(I ended up not going on the computer at all yesterday; I'll make up the missed day on one of my free days.)

The first fanvids I ever watched were on a VHS tape that a friend of my sister's brought over to our house in the summer (or maybe early autumn) of my freshman year of high school. I'm fairly sure it was a vid show from Otakon 1997, or maybe a premiers vid from the previous Katsucon, because the only vids I remember (probably because they were the only ones I recognized both the canon and the song) were this Ranma 1/2 vid to the Proclaimers' "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" and this Dragonball vid to TMBG's "Particle Man". We watched them on the VCR in the downstairs sitting room, the one where the remote control wasn't wireless.

In a way that was also my intro to real life organized fandom - I wouldn't have enough internet access to be involved in online fandom for several more years, and before that I'd been limited to things like pro-published accounts of the history of Star Trek fandom. But now I had met someone who had been to actual cons! Watched actual fanvids! (He still has all his old tapes, we re-watched them a few years back, I could probably track down the exact one if I needed to.)

My taste in fanvids has not noticeably improved since then. (My current strong desire is for someone to vid the Venom movie to "I came in like a wrecking ball")

On that note, all the people wanting a home for vidders: AMV.org (ETA: actually http://www.animemusicvideos.org )has been going for nearly 20 years, has been the undisputed hub of AMV fandom nearly that whole time, and it took me literally five minutes to track down copies of vids I hadn't seen in 20 years. Why aren't more people talking about AMV.org? (...probably because it doesn't stream, embed, or allow comments. It does a very good job of making vids findable, though!)

I will do my last two December meme posts... soon. Right now I am just trying to catch up on comments on the old ones. Meanwhile, I have barely dipped into the Yuletide archive (and probably won't before reveals), but I have read all of the Madness works that are over 100 words and up to 1000 words in fandoms I care about, so here are 20 recs for short Madness stories (and two sonnets, a sestina and a vid.)

( In more-or-less reverse wordcount order )

Also, my Madness gift has got me thinking about vids again. And when I was clearing stuff out, I found an old mix CD from c. 2008 that was labelled "to vid". So let's play a fun game! Can you match the song to the fandom/pairing I wanted to vid it to in 2008?

1. A Weekend In the Country from A Little Night Music 2. All This Useless Beauty - June Tabor 3. Black Velvet - Alannah Myles 4. Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen 5. Cabaret from Cabaret 6. Don't Need the Sunshine - Catatonia 7. Finale from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat 8. Hotel California - The Eagles 9. Is That All There Is? - Peggy Lee 10. It's A Small World After All - The Sherman Brothers 11. Light Up My Room - Barenaked Ladies 12. Little Miss Can't Be Wrong - Spin Doctors 13. My Heart Will Go On from Titanic 14. Nine Inch Will Please A Lady - Robert Burns/Traditional 15 Paradise by the Dashboard Light - Meatloaf 16. Postcards from Mexico - Girlyman 17. Que Sera Sera - Doris Day 18. Sixteen Tons - Merle Travis/Traditional 19. Son of a Preacher Man - Pansy Division 20. The Band Played On - Guy Lombardo 21. The Way - Fastball

A. Doctor Who, All the Masters B. Doctor Who, Doctor/Master C. Doctor Who, Jack/Rose D. Doctor Who, Peri and Five's regeneration E. Doctor Who, Shalka!Doctor F. Doctor Who, the DoctorDonna G. Free Space (I don't remember) H. Harry Potter, McGonagall the ladies of Hogwarts I. Highlander, Joe/Methos J. Pirates of the Caribbean:At World's End, Ensemble K. Sherlock Holmes (RDJ version, but BBC would work), Everybody/Everybody L. Superman Returns, Lois Lane M. Supernatural, Dean N. Supernatural/Bones, Dean/Temperance O. The X-Files, Alex Krycek P. The X-Files, Byers/Suzanne Q. The X-Files, Mulder/Krycek R. The X-Files, Mulder/Scully S9 S. The X-Files, Teena Mulder T. Torchwood, Jack Harkness U. Stargate : Atlantis, Ensemble

...We're not even going to talk about the other old CD I found, which is labeled just "TARDIS: The Musical". It starts with House Prydon singing "All That's Known" and features such gems as Delgado Master singing "If I Loved You" from Carousel and Nine singing "Everything's Comin' Up Roses." The real mystery, though, is: I made this mix CD no later than 2009, so WHY, after the big LotTL climax, did I decide to end it with the Master singing "Now that I'm A Woman, Everything Has Changed" from The Last Unicorn? Time travel?

