somniloquence

I fell so hard for Lem and Phil, the scientists from Better Off Ted, this year that I immediately had to ask for them for Yuletide (and I got it!). There actually doesn't seem to be as much Phil and Lem fic as I was hoping for when I went looking, but I did find this delightful vid, which captures the essence of these two adorkable nerds being adorkable nerds together.


Finite Simple Group (Of Order Two) by thingswithwings (Better Off Ted, G)
Summary: Phil says it with group theory.

If you've never seen the show, it's on Hulu in the US, and it's only two short seasons--definitely worth your time. I wish I'd discovered it sooner.

I mentioned a while ago writing out some of the process notes for creating Dream, and then just kind of settled into ennui and entropy. Even though it's faded into the woodwork now, I figured I should write it down at least so I don't forget later, more for my own benefit than anything else.

As I said in the original post here, I've had this song for quite a few years, since I first heard it ten years ago on a commercial for a vaccines campaign sponsored by Pampers/UNICEF (this piece of information always makes people titter or sneer, IDEK). I recognised the singer, who is a longtime fave--I was like, "Is that Angela McCluskey? Oh my god, it is!!" and I went in search of the song. Fortunately there was a full length version with full production values on iTunes, so I downloaded it and knew immediately it was a fabulous vid song. It had everything you could hope for--great hook, tonal changes, hopeful and inspirational lyrics, great chords and beats...it was perfect, only I just didn't know what the theme was. For years I would ask people, and they'd offer some idea or other, and while those were interesting, they were never right. When the con comm announced the last Vividcon, I knew that I finally had my theme.

( long and not especially coherent thoughts on Dream )

Here's the first of the two vids I made with collaboration for the final Vividcon. It's basically my love letter to the con, to vidding, and to fandom.




First of all, I want to say that I could not have made this without the help of anoel, especially, and killa and sdwolfpup, who all helped me with clips, especially in fandoms that aren't my own and I'd have had no hope of getting source for. Anoel went above and beyond and cheerled to an extreme degree, and I also have to thank minim_calibre, who gave me the original, restored-to-their-glory Star Wars movies a while ago, and gave me the Martian as well. I only ended up having like maybe half the source on my own, and getting so much crowd-sourced and just the collaborative spirit made a huge difference (particularly when I found out that the deadline was ten days sooner than I thought it was). The fact that this came together in essentially less than a month is entirely due to their help.

I've had this song from my longtime fave Angela McCluskey for years, and I would play it for people and they'd all agree it would be a fantastic vid song. But I could never figure out a way into it, what the theme was, and when I'd ask what they thought the theme was, they'd tell me something and I'd listen and nod appreciatively, but it was never quite right. When the VVC con comm announced this would be the last con, I thought "oh, that's what it is" and finally knew what it had to be about: this group of crazy people who get together and sit in the dark to watch vids, and make vids, or discuss them and analyze them and gush over them. It's us.

I intended to start it last year, but there was cancer, and other lifestuff, and then I began the process of talking myself out of it. Only, in the back of my heart, I couldn't stop wanting to do this. Fortunately my friends are evil enablers, and they sent me clips and talked about it, and I'm so glad I made it, even with all the hardship. It was a lot of pain and suffering and hard work, but worth it in the end.

If anyone's interested in the list of fandoms, I could add that to this post later--let me know. I managed to injure myself rather severely today and am running at half power right now, but if there's interest I'll happily come back and do that.

ETA: Now with list of fandoms (not in alphabetical order) ( Click for list of fandoms )

ETA 2:
People have asked me about the song--I'm not sure if it's still available on iTunes, but it was. I've been a fan of Angela's for a while, and (everyone gets wigged out when I tell them where this song comes from, but I'll say it anyways) I was watching TV once when a commercial came on and I thought, wait, is that Angela McCluskey? It is! The ad was for the Pampers/UNICEF program to end maternal and newborn tetanus, represented by Salma Hayak, and I wondered if they'd have a full length song available, hunted around, and found it. So it says Pampers/UNICEF on the song metadata--I don't know, I always thought that was kind of cool, a song for a super valuable vaccines campaign and it also fit perfectly with fannish feels. It's a hopeful song, and has that sense of wonder I think we're always looking for.

