Remember in April when I announced the first in a series of Battlestar Galactica season 4 crack vidlets (http://cyborganize.livejournal.com/18745.html#vid)? beccatoria and my Plan was to mashup each episode with audio from the Prelinger Archives (http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger) of mid-century sponsored films, thereby creating our own archive that chronicles the season against the backdrop of our own cultural and technological history. Months later, the project is complete! Part one, at least, with the rest to come when BSG returns in 2009. Length: 9:20 (10 parts, mostly under 60 seconds each). Stream: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DE5FB59D5F1827CC or http://www.imeem.com/cyborganize/playlist/b7ptRJq1/tomorrow_bsg_video_playlist/ Download: http://beccatoria.babealicious.net/Tomorrow2008.avi (61MB). Im absurdly proud of how these vids emerged as a collaborative artwork, and I think you can witness our skills improving as the series progresses. For a more sober portrait of season 4.0 (or as a reference point for anyone who might be arriving at this post without a sense of what a more typical fanvid looks like), let me recommend beccatorias Tricks (http://beccatoria.livejournal.com/55876.html) (to Bruce Springseens Magic). In addition to its elegant distillation of S4s key moments and themes, this vid is notable for contrasting them with a heartbreaking montage of earlier BSG scenes, and for an ingenious use of the final episodes final shot (interspersed throughout on the refrain). Its also technically dazzling, and could be taken as an exemplar of Windows Movie Maker vidding. WMM offers a very limited palette of capabilities, but Becka pushes them to their limits, perfecting the rhythm with extensive time toggles. I had the pleasure of doing some light beta duty on this. Finally, one of the perks of selecting concepts for Tomorrow was having an excuse to plumb the depths of the remarkable Prelinger collection. Click to the full post for a sampling.

[9]

It is with immeasurable awe, pride, and jubilation that I announce the birth of
Hera Has Six Mommies by [10]tallulah71 [11]
a Battlestar Galactica fanvid that I commissioned through Sweet Charity.
{ feedback [12] | download [13] | stream [14] }

I. CONCEPTION
For those who don't know, Sweet Charity [15] is a cyclical auction wherein fans can bid on the creative services of other fans to raise money for a non-profit organization (in this case, the Writers Guild Foundation Industry Support Fund, as I won [16]tallulah71 [17] in January during the WGA strike benefit).

This project came into being when I got the official notification of my winning bid, and in turn emailed "ho" [18]tallulah71 [19] enumerating my BSG femslash fanvids wishlist. Here's an excerpt:

HI I AM DYING OF SQUEE! this is, like, my ultimate Sweet Charity fantasy -- I seriously cannot believe I actually managed to buy you. in case you haven't noticed, I'm a huge fan of your vids, and plus I'm thrilled to have an occasion to donate to this cause. so thank you!! [...]

- Hera Has Six (or more) Mommies!
OK, this is the vid of my wildest dreams, and a concept that I think is especially well-suited to your artistic and intellectual skills and approach. it's also potentially quite ambitious. it's the story of the alternative kinship networks that coalesce around Hera, and how various configurations of women learn to love each other through being her family (Helo and Gaius can potentially come too). it has one strand tracing the lineage of Cylon mommies (from Athena, to Caprica and Gaius and/or Boomer around the whole "Downloaded" upheaval, to Caprica and Three, to Boomer, and back to Athena) and one strand about the Laura/Maya/Tory love triangle. it's partly an epic romance and partly an apocalyptic battle for the future of humanity, and I elaborated on my picture of it in the talk I wrote for Mary McDonnell! which I'd be very happy for you to read or listen to if you're willing. another fan [ [20]carla_scribbles [21]] passed along to me a song I LOVE for this, which is a mashup by Wax Audio...

More than five months later, I can take no credit for any of the remarkable artistry evident in the vid that evolved. I let [22]tallulah71 [23] loose with my notes to generate the narrative, not to mention the stunning visuals, as inspiration dictated. However, it was my great pleasure and privilege to collaborate with her in an intense and often magical betaing process. I returned extensive feedback on three distinct drafts, co-parenting it toward what I hope is the most lucid and elegant communication of this story/interpretation. I couldn't overstate how breathtaking it was to witness the show *I* watch take shape fully onscreen. My betas, friends, and vidding co-conspirators [24]heyiya [25] and [26]beccatoria [27] were likewise invaluable midwives, bringing fresh eyes to the project. Of the many priceless gifts fandom has given me, this vid is the most acutely astounding, and I love it with a ferocity that befits the miracle of bringing something new into the world. I cannot even begin to quantify how much I got more than my money's worth.

II. GESTATION
Recent months have seen intensifying discussions about the modus operandi of vidding (historically and in its contemporary transformations), particularly [28]giandujakiss [29]'s musings [30] on the perceived relationships between vids as visual arguments and their written paratexts. In light of this debate, I wanted to weigh in on how I understand the articulation between this collaborative artwork and my more academic projects. Although [31]tallulah71 [32] read an essay of mine on this topic as part of its development, I would not take the vid that emerged as based on, illustrative of, or otherwise subordinate to that document.

Hera Has Six Mommies, for that matter, is far more than an essay: it is what I might call a lens for focusing the all-consuming experience that is my love for this show, which has infiltrated vast reaches of my heart, mind, and body. This focus has coalesced in a variety of tangible iterations in my work over the years, from a talk [33] to a chapter [34]; from a ficlet [35] to a drawing [36]. The essay and the vid alike grow out of this reservoir of obsessive, inexhaustible desire and vitality.

