ghost_lingering

~~This journal flows in and out of friends-lock depending on my current level of paranoia. If there's a particular locked post you want to see then ask and I'll probably unlock it for you.~~ At this point it's mostly locked, less because of paranoia & more because as it turns out, the last few years I've just been reverting to a state of constant lurkerdom.

fyi:

I try to give content notes for my stuff, but sometimes I have a hard time figuring what they should say, so I opt out and choose not to give notes for that particular thing. If ever you want more information about a vid or story (presence of ratings/content notes or no) don't hestitate to ask me. Be safe out there, kids, and sorry for any confusion.

Sometimes the thought of answering comments gives me panic attacks, so if you comment: thank you! If you don't get a response it's not because I don't appreciate that you took the time to let me know what you thought, but because I don't have the spoons.

If you ever want to ~~podfic, remix, transform~~ make a fannish thing based on any of my fics, vids, etc, I would appreciate it if you let me know. If I'm not comfortable with it for any reason then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. But I don't anticipate that happening; I'm pretty sure I'll be amenable to anything that isn't plagarism or reposting, which doesn't fall under the category of fannish transformation anyway. The best way to contact me is ghost [dot] lingering [at] gmail [dot] com. (I don't use the word "permission" here because I find the idea of my giving or withholding permission to be a complicated one for reasons I'd rather not get into.)

You can also find me on Archive of Our Own as ghost lingering. ~~I have a tumblr, but it is just for following people; I don't post on it. (Perhaps someday I will sideblog it up & post vids to tumblr, but today is not the day.)~~ Oh hey, the day has arrived! I have created a sideblog on tumblr where I am posting all of my vids! It is ghost-lingerings-vids.

( cheat sheet to this dj wherein dj=dreamwidth journal )

Belatedly back on my quest to post my vidding backlog to Tumblr &, as an off-shoot of that, posting thoughts about some of my past vids. The second vid I ever made Brand New Key [VMars], now over on Tumblr is one I don't have all that much to say about. I think it shows improvement from my first vid, but not so so much that I have any special insights that feel meaningful to share. On the other hand, my third vid, Pink Bullets [Heroes] is one that I do have more to say about, because I think it represents an interesting turning point in my vidding development.

( Click through to see my oh so interesting thoughts & analyses of said vid! )

For Equinox I made two vids both for Vialana, both for Dead Boy Detectives:

Hallways is a Charles/Edwin vid … & is possibly my first real slash vid? I've made femslash vids in the past & I've made OT3 vids & I've made vids that were slash vids in my heart, but I think this is the first vid I've made that firmly can be labeled a slash vid without question or caveat. Wow, a vidding milestone.

( Vid post for Hallways! )

Elegy is an experimental Crystal & Niko (Crystal/Niko?) treat to a poem by Aracelis Girmay.

( Vid post for Elegy! )

( Process notes for both vids! )

( Notes on a couple of things I did in After Effects, mostly for my own reference, but hopefully helpful to others as well )

So a week or so ago, I created a sideblog tumblr for vid posting (check it out over here - ghost-lingerings-vids), since I still have no interest in fucking with YouTube, but Dreamwidth feels quieter than it used to on the vid front, at least outside of exchanges, & even though I've posted my vids to AO3 for completion's sake, I've never loved AO3 as a platform for vids. (Also, I don't really think that's where people look for vids outside of exchanges.) Anyway, because I'm a completionist, I'm aiming to post my backlog of vids over the next few months, starting with the vids I've made over the past year or so & then skipping around, time-wise.

As I was thinking about how I wanted to approach my earliest vids wrt tumblr I realized that beyond just posting them & linking to the dw/ao3 posts for downloads, it would maybe be interesting to comment how I watch them now. I still retain some fondness for many/most of my earliest vids, but I wouldn't make most of them the same way if I was to vid them now & some of them I wouldn't make at all. I don't really want to do most of that commentary on tumblr itself, but I figured I could do longer analyses of some of the vids here & maybe excerpt a brief quote & link back on the tumblr post. We'll see, I'm mostly doing this to entertain myself & maybe catch some stray vidding talk along the way, so I might mix things up as I go along or abandon entirely.

