thefourthvine | 178: Every Now and Then, I Get a Little Bit Restless and I Dream of Something Meta

So, the question of the day is whether I will ever forgive

seperis for posting a link to the video for Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. I'm thinking I probably won't. If I ever see

seperis in person, I will sniff haughtily and raise my chin and stride right on by. She will deserve it.

Because, see, the video somehow makes the song very sticky, and it's not so much that I mind going around singing "turn around bright eyes" under my breath - okay, wait. I do. I do mind. But I wouldn't be contemplating a permanent grudge just for that. No, but see, the video changes the meaning of virtually all the lyrics. So I'll sing to myself "I don't know what to do/I'm always in the dark/living on a powder keg and giving off sparks" and then I will have to interrupt myself to shriek, "MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP FUCKING SCHOOLBOYS, THEN. That might be your problem!"

It was when I shrieked that this morning that I realized that a) I was driving, and thus visible to others as I went into my very emotional anti-schoolboy-fucking credo and b) I was on my way to a place where I would be interacting with others. Who might not understand my need to explain, at volume, that being a little bit nervous that the best of all your years have gone by is no excuse for fucking alien schoolboys with wings. (Seriously. This video is like a live action version of all the anime in the world. In five minutes. Except...not good. At all. Sort of the opposite of good, if you get my drift.)

So, no, I won't be forgiving

seperis anytime soon. You may say I could just have not watched it, but you would be wrong, because she mentioned dancing ninjas when she linked. Everyone knows that your average person is helpless in the face of dancing ninjas. It's why ninjas dance! So obviously she's entirely to blame, and until I can stop sharing with strangers that, yes, falling apart tends to happen when you spend all your time exploiting underaged lads (and BIRDS - BIRDS!) with mind control powers, I will be holding a massive grudge. I fail to see how anyone could blame me for this.

Obviously, I need help. In an attempt to reclaim the video portion of my brain for better purposes (it's hard to see how there could be worse purposes, frankly), I have turned to vids. Where else? I initially considered doing a Vids That Traumatize set - it would fit in so nicely - but, sadly, those tend to render me unable to speak, never mind type. (I will never forgive Pouncer and Barkley for showing me footage from Xanadu, though. Not ever. The...costumes. The...roller skates. GENE KELLY ON ROLLER SKATES OMG.)

Instead, meta vids. These make me consistently happy, after all. And they make sense. And there aren't any dancing football players in just the shoulder pads without the jerseys. In short: meta vids win.

The One That Will Remind You That We're Living in the Avalanche Times. But We Still Have Each Other. (I'm Sorry! Meta Vids Make Me Really Emotional. Unless That's Bonnie Tyler's Influence.) Us, by

lim.

Level of fandom knowledge required: 8.

But in this case, don't worry; if you're reading this LJ (and you're not my mother), you almost certainly know enough to appreciate this vid, because the knowledge you need is not about a fandom, or a part of fandom, but just media fandom itself.

And I say "media fandom" advisedly. When this vid came out, I was curious about how it would read to people outside our neck of fandom, so I asked some anime vidders to watch it and tell me what they got from it. I learned many things, some of them totally not relevant to the vid. (Like that anime vidders will always go to the critique place, always; they talk about technique first and content second, which shows you that they're like us but not us.) And I learned that people outside our community can, in fact, get something from this vid. (It was interesting to see what they did get, and what they didn't. If you ever have a handful of anime vidders and you don't know what to do with them, I recommend the experiment.) But they didn't get most of what's in there, not nearly. Which means this is a vid by one of us that's just for us.

Why? Well, partly because you need to be able to recognize what fandom is, and what our particular kind of fandom does: we borrow pieces from the things we love and turn them into new works of art. And partly because you need to be able to recognize the big fannish moments from the sources here. And partly because this is about being a fan: about the struggles we have with them - the people who aren't us.

The One That Proves That What We All Want Is Rupert Giles. Locked in Our Basement. I Put You There, by

laurashapiro and Lithium Doll, aka

halcyon_shift. (Password required for download; available without a password in streaming video on IMEEM. At least, I hope it's still there; I can't actually check, because IMEEM hates me, so if you follow this link and it works, will you let me know?)

Level of fandom knowledge required: 2.

Because, seriously, all you need to know is that we love our characters a lot, and we...do stuff to do them sometimes, take control sometimes. Because we can. (And also because of love. Let's not forget that.) This is the classic fangirl story, set to music. With drawings that pretty much represent all of us, and show all the things we do to the people we love: Obsessively collect stuff about them! Chase them! Kiss them! Insert ourselves into their stories! Hate their girlfriends! Lock them up and hit them over the head with heavy objects! (...What? Don't even try to tell me you're above hurt/comfort. I saw you with that angsty epic bookmark you think no one knows you have. Your shame is known to me.)

