bironic

Doing: I confess I am not doing great, friends. It's probably just cyclical biochemistry, but combined with shenanigans at the office and acknowledgement that I need to turn back to medicine in search of help for stuff that therapy didn't budge after two years—even though it was dissatisfaction with medical solutions that sent me to therapy in the first place—there's been more than the usual amount of existential reflection and droopiness. Work is not getting done. Fun is not really happening either. I feel defeated in several arenas. Stuff annoys me everywhere I turn: an intractable audio delay on the Roku I bought over the holidays because the old one couldn't run apps anymore, road closures, bloggers' overuse of parentheses, con and other event organizers inviting original submissions without enough lead time, continuing frustration that so many Twitter users who cross my dashboard don't, to name one of many behaviors, track down original sources before RTing commentary.

This, too, shall pass.

Good things: Friend J. and I attended a book talk and signing with a powerhouse trio: G. Willow Wilson and Helen Oyeyemi interviewed by Kelly Link. It had its moments, but I wish it had gone deeper. The bookstore event organizer and Link both mentioned a conversation the authors had had earlier in the evening, and that sounded better than what we got. By contrast, last night coworker R. and I went to an alternately entertaining and illuminating talk with Werner Herzog, done conversation-style with a classics professor who has collaborated with him on ten films. It ran two hours with Q&A and could have gone longer, as far as we were concerned. Well, not the Q&A part; the questions and "questions" were of that painful sort that come from university students trying to sound smart.

My sister came to town for about 36 hours on her latest gig, with the Russian National Ballet, so disgruntled_owl and I got to hang with her. For those of you who are new here, my sister is basically a freelance tour manager for musicians. My favorite part was when one guy, whose English was better than most of the troupe's, gently teased her in the green room for eating sushi without drinking beer, and then a few minutes later, while watching the evening's performance of Swan Lake, I discovered he played the prince. Having seen the dancers offstage at the hotel and at the mall added a fun layer to the viewing experience: that one over there, she's the one who made an adorable pout when told the venue wifi wasn't working, and those two have just recovered from a bad landing and a fight, respectively…. Also, did you know the ballet has alternate endings? In this version, to the probable benefit of the children in the audience, Rothbart got defeated and Odette and the prince lived happily ever after.

Last and perhaps least, I replaced the living room area rug I'd disliked for five years. Pretty. (Not my apartment.)

Reading: Local friends are wrapping up a March mini-version of our autumn reading challenge. I decided to use the communal motivation to finish some books I was stuck on, plus one I'd had on the shelf for 20 years, A Canticle for Leibowitz. So at least some books made it back to the library completed after the maximum number of renewals and a few cents in fines.

Fanfic-wise, I tried some Star Trek: Discovery fic and have enjoyed this person Alethia's collection of Christopher Pike/Michael Burnham stories, except for one thing. They have excellent banter and good character voices and a variety of simple yet enjoyable premises, but there's little to no attention paid to the incredible breach of protocol inherent in a ship's captain sleeping with a crew member. It's either not mentioned at all, or it's brushed aside in a line or two. For me, that's a big disappointment. Also, the author likes italics more than I like reading them, because you shouldn't have to rely on them to indicate what you want emphasized, and even if they add force and movement to words like thrust in a sex scene, you don't need them multiple times per paragraph. Okay, see above re: being easily annoyed. At least it's not The Magicians, where, I'm told, fandom has decided fic should be written in the style of e.e. cummings.

Watching + Vidding: Ask me about the time I watched an entire TV show for Equinox Exchange after saying it was going to be a low-effort project. That's done now, and over the weekend I returned to a sports movie vid I'd been planning two years ago but set aside when Fandom Trumps Hate came along. It has structure. Structure is my friend. When I'm feeling less despondent I would like to work on the vid I suuuuuper owe deelaundry, as well as other projects recently mentioned here. And, you know, actually finish something.

How are you?

Hm. My equinox_exchange assignment is technically a match, but we're interested in completely different characters for our large, shared source. Am instead exploring a couple of other sources among their requests. Oh, well.

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I went to a small gallery opening last night at Harvard Divinity School in which a recent graduate, a self-taught artist, painted a series of icons in the Byzantine tradition that depict Star Wars characters. So instead of Mary and baby Jesus, there's C-3PO cradling R2D2, radiant against a gold background, with their names transliterated into Greek.

The collection is called "Saints of Star Wars" and it is a super fun exploration of the intersection of fannishness and worship.

The artist, Alex Ramos (artist bio | academic bio), spoke for a few minutes and made himself very available for discussions with the few dozen attendees. Two faculty members also introduced the exhibit. As someone with only a cursory education in Christianity and art history and medium-level knowledge of Star Wars, I appreciated the context they provided and the framing questions they posed, such as:

- What is for us today an icon?

- Some contemporary SF/F properties convene religious communities. Ex. Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, Jedi-ism as a self-entered minority religion on official census documents.

- Explanations of the inspirations behind individual paintings. Chewbacca after John the Baptist with fur cloak and curly hair. Luke after St. George and the Dragon. Anakin as an icon of redemption.

And as a Renaissance finale, a version of the Last Supper featuring Jabba the Hutt, which, if I heard correctly, the Divinity School commissioned. Ramos told a few of us about the decisionmaking behind placement of certain characters, notably Leia in the position of betrayer. In the second version he painted, she doesn't have a halo.

With bonus filk! Topping off the event, a local family choir performed two original Star Wars songs, one detailing Jabba's excuses for why he can't be nice and the other sung by Anakin Skywalker about the benefits of turning to the Dark Side. It was amusing in the sometimes cringey way of amateur performances.

On a personal level, I enjoyed chatting with not only Ramos but also a visiting scholar from Tuskegee University who studies at the confluence of bioethics, faith and gender; a young woman priest from Boston's Trinity Church; a biologist; and a faculty member at the design school.

Never has there been a more appropriate venue to overhear the exchange: "May the Force be with you." "And also with you."

ETA: The internet reveals a similar, digital series, Imperial Saints, designed by Patrick King.

It's periodic crunch time at work, so a proper post / con report will have to wait a bit longer. For now:

vividcon was lovely. I had some good conversations with a few people I'd expected to catch up with and a few I had not; went to most of the panels; saw only a fraction of the vids screened but still came away with several favorites; stayed on an even emotional keel the whole weekend; and returned with renewed vigor for creative pursuits…

…most notably this extensive auction vid that's been in progress since the spring. After VVC I finally processed all the DVD footage I've been collecting, figured out how to get a bunch of MKV files into Adobe Premiere (tried absolutedestiny's FFmpeg tutorial for format conversion but gave up in favor of DirectShowSource in the more familiar Avisynth), and skimmed two seasons of American Horror Story with drglam's guidance. I'd been putting that off along with The Walking Dead & Z Nation because horror TV is not always my thing, but it went fine. Forging onward.

Meanwhile, I made the mistake of perusing equinox_exchange requests on the AO3 and ended up with a vid idea that I don't have time to make, except I started making it. *facepalm* I don't even go here, as they say, but I think the concept is beautiful, and the draft is making me have an emotion. Fortunately, what at first seemed like an intimidating endeavor is coming together faster than expected.

Still, my primary focus needs to be the auction vid, and I'll be away three of the six weekends between now and Equinox go-live, so we'll see if this other vid gets done in time or if the DS9 vidlet began a tradition of posting treats three months late.