For now though … ( join me as I look back at my very first vid, Richard Cory, a Veronica Mars vid about Logan & Weevil that I made nearly twenty years ago! )

So the recent festivids post to discuss possible rule changes is something I'm spending far too much time thinking about, but it did remind me of this very experimental idea that I've had for a while about a potential vidding project. Here's the basic description that I gave in the comments of that post:

& as an example of what I mean by vid that might slot into 'there is a history of multi-media artists using computer generation in interesting ways that pre-dates the current "AI" craze & I wouldn't be opposed to people experimenting in that tradition': say Festivids was nominated/requested again & I was stupid enough to vid it again. This time, I decide to focus on / celebrate what has already been made for festivids rather than what has been requested but not made. I reach out to a bunch of vidders asking if it's cool if I use parts of their vids for my vid. Let's say I get 30 responses telling me to go ahead & between all of those vidders there are 100 vids that I now have permission to use. I then tag all of the clips from all of the vids with different values measuring: length, type of movement, color, type of shot / framing, maybe actors, maybe select subject matter, etc. I select a song (not 4'33"; maybe I try to find a song that is the conceptual opposite) & make a reference vid using the various shots from the other vids. Then I figure out how to write a program that will randomly swap out different shots based on if they match the length as well as one or more of the attributes that I tagged. And every time you run the program you get a different version of the vid with the same timing & ideally with a recognizable vibe (since the swaps are based on tagged attributes), but that would be a different experience, which I would hope partially replicates the differing experiences of Festivids year to year & participant to participant. Maybe there are even viewer controls so that the view can prioritize swaps based on motion or color or any number of other attributes that I may have picked. There is certainly some level of computer automation with this idea, but I would argue that there are also specific choices & a conceptual framework to the extent that would consider it "fan-made". Anyway I would hope that the Festivids rules would allow for this kind of experimentation, even though it involves some level of computer automation.

(I have a frustration with the imprecise way that people talk about AI / computer generation in art. Like, I think chatgpt & dall-e & similar recent AI things are bad for a lot of reasons, but there are also interesting ways to use technology in the making of art that wind up getting sort of lumped in with them unfairly, IMO.)

But anyway, I'm thinking more about this idea now. I realized after posting the comment that clearly this should be to the Goldberg Variations: the idea that vidding is variations on a theme. I do think a project like this would need a unifying theme, like Festivids if only to cap the source search, though I wonder if actually something like Equinox might be better -- one of the attributes could be which of themes the vid was made for. A con could work as well -- say VVC or Fanworks Con. Basing the project on existing vids would also help limit the source search. I think you could come up with a concept that wasn't based on existing vids, but it would get even more unwieldly very quickly. & I like the idea of the project as a kind of evolving visual archive of (a particular subset) of vids. In fact, depending on how it was hosted / set up, once the infrastructure was in place you could add shots from different vids to the database or even share the basic code so someone could create something similar or create a kind of roving community art project. But would sharing the code make people uncomfortable because it's too similar to AI applications, even if you have to go through & create the database of clips to pull from + the original reference vid that the shots get swapped out for? Hell, is this idea too close to current corporate iterations of AI for people's comfort? This is where I find the AI discourse frustrating in how reductive it becomes about smaller projects that feel more artist/community-centric, again, IMO.

What stumps me about this project & why I've never persued it is the coding / platform. I've dabbled in writing code for things like interactive fiction so I think the theory behind what I am describing makes sense -- creating a sequence of shots with specific attributes & then having code that will swap those shots for other shots with matching attributes -- but in terms of how to implement it I'm less certain. Curious if anyone has ideas / insight on that front? I feel like I could figure it out if it was text, but I'm not sure what applications exist for this kind of interactive video project.

I've had this vid mostly done for ages, but have been dragging my feet on the textual elements. I decided today that slapping in some semi-shitty text that gestured at what I was envisioning was good enough, so I'm calling this done & posting it.

Title: technically untitled, but I've been calling it Hallelujah (Please Don't Steal My Man)
Fandom: Mrs. Davis
Music: A cover of Jolene by Dolly Parton sung with the lyrics from Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. (The full cover can be found on Youtube, posted by mimaprods1. & I do apologize to the ghost of Leonard Cohen for this vid: I know that Hallelujah is a Jewish song, not a Christian one, but this song choice was too hilarious for me to pass up.)

