OMG Vividcon Yay!
So yeah, that's about how I feel. When's the last time I posted about a con? Squeed about a con? Made a long post about a con, or even anything fannish? I can't even remember (even though I've certainly had plenty of fun at cons over the past few years). It was starting to feel like maybe I needed to turn in my fangirl credentials...
And then - VIVIDCON! I don't know what it was about this particular con. I hadn't even been feeling much like I wanted to go. But I just had the greatest time, pretty much from start to finish. I had one of those so-hard-to-leave feelings on Sunday, which I imagine all con-going fans recognize, which I used to get a lot but haven't had in a while - I was just so low at the thought that it was over. (I'm thinking maybe some of that is attributable to lingering sadness about minotaurs' death, and a consequent particularly acute awareness of the fact that even though time flies, and fannish time moves in its own way, still, it'll be a year before I'll see many of these people again, and all sorts of things can happen in a year...)
Some of it was rooming with cmshaw - which yeah, I've done every year for a while, but this year it was especially fun; we spent a lot of time actually...well, spending time together. And talking about some interesting stuff. And I had slashgirl on the brain, with a hysterical desire to put every two guys we saw (like in restaurants, or the hotel lobby), in bed together (well, a bit more graphically than that!) - and I seldom indulge that side of myself, but her good-natured, amused tolerance of it freed me to give it free(ish) reign, which was just...so cool.
Plus, I'm just totally fangirling Star Trek Reboot, and most specifically Kirk - as in Chris Pine Kirk - and happily, there were enough like-minded fans there that I never had to go it alone. Oddly, considering that I've been in fandom for quite a while now, I don't think I've ever felt (or, at times, acted) so unrestrainedly, unapologetically...well, fanigirly. Or at least it's been rare. It was fun.
And then there were...the vids!
For all that this was my sixth VVC, and I am probably a reasonably knowledgable watcher of vids by this point, I'm still not a very good one. My ability to "read" visually isn't great - I don't have great visual memory in any setting, not just vidding. Visually is just not how my brain processes things. And trying to process vids the way my brain does process things doesn't always work well. Add to that my fairly pathetic lack of familiarity with much fannish source material, stuff that most fans know, and sometimes I find myself frustrated at VVC, feeling like I'm not "getting" so much of what others can parse with more ease.
And that's still true. Yet - this year I enjoyed watching vids at VVC more than any other year I can remember. I went to more vid shows and watched them with more engagement than I ever have before - even sat once through three hours in a row, which I've never done. Part of that was due to the fact that this year I actually do know a few the sources for new vids - Merlin, Torchwood, STXI. Part of it was because there seemed to be more humorous or crack vids, which I can enjoy without needing to get every layer, and certainly more "self-referential" vids - vids referencing us as fans - and I have less trouble getting at least some aspects of those. But it went beyond that. I just...enjoyed the vid watching. Lots of really well put together shows, and maybe I was just in a receptive mood.
I'm just going to touch on some highlights rather than giving systematic reports on each show I attended, or each vid.
Nearly New - Enjoyed the entire show. Standouts for me personally:
- Circus, a STXI vid by butterfly (I feel like this is a dumb question, but is there a way to indicate a dreamwidth user from within LJ?). I had seen this vid before and loved it - loved it even more on the big screen. Fangirling Kirk, remember? And this vid is all about Kirk. Who knew a Britney Spears song could work so well, but it does - it's perfect. I've watched this many times, so I've actually managed to begin to appreciate the guts and the details of it a bit more - the technique, the editing, the clip choice, etc. Things like - oh wow, isn't it cool that she put that clip there; it's like - a metaphor! Again, I'm just so impaired at visual reading - I seldom get many of these things in one watching, and I'm sure I don't get many of them even after multiple watchings. But at least I improve. (I think I managed to get the overarching message fairly quickly. *g*)
Anyway, this vid makes me so damn happy.
- Blackbirds, by killabeez. There were a surprising number of new Highlander vids this year (including another cute cracky one in Nearly New called Threesome, by Valoise). I found this one very interesting. To me it seemed to say...the immortals are a small and kind of incestuous community, and Duncan and Amanda can be in love and together for a while, and then it can be Duncan and Methos, and that's okay; they're still all in it together, Amanda's still with them. But I'm not confident of that reading. In any event, I liked the vid - interesting song, got me thinking.
- New Soul, by buffyann. Edward Scissorhands - another movie I've never seen, but I know the story roughly, and this vid was lovely - great song choice, nice pace, and really very heartbreaking.
- Unnatural Selection, by charmax. Neither of the fandoms for this one do I know firsthand - BSG and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. But I've seen so many vids from these sources, and heard about them so much - like in last year's in-depth vid review of a SCC vid - that I've picked up at least a little bit by osmosis. Certainly enough to get the main thrust of this vid - to quote the vidder, "As humanity teeters on the edge of extinction they slide down the evolutionary tree of life whilst the machines evolve into better beings" - if not to be able to appreciate it the way I could if I really knew the scenes and characters. That's because of the vidder's skill - it's accessible but also clearly has great depth, many layers.
This vid amazes me - the song choice, the technical mastery, the editing, the seamless merging of the sources, the sheer power of it, of the vid itself, its aesthetics, and of its themes, the questions it raises and the answers it seems to posit. I love watching it, listening to it.
- Everything's Not Lost, by greensilver. Doctor Who and Torchwood - I actually know a little of the source! But even if I didn't...the message is so clear. The world doesn't always suck - people don't always suck. When we have friends, connections, each other, there's hope. We're all in this mad race together. The vid was made specifically for one person - but its message is universal, and all of us can feel its impact; for me just one of the things it evokes is fandom itself, the fannish community. A gorgeous vid whose feel-good-ness has real depth, and even I can appreciate the structure and the framing.
Club Vivid- I didn't focus on the vids all that much during Club Vivid and haven't had a chance to watch the DVD. So only two to mention here, plus one that was the subject of the in-depth vid review, which I want to focus on because I think it's just fantastic, and because it was the ultimate embodiment of a concept I kept encountering, or at least being reminded of, this VVC, something with real resonance for me.
- Mothership, by laurashapiro. This is Dr. Who, which I know only insofar as it relates to Torchwood, so I can't comment much on content. But oh my god - the timing. Is that the right word? Does it encompass everything I mean? I'd almost say musicality - it's like the video is the music, though the music isn't very musical, though it's very rhythmic. Anyway - this just blows me away to watch, because the timing (I'll go with that) is so absolutely perfect.