In fact, if I had to hierarchize these artifacts, I'd say it's the vid that is their ultimate apotheosis. I can write endlessly about the technologies of seeing that Battlestar Galactica incites us to cultivate. But here I can instead USE those technologies to SEE, in it's brevity and purity, and take you with me to the show.

III. DELIVERY
I wouldn't call "Hera Has Six Mommies" a meta vid or a political vid or an experimental vid. Though it is a bit of an experiment in slash ensemble rather than couple storytelling, mostly it's your traditional interpretive vid. But if there's nonetheless a meta-level of allegory here (and isn't there always?), it's that we fans are the collective of lesbian mommies who conceive and nurture illegitimate offspring as a labor of love, the queer families who originate a mongrel brood that, like Hera, is part of "the shape of things to come." Hera is our vids, our art, our fics, our hybrids -- the harbinger of a new dawn or a final apocalypse, depending on how you look at it.

"Hera Has Six Mommies" has at least four mommies, and creating it within a cooperative kinship network did feel a little like making a baby, complete with its own erotics and marvels. But really, we can't stop counting there, with the vidder and the videe and the betas, because it was a whole community of femslashers who parented this progeny, who produced the branching lineages that link the women of Battlestar Galactica, via variable couplings and intertexts, into a lesbian family tree. For that reason, I invite all of you to join its geneology and to celebrate its birth.

Please bear with my rhapsodizing -- like every mother, perhaps, my own little one seems to me like the most wondrous exemplar of its kind!

I'm thrilled to welcome Francesca Coppa to Brown University for this event!

Friday, April 6th, 4-6pm @ Kassar Foxboro Theater (151 Thayer St.)
FREE and Open to the Public

[41]girlboymusic [42] pointed me to a mention of this vidshow in comments at Idolator [43] -- what more incentive do you need than that?!

BLURB
Fanvids, a mashup genre with a 30-year history, are attracting increasing attention today as YouTube and its ilk make internet video ubiquitous. These music videos, constructed of recombined clips from movies or TV, are traditionally created within a predominantly female subculture, and often make feminist and/or queer statements about their mass media source texts. This combination screening-lecture- discussion will contextualize vidding as form and practice and explore its intricate techniques for queering media technologies and bodies. Insider veejays [us] will highlight examples that critique the mainstream representation of gender and sexuality and that self-reflexively elucidate vidding as a technology of fannish fetishism. Variably provocative, joyous, hilarious, and surprising, these ingenious underground artifacts offer a unique vision of the possibilities of popular appropriation.


FEMINIST FETISHISM

vidder(s): California Crew
title: Oh Boy
music: Buddy Holly
fandom: Quantum Leap

vidder(s): California Crew
title: Pressure [44]
music: Billy Joel
fandom: California Crew

vidder(s): Rache and Sandy
title: A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness [45]
music: Buster Poindexter
fandom: multi


QUEER EYES

vidder(s): [46]laurashapiro [47]
title: Wouldn't It Be Nice [48]
music: The Beach Boys
fandom: multi

vidder(s): Media Cannibals
title: Detachable Penis [49]
music: King Missile
fandom: The Professionals

vidder(s): [50]killabeez [51] and [52]tjonesy [53]
title: Closer
music: Nine Inch Nails
fandom: Star Trek TOS


VIDDING VIDDING

vidder(s): [54]laurashapiro [55] and [56]halcyon_shift [57]
title: I Put You There [58]
music: Mary Schmary
fandom: Giles

vidder(s): [59]flummery [60] (Seah and Margie)
title: Walking on the Ground [61]
music: Sheldon Allman
fandom: multi

vidder(s): [62]counteragent [63]
title: Destiny Calling [64]
music: James
fandom: vidding


GENDER TROUBLE

vidder(s): [65]absolutedestiny [66]
title: I Enjoy Being a Girl [67]
music: Sandra Allen
fandom: Alias, Buffy, BSG, Firefly, Veronica Mars

vidder(s): [68]obsessive24 [69]
title: Piece of Me [70]
music: Britney Spears
fandom: Britney Spears

vidder(s): [71]sockkpuppett [72]
title: Vogue [73]
music: Madonna
fandom: 300


EPILOGUE

vidder(s): [74]dualbunny [75]
title: Snakes on a Plane [76]
music: Cobra Starship
fandom: Harry Potter

We have obtained permission from the vidders in the show. Many of these vids, and more, screened at 24/7: A DIY Video Summit [77].

I had a fantastic time at Swarthmore and was enthusiastically received! Nonetheless, it's decidedly a first draft of this presentation; please be gentle.

production notes
- my first time using slideshare.net, which is amazing -- you can page through (or download) the powerpoint, or hit play to watch with my synced voice
- audio recorded on the fly on my macbook's internal mic; sorry about the fluctuations
- because of the difficulty of attribution and permissions, not to mention the barely adequate sound quality, the excellent and extensive comments/questions from the audience are edited out
- I should soon be adding an alternate videotaped version of the lecture to this post

http://slideshare.net/cyborganize/04-march-08-skewtube-swarthmore/ [82]

@ SCMS, my talk was a highly excerpted version of the BSG chapter already posted here; I'd be happy to provide you with that 10-page text if you're interested.

Another conference [87]! This time I'm following in my workshop-mate Sam Ford's footsteps [88]. Friends still bolded. I may try to flit between panels when they're scheduled against each other.