Additional audio from the show is also used.

Summary: That feel when you get cuckolded by The Lord only to turn around & kind of see what your ex-girlfriend was thinking.

Vidder Notes: This vid was semi-inspired by the color/light building prompt from

vexercises. Also: while this vid isn't really a slash vid, it is, in my heart, a slash vid.

Content Notes: my brain is tired & so this is a choose not to warn situation. I mean, there's stuff that is canonical to the show (expiration dates), but nothing in this is graphic wrt I don't think & I feel like whatever relationship weirdness is going on is probably adequately warned simply by the summary. Ask if there's anything specific & I'd be happy to tell you, but my brain is just stuck on: so much weird Christianity. Oh I guess there's some sex that happens? No visual triggers that I can think of, but there is yelling / thunder at the beginning. Anyway, all of that kind of passes for content warnings, but my brain is tired & I maybe missed something.

Watch on Vimeo

PW: wiley

Alternatively, if you want to download a copy, you can do so over on Dropbox.

Anyone want to watch a vid I made for the Equinox exchange & tell me it's perfect & I don't have to change anything before submitting? Both because I want to be done because my August & September are about to get quite busy, but also because shortly after I exported it, the project stopped being able to load the media & I'd rather not try to untangle that mess if at all possible.

I have a complicated relationship with reading books that is slightly less complicated than it was 15 years ago, but is still complicated. However, this is not a post about that, it is instead a post about speculative fiction books I have read or tried to read recently:

( books I guess )

So I on a whim signed up for the Equinox Vidding Exchange & in my as-of-yet-not-public vidder letter I mention that I would like more poetry vids. & then I realized that probably at least some people would be like: "Hey fellow vidder, I love the idea of vidding to poetry, but I don't read much of it, so I don't know where to start looking for good poems to vid to" & then I was like, well, that is a problem that maybe I can help with. So. Here is a list of places to look if you are looking for poetry to vid to (sorry for the American-centric-ness of this list, but it's definitely not meant to be comprehensive, so):

The Slowdown: a podcast where each episode is about a single poem. The episodes are all pretty short: quick intro to the poem & why it was picked & then a reading of the poem.

VS: a interview podcast where poets ~confront the ideas that move them~. This podcast is really great for introducing you to a variety of different contemporary poets & to get a feel for their style & their approach to poetry. It's also just a fun listen.

The Poetry Gods: this podcast is an oldie, but a goodie (though I've gotta warn for some less than great audio quality at times). Like VS it is ostensibly an interview podcast, in that each episode has a guest poet, but it's really more shooting the shit. Great if you like podcasts with people just having interesting conversations rather than something more edited / polished. Again, great place to start learning names of poets you might want to check out.

Button Poetry's YouTube: they are a publisher, but if you're specifically looking for spoken word / slam poetry, their YouTube is a great resource with a lot of videos of writers performing their work.

Poets dot org: this is a great website for looking up poems & poets, though it skews towards people who are more established. They have a poem-a-day feature & many of the poems on their website include audio of the poem being read aloud.

Poetry Foundation website: another great resource for looking up poems & poets, though it skews towards people who are more established. They have a variety of lists of poems about [x] & articles about poetry / poets. A number of the poems include audio of the poem read aloud.

U.S. Poet Laureates: this is a great list of poets in general, but I think it's also a valuable list if you want to look at the intersections of culture, poetry, & politics in the U.S. over time. (For example: for me, one of the few political joys of Trump's presidency were the people who held the title of U.S. Poet Laureate during his time in office.)

(BTW, pet peeve time: U.S. Poet Laureate is a very different position than the National Youth Poet Laureate, which goes to a teenager & is determined by competion & is part of a program for literacy amoung young people. Great program, but totally different than the US Poet Laureate who is named as such after making a significant mark in the poetry world in their professional career. This was a mistake I saw a lot of people — including news organizations! — make when Amanda Gorman performed at Biden's inauguration. NO! Gorman was NOT the U.S. Poet Laureate. Joy Harjo was the U.S. Poet Laureate at that time & deserved to be acknowledged as such!)