- Seven Nation Army, by charmax - lots of robot sources, like Sarah Conor Chronicles and Matrix and BSG and Dr. Who. The vidder described it as "Rainbow Coalition vs. facist robots" - what struck me was the contrast between this and Unnatural Selection, from Nearly New, which I talked about up above. This one seemed almost to have the opposite message, the more traditional one - like here the robots are all...robotic, and the humans are the ones with humanity. The same power and amazing seamless blending of source and energy (though the energy is more upbeat and less apocalyptic-feeling) and amazing editing. Lots there I'm not getting, as usual, because of lack of source familiarity - but still plenty of layers that even I can see, and plenty of just plain cool action and aesthetics and brilliant vidding for me to appreciate.
- Give It Up, by jarrow. Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Footloose, Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller - OMG OMG! So, how old was I then?? Older than a lot of VVC attendees, that's for sure! *g* For me that was high school and early college - I was 16 for Fast Times, 20 when Ferris Bueller came out. So yeah, I was perhaps a few years past the true target age for Breakfast Club and Feris Bueller, but I was definitely of that era - and totally the Fast Times generation. So chalk one up just for nostalgia.
Beyond that, though, this vid...well, it's one I can appreciate on many levels. I feel this way about many of jarrow's vids (though I'm rarely familiar with his sources) - and as an aside, interestingly, I also found his commentary in the Premieres vids review (which he co-led this year) particularly helpful - insightful and yet simple, the kinds of insights I could get a hook into, immediately see and think oh yes, I get it, and now I understand that vid better, and shit, that seems so obvious, why can't I pick up that stuff myself - but I can't. I didn't. Stuff that doesn't require a degree in film history or color theory or music theory to tease out of the vids (not that he doesn't see those things too - I have no idea - but if so, he doesn't speak only that language. I know myself, very well, as someone who's very technical but has always had communication skills and so has worked with people on both sides of the "line," that that sort of communication: almost translation, making complex ideas and thoughts seem simple and understandable to those who don't know whatever language is at issue - language of vidding, language of international tax law, language of computers, whatever - is one of the most difficult and underrated abilities; I really respect and appreciate it). I'd love to have sat down with him and had him give me a two-minute commentary on every vid in the show.
But anyway - my point is, for whatever reason, I find his vids somewhat unique (for me) in that they're obviously layered, well thought out and structured, with plenty of depth, and yet I find them accessible. And technically - his particular skills, the way he uses the music and visuals and his timing; those are also things I'm able to appreciate. They're all highlighted in this deceptively straightforward vid, whose sheer energy and fun makes it look too easy - and makes it easy to overlook how great it is. The integration of sources, the timing, the musicality, the structure... I just love it.
Someone in the in-depth vid review pointed out another aspect of this vid that is a big part of its appeal for me but that I hadn't consciously grasped. It's the generational aspect. These have become iconic movies of their era - early to mid 80s - but for me they were originally simply movies of my late teens; they were, in their original incarnations - in the theaters, as new releases - an element, part and parcel, of the cultural background of the world in which I was growing to adulthood.
And here it is now, 25 years later, and I'm still here, and I'm seeing them in a different context entirely while still having personal knowledge of their origins; but also there's a new generation (of which the vidder is one!) that is experiencing them "originally" but entirely differently from the way I did: not in their "native" place - i.e., the mid-80s, where they were of their time - but as...well, maybe sort of as the way I experienced The Graduate: as history of a sort, as a representation of another time, a pre-"me" era that was real but whose reality is almost secondary; it holds a great fascination for me in the way a foreign fantasy land might, and while it's not "mine," still it resonates with me, speaks to me, because its messages transcend its generation-specific references and are real and legitimate and timeless, regardless of the validity of the movie as "history." Plus it's damn good!
And then, as the commenter in vid review pointed out, the brief clip in the vid of a stroller-dancing baby represents future generations... There's me, and there are the vidders seeing the movies now, and there's the baby, who will be at VVC or its equivalent in 25 years, maybe, having watched those movies and this vid - maybe there'll be some new vid, or vid equivalent, that incorporates both of them, because then this vid will be "history," too.
Ack. Anyway, I can see a lot of ways of looking at the "generational continuity" aspects of the vid - but what I'm getting at here is that it makes me think both about myself, the fact that here I am, decades later, and I'm still...me, and these movies connect the me of now to the me of then; and also about my part in the generational line-up, my relationships with others - that the movies connect me with my fellow fans who are more of the vidder's generation (and the connection will continue into the future). Sort of the same way I feel connected, for example, with the early Pros fans - we're separated by years, and yet we're all part of the same thing, something that's bigger than us, that joins us. I'm grasping at a way to articulate this, as I think perhaps the commenter in the vid review was as well, and I haven't quite solidified it in my head - but this vid evoked these things for me. There's an element of bittersweetness to it - though I'd never want to go back to that time in my life, I'm happy where I am in my journey, it's still a reminder of the relentless passage of time. But there's also joy.
Perhaps that's a lot for a Club Vivid vid to carry - and the neat thing about this vid is that you can if you want ignore all that and just revel in the music (though as a general rule Jimmy Eat World is not my favorite; I tend to immediately switch the station away from just about every JEW song - another case of a vid making me like music I otherwise wouldn't!) and the joy and the dance. But all that stuff is there if you want to see it. Which makes it, as absolutedestiny pointed out, a pretty ideal Club Vivid vid.
You Crack Me Up - So then it's morning and (if you're me) you've still got glitter in your eyelashes, scrubbing notwithstanding, and you've fought with the waffle machine and eventually conceded and slunk away to the oatmeal, and you're feeling kind of muddle-headed...what better way to start the day than with humor and crack vids? I think this panel should be a permanent fixture of the VVC line-up. Because it was just such a treat to laugh for an hour, to walk out of a vid show feeling so good. Laughing...god, it really does make you feel good, changes your whole view of the world. A few of these are vids I've known (and loved) for a long time; we've even shown some of them (Jolene, Whatever) at con.txt. One of my other favorites: White Rabbit, by starcrossedgirl. ST:TOS - so funny, and so true! Great use of small gestures (like Spock's creepy eyebrows!) with the music - the pacing is really stellar. I've watched this many times since Saturday and haven't tired of it. Loved almost all of these, though - I left this vid show so uplifted.
Envelope Pushers of the Past - Vids that astonished con-goers in the 80s and 90s...
Great show. I mean, what vidders can do now is amazing, but creativity isn't a modern invention, even if a lot of the technology is, and it's so cool to see that. There was a Pros vid here - Heartbreaker by deejay - and I can't remember ever watching this one through before, though I must have, so I never even realized it was a constructed reality vid, and a funny, if darkish, one.