Thursday, April 24 - 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. SESSION 1
1 Hee Hee Hee: TV Comedy
Laura Christian, UC Santa Cruz, “Showbiz and the Limits of Self-Reflexivity: Tina Fey’s 30 Rock”
Joanne Morreale, Northeastern Univ., “The Comeback and the Plight of the Female Comic”
Amy Shore, SUNY Oswego, “‘That’s What She Said’: Mapping Urban Economies through Gender and Sexuality in The Office”
Racquel Gates, Northwestern Univ., “Whitley/Dwayne/Kinu: Crossracial Performance and Racial Triangulation in A Different World”


4 Pornography from Gonzo to Hardcore
Leigh Goldstein, UT-Austin, “Scrunchies, Braces and Throat Fucking: Performances of Girlhood in Gonzo Porn,”
Aimee-Marie Dorsten, Wilson College, “Vietnam’s Political Economy: the VNCP Goes ‘Hard Core’ for Entrepreneurial Pornography”
Naima Lowe, Independent scholar/artist, “Pushing Porno’s Buttons: Spectator Pleasures in Hard-Core Narrative Pornography”
Susanna Paasonen, Univ. of Helsinki, “The Beast Within: Animals as Intimate Others in Online Pornography”


Thursday, April 24 - 1:30-3:00 p.m. SESSION 2
2 Queer Pleasures and Violations in Fiction and non-Fiction TV
Deborah E. R. Hanan, USC, “Harvesting Transgressive, Normative, and Bourgeois Pleasures in Showtime’s The L-Word”
Marusya Bociurkiw, Ryerson Univ., “Sexy, Racy: Discourses of Race and Passing on The L Word”
Eve Ng, Univ. of Massachusetts-Amherst, “Violation Narratives of Queer Female Characters”
Julia Himberg, USC, “Performing Cultural Citizenship”


4 Intimate Ethical Mediations
David Crane, UC Santa Cruz, “Proper Closeness?: Intimations of Communications”
Aniko Imre, USC, “National Intimacy: Social Networking Sites and Post-Socialist Public Culture”
Mónica Enríquez-Enríquez, UC Santa Cruz, “Melancholia, Participatory Culture, and Intimacy in Marginalized Digital Productions”
Theresa M. Senft, University of East London, “Familiar Strangers, Strange Familiarities, or Intimacy and Ethics: On the Web and off It”

Thursday, April 24 - 3:15-4:45 SESSION 3
naptime?


Thursday, April 24 - 5:00-6:30 SESSION 4
3 Queer Boys on the Side: Desire, Media, and Female Fandom in the Twenty-First Century
Lyndsay Brown, Univ. of Florida, “Slashing Celebrities, Slashing Theory: How Real Person Slash and Vids Lead to Deleuze/Lacan”
Catherine Tosenberger, Univ. of Florida, “The Epic Love Story of Sam and Dean: Supernatural, Queer Readings, and the Romance of Incestuous Fanfiction”
Andrea Wood, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Choose your own Queer Erotic Adventure: Boys’ Love Dating-Sims and the Politics of Play in Sexually Interactive PC Games”

Friday, April 25 - 8:30-10:00 a.m. SESSION 1
2 Televisual (In)visibilities: Sexuality, Gender, and Race
Melanie E.S. Kohnen, Brown University, “Whiteness as Screen: Race, Sexuality and the “Explosion of Gay Visibility”
Alexis Lothian, USC, “Televisual Transformation and its Discontents:
Slash Fan Fiction: ‘Queer Female Space’ and Race”
Louisa Stein, San Diego State University, “Sons and Brothers: Sexuality and Race in Supernatural Fan Videos”
Joe Wlodarz, Univ. of Western Ontario, “Tell Me If You Can: Masculinity and Queer (In)Visibility in American Network Television of the 1970s”

[meaning that WON'T be able to attend these other delightful panels:]

3 Feminist Responses to Slash
Conseula Francis and Alison Piepmeier, College of Charleston, “Slash, Academia, and What Happens When Straight Women Start Flirting with Each Other”
Robin Anne Reid, Texas A&M Univ., "'A Room of Our Own:' How F/F Slash Queers Female Space"
Anna Feigenbaum, McGill Univ. , “If Adorno Could Hear Us Now: (Re)writing the Romance/ Porn Divide in ‘Boy Band’ Slash Fiction”

4 How New Media Reconfigures Public and Educational Space
Chuck Tryon, Fayetteville State University, “Elections 2.0: Political Participation, Virtual Citizenship, and Web Videos”
Alexandra Juhasz, Pitzer College, “Learning from Learning from YouTube”
L.S. Kim, UC Santa Cruz, “It is Good to be Angry: SmartMobs and angryasianman.com”
Julia Lesage, Jumpcut, “Audio Podcasting Now”

5 Studies of Battlestar Galactica
Heather Hendershot, Queens College, CUNY, “‘You Have Your Pound of Flesh’: Religion, Battlestar Galactica, and Television’s Sacred/Secular Fetuses”
Carol Stabile, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “‘Bringing Home the Cat’: Gender, Violence, and Militarism in Battlestar Galactica”
Allison McCracken, DePaul University, “‘Say Goodnight Mrs. Ron’: Ronald D. Moore and the Gender Politics of the Battlestar Galactica Podcast”
Ethan Thompson, Texas A&M - Corpus Christi,“Love Fraks Everything: Masculine Melodrama and Battlestar Galactica’s Textual Flow”


Friday, April 25 - 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. SESSION 2
5 Workshop: Gendered Fan Labor in New Media and Old
Julie Levin Russo, Brown University, “Labors of Love: Who Charts The L Word?”
Sam Ford, MIT, “Outside the Target Demographic: Surplus Audiences in Wrestling and Soaps”
Suzanne Scott, USC, “From Filk to Wrock: Performance, Professionalism, and Power in Harry Potter Wizard”
Bob Rehak, Swarthmore College, “Boys, Blueprints, and Boundaries: Star Trek’s Hardware Fandom”
Louisa Stein, San Diego State Univ., “Videogames, Fan Creativity, and Gendered Authorship: Complicating Dichotomies”


