bironic

Doing

Work has been… not good lately. My boss' boss killed a long-term project of mine at the 11th hour that I was really proud of and looking forward to sharing with people. The nix came out of nowhere and despite approvals by all the other necessary parties, proposed compromises from me and vocal support from the rest of our team. That has taken the wind out of my sails.

I also struggled in the last couple of weeks with a series of decisions that shouldn't have been that hard. Well, I've got issues, but I realized this go-round that it's not all me, it's also other people not accepting a first "no thanks." Plus I think I have to quit my therapist and find someone less frustrating. Or just stop. Perhaps not surprisingly, I've had a strange, pressure-type headache for a week and counting.

However! Summer travel provides something to look forward to. I was approved to attend a conference in Switzerland, whee, and later will be spending a low-key week with some friends on the Cape, where I have never gone despite having lived in Boston for more than 10 years when you add it all together. Grateful to have been invited.

Listening

Achieved my first fannish goal for the year by upgrading to a paid Spotify account. Being able to play music on the TV (via Roku) has made a huge difference in how often I listen, and already the influx of new artists and songs has lifted my spirits and begun to replenish my dwindling collection of viddable music. One song wants to be about The Good Place, even though I had no plans to vid that show.

Watching

Back to usual habits: 26 movies and 3 seasons of television so far this year. No oomph to write reviews, but I'm sure the time and inclination will return at some point.

Some of that TV is a new-to-me 1990s show in case it sparks an idea for equinox_exchange, because our matched fandom isn't working out and I don't know how to do things in half measures. (I talked to my mom about defaulting or phoning something in, and she reminded me that I won't be happy making something I don't like.) There is a movie option, but the right song hasn't presented itself. TBD, I guess.

Funny story about that: One actor struck me as good-looking in atypical way, and when I looked him up I learned he's the son of another actor whose photos I've had on my computer for years because he is also good-looking in an atypical way. Consistent taste is consistent! Now I see the resemblance, although I don't think I would have figured it out on my own, especially since they have different last names. /cryptic

Vidding

1. For stress relief and a friend's birthday, I spent half a day making a vidlet of the best kind: simple, silly and short. Stay tuned.

2. Intermittently editing a Longmire vid that didn't work out for Festivids: Mathias+Walt (or Mathias/Walt), Mathias POV, hopefully funny. Somehow there are zero Mathias/Walt fanworks among the 289 Longmire entries on the AO3, despite the characters having similar jobs and the type of contentious relationship fandom usually loves.

3. Planning deelaundry's auction vid.

Also, trelkez's Self-Curated Vid Show collection went live, in which 31 vidders submitted playlists they constructed from their own vid archives in whatever ways they desired. I've got two playlists in the mix. You can watch them here if you like. I'm looking forward to getting a better sense of people's bodies of work in the coming weeks.

Info about this year's exchange.

Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat -- complete with sales pitches and pictures:

( Longmire )

( Queen Margot )

( The Golem and the Jinni )

( Blood for Dracula & Flesh for Frankenstein )

( The Lesser Blessed )

( Wildlike )

Here are some notes on music preferences, if you're at a loss. I'm also open to spoken-word and other nontraditional forms of audio, but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.

Thank you for making something for one of these newly or long-loved sources.

\festivids/

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. ( Quick examples: )

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.