I'd never seen the original version of Data's Dream, GF & Tashery's lovely multimedia vid. I saw the remaster when it premiered at Escapade in 2005, and I've always thought it one of the most lovely vids I've ever seen - in a way, for me, this vid is Fandom. Which is odd, because my primary fandoms aren't really the fandoms represented in that vid - the fantasy and sci-fi fandoms. But my first love was fantasy, and somehow, for me, that thing in me that drew me to fantasy from my earliest memories is my fannishness. So for me, that vid in some fundamental way captures what it means to be a fan, not in the sense of participating in the fannish community, but fundamentally and in your soul. It's about dreams and fantasy and obsession and passion; it's (and I think I may be paraphrasing someone else here; I can't remember) a love poem to...well, to our roots, the roots of fandom, SF and fantasy and flight and magic and love. When it ends, you - or at least I! - feel this amazing connection with everyone in the room. It's a beautiful, magical thing.
But again, I'd only ever seen the remaster (which is available here), which has some new source in it. I still prefer it, since it's the first version I knew, and of course the video quality is so high - but it was really wonderful to see the original.
Another fascinating early vid - Finland, Finland, by Leigh M., which is a vid of Tom of Finland's art (i.e., all stills) - he was a Finnish artist known for his stylized homoerotic drawings, among other things. Very exaggerated male attributes. *g* The art was fascinating - I'd never seen much of it - but also I thought the vid was actually quite well done; the really smart and witty matching of lyrics with illustrations ("Finland, Finland/The country where I want to be/Your mountains so lofty/Your treetops so tall..."), and the use of panning (or whatever the techniques are called). Very effective - I was entranced; I watched this one a few times as well (and not just for the pictures! *g* - though those are pretty amazing, actually).
Carol M.'s Blake's 7 vid I Would Do Anything for Love was particularly appropriate, I thought, this year, which was full of self-referential vids - vids that stepped out of the source and somehow referenced fandom or fans. In this case the additional source was fannish art - slashy art in particular; the vid struck me as hilarious ("I would do anything for love...but I won't do that"), but only if we're sort of laughing at ourselves. I suppose you could also interpret it as a criticism of slash; it would depend on who was sending the message. Interesting.
All in the Family
The standout vid for me in this show, and actually one of the standouts of the con, was Half Acre, a Six Feet Under vid by jarrow and laurashapiro. Now, I've never seen even a single episode of Six Feet Under, though I know the premise. But I knew immediately after seeing this vid that that was going to change. I badgered melina123 into letting me into the con suite after it closed just so I could check out the All in the Family DVD to watch it again; then I saw bits of it on the big screen during Premieres set-up (for which I was volunteering), and iuliamentis, who along with dsudis is a veritable font of knowledge about every fannish source I was able to throw at her, and who was also on set-up duty, gave me a precis of the show - and then after Premieres and Karaoke and the Star Trek party, at 1am, I went back to my room and went to ebay and ordered the entire 5-season series of Six Feet Under on DVD.
Which is how much this vid got to me. I think I said somewhere up above that I find jarrow's vids uniquely accessible - and Laura Shapiro is pretty brilliant, and together...the structure of this vid, the way it carried me along with it on its emotional journey and so clearly told me its story, even with my lack of familiarity with the source; the way it moved me, the timing and the rhythm and the music - just, wow. I was all weepy and uplifted and emotional even knowing almost nothing. I hope the show lives up to the vid's promise, is all I can say (though I can tell it's going to be the kind of show I'm not going to be able to mainline, or it'll bring me to my knees...)!
Premieres - So many fantastic premiering vids. After spending the hour before this show on my knees taping cable (iuliamentis and I made our line of taped cables a thing of beauty and symmetry, if I do say so myself), I sat through this show pretty much entranced; the time just flew - and that is so, so rare for me. I was just...in vid-space in my head. Vid-watching space. It was a good space to be in. I'm not going to mention all the vids, though, just those that stand out in my memory for one reason or another.
- Metaphor, by Speranza, Seah, and Margie. gwyn_r voiced in vid review precisely what was going through my head as I watched this: it's the Detachable Penis of the modern era, without (and this is my addition) trying to be Detachable Penis. (I guess sometimes I do get it, at least if it's obvious enough, and I suppose I could hardly know a vid better than I do Detachable Penis - now that I think about it, that was the first one I remastered!). Lots of sources I'm not familiar with, and I definitely need to re-watch to fully appreciate, but still - fabulous.
- Sea Fever, by heresluck. I've never seen Slings & Arrows and had no idea of the premise - stint in DS fandom notwithstanding - and apparently unlike many fans in the audience in that same position, I didn't fully get the metaphor when I saw it in the show. It nonethless stood out for me because the music is so incredibly lovely, as are the rhythm and pacing of the vid. After vid review I understand the vid a whole lot better - sometimes it only takes a few sentences for the mists to clear, and that's enough to make me really love a vid I previously just appreciated for inchoate and/or purely aesthetic reasons. Which is what happened here.
- Hard Sun, by bradcpu and laurashapiro. Firefly, but also another self-referential vid. The meta/self-referential aspects didn't flow seamlessly for me, and I'm not familiar enough with Firefly to completely get what the vidders were doing with the specific clips they chose, though I know it a little - but nonetheless, this vid spoke to me, possibly partly because I absolutely love this song. I kind of read it as...well, the lyrics: "When I walk beside her/I am the better man/When I look to leave her/I always stagger back again" - it's on the one hand our, fans', relationship with our source - maybe even with fandom? but definitely with our shows - it's always there for us, always offering us what we need, something we need; the parallel, in the vid, is it's the Firefly crew's relationship with...their ship, each other (here's where my ignorance of the details of source gets in the way). There's a big hard sun, a big hard world, but there's this "comfort by my side." Not an easy comfort, not one that offers answers or solves all problems, not one that gives us everything without cost or challenge; but always there.
But then - I didn't quite get the ending, with the rain coming down. Does that mean that in the end we lose this - as one commenter in vid review said, the "source" ends, the show ends, we have to move on, just as they couldn't save the ship? Hmm. I'm not sure. Though on second thought - maybe I've sort of got it there; it's the coming back into the real world, isn't it, coming out of that space...a feeling I know so well. The movie ends, you finish the last page of the book, and you think, oh, no, no, that can't be all, can it? I want to be back in there, in that world. Just stretching a bit - a different manifestation of the same feeling is the end-of-con feeling, isn't it. Those three days out of time are over; the real world calls us back inexorably. We can't live in that space, that fannish space, with our characters, with our fannish community, whatever... Even though at the same time, it's always there inside us. Unfortunately I can't quite relate those musings to the source in this vid, as I don't know Firefly/Serenity well enough - maybe, they lose the ship, but they, their team, lives on in some way?
Anyway, I was very engaged by this vid; it definitely moved me.