ETA 3:
There are no official lyrics anywhere, but after listening to the artist for years, I am familiar with her phrasing, and I think this is what they are. ( Lyrics behind cut )

Hey fam--this is the first of two posts that I have about plans for Vividcon, specifically crowd-sourcing information and help.

For this one, I need help with the ancient history of vidding--I'm doing a retrospective show on vidding from before the Vividcon era. ETA: I should clarify this: It's not the lists of cons or fandoms or whatever I need help with--it's recommendations and ideas for actual vids I could include. Just having lists of vid names or vidders is not really any use if I have no idea what the vid is like, so personal recommendations or people who can give me those is the most useful.

It's relatively easy for me to go back through the DVDs from Escapade and from individual vidders dating to before 2002, but not so much before the DVD era, because I can't view tapes any longer and most of the folks I know who kept tape collections with run lists and liner notes are either gone now or the ones still alive haven't kept their tapes. And I'd really like to include some things beyond my sphere of influence (eg Escapade, mostly, and the vidders who used to hang out with the Media Cannibals in some form or another). I'd love to not have them all be clustered in the very late '90s/early aughts.

So that would be places like RevelCon, and MediaWest and Zebracon, and the East Coast cons I never really knew much about and whose names I can no longer remember, as well as some fandom-specific cons like the S&H one, I think there were a number of Trek ones, and at least one Professionals one I recall. And there were groups like Cali Crew and others who put out collections or vidded together, but again, just trying to figure out where and when is a little overwhelming for me right now to do solo. Actual concrete info would be most helpful here--I have a pretty good memory but more people telling me what those vids are will help jog my memory.

Not that I necessarily know how I'll get my hands on some of the vids even if anyone has some suggestions, but I'd love to at least have a giant list of suggestions I can research from. I have a few I know I'd like to include, but I think this will be a tough one for me to do.

Also, if you think some of your flist might have ideas, and you wouldn't mind posting a link here or tweeting it or whatever you do social mediawise (I don't twitter or facebook), I'd absolutely love to have people drop by with some ideas. The more the merrier (at least merrier me).

I made so few vids this year that it feels ridiculous to do this, but I'm waiting till Yuletide reveals to do my writing one, so. Three vids…that's just sad.

February: All We Do
My Escapade vid for the series Political Animals

August:
Battleflag
A vid for the Star Wars universe made for the premieres show at Vividcon

Chase You Down
My Club Vivid vid for Captain America fandom, focusing on Steve and Sam, Bucky, and Peggy


It feels funny to be doing this, since there's only three, but whatever. Thinky thoughts part:

My favorite video this year:
Battleflag. I've wanted to do this song for so many years, and when I walked out of Rogue One, I just knew it was finally my time.

Least favorite video this year:
I don't really have one, I felt like they all had at least one good thing about them.

Most successful:
Judging by response on Tumblr and AO3, Chase You Down wins by a wide margin, but All We Do is pretty close on YouTube. Judging by my perspective, Battleflag, just because it did what I wanted it to do, which was show the characters resisting the fascist state and look good doing it.

Vid most under-appreciated by the universe in my opinion:
I honestly thought, since it's a much, much larger fandom than Captain America or anything else I vid lately, that Battleflag would do well. And it sank without a trace, it has even fewer hits on YouTube than my silly Jet Song vid from last year. People have suggested it's because most people don't follow me for Star Wars stuff, but it's heavily tagged with SW tags everywhere…I don't know. It was definitely disappointing.

Funnest video:
Chase You Down seems to make people happy. There are so few vids that show Steve and Sam as a couple that it made me happy to be able to give that one to people, and I really enjoyed turning the story around in the Peggy and Steve verse.

Video with the single sexiest moment:
Probably All We Do, because it has half-naked Sebastian Stan kissing boys and getting cocaine snorted off his abs and playing the piano in his underwear. So not single sexy moment, but a lot of them.

