bironic

Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat! Info at festivids.

( Wildlike (2014 movie) )

( Nosferatu (2024) )

ANIMAL SHOWS UMBRELLA REQUEST:

So I would love a vid that uses any or all of the animal shows below to wallow in the good feelings that come from loving and bonding with and caring for pets. If you want to expand to include a favorite show of your own, that’d be cool. I also have enjoyed Festivids-eligible things like Animal Cribs (TV/Disney+), Dog: Impossible (TV/Disney+), Dogs (TV/Netflix), Dr. K's Exotic Animal ER (TV/Hulu), Fur Babies (TV/NatGeo/Disney+), and Cat Daddies (movie/Kanopy) if you want to mix in any. Animal feelinnngggs.

( The Dog House UK )

( The Wizard of Paws )

( Cesar Millan: Better Human Better Dog )

( Critter Fixers: Country Vets )

LOL. "Cute, cute, cute, sweet, cute, VAMPIRE TRAUMA."

Music-wise, my favorite genres are folk from pretty much any country, rock, classical, instrumental, bluegrass, movie scores, Celtic, choral, country where it intersects with folk and rock, some pop, some dance, some hip hop, indie... If you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.

Thank you!!

Hey, NZ friends. My sister and her new husband will be honeymooning in Aotearoa/New Zealand for a couple of weeks, starting in about a week. They'll be based in Auckland. They have some basics planned, like the Hobbiton and glow worm cave day trip, but are welcoming recommendations on what else they should see or where to eat. Any personal favorites that are reachable by public transit or tour? Things they like include: nature, animals, nerd stuff, vegan food, whiskey, things that aren't found in the U.S. northeast.

Because this show is cute and I needed a warmup before Festividding.

On AO3 or below.

Music: "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor (shortened)
Content notes: reality/competition TV, hamsters, humor, people falling off obstacle courses
Visual notes: action TV-typical camera movement

Hello! I’ve been here, keeping up with people’s posts; I just haven’t been posting myself. Let’s fix that.

Travels

I went on vacation last month for the first time in 5 years, to visit my friend A. and her husband V. and two kids for a few days in Finland, where they’re from, and another few days in Stockholm, where they live now, finished off with a few days on my own on the Swedish island of Gotland. I’d never been to either country, and it was so nice to see new landscapes and architecture and wildlife and try new foods. The weather offered welcome relief: around 21C/70F and breezy compared to this summer’s record-breaking number of humid 90F+ days at home. Two weeks after midsummer, it never got fully dark.

( deets )

Next time maybe there will be a chance to visit isagel and/or naye. I’d also love to see Lapland in wintertime and the northern lights.

COVID

I’d put off traveling anywhere besides visiting family since 2020 because I knew as well as anyone that it raises risk of contracting COVID, and I’d avoided COVID so far. But fumbled policies have left us with COVID being basically endemic, and I wanted to go abroad, so I took extra precautions before and during, bought travel insurance, and crossed my fingers.

Friends, I came down with COVID less than 24 hours into the trip. Which, if the CDC’s statistics on incubation period remain reliable, means I 100% caught it before departing. Sigh. One of many no-longer-"novid" victims of the summer surge. ( deets )

I got home and slept a lot for a couple of weeks. Would say it took one month from first to last symptoms. TBD on any lingering effects.

Health

Like, for example, how my current period has lasted three weeks and counting? More likely it’s perimenopause and/or the fibroids or endometrial hyperplasia an ultrasound found last week, after more than a year of increasingly disagreeable symptoms. The medical investigation is only just getting underway. "Hooray."

Family

My little sister is getting married this fall! Guess it’s time to accept that she’s 40 and not 12. Her boyf is a good guy. Our parents are over the moon that one of their offspring has at last found a life partner, even if there are no grandchildren on the horizon. Insert complicated feelings here about suspecting I am ace and aro + wanting parents to feel like the family line isn’t dying out + general mortality anxiety. The wedding will be fun and the right amount of quirky. It’s at the science museum on the grounds of the 1964 World’s Fair, where our families used to visit when we were kids and my dad took slides and reel-to-reel tape when he was young. I’m dress shopping. Some relatives I haven’t seen in a while will be there.