[meaning that WON'T be able to attend these other delightful panels, which are against my own workshop:]

2 “Most Wired” in a Globalized Arena: Asian Americans, Asia, and New Media
Lisa Nakamura, University of Illinois, Champaign Urbana, “‘I Bet Half of these People are Koreans’: Fan-Produced World of Warcraft Machinima and the Domestication of Asian Labor in Multiplayer Online Games”
Greta Niu, Univ. of Rochester, “‘Most Wired’ and Wire Work: Model Minorities, Chinese Cinema, Console Games”
Abigail Derecho, Northwestern, “Performing Transnational Anti-Fandom: Filipinos Protesting American Idol, The Daily Show, and Desperate Housewives Online”
LeiLani Nishime, Sonoma State Univ., “Asian Lovebots and Cyborg War Brides: Race, Miscegenation, and Battlestar Galactica”

3 The Big Queer Comedy Panel
Margo Miller, Northwestern University, “Is There a Queer Closet?: Quality Sitcom Straight Men and the Question of Self-Identification”
Lucas Hilderbrand, UCI, “Queens and Queeny: Ugly Betty’s Dual Demos and Modes”
Candace Moore, UCLA, “Bunny-eared TV: Making Things Perfectly Sketch”
Hye Jin Lee, Univ. of Iowa, “Thank you for Being (More Than) A Friend: A Queer Reading of The Golden Girls”

4 Legitimating Television
Derek Kompare, Southern Methodist University, “What is a Showrunner?: Considering Post-Network Television Authorship”
Michael Kackman, University of Texas at Austin, “Quality Television, Lost and Found: Gender & Cultural Value in Formalist Television Studies”
Michael Z. Newman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “Upscaling Television Aesthetics and the Cinematic Analogy”
Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “From Domestic Appliance to High-Tech Gadget: Media Convergence and the Masculinization of Television Technology”


Friday, April 25 - 1:15-2:45 SESSION 3
decompress?

Friday, April 25 - 3:00-4:30 SESSION 4
Lynne Joyrich, Brown Univ., “The Magic of Television: Thinking Through Magical Realism in Recent U.S. TV”
Diane Negra, Univ. of East Anglia, “Unforgettable You: The Female Amnesiac in Recent Film and Television”
Moya Luckett, NYU, “Big Love and The Girls Next Door: Exploring Structures of the Feminine Text”
Alex Bevan, Northwestern Univ., “Desperate Housewives: New Media, Historical Memory, and the Constitute of Female Identity and Feminism”

Saturday, April 26 - 8:30-10:00 SESSION 1
5 Under the Knife: Plastic Surgery on TV
Carole-Anne Tyler, UC Riverside, “The ‘Subject’ of Plastic Surgery Television”
David Bering-Porter, Brown Univ., “Mimicry and the Televisual Real: Plastic Surgery and/in Reality Television”
Jonathan Cohn, UCLA, “The Perfection of Disfigurement: The Spectator’s Body in the Era of Video”
Anne Jerslev, Univ. of Copenhagen, “Cosmetic Surgery and Mediatized Body Theatre: The Designable Body as Public Events”

Saturday, April 26 - 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. SESSION 2
4 Workshop: Sex Work in Industry and Academe
Chair: Constance Penley, UCSB
Mireille Miller-Young, UCSB
Celine Parreñas Shimizu, UCSB
Nina Hartley

• 10:23 @jeangenie [93] you just got namechecked in "state of research"! # [94]
• 11:20 Eric Garland with an interesting question: what IS user-generated or internet video content? BitTorrent doesn't discriminate.# [95]
• 11:29 four white men on the opening panel? srsly? # [96]
• 11:56 Alexandra Juhasz: DIY is not just user created + distributed; it implies (or should) a critical opposition to dominant culture. # [97]
• 13:38 OMG HI I'M SURROUNDED BY FAMOUS VIDDERS! # [98]
• 13:51 Juhasz's 6 binaries of pedagogy: public/private, cyber/real, oral/visual, entertainment/education, amateur/expert, control/chaos. # [99]
• 14:17 awesome political critiques of YouTube's "consumption model" on this panel. we want to own the infrastructure! # [100]
• 14:55 Sam Gregory: we need not just DIY, but DIWO (Doing It With Others). also: YouTube lacks community-building architecture. # [101]
• 14:59 I'm cheering this, but wondering how "state of the art" is only dealing w/ live-action docus - where's the rest of internet video? # [102]
• 15:35 Jenkins: YT does not exist in a vacuum. its strength is as a distribution architecture for content that is relocalized elsewhere. # [103]
• 16:31 go watch the slate.com video 'hillary's inner tracy flick' on youtube. # [104]
• 16:36 Fred von Lohmann of EFF is explaining strict liability (old media) and notice-and-takedown (DMCA) as velvet rope vs. bouncer. # [105]
• 16:44 LOL! also sadkermit.com, [106] an example of YT TOSsing as censorship of legal works. # [107]
• 17:15 dear Yochai Benkler: the decentralized information economy is still a capitalist economy -- domination does not go away! # [108]
• 21:14 drinking bud light at a hotel bar, baby. but with VIDDERS! # [109]

[repost of February 9th tweets from 24/7 DIY [110], originally hashtagged #video247 [111]]