And this is all set to music, I might add, that is so perfect for this vid that I was astonished to learn that it isn't about fandom, or at least that it wasn't written about fandom. I still listen to it and can't believe it: you mean this isn't about a fangirl? But, but, but - how do you explain that line about real life? And, look, we do put you there! (You, of course, being Rupert Giles. Or, okay, I hear people sometimes like other characters. Whatever.) Us! But, of course, we don't have a monopoly on this kind of love.

That's why this is the perfect meta vid to show outsiders, in fact. Everyone can understand this much of fandom, because, well, nearly everyone who consumes fiction has done this. (At least, I assume they have. If they haven't, they are strangers to me.)

The One That Always Makes Me Deeply Happy to See Lemons. I Mean, Not That I Don't Love Lemons Anyway, but These Are Lemons of Significance. Without Me, by

mamoru22.

Level of fandom knowledge required: 2 or 6.

Basically, for me this vid is the other side of I Put You There. This is the actor's side: "I've created a monster" must be pretty close to an accurate transcription of their thoughts sometimes. Particularly at cons.

The actor in this case is David Hewlett, and the monster is Rodney McKay, which is curiously appropriate. (He's a monster in some ways. But he's lovable! And he's ours. Aaaaand, oh my god, I just made Rodney McKay sound like a monster from Monsters, Inc., which image will haunt me to my grave, especially since Best Beloved and

makesmewannadie tormented me this weekend with Sulley/Mike slash. Seriously, don't ever watch an innocent movie with those two; you'll never be the same again.)

The dual level of knowledge is because to get the basics of this vid, you just have to know that there's actor, and there's character, and there's fans. And sometimes there's a complex relationship between the three. But I love so much that this vid throws in another layer: it's also about SGA fandom. See those penguins? Those lemons? Those are our controversies! Those are part of what we bring to the picture! And I just love that.

But to get the add-in cookie bonuses, you really do need to know the fandom; I watched this initially with Best Beloved, who totally got the David Hewlett/Rodney McKay (not a pairing OMG no no noooooo) part of it, and loved the vid, but failed to understand why I squeaked and laughed and just generally acted insanely joyful at, for example, the postcards. (Fandom, how are you so awesome? No, really, how?) So this vid is perfect for any person who can recognize Rodney McKay, but it rewards a close familiarity with SGA fandom. In other words, it's for nearly all viewers!

The One That Will Remind You Why You Big Pink Line Fandom. I Love Fandom, by

barkley.

Level of fandom knowledge required: 5.

This isn't technically a fannish vid, in the sense that it contains only footage Barkley shot herself (as far as I know). And it's set to a song by Chicago, a song that will never, ever make any favorites list compiled by me. (Although I'll tell you what: it effortlessly displaces Total Eclipse of the Heart. My only worry now is that I'll end up singing a hideous mash-up of the two, and then I will have to be confined for my own good.) But of all the vids in my meta folder, this is the one that makes me sniffle emotionally every single time I watch it. Barkley and

destina were right; this is indeed the fannish theme song, and here it's set to perfect fannish footage: the computer, the assorted media, the books, the DVDs, the alcohol, the chocolate, the tea. (Also a random clip of something that I believe is called the "outdoors." Ignore that part.)

And, of course, there's footage of

musesfool's love meme. If you somehow missed it, it's here, and I still look at it from time to time, just because it makes me so happy. But I look at this vid even more.

This is the perfect insider meta vid. (So perfect I actually harassed Barkley to make it available again. Vidders, let this be a lesson to you: hide your email addresses, because otherwise, I will totally come for you.) I'm sure it'd be meaningless to outsiders (though I haven't actually checked this, as with Us). But for me - oh, fandom. You're just the part of me I can't let go. *sniffle*

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'd actually like to answer this, TFV, just to see if I'm at all close.

I'm not an acafan, so this will be the most overt basic interpretation.

Fandom *is* the "den of thieves". We "rummage for answers through the pages" of the source material, looking for things to play with. And clearly, this activity speaks to many of us and is contagious. If anyone ever made a statue to us, they'd put it on a mountaintop, where no one would ever see it, or if they did, we would be looked at like a bunch of freaks.

TPTB have "given us a talking to because they've got years of experience" via C&D letters etc., telling us that what we're doing is wrong wrong wrong, All Hail the Patriarchy.

Most of the clips are significant in a relationship-way for the various fandoms represented.

And finally, the bit at the end shows us taking off our masks and coming out into the light and displaying who we really are, as typified by the fangirl at the very end.

*shrug* Or, you know, not. *g*

Okay, that helps, thank you. I was missing the most basic narrative of it, apparently, because I did not know, well, any of that. ::watches again::

I will understand this vid if it kills me!

I just realized that most of the above was dealing with the audio part of it.

A few of the (to me) more obvious video parts:

Changing the Batman symbol to the copyright symbol. To be honest, I'm not entire sure what the significance of this is. On the one hand, it could mean we're all living under the watchful eye of the copyright holders and need to watch our step. On the other hand, Batman is the epitome of subversive activities, generally for the good of the community, and could mean we're laying our own subversive claim on the copyright.

