thirdblindmouse

Download links are available on request.

From newest to oldest:

( All vids through April 2019Collapse )

Fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess
Song:"Wild", by Poe
Subject: Callisto

Password = that night in Cirra

Fandom: Cemetery Man (1994)
Song: "Style", by Taylor Swift
Summary: Things that never go out of style: sex, death, and flesh-eating zombies.

Password = james dean


Note: Made for Brendan. Premiered at Vividcon 2018. Downloadable copy available by request.

Fandom: Phantom Lady (1944)
Song: "Moody", by Bitter:Sweet
Summary: After her boss is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, she hunts down the witnesses who could have been his alibi...

Password = relentless




Note: Made circa 2015, premiered at Vividcon 2018. Downloadable copy available by request.

Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Song: "Zero Sum", by Nine Inch Nails
Summary: Bajor and the Prophets: all this is consequence.
Password = nonlinear


Note: Premiered at Vividcon 2018 as part of the challenge "Full Circle". Downloadable copy available by request.

Dear Festividder,

Sorry for the late letter! And thank you for offering to vid one of these fandoms. You have excellent taste. Or terrible taste? Either way, we have something in common.

I will enjoy any music you choose to use in your vid. No, really, feel free to go as experimental as you like. I've loved plenty of vids to music I'd have hated on its own, as well as vids to audio tracks that were not technically even music. If you want more specific guidance on genre, I like dance music, and I'm partial to vids set to rap.

( Aelita: Queen of MarsCollapse )

( Dwarf FortressCollapse )

( Magyar népmesékCollapse )

( Jack of All TradesCollapse )

( Tintin et le mystère de la Toison d'OrCollapse )

( The Young PopeCollapse )

( Wanted (2008)Collapse )

Happy vidding!

Festivids are live! I got three vids of my heart, for a TV show I love and an astronaut I admire:

Cheaper (Terriers)

In summary: A pair of small-time, not very successful (I mean at life in general, not specifically at investigating) private detectives in southern California stumble onto a mystery that ends up going deep into the black unknown, and, in the grand and unwise tradition of Philip Marlowe, refuse to stop investigating even when people try to pay them to go away. If you've watched the show, I strongly recommend this vid. If you haven't watched the show why not?? this vid will give you a taste.

Mood: bittersweet

Going through space with the world (Chris Hadfield)

In summary: So this astronaut went to space, and then was like, "How about we share this experience with everyone, I mean EVERYONE?" And lo, it became a beautiful vid, and we cried with happiness.

Mood: excited

Satellite (Chris Hadfield)

In summary: Space isn't easy. There's a lot you have to do and risk to get there, and there's a lot that you have to do and endure when you're there. But there's also so much you can do and see, and it is very worth it. We laughed, we cried, we had fun with gas masks.

Mood: awed

There are almost a hundred other vids, and I might make recs later. I've really enjoyed all the ones I've watched so far.

Alternative title: The one with the raccoon.
Fandom: The Cape (2011)
Music: "Mahala"
Performer: Életfa
Summary: Vince Faraday becomes the Cape. A gift for seekingferret

Password = festivids


( How this vid happened.Collapse )

I tried Equal Love, but judging from the scenes with Mardy & Teli and some odd lines from Gorim about it later, those were just flag changes and not serious consideration into making logical changes. I know Alistair Male Romance and Marriage takes care to make the dialogue logical for same sex romance and/or marriage with Alistair, but is there anything that does this for Morrigan's romance, the Dark Ritual, or female Couslands marrying Anora?

ETA: Completely predictably, I have started working on my own. Wish me luck.

