What I've been up to, midsummer edition

[bironic]

Doing

I spent May working 24/7 on the vid; did little but watch TV in June; then spent three-quarters of July working 24/7 on an article for my job. Now it's back to chillin' out, by which I mean doing the minimum at work while visiting friends and family, consuming media, daydreaming and going for the occasional swim. Things will achieve balance again at some point.

Oh, and my birthday happened last week. 'Twas a pleasant one. Some friends made me dinner ♥, and some other friends and I went for fancy Italian over the weekend. marginaliana made a beautiful Star Trek and blood moon-themed card and thingswithwings wrote an Odo/Quark flashfic. Other surprise gifts included a quart of farm-fresh blueberries, a book on Hollywood Gothic and a Ravenclaw button. Happy double chai to me. The Hebrew kind, not the tea.

Going

I popped down to NYC for 24 hours to catch my beloved friend A., her husband V. and their five-year-old while they swept through three states on a business trip from Munich. The timing was terrible, but it was a joy to see them; I hadn't seen A. in three years. That kid was born a few months before we all left DC. Time flies.

My mom came to MA for a class mid-month, so I hung out with her for a few days. That was nice, although it would've been nicer if I hadn't had to work. We played mini golf, went to an art museum, walked around a lake and watched bits of the Harry Potter marathon on TV. Food highlights: lamb burger with goat cheese, sunflower seed risotto, cocktail made with local blueberries.

Next weekend is vividcon, the last before it metamorphoses into fanworkscon in 2019. It already sounds like people's emotions will be running high. I'm aiming to remain calm, set simple goals—i.e. "meet sol_se"—and not have too-high expectations for hanging out with people who will all be trying to do and feel A Lot. My perspective: It is just another Vividcon, this is not the last opportunity to see vidders, not everything has to be 'a moment.' It helps that I'm not showing any new vids amidst the glut of premieres. So far the worst I have to deal with is performance anxiety over co-modding a panel. (If you have requests for multifandom vidding topics, drop a line here!)

Watching

The movie adaptation of a play I'd wanted to see but missed, Marjorie Prime, which, like Robot and Frank, and like Westworld only less irritating, uses AI as a lens to explore age-related memory loss, how memories help construct a person, how they can be manipulated, and what happens to memories themselves and echoes of people as time passes and stories get conveyed second- and third-hand. The movie dipped in the… third quarter? But the beginning and end were wonderful.

Other than that, a string of movies and shows featuring Zahn McClarnon.

I watched six seasons of Longmire in about a month, whoops. It's a present-day sheriffing show set in rural Wyoming. Came for Zahn as the police chief of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation; stayed for him and Lou Diamond Phillips, Katee Sackhoff and some heartfelt seeking of justice. Post pending when writing about it feels less intimidating.

Writing

Fic!! Although I've been playing with Mary Sues on my hard drive here and there, it's been two years since I posted a story to the AO3 (Here rest, interred without a stone) and three years since an actor or source inspired a cluster of fics (the Inkheart trio, plus two WsIP I swear I'll finish one day). In the last month, I've started no fewer than three stories, thanks to Zahn McClarnon characters.

So far:

- 1,400 words of an indulgent Mathias/OFC dubcon aphrodisiacs story for Longmire

- 670 words of the vampire threesome flashbacks no one else has written despite the clear subtext in this one episode of Midnight, Texas

- 2,000 words of noncon inspired by a scene in the premiere of The Red Road that I watched on Sunday. I should have known noncon would overcome the writer’s block.

- Well, and 6 lines of Mathias/Cady (Longmire), but I'm not sure there's enough to hang a story on

It's both motivating and refreshingly low-pressure to observe how few AO3 fics there are for some of these characters. This just counts character tags, not even whether he's a main character in the fanwork or involved in a pairing:

Midnight, Texas (TV)
Works: 92
Zachariah: 0

Westworld (TV)
Works: 200
Akecheta: 1

Fargo (TV)
Works: 496
Hanzee: 11

Longmire (TV)
Works: 246
Mathias: 25 – can't really complain

The Red Road (TV)
Works: 4
Mike: 0

I need all the momentum I can get, being so rusty at this point and easily defeated by self-recrimination and any narrative problems that arise. disgruntled_owl and other local fic-writing friends have been great help on both fronts, offering solutions and encouragement.

Vidding

I've recovered enough from "The Greatest" to plan vids again. I'd like to make one for Longmire; given that I've been humming a particular song candidate for about six weeks, chances are it'll be set to that.

Also on the docket is the second FandomTrumpsHate vid, for deelaundry. We've narrowed it down to two options: either the opening credits to a TV show she has been imagining for a while or a remix of her "all you can kink" Tango & Cash vid.

Reading

Can wait for another post.