- Learn to Crawl, by jarrow. My familiarity with BSG is based mostly on vids and osmosis. But I often enjoy BSG vids - action and humanity and robots and everything - even though I'm not very tempted to watch the source; probably a bit too dark for me. This vid is, as I heard a number of people comment - probably sherrold first - in many ways a "classic" slash vid, building a relationship between two characters (Starbuck and Kat) with an incredibly effective mix of close-in "emotion" shots and more metaphorical "action" shots - and I love those; they still speak to me the most - at heart what I am is a fan, and a slash fan, and vids are best to me when they're an expression of that.
In my primary fandom I see a whole, whole lot of really badly done vids of this sort, just every clip of the two characters gazing at each other or touching each other, all thrown together into a kitchen sink (though of course there are brilliant ones too!). It's such a treat to see - and in VVC Premieres, no less! - such a beautifully edited and constructed one - great music, great timing, great story, which I totally got even without knowing. Such a quintessentially fannish feeling vid for me, even if not my fandom...one of my favorites.
- Sleeping With Ghosts, by butterfly. ST:TOS and STXI - the lyrics say it all: Soulmates Never Die. K/S forever. To me this felt like the Universal K/S vid...which so needed to be made, and this vidder made it so beautifully, with skill and talent and love. It's also, in a way, a bit of a meta vid, in the sense of conveying the...continuity, I suppose; it all started with K/S (well, slash started at least), and here we are now, back full circle, to K/S - but a different K/S, in a different world, but not entirely different - look at Spock, the link; and our world is a different world from what it was then, but it's also the same world - the generations of fans are the link... Obviously I have this sort of generational continuity thing on the brain. I wonder if it's something to do with me, where I am in my life now, or if it's something broader?
Anyway - I love this vid. In a very different way from the way I fangirl say, Circus - this one gets me deep in the gut, in the core, that deep, impossible-to-articulate, transcendent, obsessive, all-consuming love/passion/addiction/craving...love I feel for the pairings that touch me where it counts. And the music... Gah.
- Comfortably Numb, by sisabet. Sarah Connor Chronicles - I know who Cameron is and that's about it, so I know damn well that my ability to truly get and appreciate this vid is extremely limited. But I still managed to pick some stuff up, and I was so awed by it - I loved the use of grids and split screens, all the stuff going on, which to me gave a good sense of...well, computers. Machines, bits and bytes. Inside Cameron's head. For whatever reason, I didn't really worry about needing to know what was happening in each and every grid; a lot of it was repetition, it seemed to me - the same, or almost the same, clip, just slightly different timing. I'm sure it meant a lot more than I'm seeing; I'm sure I'm doing a gross injustice to all the thought and care that I know went into it. But from an ignorant viewer's perspective...it gave me a sense of...fragmentation yet unity, which makes no sense, but there it is. I was just awed by the creative vision and technical mastery, and the great song choice (which I expected to hate). I loved watching, and listening to, this vid.
- Bromance (Birdhouse in Your Soul), by the Clucking Belles. A sweet little homage to that classic slashy vidding I love, by some of the classic vidders who epitomize it. I loved it even more when someone summarized it in vid review: it's as if fanboy!Rodney sits John down to try to explain their relationship to him (a Data's Dream-esque framing device), and off he goes onto a journey into classic slashy pairings of yore. Yes! Exactly! Yay!
- The Long Spear (The Boxer), by jmtorres et al. This was...interesting. As a ST vid it worked for me in many ways - lots of things I liked about the middle part, which seemed a lot like a ship vid, or at least a fandom vid. As a meta and/or self-referential vid...well, it didn't work as well (though it didn't piss me off, as it seemed to do some in the audience). It was too much or not enough. sherreld noted in vid review that it occurred to her that it was attempting to be the 30-years-of-ST-fandom vid...and for me, though I'm certainly not a definitive voice about ST fandom, it failed at that. It wasn't "big" enough, yet it acted like it was - I'm not sure if pretentiousness is the right word...delusions of grandeur, perhaps? The tiny bits of fandom reference at the beginning were not enough to set up the vid, frame it, for what it was trying to be, not when a significant portion of the vid that followed could be read as a 30-years-of-ST, or 30-years-of-K/S (as opposed to 30-years-of-ST-fandom) vid.
And yet - it still, despite itself, made me feel something, with the images, all the STs over all the years; with its references to ST vids (though not enough of those, if that was going to be the point), and with its closing words: "After changes we are more or less the same." So very much in keeping with the continuity-of-fandom-generations theme that for me pervaded this con in many ways...and in some ways a really fitting ending to this vid show, one that left me contemplative and...uplifted while a bit wistful. So though the vid didn't completely work for me, or accomplish its goal, that's okay - not everything has to be perfect, and it made me feel something, and think, and admire its ambition; it made me...stretch a little. Again, a very good way, to my mind, to end the VVC Premieres show.
After that was Karaoke, which is always very entertaining, and also amazing to me - I'm amazed by anyone who can create actual tunefulness with their vocal chords! *g* I dropped by the ST room party for long enough to watch a few vids and the 40-minute abridged version of STXI (the movie). Sunday was vid review - always helpful for me, though also frustrating, because I'd like to have so much more of it (I need the help, I mean!).
I had to get ready to go and so didn't see Challenge or Auction vids. Myflight was supposed to leave Sunday at 5pm, and when I left the hotel at 3:45 - and it was really hard to leave this year; I felt it in my gut - it was still showing as "on time," despite monsoon thunderstorms, so I had to go. But of course when I got there it was delayed - and delayed, and delayed, and delayed, like every other flight at the airport. What pissed me off more than anything was that if I'd known, I could have stayed for the Auction vids, and Calls from the Public. Ah well. At least we did end up taking off at 9pm - not as bad as it could have been; I was home by midnight.
And the thing that made it almost bearable was my Kindle (thank you, melina123)!! I am addicted to my Kindle. A complete and total addict. They tried to make me turn it off during take-off...but as soon as the flight attendant sits down, back on it goes. (I was assured by the wife of a pilot, who sat next to me on a recent flight, that it will not interfere with anything.) Usually no one bothers me - this was the first time. Having so many books at hand makes the waiting far more endurable than it otherwise would be.
Oh wow, so that was a lot longer than I'd intended. What else? Well, I came home with a whole list of source (in addition to Six Feet Under!) that I want to seek out and watch - or, in the case of ongoing series, start watching, which would be a change for me; I watch almost no current shows. A bunch of people recommended Leverage, so I think I'm going to try that. I don't want to load up too much or I'll end up watching nothing - maybe just one or two shows. And a few movies. *g*
So...overall it was a great, great con for me. A memorable one. It's not like I've been around forever - but still, I've been around long enough that it's no longer for me the way it was at the beginning, when every single con was a perfect and magical experience. They're all fun, sure - but still it's nice to realize that even after many years of con-going, particular cons can still be special and magical and almost perfect. Thanks to everyone who made this one that way.