A while back I went to see that Snowden movie. It was an enjoyable and good-looking movie. At the same time, it crystallized for me Hollywood's problem with movies about computer scientists, which is that they have only one template for them, one they will apply no matter how inappropriate to the story it may be. "Extraordinary genius misfit shows them all" was a stupid enough template when used in that terrible Turing movie, and being a computer science visionary was what made Alan Turing special. For Edward Snowden, that template was laughably wrong. What makes Edward Snowden special is not any particular genius. I'm sure he's very smart and was very good at his job. So was everyone else hired to do the kinds of jobs he did. That's not an area where the US government skimps. What makes Edward Snowden special is not being 1337 h4xx0r who can do things that other people can't, because he's not. What makes Snowden special is his conscience and his courage to draw his own conclusions about right and wrong in face of extreme ideological and practical pressures to go with the majority opinion. His story is more 12 Angry Men than Hackers. It bothers me that the film decided to fabricate a story of technical badassery to gloss up a gritty story of wrestling with what is right and what is justified.

Other notes from the person I saw the film with:

- The cheesy scenes of colleagues and mentors secretly cheering Snowden on don't ring true at all for him. His acquaintances in the NSA and CIA are the opposite of Edward Snowden fans. The people who work for those agencies do so because they believe in them, as Snowden once did, and largely consider Snowden a traitor, even suspecting him of ties to foreign governments. Again, this is where the film did his story a disservice: it's not that a man with skills nobody else had saw what everyone around him saw, it's that a man with skills everyone around him had saw what nobody else was willing to see.

- He would have thought that the scene at the end of the movie featuring the real Edward Snowden was scripted had he never heard Edward Snowden speak. That's just how the guy talks.

- Despite any other inaccuracies of the film, the way Snowden's colleague (the one with the backpack) dressed and spoke was eerily true to his experience. "I know that guy," he said with a rueful shake of his head. "I know five of that guy."

Dear Festividder,

Thank you for vidding for me! I'm glad we matched on one of these six rarely vidded fandoms, because these are great sources that deserve vids. And don't worry about what kind of music I like, because I will like what ever music you choose as long as you feel it fits the vid. Yes, even that weirdo music you like that nobody else you know tolerates. It's all good.

---

( Chris Hadfield, Dwarf Fortress, Hungarian Folktales, MacGyver, Terriers, Tintin and the Golden FleeceCollapse )

In conclusion, happy vidding!

In the process of nominating Killjoys for festivids I made a list of all the Killjoys fanvids that exist on the Internet as of September 2016. I haven't watched all of these, so let me know if I've listed something that's not a Killjoys fanvid by mistake or if I missed any other Killjoys vids out there. Not all of these vids are at least a minute long; some are shorter.

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Enjoy!

Song: "Fly Me to the Moon"
Performer: Frank Sinatra
Summary: ...and let me play among the stars.
Notes: Premiered in the Vividcon 2016 "A Spankin' Good Time" vidshow.
Warnings: NSFW, but not as much as you'd expect.
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Password = in other words


Download: 33MB .avi (zipped) + .srt subtitles from my website.

I'll be frank: metaphor, schmetaphor, I always thought this song was about banging aliens and having sex in space. elipie and bironic's kink vidshow gave me the excuse to share this vision with the world. The biggest challenge in gathering footage for this vid was weeding out all the sources where the sex was A.) non-consensual*, B.) non-sexual for one of the participants ("You think you're getting laid, I think I'm getting dinner"), or C.) indistinguishable out of context from two humans fucking the usual way on Earth. There's also a shocking dearth of consensual male human/male alien sex out there, to the extent that the only clear m/m footage in this vid was produced by tricking a video game into allowing a romance it otherwise doesn't.

Many thanks to franzeska for pointing me to music video footage I never would have found on my own, par_avion for last minute beta, and settiai for invaluable assistance with Mass Effect and getting me hooked on that game without which this vid would not have been made. Sims footage comes from YouTube users MattShea and CaptainSauce.

*For the few people who have seen Queen of Blood, yes, that is the one clear exception. He is hypnotized and does not consent. But how many sources out there have humans fertilizing alien eggs? It's less common than you'd think! As for the rest, the Sims had a rollicking good time on that flying saucer, Barbarella's orgasm machine is her best friend, and the giant space squid and the spaceship at the end of the vid love each other very much, thank you.

I don't remember when I began this vid, but I do know that most of the timeline was drunkenly filled in during a Vividcon room party last year. I finished it on the train ride home from the airport today.