My grandfather turned 103 in June. He’s as cognitively sharp as you could hope. A lady with a therapy cat comes to visit him in the assisted living facility every other weekend. Amazing. I wish I could look forward to same, but since he’s my dad’s stepfather, the genes don’t belong to us. Best hope comes from my grandma (dad’s mom), who made it to a week short of 99. The rest died young or youngish, alas.

Pets

Pepper is still here, still cute, still feisty. She’s my condo companion and stress reliever and provider of amusement and affection. If rescue records are to be believed, she turns 5 this month. The average guinea pig lifespan is 6, but there’s a pretty big spread around that number. We’ll see. My sister’s guinea pig—adopted to be a friend for Pepper but whom Pepper categorically rejected—lived until almost 5. If memory serves, our childhood guinea pig made it to something like 8.



Work

I accepted another promotion. Been having mixed feelings about it. Good: money, learning useful new skills, a change after 10 years in the same office. Ambivalent: little time for creative work. What does it mean to focus on management and strategy after 25 years of identifying as a writer and video editor? Am I drifting further away from the ideal artist life I dreamed of, or making a smart/pragmatic decision since various factors have made writing harder as the years pass? Am I gravitating toward something I’m actually better at? What’s the plan? What’s the meaning of life?

THE END

Hello to you all. Please don’t feel like you need to respond to everything if there is one part you’d like to engage with. <3

I'd wanted to see the Afrofuturist cyberpunk musical movie Neptune Frost since hearing about it last year, and eruthros requesting it for Festivids provided extra motivation.

The film was sometimes confusing but definitely memorable. So much interesting stuff happened visually and thematically that I really wanted to turn it into a treat for eruthros, yet the prospect was also intimidating. And there was only a week or so until go-live. So the first draft was pretty much the final draft. Does it make any sense? Who knows! But hey, the vid exists now.

It didn't turn out as organic as I'd envisioned. The first sequence, of the miners, wanted to be cut to the beat, one action per drum strike. But that did suggest an editing style in which the beginning of the vid, about oppression in a police state and capitalism and feeling trapped within prescribed gender identities, holds to its own rigid structure, and then as the main character transforms into her ideal self and the people around her break free and wake up and resist, the cuts begin to fall outside that rhythm. Neptune's own clips, you may notice, don't hold to the drumbeat from the start.

Hack the Binary on AO3

I'm super pleased that eruthros responded positively and that a few others found the story compelling. Particular gratitude to thingswithwings for checking visual triggers and providing pre-go-live feedback that it did, in fact, make some sense even for someone who was only passingly familiar with the film.

Of note: There's cool stuff in the movie that doesn't appear in the vid, most notably some dream sequences involving fluorescent makeup. One of the two main characters is only glancingly featured. And the ending of the vid does not reflect the ending of the movie. It's a more streamlined (and Westernized?) version of the movie narrative.

Since a significant portion of my yearly vidding wraps around into January for Festivids, I’ve decided to count years as ending in February henceforth. So there!

Previous Roundups
2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006

( 8 vids )

Vid #3 complete! One of seekingferret's pitches was to vid the sisters of the band Haim walking in their music videos. This being a very seekingferret concept, I was happy to develop the idea with him.

Walk, Walk
Source: HAIM music videos & Instagram posts
Music: "Walk Walk" by Yael Naim (slightly edited), which makes the unofficial title of this project "Haim & Naim"
Physical notes: Often, several clips appear at the same time depicting people walking, running, or dancing. Some shaky cam and panning.
Content notes: Jews dance in this vid.
Summary: Gonna walk 'til dawn, on and on.

On the AO3 or ( embedded )

This vid supported the International Rescue Committee.

Vid #2 posted! yhlee asked for Jessica Jones or Valkyrie set to this song. I hope you agree the latter made for an excellent match.

Tomboy
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe | Thor movies
Rating: Teen and Up
Characters: Valkyrie, Thor, Loki, Bruce/the Hulk, Jane, the Grandmaster
Music: by 여자)아이들 (G)I-DLE
Content notes: violence, guns, drinking, nonconsensual stripping of a man in public, eating of a mouse-like animal
Physical notes: shaky cam, occasional flashing lights (e.g. ray guns firing)
Thank you to M. for high-quality source!

Summary

In which Valkyrie kicks everyone's ass.

On the AO3 or ( embedded )

This vid supported the World Health Organization.