Biggest vid fail:
Seekingferret was kind enough to help me with Star Wars footage for TFA and R1, but something really weird happened because everything on my system is wonky and I found out that some of it wouldn't come through in download, or once I fast-forwarded through the clips scrubbing for scenes, it would stay that way. I mean, I couldn't even re-download the files and have them work, they stubbornly refused to go back to normal speed. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen--probably because my OS is so old that everything malfunctions lately. Anyway, I had to use those clips sped up, and I can't not see them that way, but apparently no one else seems to notice it.

Hardest video to make:
Battleflag, because of the reason above. Intellectually it was Chase You Down, because I couldn't find my way in with it, until killabeez made a suggestion to me and the light went off above my head.

Easiest video to make:
All We Do, because it was one goddamn fandom with one aspect ratio, although interesting I had another tech failure there too, because my discs have some kind of processing error in a couple scenes and they have that digital drag effect I haven't seen for years.

Most unintentionally telling video:
I never really know what this means, but I suppose Battleflag showed how angry and helpless and hopeless I feel about my future in this awful world, and how much I wish there was a useful resistance.

What's Next?
I'm doing a vid for the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction for minim calibre. This will be an interesting challenge since it's a NOTP for both of us and it's to a band I never listen to--it could have very entertaining results, and I'm really scared of the stalker fans for this particular pairing.

I realized after I told people the story of how this came to be that I was telling it wrong, but here's the actual story. I wanted to make this initially as a Stucky vid, but I felt like I've made so many it was ridic, but I knew I couldn't make it as just a SteveSam vid, because there wasn't enough footage. So then I dithered about whether I should make it as both of them, but I worried that it would be unevenly divided because there's so much more useful Steve and Bucky clips, and I was telling killabeez about that and she said, well, if I was making this, I'd do that last verse as Natasha, because no one would see that reversal of her chasing Steve coming. And I gasped: "Peggy!" I said and she went "Oooooohhhhhh." I was excited to get started and then...it became agonizing. It was so hard to make sure that the POV characters landed on the "I"s and the chased characters landed on the "you"s. This was so hard, and I never did feel like the switch in POV worked. But people seemed to enjoy it, which I guess is what matters in the end. So here, have a vid about the bisexual America deserves.



On AO3 | On Tumblr

Sorry it's taken me so long to get all my ducks in a row for posting my vid from Escapade: my laptop refused to work on any of the hotels' wi-fi while I was traveling, I guess the OS is just too old or something, so I couldn't post it to all the usual places. Anyway, at some point soon I hope to have this it's now up on my vids site (gwynethr.net) for a HQ download, but in the meantime streaming's all I got.



All We Do
Artist: Oh Wonder
Fandom: Political Animals (and let's be real, Sebastian Stan)
On AO3 on Tumblr


I've always wanted to do a TJ Hammond vid, and I'd originally planned to do this song for Jack Benjamin in Kings, but chatting with vidder Secretlytodream, it really did seem to belong to TJ. I was roundly mocked for my interest in Sebastian's different roles this weekend, but you know, whatever, I like his face. Anyway, thanks especially to przed for the helpful beta!

This is probably terrible, but I couldn't help myself: every single time I saw Captain America: Civil War in the theatre, this song would play in my head when Steve walked out to the tarmac. I edited out the spoken word section in the middle (as well as the ethnic insults line, because it just didn't feel like it belonged in a vid that isn't about ethnic-based conflict), but the spoken dialog there is hilarious--"meet Tony and me at ten. And walk tall!" "We always walk tall, we're Jets! The greatest!"

Anyway, have a silly vid.



Also on tumblr.

So…that was an…eventful week.

