MB
Spike moves on with a little help from his friends.

It's pretty much a clip for clip remaster with only one completely different clip (because I could not find the landscape shot I'd used originally no matter how hard I looked) and a few tweaks to timing and such. I've always been amused by how amused people were about this vid when I first made it. But my favorite reaction is still the comment by the person I consider the dumbest person I've ever met in fandom, after this was shown at VVC, when she complained that there "were all these lyrics about living by the ocean, but there were no clips in the whole vid with water in them." Yup, that's me -- missing the literality since 1993.


And if by any chance someone actually watches it who can tell me how to fix the type in the credits, I would be grateful. The original credits, made in iMovie, work fine in that typeface. For some reason, I cannot get Final Cut Express to give me anything usable -- it either loses the ascenders and descenders completely, or if I bold it, like in this, it becomes a pixelly blob. I find the type control next to useless in FCE, but I've used fussier faces and still not had this kind of problem. I'd almost say it's related to anti-aliasing, but I haven't changed any settings and I'm not sure why this one is turning out far worse than any other credits. I am going to keep poking around, maybe even resort to making them in iMovie and seeing if they will import, but if the problem is in FCE, then that might not fix it. V. v. frustrated.