Fandom: Smallville
Song: "It's Not My Birthday", by They Might Be Giants
Subject: Lana Lang
Summary: She doesn't understand why these things keep happening to her! (AKA: Lana Lang vs. the writers)

Password = whatnow


Download: 22MB .avi (zipped) from my website.

- hair cut
- CVV outfit?
- packing
- breakfast lunch dinner breakfast
- bring up new litter from stair well
- change litter
- take old litter out
- put out lots of water
- put out two days of food
- turn on cat cam
- decide whether to leave AC on or windows open for cats

Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space 9
Song: "The Sound of Settling", by Death Cab for Cutie
Subject: Rom
Summary: There's more than one way to be a successful Ferengi.

Password = vividcon


Download: 30MB .avi (zipped) + .srt subtitles from my website.

( LyricsCollapse )

I made this last year, and ended up premiering it at VividCon, even though it was unlikely to be comprehensible to anyone who hasn't watched DS9. This vid started when I was thinking about making a Leeta vid, because she's in few enough episodes that a vid about her would be easy to clip for. Naturally, while looking for a song for her I came across a song for a Rom vid, so my "easy clipping" plan turned into taking notes on about seventy episodes. (NB: if you're thinking about vidding Rom, Nog, or Leeta, I have notes on every single scene they are in, and I'd be happy to share.) Rom's story isn't always a happy one -- a central theme is his abusive relationship with his brother -- but it ends happily and has an arc that I find very satisfying and engaging throughout the entire series (not true for many DS9 characters).

Rom is not a good Ferengi in the classic sense. He has a talent for electrical engineering, but he has no lobes for finance, and so he is a disappointment to his brother, Quark, who abuses, belittles, and exploits him. At the beginning of the show, Rom is an unhappy man who believes fully in his brother's view of what it is to be a Ferengi, and who passes that treatment along to his son, Nog. This might have been his whole life if not for Keiko Ishikawa O'Brien and her plan to start a school on the Deep Space 9. She persuades him that although Ferengi tradition does not encompass Federation-style schooling, attending school could give Nog an advantage in Ferengi business. Keiko doesn't challenge the values he's currently struggling to live up to, but opens the possibility that his son could struggle less. He takes the offer. I believe his willingness to try new things, and to even listen to a Human female, can be attributed to his parents, one of whom did not live up to traditional Ferengi ideals and the other of whom, his mother Ishka, refused to be held down by them.

The experiment with sending Nog to school doesn't last long, because Rom cannot stand up to Quark or Grand Nagus Zek and their insistence on Ferengi traditions over his family's happiness. Other influences like Starfleet and Bajorans cannot overcome how beaten down Rom is. He sticks to traditional Ferengi ways, and in traditional Ferengi ways he fails again and again. His brother values his business acumen less than that of another Ferengi who turns out to be a female, when women aren't supposed to have the lobes for business at all! His attempt to escape Quark's control leads him to work for a new boss who is just as greedy and shows Rom just as little respect. The theme of the first two seasons of Rom's story is settling, settling for the devil he knows.

Nog changes everything. Nog's taste of Federation-style school leaves him with a hunger for knowledge, and after his father forbids him to attend school, he studies in secret with his friend Jake. Nog is a smart kid who understands his father's weaknesses and who understands his fate could be the same, but unlike his father, Nog wasn't raised on Ferenginar. Nog can see a wider universe with other options. The scene where Nog attempts to arrange a Ferengi apprenticeship with Starfleet Commander Sisko is one of my favorite moments in the entire show. Never let it be said that Nog lacks chutzpah. And never let it be said that Rom doesn't love his son, because when Nog succeeds in negotiating an opportunity to join Starfleet, Rom supports him wholeheartedly over his brother's objections. Quark's objections culminate in sabotaging Nog's Starfleet entrance exam. Seeing his son's dreams go down the drain is the final straw for Rom. For the first time we see Rom stand up to Quark and not back down, not give up, not ultimately acquiesce to the status quo. Nog will attend Starfleet Academy. This is the experience that teaches Rom he can stand up for himself, and for other people. He leads his coworkers in a successful labor strike, and Quark learns that not taking Rom seriously is a mistake.