And then - VIVIDCON! I don't know what it was about this particular con. I hadn't even been feeling much like I wanted to go. But I just had the greatest time, pretty much from start to finish. I had one of those so-hard-to-leave feelings on Sunday, which I imagine all con-going fans recognize, which I used to get a lot but haven't had in a while - I was just so low at the thought that it was over. (I'm thinking maybe some of that is attributable to lingering sadness about minotaurs' death, and a consequent particularly acute awareness of the fact that even though time flies, and fannish time moves in its own way, still, it'll be a year before I'll see many of these people again, and all sorts of things can happen in a year...)
Some of it was rooming with cmshaw - which yeah, I've done every year for a while, but this year it was especially fun; we spent a lot of time actually...well, spending time together. And talking about some interesting stuff. And I had slashgirl on the brain, with a hysterical desire to put every two guys we saw (like in restaurants, or the hotel lobby), in bed together (well, a bit more graphically than that!) - and I seldom indulge that side of myself, but her good-natured, amused tolerance of it freed me to give it free(ish) reign, which was just...so cool.
Plus, I'm just totally fangirling Star Trek Reboot, and most specifically Kirk - as in Chris Pine Kirk - and happily, there were enough like-minded fans there that I never had to go it alone. Oddly, considering that I've been in fandom for quite a while now, I don't think I've ever felt (or, at times, acted) so unrestrainedly, unapologetically...well, fanigirly. Or at least it's been rare. It was fun.
And then there were...the vids!
For all that this was my sixth VVC, and I am probably a reasonably knowledgable watcher of vids by this point, I'm still not a very good one. My ability to "read" visually isn't great - I don't have great visual memory in any setting, not just vidding. Visually is just not how my brain processes things. And trying to process vids the way my brain does process things doesn't always work well. Add to that my fairly pathetic lack of familiarity with much fannish source material, stuff that most fans know, and sometimes I find myself frustrated at VVC, feeling like I'm not "getting" so much of what others can parse with more ease.
And that's still true. Yet - this year I enjoyed watching vids at VVC more than any other year I can remember. I went to more vid shows and watched them with more engagement than I ever have before - even sat once through three hours in a row, which I've never done. Part of that was due to the fact that this year I actually do know a few the sources for new vids - Merlin, Torchwood, STXI. Part of it was because there seemed to be more humorous or crack vids, which I can enjoy without needing to get every layer, and certainly more "self-referential" vids - vids referencing us as fans - and I have less trouble getting at least some aspects of those. But it went beyond that. I just...enjoyed the vid watching. Lots of really well put together shows, and maybe I was just in a receptive mood.
I'm just going to touch on some highlights rather than giving systematic reports on each show I attended, or each vid.
Nearly New - Enjoyed the entire show. Standouts for me personally:
- Circus, a STXI vid by butterfly (I feel like this is a dumb question, but is there a way to indicate a dreamwidth user from within LJ?). I had seen this vid before and loved it - loved it even more on the big screen. Fangirling Kirk, remember? And this vid is all about Kirk. Who knew a Britney Spears song could work so well, but it does - it's perfect. I've watched this many times, so I've actually managed to begin to appreciate the guts and the details of it a bit more - the technique, the editing, the clip choice, etc. Things like - oh wow, isn't it cool that she put that clip there; it's like - a metaphor! Again, I'm just so impaired at visual reading - I seldom get many of these things in one watching, and I'm sure I don't get many of them even after multiple watchings. But at least I improve. (I think I managed to get the overarching message fairly quickly. *g*)
Anyway, this vid makes me so damn happy.
- Blackbirds, by killabeez. There were a surprising number of new Highlander vids this year (including another cute cracky one in Nearly New called Threesome, by Valoise). I found this one very interesting. To me it seemed to say...the immortals are a small and kind of incestuous community, and Duncan and Amanda can be in love and together for a while, and then it can be Duncan and Methos, and that's okay; they're still all in it together, Amanda's still with them. But I'm not confident of that reading. In any event, I liked the vid - interesting song, got me thinking.
- New Soul, by buffyann. Edward Scissorhands - another movie I've never seen, but I know the story roughly, and this vid was lovely - great song choice, nice pace, and really very heartbreaking.
- Unnatural Selection, by charmax. Neither of the fandoms for this one do I know firsthand - BSG and Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. But I've seen so many vids from these sources, and heard about them so much - like in last year's in-depth vid review of a SCC vid - that I've picked up at least a little bit by osmosis. Certainly enough to get the main thrust of this vid - to quote the vidder, "As humanity teeters on the edge of extinction they slide down the evolutionary tree of life whilst the machines evolve into better beings" - if not to be able to appreciate it the way I could if I really knew the scenes and characters. That's because of the vidder's skill - it's accessible but also clearly has great depth, many layers.
This vid amazes me - the song choice, the technical mastery, the editing, the seamless merging of the sources, the sheer power of it, of the vid itself, its aesthetics, and of its themes, the questions it raises and the answers it seems to posit. I love watching it, listening to it.
- Everything's Not Lost, by greensilver. Doctor Who and Torchwood - I actually know a little of the source! But even if I didn't...the message is so clear. The world doesn't always suck - people don't always suck. When we have friends, connections, each other, there's hope. We're all in this mad race together. The vid was made specifically for one person - but its message is universal, and all of us can feel its impact; for me just one of the things it evokes is fandom itself, the fannish community. A gorgeous vid whose feel-good-ness has real depth, and even I can appreciate the structure and the framing.
Club Vivid- I didn't focus on the vids all that much during Club Vivid and haven't had a chance to watch the DVD. So only two to mention here, plus one that was the subject of the in-depth vid review, which I want to focus on because I think it's just fantastic, and because it was the ultimate embodiment of a concept I kept encountering, or at least being reminded of, this VVC, something with real resonance for me.
- Mothership, by laurashapiro. This is Dr. Who, which I know only insofar as it relates to Torchwood, so I can't comment much on content. But oh my god - the timing. Is that the right word? Does it encompass everything I mean? I'd almost say musicality - it's like the video is the music, though the music isn't very musical, though it's very rhythmic. Anyway - this just blows me away to watch, because the timing (I'll go with that) is so absolutely perfect.
- Seven Nation Army, by charmax - lots of robot sources, like Sarah Conor Chronicles and Matrix and BSG and Dr. Who. The vidder described it as "Rainbow Coalition vs. facist robots" - what struck me was the contrast between this and Unnatural Selection, from Nearly New, which I talked about up above. This one seemed almost to have the opposite message, the more traditional one - like here the robots are all...robotic, and the humans are the ones with humanity. The same power and amazing seamless blending of source and energy (though the energy is more upbeat and less apocalyptic-feeling) and amazing editing. Lots there I'm not getting, as usual, because of lack of source familiarity - but still plenty of layers that even I can see, and plenty of just plain cool action and aesthetics and brilliant vidding for me to appreciate.