I face something of a dilemma: it makes me uncomfortable to put myself in the position of speaking about or for vidders as an academic, since I'm decidedly NOT a vidder (an irresistible bunny, however, that someone should really take off my hands: a series of 21 vid-flashes to They Might Be Giants "Fingertips," which are on average 10 seconds long). I've always been a creature of words, not a visual artist, and fanfiction is intimately contiguous with how I work professionally. Visual media is my project, though, and it fits so undeniably for me to explore vidding as my pathway toward the intersection of fan cultures and convergence. The immediate motivation behind this massive remedial education is that this spring has turned into a sort of mini-tour, and I decided I should just follow where my obsessions lead (while, of course, trying to be as informed and respectful as possible):

• this weekend I'm attending 24/7, a DIY Video Summit [116] at USC, and participating in a sekrit film
• March 4, I am giving a campus talk on "queer" vidding within the larger context of internet video negotiations at Swarthmore College, 7pm @ Science Center 199 (and also visiting Bob Rehak's class [117] earlier that day)
• March 7 is my presentation at SCMS: "The Shape of Things to Come: Online Promotions, Fan Videos, and Other Queer Technologies in the Progeny of 'Battlestar Galactica'" (an excerpt of the chapter)
• I'm organizing the April 6 panel/screening "Media Fetish: The VIdshow!" as an event in Brown University's Pride Month
• April 24-26 is Console-ing Passions [118], where I'm part of a [119]fandebate [120] follow-up workshop -- I'm signed up to speak about The L Word's online promotions and NOT vidding, but you never know what might happen!

In preparation, I have now finished watching every vid in kbusse [121] and jarrow272 [122]'s recs posts -- phew! The remaining ones that I've chosen to re-review are below. [123]jarrow272 [124]'s VVC07 picks are copious, but if you think he missed any crucial entries please let me know! The reason I haven't been trolling all over for vidrecs is that, in the course of this undertaking, I quickly discovered that taste in vids is quite subjective. I typically don't get much out of traditional, sincere vids about characters/pairings/fandoms I'm not invested in, no matter how shiny they are. That said, I'm in the market for recs and reccers that share my kinks:
a) a focus on women (especially girlslashy ones)
b) interesting thematic attention to the mediation of bodies, subjectivity, and technology
c) humor (especially in the form of juxtapositions of funny with serious/disturbing)
d) innovations in form, meta and/or self-reflexivity


let's talk about [125]absolutedestiny [126]
I'd seen perhaps three of Ian's vids before embarking on this marathon; last week I sat down with his most recent dozen. It was a pretty mind-blowing experience. He comes to media vidding from a background in anime music vids (AMVs), a related genre which nonetheless has quite different aesthetic and community traditions. This divergent history cannot alone account, though, for Ian's truly unique ways of seeing. His wildly idiosyncratic works test the limits of the form with, variably, obscure source texts such as classic and arthouse films; sometimes scintillating, sometimes provocative humor; an adventurous visual virtuosity that results in surprising and stunning exploits; a gleeful interest in disturbingly violent imagery, complete with a considered attention to the ways it is framed by media form (of both vid and original); overall, one of the "queerest" sensibilities, to me, in terms of mucking about with the representation and mediation of gender and sexuality. A selection of reviews follows, in chronological order of production.

title: I Wish I Was a Lesbian [127]
music: Loudon Wainwright III
source: multi (anime)
comments: I'll dip my toes into AMV for this -- for obvious reasons! A mischievous romp through some of anime's delightful and absurd lesbian imagery, canonical and otherwise, that . And it's prefaced by an expertly lip-synced spoken-word section.

title: Revenge [128]
music: Night on Bare Mountain by Bob James
source: multi ("exploitation" films)
comments: An unusual and fascinating mobilization of the vidding format to trace an underappreciated cinematic lineage. I feel like I got a visual education watching this pice, which makes a sort of historical argument through clip matching.

title: There is Too Much Light In This Bar [129]
music: Wammo
source: Life on Mars
comments: I've never seen LoM, I can't even see boys onscreen, and I loved this vid! I'd call it highly experimental -- an acid trip of an impressionistic story like none you've ever encountered.

title: I Enjoy Being a Girl [130]
music: written by Rogers and Hammerstien, performed by Sandra Allen
source: multi (Alias, Buffy, Veronica Mars, BSG, Firefly)
comments: The straightforward yet brilliant gambit of this vid is contrasting a nostalgic anthem to orthodox femininity with characters that explode that stereotype by, essentially, kicking ass. Its masterful editing weaves together captivating matches between shows and juxtapositions with lyrics, and its structure is quite intelligible: sections focusing on each of the women in sequence are followed by an increasing melange, culminating in a breathtaking concluding riff. This one's a crash course in the new girl power of genre TV, and a longtime favorite of mine. [There's at least one other vid to this song.]

title: Beethoven's Fifth Gold Digger [131]
music: A Plus D (mashup of Kayne West's Gold Digger and Walter Murphy's Fifth of Betthoven)
source: Gone With the Wind
comments: I understand that this vid was rather controversial, and I'd love to hear/talk more about why. It's a remarkably thick soup of overdetermined cultural signifiers spanning centuries of history and higly-charged lattices of gender, race, and class, and would take many viewings and thinkings to even begin to digest. But it's also stunning, just purely as spectacle.

title: Rodeohead [132]
music: Hard n Phirm (bluegrass mashup of Radiohead)
source: Firefly/Serenity
comments: Quite possibly my favorite Firefly vid, because it's a caper! I don't have any deep investment in the Jossverse, I hate to admit. There's plenty that's dark in this vid, but it's just so weird that it's all folded into the reverie. Incredible aesthetics, incredible characterization, incredible adventure.