His relationship with other Ferengi starts to shift. Rom isn't the only one re-evaluating his reality. Grand Nagus Zek has a brief bout of Prophet-induced insanity and rewrites the Rules of Acquisition. By the end of the ordeal, the brother who used Rom as a Human Ferengi shield at the beginning of Zek's visit shields Rom from Zek's wrath with his own body. The episode is notable for Quark's growth in how he regards his "idiot brother". Rom also develops relationships with a Bajoran woman, Leeta, and with the Deep Space 9 engineering staff. Rom is no good at business, but he is excellent at making a holosuite, bar, or space station hold together with gum and string, and he is the one who saves the day in the war against the Dominion with his self-replicating cloaked minefield. Rom is now settling into himself, into a role in life that fits him.

Rom almost settles too far, almost trades his culture for Leeta's in his excitement to marry her, but his new Starfleet friends warn him off it. This is the moment when Rom, like his son, finds a third way between forcing Ferengi traditions on Leeta and abandoning them himself entirely. He takes the step no other Ferengi would have taken, of giving up his wealth to avoid asking his bride to sign a demeaning prenuptial agreement regarding that wealth. It's a revolutionary loophole to take. My greatest regret of this vid is that I could not find a good shot of latinum to illustrate Rom giving it up.

In the end, Rom finds happiness and respect with his loved ones, coworkers, and friends. Quark even indulges Rom's interest in non-Ferengi culture, though he will never understand that interest. And ultimately Zek (now partnered with Rom's rebel mother, Ishka) recognizes that Rom may not be the classic Ferengi success story, but he's the success story Ferenginar needs. And that is how the least likely Ferengi became the Grand Nagus.

...I really need a DS9 icon.

I have finished Mass Effect 3 and I am ready for more Mass Effect vids in my life, if anyone has recs.

Sometimes I wonder if the A.V. Club Gotham reviewers went to Wrongness School of Advanced Study to be this wrong. Nobody can be that consistently, bewilderingly wrong about everything without training.

I'm seeking confidential advice about which of ten Mass Effect pairings to include in a multifandom vid. Would anyone with knowledge of the games be willing to advise me?

AlphaGo has won 3 out of 3 games so far. There are two more games in the match yet to be played, and I wonder if Lee Sedol will do better in these now that winning the match is out of the question. Computers may simply be better than humans at go -- Fan Hui seems to think so (with some excitement), and AlphaGo certainly plays outside human orthodoxy. But it is also clearly an advantage for AlphaGo that it does not feel intimidation by its opponent or by the eyes of the world on this match.

Were chess players as excited by Deep Blue's win? I've never heard that Deep Blue's moves blew anyone's mind, just that it played well by human standards. But everyone seems to agree that AlphaGo is crazy like a fox.

ETA -- Lee Sedol won game 4!

The A.I. AlphaGo has won the first round of a five round match against go grand master Lee Sedol. Until now, two decades after Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in chess, the best go-playing computers were no better than human amateurs. The game of go is more complex than chess, just as chess is more complex than tic-tac-toe. Go has simpler rules, but the board is larger and more freely used, and the state of the game is more difficult to judge at any given time. AlphaGo uses neural networks extensively trained to be able to strategize at that level. There are four more games ahead (all streamed live on YouTube) to see if AlphaGo's victory over Lee was a fluke, but it is clear it is playing at a professional level.

Internet was restored while I was out of town in Boston visiting family and a few vidding friends (but sadly missing a few others). Now I'm back in Brooklyn alone for New Years with a pair of sweet but deranged cats, thinking about vidding. I don't usually make New Years resolutions, because I'm no good at keeping them, but after vidding very little in 2015, in 2016 I hope to finish more than a half dozen of the WIPs on my computer. Besides for current festivids in progress, I have three Smallville vids ranging from 30-90% complete, one Deep Space 9 vid, one Voyager vid, one Xena vid which I even have beta notes on, and at least one multifandom vid that I'd like to finish.