This one isn't a link, but another tip for finding poems / poets: pay attention to those quotes from mood boards & gifsets on tumblr. Richard Siken, obviously, is a fan fav poet to quote & I see Anne Carson a lot (she's my personal fav, FWIW), but there are generally a lot of good poetry quotes floating around & if you like one specific quote from someone, they might be someone whose work you want to look into.

Anyway, I don't really have a good sign off to this, so I will end by asking if anyone has yet made a Supernatural vid about Castiel to the poem When You See Me by Vanessa Reyes, which is perhaps better known (to me at least) as the 'my car is filled with bees' poem. Because if that vid doesn't exist yet, (a) it should, & (b) it is proof that there are not enough poetry vids.

Also: always happy to recommend poets to look into!

At some point ... while I was waiting for Festivids to go live perhaps? ... I signed up for Fandom Trumps Hate on a whim / with the intent of forcing myself to make at least one more of the vids on my list this year & not just slink away from the hobby for another 8 years before resurfacing again.

So, uh, if you want to bid on me in order to force me to make a vid for Orphan Black, Farscape, or Mrs. Davis, now is your chance! Or rather, you'll have your chance starting on Tuesday when the bidding system thing goes live.

Here's the link to my auction post for more details.

I made two festivids! I would have submitted one more, but vimeo upload limits restricted my ability to upload another vid & I was too lazy to actually find a work around. Someday the Mrs. Davis vid about being cuckolded by Jesus & then subsequently realizing you want to make out with Jesus will get posted, but today is not the day since I still have to figure out some text/gfx elements at the beginning.

First up, for my actual assignment I made Eye of the Tiger an RRR vid for Teyla. (Also here on Dreamwidth w/ a d/l link.)

For my treat, I made Raising Hell a Mrs. Davis vid for valoise. (Also here on Dreamwidth, this time with a link to download.)

So these two vids + Grandpa Never Gives Up His Money, a Trust vid that I submitted to Fanworkscon b/c no one but me requested Trust for Festivids, were the main vid projects that brought me back to this hobby. In the last eight years I’ve occassionally gotten vid ideas, but Trust, RRR, & Mrs. Davis are, I think, the only canons that I’ve seen recently that sparked a fannish itch, felt surmountable to vid (ahaha, fuck no I will not vid Critical Role), & also didn’t have other extant vids that said similar things to what I’d want to say (Everything Everywhere All At Once, We Are Lady Parts, & The Old Guard, I love you, but I don’t need to vid you). I started drafts of all three vids right around when nominations were opening for Festivids & I thought: hey, all three of these fandoms are eligible & all three of these vids drafts are probably likely to be well recieved by anyone requesting the fandoms so maybe I can gift them to folks (though once sign ups went live I did do some journal stalking of Teyla & valoise, the only two people I could have matched on, just to verify that assumption).

Anyway, all that said, let me now naval gaze about the vids that brought me back to vidding after 8 years.

( Eye of the Tiger notes )

( Raising Hell notes )

( surprise appearance of notes for Grandpa Never Gives Up His Money, sir vid not appearing in Festivids )

Anyway, my hope is that it will not be eight years between this & the next time I post a vid. I do have those two Mrs. Davis vids to finish/post after all & I still have somehow never vidded Orphan Black or made a Chiana vid for Farscape, so. I also did start a Mad Max: Fury Road vid around the same time that I made these three, so theoretically I could finish that as well, but wow that movie is way more violent than I remembered, so making a vid for it might be more than I can handle. Idek, anyone want to collab on it? I make the parts of the vid I care about & you fill in the rest of the timeline with the violent bits. (…please do not point out that there is lots of violence in the vids I recently made including public flogging, a head exploding, & an ear being (implied) to be cut off. IDEK, different things hit different to me I guess????) (To be fair, I couldn’t actually include much of the ear being cut off, I can only look at that shot for so long before I get squeamish. I included as much as I could.)

Title: Eye of the Tiger
Fandom: RRR
Audio: Eye of the Tiger by 2Cellos
Summary: We're rising up to the challenge of our rival.
Vidder notes: This reveals post can function as my notes (incessant rambling) for this vid. Also shout out to seekingferret & C who gave thoughtful feedback on versions of this.
Content notes: Warning for physical / visual triggers. In addition to AO3 archive warnings (graphic violence & character death), this vid also includes child death; child endangerment & kidnapping; blood/gore; police & state violence; racism; colonialism; & imagery related to Hindu nationalism. It also includes animal harm, but all the animals are all CGI, so YMMV.