Dexter

vidder(s): [133]kiki_miserychic [134]
title: Ramalama (Bang Bang) [135]
music: Róisín Murphy
focus: Dexter
availability: download, imeem, youtube
summary: Season one Dexter character study. Warnings: Blood, sex, violence, chainsaw.
comments: Visually adventurous, hauntingly abstract, disturbingly gorgeous portrait of a serial killer. This highly impressionistic vid captures Dexter's experience through images and rhythm, including methodical beats that (says DPB) mirror the meticulousness of his compulsion, more than through narrative. An obsessive focus on bodily dismemberment within the fragmentary embodiment of the medium itself ("Finger in position on the switch / A little flash photography/ Taking a picture of you").

vidder(s): [136]sockkpuppett [137] (luminosity)
title: Blood Fugue [138]
music: Dog Fashion Disco
focus: Dexter
availability: download (xvid), imeem
summary: Not for the Squeamish.
comments: The ultimate mediation on Dexter S1's central symbology. Gorgeous and intensely disturbing images. Using red instead of black for the fades and letterboxing is a classy touch.

vidder(s): [139]chasarumba [140]
title: Make Lemonade [141]
music: Gotta Lotta Lemons by Groove For Thought
focus: Dexter
availability: download (divx, wmv)
summary: Meet Dexter Morgan, your friendly neighborhood serial killer. But he uses his "powers" for good, so don't be haters, y'all!
comments: Cognitive dissonance is one of my major vid-kinks, as I've mentioned, and I adore this blithe portrait of how charming it is to be a serial killer. Paradoxically, it perhaps takes Dexter's POV more seriously than the more straightforwardly disturbing vids -- it IS all just lemonade to him. [see also: Keep Breathing [142], which loses points for being far less ironic but gains points for being about DEB, and treating her trauma with a very subtle hand.]

vidder(s): [143]chasarumba [144]
title: Vibrate [145]
music: Rufus Wainwright
focus: Dexter/Rudy
availability: download (divx, wmv)
summary: A game of cat-and-mouse and a search for kinship.
comments: I'd call this a slash vid, although the vidder demurs, so you can begin to imagine how perverse it is. A totally bent study of all the ways Dexter and Rudy communicate -- through technology, and blood, and memories.

vidder(s): [146]sweetestdrain [147]
title: West of Her Spine [148]
music: Bell X1
focus: Rudy (Rudy/Deb, Rudy/OFCs, Rudy/Dexter)
availability: download (divx [currently broken]), imeem
summary: Finding love in the strangest places.
comments: A twisted and, if I recall, controversial vid that sets Rudy's homicidal liaisons to a love song. I found it mesmerizing to watch the sentimental romance disintegrate into the murderous violence that ultimately binds him to Dexter, his greatest love of all.


miscellaneous

vidder(s): [149]sweetestdrain [150]
title: Circles [151]
music: Soul Coughing
fandom: Dead Like Me (George character study)
availability: download (divx [currently broken]), imeem
summary: When the gas runs out, just wreck it - you insured the thing. (VVC07 Nearly New)
comments: Takes the "circles" of the song as a metaphor for the cycle of life and death, and matches them beautifully to visuals of circular motion -- a very apt trope for George's experience as a reaper. This is the sort of vid that could get people excited about watching this oft-overlooked show.

vidder(s): [152]obsessive24 [153]
title: Jesus for the Jugular [154]
music: The Veils
fandom: Carnivale
availability: download (xvid, wmv)
summary: Ain't nobody ever gonna have to die.
comments: A vid about evil that incorporates newsreel footage of the Holocaust. Just, yeah. It's utterly effective, and remarkable, and horrifying.

vidder(s): [155]heresluck [156]
title: People Get Ready [157]
music: The Frames
fandom: Heroes
availability: download (divx), imeem
summary: We have all the time in the world.
comments: So, this vid seems to celebrate the premise of Heroes, whereas I find that premise deeply problematic (short version: because it's essentially the corporate slogan of Cisco). However, what it does, it does spectacularly. It's an epic, and a real tear-jerker. I think it demonstrates that you don't need superfast cuts to tell a stirring story. [Another reason I find this show fairly dismal is its almost unrelieved glorification of angsty boys (setting aside Hiro), my LEAST favorite TV character type. As you might gather, his poses a grave challenge to my appreciation of many otherwise shiny Heroes vids (setting aside at least two that are Nikki/Jessica).]


staples
As I've said, I'm reviewing primarily to supplement my own memory, so I haven't yet gotten around to including the growing collection of vids that I find unforgettable. Here, at least, is a provisional list:

everything! [158] - [159]jarrow272 [160]
Us [161] (multi) - [162]lim [163]
I Put You There [164] (BtVS:meta) - [165]laurashapiro [166] and [167]lithiumdoll [168]
Walking on the Ground [169] (multi) - [170]flummery [171]
Wouldn't It Be Nice [172] (multi) - [173]laurashapiro [174]
A Little Less Conversation [175] (multi) - [176]giandujakiss [177]
A Fannish Taxonomy of Hotness, aka HotHotHot [178] (multi) - Rache and Sandy
Documentary [179] (RPS) - fabella
Vogue [180] (300) - [181]sockkpuppett [182] [disgustingly, the original was pulled by imeem -- this is a re-up]
Women's Work [183] (SPN) - [184]sockkpuppett [185] and [186]sisabet [187]
DNA [188] (SGA) - [189]cesperanza [190]
My Brilliant Idea [191] (SGA) - [192]lim [193]
Cartoon Heroes [194] (SGA) - [195]mamoru22 [196]
Coin Operated Boy [197] (BtVS) - [198]sdwolfpup [199]
United States of Spike [200] (BtVS) - [201]sdwolfpup [202]
Whatever [203] (BtVS) - [204]sockkpuppett [205] and [206]sisabet [207]
Sci-Fi Friday in a Blender [208] (Farscape, Doctor Who, BSG) - [209]sockkpuppett [210]
Ecstatic Drumtrip [211] (Farscape) - [212]sockkpuppett [213]
New Frontier [214] (Firefly) - [215]heresluck [216]
Vertigo [217] (House) - [218]bradpcu [219]
Circles [220] (West Wing) - [221]laurashapiro [222]
Boom Boom Ba [223] (Xena) [and many others] - [224]charmax [225]
Bionic [226] [and many others] - [227]tallulah71 [228]