At long last, I have finished reading Dracula. The book is a frustrating mix of well-structured suspense and eerie descriptions interspersed with several of the most tedious lulls possible, in which characters maunder on about logistics and repetitively rhapsodize over the saintly virtues of the opposite sex. If I had been reading Dracula in a print copy, it might have been easier to power through those sections, as I would have been able to acquire a sense of their finite length and more easily keep my place. Instead, I began reading it on printouts from Project Gutenberg, which were frequently shuffled out of order, and I was never able to tell at the outset whether I was rereading a section or reading a new section that started on a similar theme as a previous one. Eventually those printouts got lost or buried on my coffee table. Over a year later, I resumed reading on my new Kindle. The Kindle obligingly kept track of where I was, but the greatest flaw of the Kindle is that it provides no visual or tactile impression of how much book you have read or have left to read. Adrift in an apparently boundless sea of tedium, I more than once lost the will to read on. But now I am happy to report that there is none left, that I have read it all. I am glad to have read it, because the good sections really were good. I would even say the last few pages(?) were a good section. Sinister apparitions in the snow, mountainside chases, sawing off heads: good times.

Along the way, I would have paid good money for a version of the book with Van Helsing's English corrected to an even slightly more standard form. I don't even object to some amount of reported dialect or reported dysfluency, but when not only Van Helsing's reported dialogue but also his letters and written journal entries are in the same (at times incomprehensible) quasi-English, it is too much. I don't buy that his carefully composed writing is no more correct than his extemporaneous speeches. It's downright unfair that speech he reports is translated into his broken English when the native English speakers apparently have the capacity to remember and record the peculiarities of Van Helsing's speech and all the details of other dialects not their own verbatim.

Dear Festividder,

Thank you for vidding for me! I'm glad we matched on one of the below fandoms, because I'm excited to get a vid of any one of them. As far as music, I can offer you no guidance, but I can promise you that I'll like whatever music you choose. I'm not picky at all, and I think every one of these fandoms would go well with a wide range of musical styles. Especially Hieronymus Bosch -- are those paintings choral, country, metal, Lady Gaga? Who can say? Only you.

* The Hazards of Helen (1914-17)

Two incredible stunt women from the dawn of film history made this film series a must-see, and will make your vid a must-see as well.

* Hieronymus Bosch, paintings of

Go crazy, go experimental, go Hieronymus Bosch and his many imitators. (When it comes to ye olde painters I'm not picky about attribution.) I don't know how you intend to vid this, but I'm interested to see the result. The important part is to have fun with it.

* MacGyver (1985-1992)

Unassuming dork saves the day with science every time! I've been hoping for a vid of him for a long time. Could this be the year?

* Night Watch (2004) & Day Watch (2006)

I've written about this fandom in past festivids letters, but in summary, these movies are cool, creepy, gorgeous, badass, scary, silly, and generally fun. Highlight any or all of these aspects and I'll be happy.

* RPF - Ian McKellan/Patrick Stewart

I fell in love with them in the X-Men movies, and they've continued to be adorable and funny together ever since in performances and interviews and twitter pictures.

* They Live (1988)

Wrestler Roddy Piper (RIP) stars as an itinerant construction worker who finds a pair of sunglasses that reveal the lies behind modern capitalist society -- it's a fiendish plot by space aliens! He and his best friend argue about it by punching each other in the face for 10 minutes. It's that kind of a movie.

* Zombie Strippers! (2008)

Look, it's all there in the title. Zombies. Strippers. Strippers who are zombies.

Happy festividding!

...that the main theme of Jurassic World was sisterhood?

(Or brotherhood, in the case of the younger humans.)

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Would anyone be able to look over a (possibly final) draft of a VividCon premiere? I'm not looking for an intensive beta, just someone to tell me there weren't any glaring flaws I overlooked, or "BTW, you left out the audio, and was the file really meant to be 59 seconds long?" The fandom is DS9, if that makes a difference to you.