The internets has refused to cough up a proper cocktail recipe for scumble, and so I wish to inform them that 80-proof apple jack mixed 50-50 with ginger beer is yummy, and it's also lethal, because my body seems to think it's apple soda and I drink entire gulps before I realize that it's actually rather distinctly alcoholic.

(The stash of drinks has no vodka, but my sister and Rachel Maddow together have made me interested in cocktails. So sister had sonic screwdrivers with tequila instead of vodka & I had moscow mules with applejack instead & called them scumble.)

(Actually we had vodka, but it's double-caffeinated espresso vodka. Our hostess has been drinking it straight for several hours and is now both lit and wired. How festive, just like her non-demoninational holiday shrub!)

We watched A Colbert Christmas and then have spent the past several hours watching DVDs of all the Otakon vid shows for the entire decade of the nineties (because the parties I go to are just that cool), including the very first vid I ever saw (which was Ryoga Hibiki doing I Would Walk 500 miles in 1995. btw.) I am thinking about how much those old-school AMVs, especially in the humor vids that had a particular way of using literal matching of lyrics & images while completely (deliberately) mismatching tone & mood, shaped my vid aesthetic. Or I would be if it wasn't three o'clock in the morning and I hadn't drunk quite so much scumble.

Also I appear to have crocheted a mauve Dalek.

Everybody who is here tonight drew a party spink. Three guesses which was mine and the first two don't count! Hint: it is the Doctor Who one.

Now I am waiting impatiently for yuletide reveals. Perhaps I will drink some sherry and then attempt to write fic!

My resolution for the year: I am going to start actually finishing creative projects instead of just talking about how awesome they would be if I actually finished them. (To aid me in doing that, I am going to do more talking about them, too.)

Also I am going to get a job. And make some money.

Somebody needs to vid this song around Five's regeneration into Six. (Especially if they're clever enough to work in references to what's coming with Seven. But yes.)

...why yes, I do have all my MP3s on the same computer now, why do you ask?

So one way to tell I'm really properly in to a fandom is that when I listen to one of my old CDs I mentally vid *every single song* to that fandom.

...sigh.

(But seriously? This song? Somebody needs to do a Ten vid to that song. Like, this song was *written* for somebody to do a Ten vid to it.)

...And The Band Played On: The original DoctorDonna song, y/y?

(Am going through old records while working on Recs Post of Doomy Doom. Is not stopping my brain from trying to vid things in my head.)

I spent most of this afternoon measuring out chalklines to screw sheetrock to 16" studs. As a result, the Decembrists' 16 by 32 is *still* stuck in my head.

Somehow, this is all Stephen Colbert's fault.

In that mode, let's trying playing the new game that siegeofangels came up with the other day: load five songs at random, and figure out how they apply to John Sheppard and Atlantis (since all songs, after all, can be vidded to John/Atlantis : that's a basic law of fandom.)

Here's what I've got:
Da Vinci's Notebook - Window Washing Cowboy : okay, so this is a story about the tragic love life of a man who is very, very fond of tall building with lots of glass, and has a vaguely comic death-wish. That's pretty much John/Atlantis all the way. (Plus, the make 'em shiny clean chorus would have so much "oh my god John, you di'n't" potential.)

Dido - White Flag : This has always been a Jack Sparrow/Black Pearl Song to me, with Jack singing Dido's part because the Pearl left him for Barbossa but he just won't *let it go* already. But, you know: insane man/inanimate seafaring object: it would be so easy to re-map as Atlantis singing it to John - and it would be even *better* that way, because you would re-interpret it from a woman who won't let a relationship go, to a woman whose devotion is teaching her to fight to the end for *herself* because he makes her learn to value herself, and it would be kickass and end with John making the city fly. Yes.

Garth Brooks - Two Pina Coladas : This one starts with Jack tempting John out of Antarctica to Atlantis ("he said that heartaches are healed by the sea") and really is a love story between John and Atlantis, John falling in love with the city and knowing she loves him back (and whenever he asks for something, she gives it to him) with flashbacks to his horrible backstory on Earth.