Last Thursday, wickedwords and I were heading out around noon for VVC, and our flight got delayed for at least 45 minutes, so there was some frantic texting with astolat about dinner plans because we'd be coming in so late (I swear both of us actually thought the tickets she bought for us were for the 10 am flight), but then poor astolat ended up being delayed even longer than us due to the thunderstorms around everywhere. Turned out the restaurant closed at 9, which, what the hell, so it was Outback for us, but we got to hang and unwind a little, and catch up, and she saved my sanity by having extra earplugs, which I'd forgotten to pack. It was hilarious on the outbound flight, though: while we were waiting to board, we were just loud enough that jarrow heard us and came over to say hi, because he was on the same flight. Rache and I got seated, her in the middle seat, me in the aisle, and after a few minutes of people coming down the aisle I heard her guffaw and looked up to see jarrow there--he had the window seat next to us. We laughed and laughed--and it was great because he and I were both writing fic and that way you definitely don't have to worry about hiding your laptop with your slash on it.

Chicago was fucking hot--like, knock you back when you step out on the jetway from the plane hot. And I struggled almost the whole time with it, even when it was raining and the heat index dropped a little. We at least got to the store on Friday for some stuff, and I didn't feel like I was going to drop from heat stroke, but man, there were definitely days on this trip that I thought it might happen.

Someone had reblogged an old fic announcement post about Dream of Caramel, which had generated a little flurry of interest in the fic, and more reblogs, so that was an unexpected, rare little bit of pleasantness that made my weekend a lot brighter. Friday night was the premieres show this year, and I'd been more than a little surprised to see, when I got my reg stuff on Thursday, that the vid cesperanza and I made this year was listed first. OMG the pressure! It seemed to go over well, and I posted it that night when I was hanging out in destina's room, though I was a tiny bit tipsy and made a bunch of typos.

I did not expect the flurry of reblogs and comments and stuff! That doesn't usually happen for my vids so it was very cool but also kind of overwhelming and I spent Saturday in a bit of a haze (pleasant, don't get me wrong, but definitely a haze). Got dressed in my Bucky Barnes red henley and dark gray t-shirt, dark jeans, and shooting glove and baseball cap, for Club Vivid, and it was so funny watching people look at me and do a doubletake, thinking I wasn't in a costume and then realizing that I was, and who I was dressed as. I didn't dance as much as I wanted to, because of the aforementioned overheating--I just couldn't seem to get my feet under me half the time, between the Chicago steambath and the hot flashes and all that. My vid, Dangerous, was early on in the show, and for once, the entire dance floor didn't empty out when my vid came on! Yay! Plus it got the anxiety out of the way so I could enjoy the rest of the show. Absolutedestiny brought back some great old vids and it was really a wonderful show this year, I thought.

Sunday was more vid shows and panels and hanging out, and watching the number of notes climb on tumblr--it was all so fascinating. I didn't attend a lot of panels or shows over the weekend, preferring to hang with people I don't get to see much like destina and kassrachel and dorinda and par avion and talitha78, and it was really, really nice to spend time with people and just talk, especially when people were willing to indulge my desire to talk about Steve and Bucky or go get a cruller with me. :-D

Because of the Sebastian Stan fiasco, I was still planning to stay in Chicago for a few days, and I took an Uber into the city. I was planning to work on my Stucky Big Bang story and hang with devilpiglet and a couple other Chicago people--before I left, the artist who signed up for my fic sent me two additional sketches for my story and they are so amazing, it was so inspiring to see art come from my words, I just…it really made that push to get toward the end of the story so much easier, and I'm so excited to see the final drawings they do.

Monday night I spent with devilpiglet at a nice Thai place across from the hotel, and when I got back I had an email from cesperanza asking me about the YouTube file for our vid--she said there were some repeating clips and I thought, no, that must be some kind of browser issue, but nope, it was…completely, utterly borked, for the entire second half of the vid. It was SO bizarre--there were at least a dozen clips that basically cut off and then repeated, which in some cases cut the already tight editing down and made it look like I had flash frames in and that I was a terrible editor. I was sick to my stomach. There wasn't a thing I could do about it, though, except put a note on the YT file and the AO3 page and let people know they might want to wait till I was home to link or rec. I'd watched the vid at least twice a day from the moment I posted it, because I don't trust YT and I was using a different codec, but it was always fine, until, apparently, it wasn't.