Comments

[stardreamer]

Lou Diamond Phillips? *checks IMDB* Peter Weller?! Wow, I may have to check this one out!

Do please post when you've finished the Midnight, Texas fic -- I'll want to read it.

[bironic]

Yay, a reader! :D I do hope it doesn't run out of steam. A Lemuel/Zachariah/Pia story needs to exist in the world.

Lou Diamond Phillips plays the most central character beyond the sheriff's department and is well worth watching the show for. He can be shipped with people including his male BFF, the BFF's daughter, Zahn's character, and A Martinez's character, if you're into that. Peter Weller guest stars sometimes (and directs), and while he does some bigger acting than those around him, his character definitely holds your attention.

[laurashapiro]

I'm excited to see you next weekend!

[bironic]

Saaaaame. Our dinner in October was too brief.

[marginaliana]

<3

[bironic]

Back atcha!

[thingswithwings]

Nice to see you! I'm glad you had such a lovely birthday (and took time off from making stuff after The Greatest!).

I'm sorry that I won't see your VVC panel on multifandom vidding - that's something I'd love to see you talk about/talk about with you. Have fun and report back!

[bironic]

Hallooooo, it's been good to see you around as well. The post-vid break from everything turned out to be sort of mandatory, heh. I was impressed to see you move from your WisCon vid right into the bi one, or so it appeared.

I would love to get questions and suggestions from people who aren't going to the con, both to spark ideas for the panel and for things to post about afterwards. Is there anything in particular you are interested in?

[thingswithwings]

Ha, no, I made Stand By You, for the most part, last October - I did grab a few new sources and edit them in in May, did a few drafts, but the bulk of the work was finished. My school year culminates in May right before WisCon and I'm always incredibly busy and exhausted so I'm learning to plan ahead.

Hmmm, there's so much to talk about re: multivids! I guess it depends on whether you want to go deep into "tips on how to make" or more onto "ideas on multivid techniques." For the first one, I often think about how I've learned a lot of workarounds for finding stuff to fill holes or fix a lyric problem (basically quick and dirty ways to find fandoms and exploit them for useful shots), or about how there can be annoying framerate/aspect ratio issues, or about how you're often vidding things where you don't know the context and you're reliant on friends/social media/the internet to tell you what you need to know. I am CONSTANTLY on various wiki pages when I'm making a multivid. Not to mention imdb, tvtropes, etc.

For the second one - techniques - I'm thinking about what kinds of structures can go into multivids, how you blend the sources together. I've always loved gianduja_kiss's multivids for doing cool things with structure, like "Teenagers" that opens with a deep dive into two fandoms and then speeds up and speeds up until fandoms go by with one shot each. Or "Hourglass," that holds back all the Buffy footage and spends it in one hilarious, unexpected sequence in the middle. Where and how do you deploy each fandom or character throughout the vid? Do you organize by fandom, by theme . . . ? I remember eruthros talking about her vid Straightening Up the House and how she initially planned to do significant themed matches between the lyrics and the visuals, but how she had to give that up because she needed to spend the first couple verses just going deep establishing the basic premise of the vid.

I like structure convos, I guess!

Oh oh oh and another thing I think a lot about, and I know you do too, is representation in multivids. It's so easy to think of a theme/trope/type of character, and find almost exclusively men, or white people, or cis people, etc to meet that criterion. A big part of the research I always end up doing for multivids is finding underrepresented people who also fit the theme I'm going for, but from sources that might not be as well known or obvious. BUT I also think about how, when I do that, I paint a picture of that trope that isn't accurate. Someone told eruthros and I, after we made "Dance Apocalyptic," how great it is that it's all women and PoC fighting the apocalypse/dystopia, and that's a really inaccurate view of pop culture/mass media . . . we had to work hard to make that happen, and we avoided a lot of white men who could've fit the vid.

So I guess one thought I have is: if you're altering the fabric of the trope in order to be inclusive and diverse (which I think is totally worth it), how can you make that clear to your audience? Just in notes before the vid, I guess. But I'm wondering if there are other cool ways to do it, or have fun with it.

LOTS OF RAMBLING FOR YOU, NEVER ASK ME A QUESTION

<333

[bironic]

No regrets! Thanks for this - good topics to chew on as we prep for the panel. In modding, as with vidding, structure is my friend.

[minoanmiss]

*beams at you*

Hooray for noncon curing writer's block. ;)

[bironic]

:D

[toft]

Sounds like a sensible approach to Vividcon. I hope you have a great time!

[bironic]

Thank you! I will feel even better in a few days when we've planned our panel more.

[franzeska]

I always meant to do a Longmire vid to Jim Boyd. Super unoriginal idea, obviously, but I think it would be fun. This song for example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZiXw9pMuXs