Watch on Vimeo

Password: tiger

You can also download a copy on dropbox.

Title: Raising Hell
Fandom: Mrs. Davis
Audio: Raising Hell by Kesha feat. Big Freedia
Summary: Bitch, I'm blessed.
Vidder Notes: This tl;dr reveals post can function as my vidder notes.
Content Notes: Warning for physical / visual triggers (quick cuts). In addition to the archive warning (character death), this vid also includes actual blood/gore (~1:23) as well as several shots that look like blood/gore but are really the aftermath of a massive strawberry jam explosion. Additionally, it includes some moments of child harm / endangerment.

Watch on Vimeo

Password: nun

You can also download a copy on dropbox (does anyone even download vids anymore???)

Festivids went live this weekend! Check out the collection on AO3!

I got two RRR vids as gifts <3<3<3

The first is RRRFunk which is a dance vid to Uptown Funk that draws heavily on the Naatu Naatu dance off. It feels made to be played at a con dance party & I hope that someday it is. Also shout out to using the drummer’s reaction, truly the best character with no lines in the film.

The second is आज (Today), which happens to be exactly my platonic ideal of an RRR vid. It’s to the song Aaj by Bloodywood & it is brilliant. I am deeply angry on it’s behalf that of the three RRR vids it seems to be getting the least attention because I truly think it understands Bheem & Ram the best. Vid watchers why are you not giving it more love!!!! Anyway, I wrote a veritable essay in the comments on AO3 that I will link to: my magnum opus of why you should think it is the most brilliant.

There are a lot of great vids (of course) in Festivids & I waffled about posting a recs list b/c I think it makes it too obvious what vid(s) I made, but I’d rather laud vidders than be sneaky so just … don’t think too much about which vids are not making the list.

However, before I get into it, one word of frustration: vidders, please for the love of Spock, actually write somewhere in the notes/text of the post — or at the very least within the vid itself!!! — what the audio is for your vid. The amount of road rage that I was getting as I was watching vids & trying to find the song listed in the vid post & it wasn’t there & then I look through the credits & sometimes it wasn’t there either!!! What the hell! *grumbles in fandom old*

Anyway, with that rant out of the way, have a list of vids that stayed with me, though it is by no means exhaustive:

Like everyone, I am loving the Moby Dick bounty this year. All four vids are great, but I have particular fondness for #teamwhale & a vulture that feeds upon the heart forever. Let the whale ride the bus & eat that man’s heart in the marketplace. I support whale’s wrongs, etc etc. I should say, I am particularly drawn to ‘vulture’ because of the audio, which I think is really evokative. I’ve gotten more & more fussy wrt audio & that was one of the vids this year that I think stood out as making particularly interesting & fitting audio choices. & Here it Goes Again deserves a shout out for the sheer number of sources used.

I think one of the most impressive vids this year is סיפור הגולם, a book vid for The Golem & the Jinni. The visual language of the vid is stunning & I think it captures a lot of the mood & feel of the book as well. I am particularly fond of the clay sequence, but I also love how the end resolves in a kind of calm for Chava in her life.

I am so happy that Birds Birds Birds exists. When I saw that Wingspan was nominated & requested I hoped that someone would make a vid for it & they did & there are so many birds!!! I’m still a little sad no one vidded my False Knees request but this vid at least ensures that Festivids has a BIRDS vid, which I am very pleased about.

I really enjoyed Trust+Fall, which is one of the Romeo+Juliet vids; I think it has some really interesting things to say about the play itself & I really enjoy the editing.

I caught up with last year’s Festivids late, so I missed the initial explosion of Everything Everywhere All At Once vids that comprised that collection, so I’m happy that We Can Be Anything showed up this year. It’s a really kind vid, especially about being kind to oneself, perhaps even moreso than the film.

This next trio of vids have nothing to do with each other, except that they are connected in my heart because they all just make me smile: You Told the Drunks I Knew Karate, a Ryan & Shane / Buzzfeed Unsolved vid; rescue cats to chill/study to, a vid based on the Flatbush Cats social media; & The Only Way To See, a vid for Amaury Guichon aka the chocolate guy.

