Multifandom vid rec
care to stay by tearful_eye ['what's it like? outside - with the living...' warnings. deals with depression & suicide]
This is the vid I watched most in 2008. Possibly ever, but definitely from the last year. Every couple of weeks, I'll think, it's time, I have to watch again. And then I'll come back to myself much later, all besotted and wrecked, having played it on repeat a half dozen times. (As I have done just this morning!)
So much sorrow, and yet somehow the vid as a whole is filled with light and with grace. The rhythm of the cuts... it just breaks me every time. And the song is in 3/4 time, which is nice to see. It's a terrible story, told in a beautiful way.
Unrelated: my vid-watching inadequacies, let me show you them.
I am terrible at watching vids. I am a really bad vid-watcher.
I rarely watch them at the time that they pop up on my flist. There always seems to be something standing in the way: I don't have time, or it takes too much effort, or the computer is pitching a fit, or I'm not in the mood, or I haven't seen that canon yet but I'm just about to watch it ANY DAY NOW, or blahblah excusescakes. So I make a note of it to come back to later. And, well. That's even less likely to happen.
At this moment, my vids-to-watch folder contains 415 links. Four hundred and fifteen. This is unmanageable. I mean, my fics-to-read folder has 2,000-something links, which is even more ridiculous, and yet those stories get moved out of there, because I do from time to time say, "Hey, I'd like to read fic tonight! Let's see what have we here!" (And in the case of art, I just look at it right away, usually.) But with vids? Getting bookmarked and stuck in a folder is like the kiss of death. And I don't know why! I don't understand it. Especially since my time investment is only three or four minutes, and it takes longer than that to read a story. And it happens even with vids that I know I'll probably love. Even with vidders that I love.
It's like... You have yummy bread. And it's way too much bread to eat before it goes stale, and you sort of want to save it for a special meal anyway. So you freeze it! Only it migrates down to the back of the freezer, and eons pass, and when you discover it it's become a perfect fossil of what was, at one time, yummy bread. So the freezer really only serves as a trash can deferred.
And, gnaghhh, now I'm calling vids fossilized bread, which is NOT AT ALL what I mean. This is a terrible analogy.
In short, I am a bad vid-watcher. I have a mental block. Vid-avoidance. I DON'T KNOW. /o\
ETA:
I love it when fandom does my self-analysis for me. In talking with y'all, I decided that it's not just some weird oppositional self-defeating thing I'm doing. I mean, it may well be that, but not just that.
I think it's for the same reason that I love poetry but rarely read it anymore. Vids are so layered and dense and distilled, so rich in context and in meaning, that to really appreciate them requires a lot of participation from the viewer (or, I should say, from this viewer; I'm the only one I can speak for). More energy than is required of me from most fic or art, and more energy than I have to give, a lot of the time.
Also, this realization feels familiar, like I've figured it out once already, probably in conversation with la_fono. I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time; I think I've forgotten this before.
This is the vid I watched most in 2008. Possibly ever, but definitely from the last year. Every couple of weeks, I'll think, it's time, I have to watch again. And then I'll come back to myself much later, all besotted and wrecked, having played it on repeat a half dozen times. (As I have done just this morning!)
So much sorrow, and yet somehow the vid as a whole is filled with light and with grace. The rhythm of the cuts... it just breaks me every time. And the song is in 3/4 time, which is nice to see. It's a terrible story, told in a beautiful way.
Unrelated: my vid-watching inadequacies, let me show you them.
I am terrible at watching vids. I am a really bad vid-watcher.
I rarely watch them at the time that they pop up on my flist. There always seems to be something standing in the way: I don't have time, or it takes too much effort, or the computer is pitching a fit, or I'm not in the mood, or I haven't seen that canon yet but I'm just about to watch it ANY DAY NOW, or blahblah excusescakes. So I make a note of it to come back to later. And, well. That's even less likely to happen.
At this moment, my vids-to-watch folder contains 415 links. Four hundred and fifteen. This is unmanageable. I mean, my fics-to-read folder has 2,000-something links, which is even more ridiculous, and yet those stories get moved out of there, because I do from time to time say, "Hey, I'd like to read fic tonight! Let's see what have we here!" (And in the case of art, I just look at it right away, usually.) But with vids? Getting bookmarked and stuck in a folder is like the kiss of death. And I don't know why! I don't understand it. Especially since my time investment is only three or four minutes, and it takes longer than that to read a story. And it happens even with vids that I know I'll probably love. Even with vidders that I love.
It's like... You have yummy bread. And it's way too much bread to eat before it goes stale, and you sort of want to save it for a special meal anyway. So you freeze it! Only it migrates down to the back of the freezer, and eons pass, and when you discover it it's become a perfect fossil of what was, at one time, yummy bread. So the freezer really only serves as a trash can deferred.
And, gnaghhh, now I'm calling vids fossilized bread, which is NOT AT ALL what I mean. This is a terrible analogy.
In short, I am a bad vid-watcher. I have a mental block. Vid-avoidance. I DON'T KNOW. /o\
ETA:
I love it when fandom does my self-analysis for me. In talking with y'all, I decided that it's not just some weird oppositional self-defeating thing I'm doing. I mean, it may well be that, but not just that.
I think it's for the same reason that I love poetry but rarely read it anymore. Vids are so layered and dense and distilled, so rich in context and in meaning, that to really appreciate them requires a lot of participation from the viewer (or, I should say, from this viewer; I'm the only one I can speak for). More energy than is required of me from most fic or art, and more energy than I have to give, a lot of the time.
Also, this realization feels familiar, like I've figured it out once already, probably in conversation with la_fono. I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time; I think I've forgotten this before.