Transformative Works and Cultures [233] (TWC) is a Gold Open Access international peer-reviewed journal published by the Organization for Transformative Works [234] edited by Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson. [NB: I am part of TWC's editorial team]

TWC publishes articles about popular media, fan communities, and transformative works, broadly conceived. We invite papers on all related topics, including but not limited to fan fiction, fan vids, mashups, machinima, film, TV, anime, comic books, video games, and any and all aspects of the communities of practice that surround them. TWC’s aim is twofold: to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics, and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community.

We encourage innovative works that situate these topics within contemporary culture via a variety of critical approaches, including but not limited to feminism, queer theory, critical race studies, political economy, ethnography, reception theory, literary criticism, film studies, and media studies. We also encourage authors to consider writing personal essays integrated with scholarship, hypertext articles, or other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. TWC copyrights under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License [235].

Theory accepts blind peer-reviewed essays that are often interdisciplinary, with a conceptual focus and a theoretical frame that offers expansive interventions in the field of fan studies (5,000–8,000 words).

Praxis analyzes the particular, in contrast to Theory’s broader vantage. Essays are blind peer reviewed and may apply a specific theory to a formation or artifact; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; or otherwise relate transformative phenomena to social, literary, technological, and/or historical frameworks (4,000–7,000 words).

Symposium is a section of editorially reviewed concise, thematically contained short essays that provide insight into current developments and debates surrounding any topic related to fandom or transformative media and cultures (1,500–2,500 words).

Reviews offer critical summaries of items of interest in the fields of fan and media studies, including books, new journals, and Web sites. Reviews incorporate a description of the item’s content, an assessment of its likely audience, and an evaluation of its importance in a larger context (1,500–2,500 words). Review submissions undergo editorial review; submit inquiries first to review@transformativeworks.org.

TWC has rolling submissions. Contributors should submit online through the Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org [236]). Inquiries may be sent to the editors (editor@transformativeworks.org).

The call for papers is available as a .pdf download sized for U.S. Letter [237] or European A4 [238]. Please feel free to link, download, print, distribute, or post.

Yeah, I'm pretty late to the party! If you want to know why, about a year ago, I suddenly realized what you all probably knew already and became obsessed with fanvids, my analysis [243] of [244]jarrow272 [245]'s "Save Yourself" in my dissertation might shed some light. So I've started keeping a vid-watching diary [246]. The logic behind this is that, when I save a fic, it's easy enough to click through to it again and skim the text to remind myself of what it's about and why I loved it, whereas with vids, there's really no shorthand way to re-access them. While fanworksfinder is working well for me as an archive, it doesn't offer a means to share my reviews. So when [247]counteragent [248] declared the New-To-Me Vid Watching Challenge [249], it occurred to me that I could take this as an opportunity not only to pledge, but to do a dump of all my recent vidrecs.

My long-term OCD project is cover Battlestar Galactica gen and all the BSG vids on imeem [250] with some comprehensiveness, complete with my best-of-the-best playlist -- but that's still in the early stages. For the moment, I've been catching up on kbusse [251], jarrow272 [252], and beerbad's [253] recent recs posts. Of course, I never seem to be able to multitask, so I'm doing this in one massive blitz of ~50 vids. I got on an airplane yesterday with a stocked ipod and my Secretary swag notepad, and wrote pages and pages of comments out longhand while flying cross-country.

first, a fortnight's worth of vids that meet [254]counteragent [255]'s criteria (new to me + I feedbacked [via my personal journal]), albeit late for the challenge and all in one day! I have a really difficult time commenting on posts that already have two or three or four pages of replies, is what I learned -- but I suppose that's why it's called a "challenge."


7 challenge vids: BSG

vidder(s): [256]cherryice [257]
title: Only [258]
music: Nine Inch Nails
focus: Final Four + Sharon
availability: download (divx), imeem
summary: What does it take before you're considered a person?
comments: I was sort of afraid to watch this vid, because I had a suspicion that it would make my head explode with awesome -- and it did not disappoint! FLAIL. The definitive final five four vid (I thought I was indifferent to such vids since three of them are boys; obviously I was wrong wrong wrong -- and there's even snippets of Tory/Laura in this, if you don't blink!), and so much more! Cylons have aaaaaaaangst, yo! I found this both deeply thought-provoking and (perversely?) rather humorous -- it's impossible not to be delighted by the sweeping connections and unironic rock. The thesis: robots try to find love, but in the end they're alone.

vidder(s): [259]hollywoodgrrl [260]
title: Lost Cause [261]
music: Beck
focus: ensemble
availability: download (wmv), youtube
summary: This vid is all about the Season 2 depression that everyone seemed to be suffering from.
comments: The perfect story of how these characters break our hearts, over and over again. The vid expertly daisy chains them together -- it's structurally clean without being schematic. And I SCREAMED at the end, omg! Gently devastating.