- Give It Up, by jarrow. Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Footloose, Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller - OMG OMG! So, how old was I then?? Older than a lot of VVC attendees, that's for sure! *g* For me that was high school and early college - I was 16 for Fast Times, 20 when Ferris Bueller came out. So yeah, I was perhaps a few years past the true target age for Breakfast Club and Feris Bueller, but I was definitely of that era - and totally the Fast Times generation. So chalk one up just for nostalgia.
Beyond that, though, this vid...well, it's one I can appreciate on many levels. I feel this way about many of jarrow's vids (though I'm rarely familiar with his sources) - and as an aside, interestingly, I also found his commentary in the Premieres vids review (which he co-led this year) particularly helpful - insightful and yet simple, the kinds of insights I could get a hook into, immediately see and think oh yes, I get it, and now I understand that vid better, and shit, that seems so obvious, why can't I pick up that stuff myself - but I can't. I didn't. Stuff that doesn't require a degree in film history or color theory or music theory to tease out of the vids (not that he doesn't see those things too - I have no idea - but if so, he doesn't speak only that language. I know myself, very well, as someone who's very technical but has always had communication skills and so has worked with people on both sides of the "line," that that sort of communication: almost translation, making complex ideas and thoughts seem simple and understandable to those who don't know whatever language is at issue - language of vidding, language of international tax law, language of computers, whatever - is one of the most difficult and underrated abilities; I really respect and appreciate it). I'd love to have sat down with him and had him give me a two-minute commentary on every vid in the show.
But anyway - my point is, for whatever reason, I find his vids somewhat unique (for me) in that they're obviously layered, well thought out and structured, with plenty of depth, and yet I find them accessible. And technically - his particular skills, the way he uses the music and visuals and his timing; those are also things I'm able to appreciate. They're all highlighted in this deceptively straightforward vid, whose sheer energy and fun makes it look too easy - and makes it easy to overlook how great it is. The integration of sources, the timing, the musicality, the structure... I just love it.
Someone in the in-depth vid review pointed out another aspect of this vid that is a big part of its appeal for me but that I hadn't consciously grasped. It's the generational aspect. These have become iconic movies of their era - early to mid 80s - but for me they were originally simply movies of my late teens; they were, in their original incarnations - in the theaters, as new releases - an element, part and parcel, of the cultural background of the world in which I was growing to adulthood.
And here it is now, 25 years later, and I'm still here, and I'm seeing them in a different context entirely while still having personal knowledge of their origins; but also there's a new generation (of which the vidder is one!) that is experiencing them "originally" but entirely differently from the way I did: not in their "native" place - i.e., the mid-80s, where they were of their time - but as...well, maybe sort of as the way I experienced The Graduate: as history of a sort, as a representation of another time, a pre-"me" era that was real but whose reality is almost secondary; it holds a great fascination for me in the way a foreign fantasy land might, and while it's not "mine," still it resonates with me, speaks to me, because its messages transcend its generation-specific references and are real and legitimate and timeless, regardless of the validity of the movie as "history." Plus it's damn good!
And then, as the commenter in vid review pointed out, the brief clip in the vid of a stroller-dancing baby represents future generations... There's me, and there are the vidders seeing the movies now, and there's the baby, who will be at VVC or its equivalent in 25 years, maybe, having watched those movies and this vid - maybe there'll be some new vid, or vid equivalent, that incorporates both of them, because then this vid will be "history," too.
Ack. Anyway, I can see a lot of ways of looking at the "generational continuity" aspects of the vid - but what I'm getting at here is that it makes me think both about myself, the fact that here I am, decades later, and I'm still...me, and these movies connect the me of now to the me of then; and also about my part in the generational line-up, my relationships with others - that the movies connect me with my fellow fans who are more of the vidder's generation (and the connection will continue into the future). Sort of the same way I feel connected, for example, with the early Pros fans - we're separated by years, and yet we're all part of the same thing, something that's bigger than us, that joins us. I'm grasping at a way to articulate this, as I think perhaps the commenter in the vid review was as well, and I haven't quite solidified it in my head - but this vid evoked these things for me. There's an element of bittersweetness to it - though I'd never want to go back to that time in my life, I'm happy where I am in my journey, it's still a reminder of the relentless passage of time. But there's also joy.
Perhaps that's a lot for a Club Vivid vid to carry - and the neat thing about this vid is that you can if you want ignore all that and just revel in the music (though as a general rule Jimmy Eat World is not my favorite; I tend to immediately switch the station away from just about every JEW song - another case of a vid making me like music I otherwise wouldn't!) and the joy and the dance. But all that stuff is there if you want to see it. Which makes it, as absolutedestiny pointed out, a pretty ideal Club Vivid vid.
You Crack Me Up - So then it's morning and (if you're me) you've still got glitter in your eyelashes, scrubbing notwithstanding, and you've fought with the waffle machine and eventually conceded and slunk away to the oatmeal, and you're feeling kind of muddle-headed...what better way to start the day than with humor and crack vids? I think this panel should be a permanent fixture of the VVC line-up. Because it was just such a treat to laugh for an hour, to walk out of a vid show feeling so good. Laughing...god, it really does make you feel good, changes your whole view of the world. A few of these are vids I've known (and loved) for a long time; we've even shown some of them (Jolene, Whatever) at con.txt. One of my other favorites: White Rabbit, by starcrossedgirl. ST:TOS - so funny, and so true! Great use of small gestures (like Spock's creepy eyebrows!) with the music - the pacing is really stellar. I've watched this many times since Saturday and haven't tired of it. Loved almost all of these, though - I left this vid show so uplifted.
Envelope Pushers of the Past - Vids that astonished con-goers in the 80s and 90s...
Great show. I mean, what vidders can do now is amazing, but creativity isn't a modern invention, even if a lot of the technology is, and it's so cool to see that. There was a Pros vid here - Heartbreaker by deejay - and I can't remember ever watching this one through before, though I must have, so I never even realized it was a constructed reality vid, and a funny, if darkish, one.