(any of fifty bajillion covers) - Hallelujah : This one's kind of a gimme, becaue it's another law of fandom that Hallelujah can be vidded to any character or pairing, but - "the secret chord?" "the hallelujah"? This is set after one of the many times when Pegasus and the Ancients betray John, and he's lost all his faith because he's been hurt and people have been *killed* - he's killed people for *her* - and Atlantis doesn't even understand why he *cares*, but he walks though her corridors and he feels her hallelujah singing through his veins with his blood and he knows he can never leave her no matter how much he comes to hate her.

Eagles - Hotel California : Hotel California is actually an outsider's view of the freaky relationship John (and, okay, the rest of the expedition, too) has with Atlantis: specifically, that of the Wraith they captured and experimented on. Atlantis is Hotel California (she got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends.) Or you could do it as just straight John/Atlantis, actually, with a sort of sinister twist where John is being seduced by Atlantis into accepting the ancient code of "ethics".

So in conclusion: Yes, it is possible to vid John/Atlantis to any arbitrary song. Now you try!

ETA: Some days, I wonder about how I ended up so fannish. Other days, I'm packing away the dollhouse furniture I played with in elementary school and find Starbuck and Apollo cuddled up together among the quilts. :D (I have no memory of ever owning Starbuck and Apollo action figures, and yet, there they were...)

Why do modern striptease dancers usually start their shows already three-quarters naked? I mean, sure, Dita von Teese moves like an ancient fertility goddess (I'm totally figuring out a way to put a striptease scene in my NaNo,) but compared to, say, Gypsy Rose Lee or Georgia Sothern or even Dixie Evans, she's mostly finished by the time she starts.

Not that I have any objection to sparkly corsets. Mmm. Sparkly corsets.

...but, but, what's the point of striptease if there's no mystery? I love the long gowns and the diaphanous skirts and the little flashes of leg, the bare wrist that seems like the sexiest thing ever when it's all you're allowed to look at, the elegant girl on the town who lets you see just a bit more than is proper, and just a bit more, and she could stop - any minute - if she wanted to - but maybe she doesn't want to!

Whoever did the cinematography on this vid understood that, but they put in most of the mystery with the camera angles. It's lingerie fetish as much as it's classic striptease. Even when she starts out in a long gown, she steps out of it right off instead of teasing properly like they did in the old days. I'd just as soon watch her be plain old naked --- (She does naked really well.)

And no, I'm not just bitter that I could probably do a tolerable Gypsy Rose but there's no way I could pull off what Dita does. :P And I'm also not bitter that there's so little video footage of the classic-era girls, no not me.


Georgia Sothern was 11 when she started stripping professionally. I'm not sure how I feel about that, except that this video could probably get you in trouble with lj.

Today, I went to the beach and flew my kite.

I love the beach. And kites.

You can tell I'm as mellow as I get when Beatles songs spontaneously start echoing in my head.


The tragedy, of course, is that there are no Beatles songs currently on this computer. So I had to go looking. That eventually led, by a bonny road, to me finding the original Sesame Street version of Mahna Mahna on youtube.

Great Shub, that's disturbing.

I -- it's just *disturbing*. Somehow, a song that's only deranged when performed by two pink muppets and a caveman and just kind of silly when introduced by Kermit the Frog is *really effing wrong* when it's sung by two little girls and an escaped convict.

...and that's the version that was on the preschool show. You know, I used to complain about how insipid Sesame Street is these days compared to how it was in my day, but I am more and more learning that my version of the show was but a *pale* imitation of the real thing. When do the DVD sets come out, again?


Then, of course, I found the Star Wars OT vid to the song, and got all mellow again. Mmmm. First off, how did I not know that Cake had covered Mahna Mahna? Second of all, I'm more and more realizing that that's the kind of vid that I just love, unreservedly. I have a list of favorite vids that I like because they're clever, or deep, or pretty, or technically elegant, or make a good point, or wrap canon around their sticky little fingers. But I'm realizing more and more that the vids that I just *love* are the ones that don't have anything more (or less) profound to say than "this story has a song in its heart."

I will never, ever, ever be able to make that kind of vid.


Anyway, I now have a shiny new "Feelin' Groovy" playlist. Pardon me while I try to figure out where I left my mp3 of "A Horse With No Name". (I suppose to balance the karma the next playlist I need to make is a "Revolution" one.)

So people have been rec'cing stuff left and right lately - srs bzness burnout, I guess, combined with a bunch of fests and challenges coming due. And there's this one SGA story everybody (including me) loves, which is an absolute confection of a John/Rodney forced marriage romance. Only of course the premise under which they get married is totally bogus, and there's a bunch of whining about that in the comments already.

