A Fan's Playground

lirazel expressed interest in a rec list of some of my favourite vids and I am very suggestible when it comes to rec lists so here you go! :D Unfortunately a few of the older vids that I remember fondly are no longer available online for me to share with you (the batman vid set to johnny cash's cover of hurt! the highlander vid about methos/lord byron! and more!), but there are still plenty of excellent vids up and about, and new ones worth watching keep being made!

Yes this rec list is 22 vids long, shush, I couldn't cut any of these out. I just got so emotional in the process of making this rec list at how wonderful an artform the fanvid is! It can do so many different things! It can be so powerful in such a brief space of time!

I've ordered the list below alphabetically by fandom. I go through a lot of different fandoms here!

And it was so fun too to work on practicing my skills at describing a vid and explaining what's good about it; I have many years of practice at talking about written narratives, but interpreting and talking about visual media is still a skillset that I'm not instinctively good at and don't have as much experience with. But I think I did pretty good with these vids. I hope you enjoy them!

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One of the things I've been doing lately is rewatching older vids, so I thought I'd take the time to share some of the ones that have hit the spot recently.

(This is not intentionally a themed rec set, except that the kinds of vids that have hit the spot recently do....tend to fall in one of a few specific categories. As you might notice.)

1. Landsailor, by Raven
multifandom
"We're gonna need a bigger boat." I only know one of the fandoms that goes into this vid, but it does a clear job telling the story/stories such that you don't actually need to be familiar. It's so beautiful and optimistic about the things people do together to make things happen.

2. Soon Love Soon, by usuallyhats
Master and Commander
"To be a part is to be truly whole." I mean. That. And it does an amazing job of building the song and visuals together to create something really moving.

3.  Change You Like a Remix, by bessyboo
The Lego Movie and lego of all types and fandom as a whole
"No, I think it looked a little better on me." A fascinating vid that starts out looking like a vid about the Lego Movie, then moves into being about Lego media in general and then into, like, fandom. About creativity and creation and being inspired to do things.

4. Work This Body, by cherryice
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
"Maybe the real Jumanji was the friends we made along the way." IDEK I just am endlessly charmed by this vid, which I watched well before I ever saw the movie. It's fun and upbeat and great, and I watched it an unconscionable number of times even before I ever saw the movie.

5. Do You Dance?, by AurumCalendula
Pride & Prejudice
"Do you dance, Mr. Darcy?" Rare for me in that it's a lyric-less vid that I nonetheless really enjoy.I love the mirroring of their movements in the dance to the movements of their relationship throughout the movie, as the two are interwoven.

6. All In Together, by odessie
The Great British Bake Off
"Celebrate your oddities, your art, your own insanity." This vid was delightful when I first watched it, before I'd ever seen GBBO, and now that I've obsessively watched many seasons' worth it's even more delightful. The vid manages to capture in just a few minutes so much of what's lovely about the show.

7. Parachute, by thingswithwings
Leverage
"I don't need a parachute, baby, if I've got you." I love this ot3 a lot (Hardison/Parker/Elliot) and this vid is wonderfully them. So lovely. I love how much of the focus of the vid is on them being there for each other and supporting each other.

8. C'mon, by rhoboat
Inside Out
"What would my head be like?" Many feelings. Very yes.

9. Even If It Hurts, by pollyrepeat
Star Wars sequel trilogy
"It's darkest before the dawn." Focuses on Poe, Paige, Rose, Finn, Rey, and Leia, facing the hard things as they do what needs to be done.

10. Show Me your Teeth, by Dogstar
Hieronymous Bosch
"Tell me something that'll save me." Look, it's a vid about the weirdness of Hieronymous Bosch's art. It's weird and amazing.

So I just saw the new star wars and I enjoyed it rather more than I was expecting to? I kept on seeing review saying things like: it was perfectly fine I guess. Which does not inspire one to a lot of confidence.

But although it wasn't perfect it was definitely worthwhile. I have a lot of feelings about Star Wars, turns out? WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED.

I'm not sure what to say about it though. In a number of ways the movie was predictable because you know how things turn out: Han is alive and doing stuff with Chewie, he has the Millennium Falcon, any love interest he might have had before the Original Trilogy is emphatically not in the picture anymore, and Han is rather disillusioned with everything. But in other ways they managed to do some interesting stuff with these required details.

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I saw Rogue One yesterday, finally! Overall an imperfect but worthwhile movie.

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This is a Star Wars novel set just after the Original Trilogy, and the first official star wars novel I've ever read! Actually the first tie-in novel I've ever read for anything, I'm pretty sure. A new experience for me. And I understand that as tie-in quality goes this one is actually pretty good.

I found this book varying in quality - in some ways it was good, and in some ways it was not so much. But overall I definitely did enjoy it!

I was not a fan of the prose style (so choppy that I could never settle comfortably into the book because reading it didn't flow, resulting in me having to read much more slowly than I'm usually able to), and I found the action scenes boring and confusing, and there were too many viewpoint characters who were switched between too rapidly. And the "interlude" chapters felt like interruptions, as opposed to an essential part of the story, though they did add interesting details about what was going on in the rest of the galaxy.

I liked seeing how after the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor and Darth Vader, the Empire is not actually all the way gone yet: there's still work to be done, lots of it. And there was a great collection of characters used to show this, a number of characters who are complicated, not all good or all bad, and obviously affected by life under the Empire.

My faves: Sinjir Rath Velin and Mister Bones. Sinjir is an ex-imperial officer and Mister Bones is a modified battle droid. I liked them both a lot. But I also enjoyed reading about all the characters!

Plus: there's actual queer characters in this! Which is wonderful. Including one of our main characters, Sinjir! And among the secondary characters there's a lesbian couple and neither of them die! (my standards for queer representation, they are so low, wow)

I'm interested to see what'll happen next - I gather this is going to be a trilogy?

You can see it on my tumblr here because I'm too lazy to go look up how to embed images again.

also yes I know I am way late in putting up my summary of books read in 2015. I haven't yet put up all my book reviews from 2015 yet is the problem! I'm getting there. Probably.

Last night I went to see the new star wars movie!

This is the first star wars movie I have ever seen in my life. All my prior knowledge is cultural osmosis. And I have apparently osmosed a lot! I managed to catch quite a few call-backs/references to the previous movies, though I'm sure there are also plenty that I missed. The weirdest part though was how I had these intense feelings of nostalgia as the movie was beginning despite having never seen any star wars before.

At any rate: as a movie it worked quite well with solely my level of prior knowledge! And it was a HELLA FUN MOVIE.

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In conclusion, I feel weird about having seen a star wars movie now. I've always been annoyed with sff gatekeeper fans, and star wars is one of those major things that's held up as being obligatory for nerds. And I tend towards contrarian, so I've actually been kind of deliberate about not bothering to watch star wars? Like, SUCK IT DUDES, I'M AN SFF FAN EVEN IF YOU THINK I DON'T BELONG. (see also: me never having read or watched lord of the rings. see also: my lifelong struggle with being weird/wanting to fit in/defiantly not even trying to fit in because I know I'd never succeed, and how that relates to whether it's okay to like popular things.)

But now I've voluntarily seen a star wars movie, and LIKED it, and now have intentions of going back and watching at least the original trilogy. So. There's that.

Time to dive face-first into reading fic now!