I'd never seen the original version of Data's Dream, GF & Tashery's lovely multimedia vid. I saw the remaster when it premiered at Escapade in 2005, and I've always thought it one of the most lovely vids I've ever seen - in a way, for me, this vid is Fandom. Which is odd, because my primary fandoms aren't really the fandoms represented in that vid - the fantasy and sci-fi fandoms. But my first love was fantasy, and somehow, for me, that thing in me that drew me to fantasy from my earliest memories is my fannishness. So for me, that vid in some fundamental way captures what it means to be a fan, not in the sense of participating in the fannish community, but fundamentally and in your soul. It's about dreams and fantasy and obsession and passion; it's (and I think I may be paraphrasing someone else here; I can't remember) a love poem to...well, to our roots, the roots of fandom, SF and fantasy and flight and magic and love. When it ends, you - or at least I! - feel this amazing connection with everyone in the room. It's a beautiful, magical thing.
But again, I'd only ever seen the remaster (which is available here), which has some new source in it. I still prefer it, since it's the first version I knew, and of course the video quality is so high - but it was really wonderful to see the original.
Another fascinating early vid - Finland, Finland, by Leigh M., which is a vid of Tom of Finland's art (i.e., all stills) - he was a Finnish artist known for his stylized homoerotic drawings, among other things. Very exaggerated male attributes. *g* The art was fascinating - I'd never seen much of it - but also I thought the vid was actually quite well done; the really smart and witty matching of lyrics with illustrations ("Finland, Finland/The country where I want to be/Your mountains so lofty/Your treetops so tall..."), and the use of panning (or whatever the techniques are called). Very effective - I was entranced; I watched this one a few times as well (and not just for the pictures! *g* - though those are pretty amazing, actually).
Carol M.'s Blake's 7 vid I Would Do Anything for Love was particularly appropriate, I thought, this year, which was full of self-referential vids - vids that stepped out of the source and somehow referenced fandom or fans. In this case the additional source was fannish art - slashy art in particular; the vid struck me as hilarious ("I would do anything for love...but I won't do that"), but only if we're sort of laughing at ourselves. I suppose you could also interpret it as a criticism of slash; it would depend on who was sending the message. Interesting.
All in the Family
The standout vid for me in this show, and actually one of the standouts of the con, was Half Acre, a Six Feet Under vid by jarrow and laurashapiro. Now, I've never seen even a single episode of Six Feet Under, though I know the premise. But I knew immediately after seeing this vid that that was going to change. I badgered melina123 into letting me into the con suite after it closed just so I could check out the All in the Family DVD to watch it again; then I saw bits of it on the big screen during Premieres set-up (for which I was volunteering), and iuliamentis, who along with dsudis is a veritable font of knowledge about every fannish source I was able to throw at her, and who was also on set-up duty, gave me a precis of the show - and then after Premieres and Karaoke and the Star Trek party, at 1am, I went back to my room and went to ebay and ordered the entire 5-season series of Six Feet Under on DVD.
Which is how much this vid got to me. I think I said somewhere up above that I find jarrow's vids uniquely accessible - and Laura Shapiro is pretty brilliant, and together...the structure of this vid, the way it carried me along with it on its emotional journey and so clearly told me its story, even with my lack of familiarity with the source; the way it moved me, the timing and the rhythm and the music - just, wow. I was all weepy and uplifted and emotional even knowing almost nothing. I hope the show lives up to the vid's promise, is all I can say (though I can tell it's going to be the kind of show I'm not going to be able to mainline, or it'll bring me to my knees...)!
Premieres - So many fantastic premiering vids. After spending the hour before this show on my knees taping cable (iuliamentis and I made our line of taped cables a thing of beauty and symmetry, if I do say so myself), I sat through this show pretty much entranced; the time just flew - and that is so, so rare for me. I was just...in vid-space in my head. Vid-watching space. It was a good space to be in. I'm not going to mention all the vids, though, just those that stand out in my memory for one reason or another.
- Metaphor, by Speranza, Seah, and Margie. gwyn_r voiced in vid review precisely what was going through my head as I watched this: it's the Detachable Penis of the modern era, without (and this is my addition) trying to be Detachable Penis. (I guess sometimes I do get it, at least if it's obvious enough, and I suppose I could hardly know a vid better than I do Detachable Penis - now that I think about it, that was the first one I remastered!). Lots of sources I'm not familiar with, and I definitely need to re-watch to fully appreciate, but still - fabulous.
- Sea Fever, by heresluck. I've never seen Slings & Arrows and had no idea of the premise - stint in DS fandom notwithstanding - and apparently unlike many fans in the audience in that same position, I didn't fully get the metaphor when I saw it in the show. It nonethless stood out for me because the music is so incredibly lovely, as are the rhythm and pacing of the vid. After vid review I understand the vid a whole lot better - sometimes it only takes a few sentences for the mists to clear, and that's enough to make me really love a vid I previously just appreciated for inchoate and/or purely aesthetic reasons. Which is what happened here.
- Hard Sun, by bradcpu and laurashapiro. Firefly, but also another self-referential vid. The meta/self-referential aspects didn't flow seamlessly for me, and I'm not familiar enough with Firefly to completely get what the vidders were doing with the specific clips they chose, though I know it a little - but nonetheless, this vid spoke to me, possibly partly because I absolutely love this song. I kind of read it as...well, the lyrics: "When I walk beside her/I am the better man/When I look to leave her/I always stagger back again" - it's on the one hand our, fans', relationship with our source - maybe even with fandom? but definitely with our shows - it's always there for us, always offering us what we need, something we need; the parallel, in the vid, is it's the Firefly crew's relationship with...their ship, each other (here's where my ignorance of the details of source gets in the way). There's a big hard sun, a big hard world, but there's this "comfort by my side." Not an easy comfort, not one that offers answers or solves all problems, not one that gives us everything without cost or challenge; but always there.
But then - I didn't quite get the ending, with the rain coming down. Does that mean that in the end we lose this - as one commenter in vid review said, the "source" ends, the show ends, we have to move on, just as they couldn't save the ship? Hmm. I'm not sure. Though on second thought - maybe I've sort of got it there; it's the coming back into the real world, isn't it, coming out of that space...a feeling I know so well. The movie ends, you finish the last page of the book, and you think, oh, no, no, that can't be all, can it? I want to be back in there, in that world. Just stretching a bit - a different manifestation of the same feeling is the end-of-con feeling, isn't it. Those three days out of time are over; the real world calls us back inexorably. We can't live in that space, that fannish space, with our characters, with our fannish community, whatever... Even though at the same time, it's always there inside us. Unfortunately I can't quite relate those musings to the source in this vid, as I don't know Firefly/Serenity well enough - maybe, they lose the ship, but they, their team, lives on in some way?
Anyway, I was very engaged by this vid; it definitely moved me.