Me? I could care less about that, because it gets me, y'know, John/Rodney forced marriage fic. No. What is bothering the living heck out of me is that there's a scene where "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers" are referenced, and the author thinks it's *Trix*. And it's not like I could just drop a line suggesting she change the reference (like she ought to change the typo in the first line) because the scene would be totally different if they were talking about leprechauns and lucky charms instead of trix and rabbits. But it would *also* be totally different if they were referring to 'rainbow fruit' instead, because then the gay would outweigh the tacky. And since the point is how dorky they are, I can't believe it's in character that they'd mix it up, and the whole scene *totally doesn't work at all*.

...there. Now maybe I can resist the temptation to go say that in her comments. </OCD>

I've also read a couple SPN AUs, because I gobble "Jess is Alive" threesome AUs like candy, and that combined with that vid with all the dead wimmens in it makes me really want a Jess-is-alive AU where Jess is in charge of her own life, and kicks ass because she fuckin' wants to. It's not like all the AUs I've read weren't awesome and asskicking, but even in nearly all of those, the version of Jess's story we get is about how she motivates the boys, not about her becoming her own person in her own right. Y'know, actual agency. And then maybe she could show Sam and Dean how to be in love without being codependent, and wouldn't *that* be a miracle?

( I don't have IM so I dump brainstorming here! )

Please tell me somebody's already written that fic, and I don't have to read all 83 del.icio.us pages tagged "spn AU jess" looking for it in vain. ^_^

Courtesy of narahtbbs on lj, a 1941 fanvid of "Triumph of the Will":

Dance, Hitler, Dance!

And people think fanvids started with the VCR. (From the the British National Archives, if, like my mom, you don't believe it's real.)

ETA: Looking for clips of the original on YouTube. It's fascinating how the vid gets put up officially and linked all over, but I see German youtubers posting Triumph of the Will (which is, after all, of *unquestionable* historical and artistic merit) with "I DO NOT SUPPORT THESE OPINIONS SO THIS IS LEGAL" disclaimers all over the place, in hopes they'll avoid the anti-Nazi laws in germany. Ah, Freedom of Opinion and Expression, such fun we have together.

I've heard lots of theories about what POTC3 was supposed to be about: honor, love, choosing sides, making your own way ... but I think I've figured it out for *reals*.

It's actually about having to stand in line too long at Disney World.

And if I had the movie footage right now, I'd do the vid. But since I don't, ( I've got the outline and the lyrics )

See, now it's stuck in your head, too! Here's the mp3 I was using.

rageprufrock just posted an SGA AU she is totally not writing in which there are genies and flying carpet rides.

It occurs to me that I once wanted to vid SGA's Pilot to A Whole New World. It occurs to me that I once said I would try to vid again when I had a brand-new laptop. Which I now do. I also, thanks to sister, have SGA S1. And I have the Aladdin soundtrack.

Further, it occurs to me that the reason I was originally inspired to do that vid is that I was, at the time, working on an SGA S1 AU that started ( Like this: ) and ends ( like this: ) And that I didn't finish it because I didn't have access, at the time, to a) SGA S1, b) Aladdin, or c) I Dream of Jeannie re-runs, (which is still a problem, but how many Air Force Major jokes does one fic need anyway?)

It further occurs to me that I've been thinking I need an excuse to write every day, and 14valentines is coming up fast. And that the Genie story is the only fic I've worked on (outside of HP) that really tries to deal with abuse and recovery in any meaningful way.

Just. You know. Thinking.

Was driving home, listening to the country station (as you do) and realized that somebody really, really needs to do a post-DMC Elizabeth Swann songvid to Teri Clark's "Girls Lie Too".

Especially if they artfully intercut it with certain footage from the original video of that song.

(You don't remember the original video? You clearly did not spend lots of time that year watching the country stations, and/or suffer from taste when it comes to music. Shame on you. Go watch it now. I'll wait. I'm always surprised by how songvid people frequently are less than conversant with provids. Provids can be at least as awesomely designed, *and* you get to actually sleep with the Captain: what's not to enjoy?)

Actually, I've been wanting to do a Lizzie vid to "Water Lou" for *years*, but now it'd need DMC footage, too. *sigh* I guess it's bakc to trying to find just the right song for Fleischer Clark/Lois.