Other vids that make me happy or at least that make me laugh, despite not knowing the source material: out with a bang for Robin & Marion (I will always love Robin Hood, even despite Sean Connery); Adventures of Priscilla, Dancing Queen of the Desert for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; & Everything I Do for Cocaine Bear.

This next batch of vids were ones that felt particularly poignant, despite not knowing the canons: Angel for Tar & Alone With You Inside My Mind for Doctor Sleep. The later of which purports to be a crack vid, but I found it deeply arresting on several levels.

These next vids are all recruiter vids in the sense that all of these canons have been on my (very long & neglected) list & the vids underscore that I should watch said movies/shows, because I know I would like them & they look good: Breaking Ground for Poker Face; Light Beam for They Cloned Tyrone; & Citizens of Glass for Station Eleven.

Finally, I want to shout out the Wheel of Time vids. There’s a lot of cool ladies going on & the vids all make it look like I would enjoy the show, but I know where that road goes, I read the first … five? … books when I was a youth, I will not be drawn in again. I particularly want to shout out hold the girl which is another vid with such kindness towards oneself as well as the two (looks up her name) Lanfear vids put on a show & Together Again.

*taps mic* How does this work again?

Guys I had a vid in the Fanworks Premiere show! Which I mostly missed last night because I double-booked myself. (I was able to watch the first five vids & then had to jump, but I did continue to try to watch/listen to the vidshow on my phone as I was walking to where I was going so I knew when my vid started & I could go & lurk onto Discord to see people say nice things. Guys, don't try to watch a vidshow while walking, it's not good for either the vidshow or the walking.)

ANYWAY HAVE A NEW VID.

Title: Grandpa Never Gives Up His Money
Fandom: Trust (2018)
Audio: You Never Give Up Your Money by The Beatles
Summary: In 1973 J. Paul Getty was the richest man in the world & his grandson was kidnapped for ransom. But you don't become that rich by simply paying what's demanded. You negotiate down. For 5 long months.
Vidder Notes: Many thanks to starlady for beta!

Content Notes: if you drink every time there's a trigger you might die of alcohol poisoning in 3 minutes. Anyway the Fanworks trigger list is fairly comprehensive, so let's c&p. Physical triggers (some strobe/flickers & flashes of bright light). Character death, Sexual content, Underage sex, Graphic violence, Animal harm, Child harm, Alcohol or drug use, Suicide, Kidnapping.

Watch on Vimeo

Password: eattherich

& you can get your VERY OWN downloaded version over here on Dropbox

Ok, I think that's everything one needs in a vid announcement!

Ack, I forgot I submitted a link to Fanworks when I submitted the vid. Anyone who comes here via that link, you should actually go to either the actual Dreamwidth vid announcement here or the AO3 post / embed here

I mainlined Mrs Davis (Peacock, 1 season, 8 eps) this weekend & am in love. Best to experience it mostly unspoiled so I will just say:

-show is about a nun vs an AI
-visually beautiful: gorgeous colors, interesting settings
-hilarious; tackles big themes & issues in smart but totally bizarre ways
-a puzzle box show that actually satisfactorily concludes the mysteries it introduces
-goes for mother issues instead of daddy issues
-ot3?

I will say the show is very Jesus-y even more than I would have guessed knowing the main character is a nun. I say Jesus-y not Catholic because while it definitely has Catholic trimmings a lot of the Jesus stuff feels like magical realism / Christianity as mytharc rather than a serious grappling with Catholic ideology. But I'm not Catholic, so YMMV. I wound up liking the Jesus stuff much more than expected, but I'd guess it wouldn't work for everyone.

Things it reminded me of, in different ways at different times for different reasons: Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Kings, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Orphan Black, The Middleman, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Sex Criminals. And I never watched Joan of Arcadia, I definitely suspect that there may be some similarities there as well.

There doesn't seem to be anything posted to AO3 for the show, which seems a damn shame, though I suspect fandom's priorities & mine would be different.

You should watch & we should talk about all of the twists & reveals! There's a lot I want to say, but watching unspoiled (usually not a priority for me) was definitely the way to go in this case.