- Learn to Crawl, by jarrow. My familiarity with BSG is based mostly on vids and osmosis. But I often enjoy BSG vids - action and humanity and robots and everything - even though I'm not very tempted to watch the source; probably a bit too dark for me. This vid is, as I heard a number of people comment - probably sherrold first - in many ways a "classic" slash vid, building a relationship between two characters (Starbuck and Kat) with an incredibly effective mix of close-in "emotion" shots and more metaphorical "action" shots - and I love those; they still speak to me the most - at heart what I am is a fan, and a slash fan, and vids are best to me when they're an expression of that.
In my primary fandom I see a whole, whole lot of really badly done vids of this sort, just every clip of the two characters gazing at each other or touching each other, all thrown together into a kitchen sink (though of course there are brilliant ones too!). It's such a treat to see - and in VVC Premieres, no less! - such a beautifully edited and constructed one - great music, great timing, great story, which I totally got even without knowing. Such a quintessentially fannish feeling vid for me, even if not my fandom...one of my favorites.
- Sleeping With Ghosts, by butterfly. ST:TOS and STXI - the lyrics say it all: Soulmates Never Die. K/S forever. To me this felt like the Universal K/S vid...which so needed to be made, and this vidder made it so beautifully, with skill and talent and love. It's also, in a way, a bit of a meta vid, in the sense of conveying the...continuity, I suppose; it all started with K/S (well, slash started at least), and here we are now, back full circle, to K/S - but a different K/S, in a different world, but not entirely different - look at Spock, the link; and our world is a different world from what it was then, but it's also the same world - the generations of fans are the link... Obviously I have this sort of generational continuity thing on the brain. I wonder if it's something to do with me, where I am in my life now, or if it's something broader?
Anyway - I love this vid. In a very different way from the way I fangirl say, Circus - this one gets me deep in the gut, in the core, that deep, impossible-to-articulate, transcendent, obsessive, all-consuming love/passion/addiction/craving...love I feel for the pairings that touch me where it counts. And the music... Gah.
- Comfortably Numb, by sisabet. Sarah Connor Chronicles - I know who Cameron is and that's about it, so I know damn well that my ability to truly get and appreciate this vid is extremely limited. But I still managed to pick some stuff up, and I was so awed by it - I loved the use of grids and split screens, all the stuff going on, which to me gave a good sense of...well, computers. Machines, bits and bytes. Inside Cameron's head. For whatever reason, I didn't really worry about needing to know what was happening in each and every grid; a lot of it was repetition, it seemed to me - the same, or almost the same, clip, just slightly different timing. I'm sure it meant a lot more than I'm seeing; I'm sure I'm doing a gross injustice to all the thought and care that I know went into it. But from an ignorant viewer's perspective...it gave me a sense of...fragmentation yet unity, which makes no sense, but there it is. I was just awed by the creative vision and technical mastery, and the great song choice (which I expected to hate). I loved watching, and listening to, this vid.
- Bromance (Birdhouse in Your Soul), by the Clucking Belles. A sweet little homage to that classic slashy vidding I love, by some of the classic vidders who epitomize it. I loved it even more when someone summarized it in vid review: it's as if fanboy!Rodney sits John down to try to explain their relationship to him (a Data's Dream-esque framing device), and off he goes onto a journey into classic slashy pairings of yore. Yes! Exactly! Yay!
- The Long Spear (The Boxer), by jmtorres et al. This was...interesting. As a ST vid it worked for me in many ways - lots of things I liked about the middle part, which seemed a lot like a ship vid, or at least a fandom vid. As a meta and/or self-referential vid...well, it didn't work as well (though it didn't piss me off, as it seemed to do some in the audience). It was too much or not enough. sherreld noted in vid review that it occurred to her that it was attempting to be the 30-years-of-ST-fandom vid...and for me, though I'm certainly not a definitive voice about ST fandom, it failed at that. It wasn't "big" enough, yet it acted like it was - I'm not sure if pretentiousness is the right word...delusions of grandeur, perhaps? The tiny bits of fandom reference at the beginning were not enough to set up the vid, frame it, for what it was trying to be, not when a significant portion of the vid that followed could be read as a 30-years-of-ST, or 30-years-of-K/S (as opposed to 30-years-of-ST-fandom) vid.
And yet - it still, despite itself, made me feel something, with the images, all the STs over all the years; with its references to ST vids (though not enough of those, if that was going to be the point), and with its closing words: "After changes we are more or less the same." So very much in keeping with the continuity-of-fandom-generations theme that for me pervaded this con in many ways...and in some ways a really fitting ending to this vid show, one that left me contemplative and...uplifted while a bit wistful. So though the vid didn't completely work for me, or accomplish its goal, that's okay - not everything has to be perfect, and it made me feel something, and think, and admire its ambition; it made me...stretch a little. Again, a very good way, to my mind, to end the VVC Premieres show.
After that was Karaoke, which is always very entertaining, and also amazing to me - I'm amazed by anyone who can create actual tunefulness with their vocal chords! *g* I dropped by the ST room party for long enough to watch a few vids and the 40-minute abridged version of STXI (the movie). Sunday was vid review - always helpful for me, though also frustrating, because I'd like to have so much more of it (I need the help, I mean!).
I had to get ready to go and so didn't see Challenge or Auction vids. Myflight was supposed to leave Sunday at 5pm, and when I left the hotel at 3:45 - and it was really hard to leave this year; I felt it in my gut - it was still showing as "on time," despite monsoon thunderstorms, so I had to go. But of course when I got there it was delayed - and delayed, and delayed, and delayed, like every other flight at the airport. What pissed me off more than anything was that if I'd known, I could have stayed for the Auction vids, and Calls from the Public. Ah well. At least we did end up taking off at 9pm - not as bad as it could have been; I was home by midnight.
And the thing that made it almost bearable was my Kindle (thank you, melina123)!! I am addicted to my Kindle. A complete and total addict. They tried to make me turn it off during take-off...but as soon as the flight attendant sits down, back on it goes. (I was assured by the wife of a pilot, who sat next to me on a recent flight, that it will not interfere with anything.) Usually no one bothers me - this was the first time. Having so many books at hand makes the waiting far more endurable than it otherwise would be.
Oh wow, so that was a lot longer than I'd intended. What else? Well, I came home with a whole list of source (in addition to Six Feet Under!) that I want to seek out and watch - or, in the case of ongoing series, start watching, which would be a change for me; I watch almost no current shows. A bunch of people recommended Leverage, so I think I'm going to try that. I don't want to load up too much or I'll end up watching nothing - maybe just one or two shows. And a few movies. *g*
So...overall it was a great, great con for me. A memorable one. It's not like I've been around forever - but still, I've been around long enough that it's no longer for me the way it was at the beginning, when every single con was a perfect and magical experience. They're all fun, sure - but still it's nice to realize that even after many years of con-going, particular cons can still be special and magical and almost perfect. Thanks to everyone who made this one that way.