I also checked Dangerous and the beginning of that one was messed up. I didn't sleep at all Monday night, I was ragged and exhausted with trying to figure out what had happened, and angsting over the whole thing. In the morning on Tuesday I checked Dangerous first, and it was…fine. But I noticed YT had removed the 1080p quality setting and now only allowed a max of 720p. I just had no idea what to make of anything, but I went out to Starbucks for breakfast and then I wanted to walk over to the Miracle Mile, because I'd never seen that when I've been in Chicago before.

When I got there I opened up tumblr, just to check how the vids were doing, and saw that I had a personal message from someone, and it turned out to be the person who's doing a new stucky fic recs site that is really well written and thoughtful. She said she'd been reading my stuff and liking it, and that made me just…forget all about the Sturm und Drang of the Spaceboy fiasco, but then she added that she'd written up a rec for I can't remember how this started (but I can tell you exactly how it ends), my Winter Soldier-goes Groundhog Day story, and I swear I nearly swooned right there in Starbucks. Like, I never expected in a million years that I, a no-name fan, would ever get a story recced there. It made me feel so much better. I got a handful of comments and kudos from it, which, combined with the comments on Spaceboy and Dangerous, left me feeling better enough to spend the day writing in my room instead of rending my garments and screaming at YT, with breaks for a swim and seeking out food. Then devilpiglet and I hit the hotel bar and had a light dinner and she introduced me to rumchata (in the form of milkshakes) and OMG where has that been all my life? I am buying a bottle of that next time I hit the store, for sure.

We'd planned to go to the Shedd aquarium on Wednesday, but I kind of hit a wall, so she took me to see the beach at the lake, another thing I've never really done, but…I totally crapped out on her. The anxiety about the vid had kind of done me in, and the heat was killing me. We did stop to eat at a cool '70s diner place, and walked through some beautiful neighborhoods with amazing houses, and went to this really neat architectural salvage place, and then she took me to the airport. We got there earlier than expected, but I was so glad we left when we did after she texted me later and told me about Obama's visit basically shutting down the expressway, so yay for that. Of course my flight was delayed, but I hung out for a while at this nice bar we discovered a few years ago in the L terminal, and the bartender admired my Bucky Barnes shirt. Needless to say I gave him a nice tip. After some more delays it was home again, home again, and I got home very late last night to an insanely loving kitty cat.

This morning I got up and started to work on exporting a new video file to upload to YT, start fixing things. One of the things I hate about YT is that you can't fix a video, you have to reupload to a whole new page, and that means all the links will break and whatnot. But I got a text just as I was opening up Final Cut, from cesperanza, saying that it seemed to be playing fine, so we talked about it on the phone while I watched it and yup, it was totally unborked. I have this once-bitten feeling, like I can't trust it's not going to happen again, but as she put it, it's a chance to reblog the announcement and whip up more interest, so that was today. I have no idea why it happened, I can only assume YT made some kind of code change like they're always doing (the timing on the vid even changed, and I notice it still only allows 720p), but I feel like they took about 6 years off my life and they owe me, the bastards. So right now it's fine, and if you were waiting to watch because of my notes on the AO3 page, go cast your eyeballs upon it and enjoy!

And now I'm very sleepy, still on Chicago time, but I think I will see how much writing I can do tonight, and hope to finish this damn story by tomorrow. Posting deadline is the 29th, but wow, do I have a lot of editing and rewrites to get through, and I don't want to wait till the last minute. I've had enough of bad things happening for a while, and I feel like that's courting fate.

It's been a wild rollercoaster of a week, full of drama and trauma and ongoing saga, and lots of people I love and really sweet things happening and vids and fic and just a flurry of Things That Don't Usually Happen to Me.

A couple years ago, cesperanza and I started talking about this vid, but we'd bring it up and then forget about it, until this year, with David Bowie's death, it seemed the time to do it. It was fun to collaborate with someone again, and I think the end result turned out pretty good.

Many thanks to killa for the song edit and the graphic.



On AO3 | on Tumblr

Feedback is adored!

When I return home I'll have the high-quality download available at my vids site.