The scene where Sam Beckett sees himself in the mirror and he's a woman (putting on lipsick, no less) ... well, that seems to be blatant queering of the text. Or at least acknowleging that the text is already partially queered.

See what you've made me do! Now I'm all thinky and everything! *g*

Got it. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you!

Thinky is good -- you've explained this to me in terms I can actually understand, which believe me is quite a feat. I still don't see, entirely, how this is about our fannish work & the tension of our relationship with TPTB/non-fans, which was what I understood TFV to be saying in her rec, but if I keep watching eventually I'll get it. *determined face*

It's partly about that! And it's partly about who we are! The thing is, this is a really DEEP vid, by which I mean: many layers, many layers. So I totally agree with what Ms. Giraffe said and, I think, I can also maybe add some stuff to it. So let me talk about a few of the things that really stand out of the vid to me (that haven't already been mentioned):

The use of the - I don't know what to call it. Pencil-hatching effect? That's what we do; we take the source and make it art. Sometimes you can hardly see what the original images looked like, and that's part of it - we all know fanworks that take the source and build on it until it is almost unrecognizably more. (We can also make it unrecognizably less; we're multi-talented!) And the way the pencil hatchings sometimes clear - well, they highlight moments of Great Fannish Import. Which, again, is what we do: we build art around those moments. To me, this effect, and what Lim does to it, is the first metaphor that carries all through the vid.
Then there's who we are, and how we do what we do, which is cued in many ways through the vid, from the tools (books, code, computers, etc.) to the chains of actors that we follow through their works (uh, Best Beloved had to pick these out for me) to the sort of heroic outsider status we sometimes grant ourselves. We're the rebels, we're living in the den of thieves - and we're contagious.
From beginning to end, the vid talks about explicitly about us but you can't talk about us without also defining and discussing them, if that makes sense. In the beginning, we have the tourists staring at us. (Visually shown via images of Kirk and Spock being stared at by...I don't know. It looks like earth humans? Present era or earlier? Was there time travel in Star Trek?) Those are the first them, if you can excuse the phrasing there: the people who, well, gawk at us. The tourists, pointing because we're different, we're freaks. Which is very appropriate to that fandom, too - the early days, the pre-internet days, when Trekkies were weirdos and people like us were beyond the pale.

Then they name a city after us. That city is the Matrix - in other words, we've moved onto the internet. And now we have the notice of the TPTB - they're (initially in the person of, um, Agent Elrond? I forget his name) giving us a talking to. Because they have the experience. We don't. We're meddling in things we don't understand, that are bigger than us, would be their side of that conversation. We should be good girls and go home. And then there's some explanation of why we're in trouble, why TBTP aren't necessarily in love with us - like, for example, Pirates, Ye Be Warned!

Finally (I'm skipping a lot of the vid, here, but I'm trying to just hit the salient high points!), we build to the avalanche and the unmasking. Which is where we are now. I can give you multiple interpretations of the avalanche - I think of it often - and I don't want to put just one in your head. But the unmasking is, for me, unambiguous - that girl at the end, she's us. We're visible now: we're on the radar. TPTB (and nonfans, and so on) know we're here, know what we do - we don't exist in secret, or in secret societies, anymore. And so the end, to me, is supremely hopeful: in it, we're choosing to unmask, choosing to show the world a face, doing something brave and kind of risky but that might ultimately transform us from the anonymous freaks people laugh at, like in the beginning, to who we actually are. It's not a true ending ending, because we have no idea how this will turn out, but - it's where we are right now.

So, um, I had more to say, but for me, those are the biggest parts of the vid: and what we do, who we are, and who they are.

I really love it. And I would be happy to discuss it pretty much forever, if you want to talk more.

Oh, my god, that helps so much -- I figured the visual effects had to have some kind of meaning, because they were so prominent, but I could not get from there, through my recognition that I wasn't familiar with a lot of the images being presented (TFV, we seriously need that community for fans who do not watch TV), to the point where I could see what they were doing. ::dances with glee:: OMG this is starting to make sense now!

Can you talk more about point #2? Because I feel like I'm missing something here, but I don't even know, what, exactly, I'm missing.

you can't talk about us without also defining and discussing them, if that makes sense.

Yes, of course, every "us" has a "them" and I cannot -- well, actually, I can -- believe I couldn't see that before; it all makes so much sense when people explain it to me. (

kbusse was kind enough to link me to her In Media Res (http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/videos/2008/02/01/us-a-multivid-by-lim/) discussion of "Us" which is helping so much too.) I thought there was significance to the fact that there was Kirk and Spock, so early on, and so recognizable when practically every other frame was, as far as I could tell, manipulated out of familiar shape, but I couldn't see the narrative arc. YAY for explanations! I am totally open to going through this in even more detail, because you love it so much, and I want to love it.

178: Every Now and Then, I Get a Little Bit Restless and I Dream of Something Meta

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