Ok, real talk: has anyone seen RRR & if so what are your feelings and are they as conflicted as mine which go something like:

( ahhhhhhhh (spoilers) )

I could go on but I'm posting from my phone so I will not.

Anyway did I love watching it? Yes. Did I resubscribe to Netflix so I could rewatch it? Yes. Was it good? Um. Did I like it? Um. Do I recommend it? Ummmmmmmmmm. Does it have deeply frustrating messages and undertones? Yes. Am I watching the train/bridge scene on repeat? Yes. Have I no shame? I plead the fifth.

Please tell me your thoughts. How would you rank all of Ram Charan's looks from hot to not. Brainstorm better romance love interests for Bheem. How did the rope not catch on fire in Bheem's side in the train/bridge scene. How can we make better action movies that avoid courting fascism. Etc.

ETA I FORGET TO SHOUT OUT THE DRUM PLAYER. Best most memorable character with no lines in the film. A plus.

This weekend I caught up on some shows. I have more thoughts than these, but I doubt I will get around to writing said thoughts, so here's the thoughts I can commit to writing.

( Stranger Things Season Three or where did all of these Steve Harrington feelings come from? )

( Russian Doll or now I see why people were comparing it to Orphan Black kind of )

I have taken to thinking more about how I feel coming out of viewing/reading/experiencing difference media. I want to largely consume media that leaves me feeling buoyed and more calm with myself instead of dragged down and unsettled. This doesn’t necessarily mean happy endings, as we’ll get to in a minute, but media that locks into place for me instead of leaving me spinning in circles. For a while, I’ve tried to insulate myself with media that centers the stories of women, queer folks, and people of color as a buffer when I consume media about white straight men, but it’s become clear to me that I also need to begin to insulate myself with stories that make me feel happier and better about myself, as opposed to stories that make me feel worse and unmoored. There is overlap, but it isn’t exactly a one to one: if it was, I wouldn’t have felt so low after watching Wonder Woman. It’s harder to predict what will cause uplift and it’s true that, especially for on-going media, something that causes uplift once might not down the road as it continues.

Anyway, something I'm considering.

In other news ... when I said that I had a ticket in June for Hadestown, I lied: I meant I had one for last night. In my defense I was switching between May and June quite a bit when I was looking. I left work early, took myself out for ramen a few blocks from the theater and still got there way earlier than I needed to. I’d had a headache at work most of yesterday so I was a bit annoyed: I wanted to feel good walking into the theater so that I could enjoy the show as much as possible. But the headache abated by the end of the show and I felt buoyed.

( Hadestown on Broadway )

After the play I walked through Times Square to the train: I'm glad I no longer work in the area, but ok, yes, I can admit, walking through it every once and a while is kind of fun.

A few other notes in the world of media consumed by me:

I started listening to Sandra, a podcast by Gimlet, this week. So far I really like it: great voice acting, engaging characters, enough of a plot hook that I want to know what happens next. I'm also, for reasons obvious if you know my first name, interested in where the podcast is going with the whole digital personal assistant premise. It's a subject near and dear to my heart and so far it's doing things with it that I'm really enjoying. I'm three (?) episodes in, so we'll see how it shakes out, but I'm looking forward to hearing the rest.

I started watching the more recent videos by Natalie Wynn, aka the YouTuber known as ContraPoints. They're entertaining videos, even if the subjects aren't ones that have particular resonance for me. My favorite is still the first one I watched and the one that got me hooked: The Darkness which is an amazing exploration of music, comedy, and writing about that line between what causes pleasure and what causes pain and why entertainment is so important for the soul, but also to carefully consider and understand the effects of when it's badly conceived. It's ostensibly about a lot of the discussion of late surrounding comedy and people getting offended, but that sells it short.

Aaaaaand, why does typing out DW posts always take longer than I would like. D:

how to explore abandoned buildings

(how to walk through walls)

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Vid Announcement [Mrs. Davis]

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Poetry for vidding

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Festivid reveals / vid blather

Vid Announcement: Eye of the Tiger [RRR]

Vid Announcement: Raising Hell [Mrs. Davis]

Festivids Recs

New?! Vid?! Announcement?!

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Drive by tv recc!

I also rewatched some Slings & Arrows, hence the icon

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