ramble on vids, fics, and bad taste

[kattahj]

ficbyzee's post on literal clip coices in vids got me thinking about vids, and why so often the most lauded ones leave me cold when someone's very first vid with audio left in and aspect ratio changes can make me squee.

For me, over-literalness is so far down the list of annoying vid things. I like vids that make narrative sense, and lyrics are part of

Comments

[kattahj]

Vidders can get kind of pretentious, and there gets to the point where everything has to be about some great meaning, and sometimes they lose sight of something else because of it.

I think sometimes, it's not so much pretentious as it is the fact that they watch the clips 100 times while making the vid, and listen to the song even more times, and they forget that the viewer won't do that - so it doesn't really matter if it's incredibly clever on the fifth viewing if it's not clever on the first.

But on original characters, I think rather than quality, a lot of the time, I just really don't care. I am invested in the canon characters, the canon characters are the ones I love, and while I'm fine with you writing it, I'd rather not read it (that being said, I'm not that huge of a fic reader anyhow).

I think that's a perfectly viable point of view - though obviously not one I share. *g* What gets to me is the idea that it's somehow suspicious to be interested in OCs. To me, I think it's an issue of wanting the story to tell me something I haven't heard before, and bringing new people in can be one way of doing that. (And one I much prefer to changing existing people to fit the plot, which is another option.)

[sakuracorr]

But I've heard vidders speak about vidding, and sometimes it is pretentiousness. Not always. But sometimes.

"And one I much prefer to changing existing people to fit the plot, which is another option."

That's why I start with character and fit the plot to them, imo. If it doesn't work, the plot needs to change, not the character. Not to say there aren't AU ideas that appeal because yay for seeing a character if X hadn't happened or if Y were different (or just for fun on occasion, but you shouldn't take those AUs seriously, ever).

[kattahj]

That's why I start with character and fit the plot to them, imo. If it doesn't work, the plot needs to change, not the character.

Ah, but to me that depends on why the plot is told in the first place. For me, a story is often a way to expand on things that aren't visible in canon, or that could be illuminated in a new way. Maybe plot is the wrong word for it - theme, maybe? The most extreme example in my own writing would be "The Tale of Myra and Merrilil", which has almost only OCs, and uses them to (among other things) put different perspectives on race and gender in Lord of the Rings. No doubt it's possible to do the same thing with canon characters - even in-character canon characters - but it's easier with a clean slate, so to speak.

Not that those themes were the reason I wrote the story in the first place - that was because someone had asked why there were no hook-nosed Mary Sues who turned out to be orcs...