vidder(s): [262]laurashapiro [263] and [264]sdwolfpup [265]
title: Let's Go Crazy [266]
music: Prince
focus: Gaius, ensemble
availability: download (divx avi), imeem [267]
summary: Gaius Baltar doubts your commitment to sparkle motion (Club Vivid 07).
comments: I think one could experience this vid on multiple registers: it's Club Vivid, so it's bouncy and cracked-out and hilarious. But it also has something darker and deeper to say on the subject of "going crazy." In keeping with the vortex of Gaius, it features some pretty creepy sex and other varied perversions. The guitar riff montage at the end is especially ripe with insane genius!

vidder(s): [268]super_kc [269]
title: Battlestar Inferno [270]
music: Disco Inferno by 50 Cent
focus: ensemble
availability: stage6, imeem
summary: No plot, just hot. Pimps and hos. Rock it. Adult language and themes.
comments: We all know BSG is a supremely sexy show, but we didn't know just HOW sexy until this vid gave it to us, hard and fast, in one hip-grinding, sweat-soaked injection of pure smut. Also features probably the best ever use of the slow clap in a vid. :)

vidder(s): [271]charmax [272]
title: Mainstream [273]
music: Thea Gilmore
focus: Starbuck
availability: download (xvid avi), imeem
summary: This covers Starbuck from the mini series through to "Lay your burdens down" [ed: "Lay Down Your Burdens"]. It's a pilot's life.
comments: Starbuck's always on the move -- and she's moving to lesbian music! I don't know how it's even possible that I didn't watch this vid until now. Perfect for lovers of pre-angstified Starbuck, it's go go go through her life (complete with a cameo appearance by Cain!). Incorporates some truly amazing time-bridging sequences, including the one of her at her locker and the one of her jogging through hallways.

vidder(s): [274]bananainpyjamas [275] (dragonchic)
title: A Place Inside [276]
music: "Scared of Girls" by Placebo
focus: Starbuck
availability: download (xvid avi, wmv), imeem
summary: Starbuck character study with a heavy emphasis on season three.
comments: The strength of this vid is how expertly it parallels and intertwines the web of intimate relationships in Starbuck's life (including Kat!), rendering their out-of-control trajectories through the more metaphorical movements of flying and, most provocatively, "destiny." The intercutting of Lee and Leoben is especially chilling!

vidder(s): [277]buffyann [278]
title: Headlights [279]
music: Archive
focus: Starbuck
availability: download (wmv/avi), stage6
summary: This is an attempt at showing Starbuck's struggle through life and through her "destiny" path.
comments: Season 3 Starbuck = OUCH. This vid captures her downward spiral into utter devastation, to a haunting song. Lovely, evocative use of images of the eye mandala, and paralleling of different dimensions of her life (flying and boxing, for example). [cheating: I did this one a couple of weeks ago]


7 challenge vids: miscellaneous

vidder(s): [280]dualbunny [281]
title: Snakes on a Plane [282]
music: Cobra Starship
fandom: Harry Potter
availability: download (divx, wmv)
summary: Harry/Voldemort?? Harry has *had* it with the motherfuckin' snakes on his motherfuckin' plane broom!
comments: Possibly the ultimate cult media mashup vid. Seriously, I have no words for the genius -- I mean, what could one say except MOTHERFUCKIN' SNAKES! Far more than a gimmick, though, this vid executes its ludicrous premise exquisitely, transcending its own crackitude to express something visually and intellectually magical about one of our culture's most enduring figures of evil (I'm not joking!).

vidder(s): [283]jescaflowne [284]
title: Another Sunday [285]
music: Jefferson Starship
fandom: SGA
availability: download (avi)
summary: "We built this city on rock n' roll" (Club Vivid 07)
comments: A self-consciously cheesy, gloriously retro, stylistically adventurous romp through the city of Atlantis! The genius of this vid is the virtuosity with which it marries the source to evocative visual codes of 80s culture, rendering its joy accessible to the non-viewer.

vidder(s): [286]mranderson71 [287]
title: Every Penguin Dance Now [288]
music: Rock This Party by Bob Sinclair
fandom: Happy Feet
availability: stage6, imeem
summary: Penguins! (Club Vivid 07)
comments: This vid is so flawless that the prowess of its technical achievement may not be immediately apparent. The Penguins appear as if they were dancing to this song all along! And part of the fun of animation is that they can also lip-sync (or beak-sync, in this case) to the lyrics. An exemplary dancevid.

vidder(s): [289]hollywoodgrrl [290]
title: (Boulevard of) Broken Songs [291]
music: Party Ben
fandom: Doctor Who
availability: download, imeem
summary: If Rose, Martha, Donna, and the Doctor all went to a pub together, these are the stories they each would tell after a couple rounds of the good stuff.
comments: Glorious on so many levels! First of all it's about the neglected COMPANIONS -- and what a worthy tribute it is. Secondly, I have a particular fondness for vids to mashups, and [292]hollywoodgrrl [293] mobilizes this one to especially compelling effect by tying each component song to a different character. As she puts it, "I literally went with the notion that each companion tells her version of her story, and in the end, the Doctor jumps in and tells his" -- in other words, in addition to the mashup aesthetic, the vid carries over its underlying postmodern credo into its own conceptual register.

vidder(s): [294]laurashapiro [295] and [296]killabeez [297]
title: Not Only Human [298]
music: Heather Nova
fandom: X-Files
availability: download (password), imeem [299]
summary: Scully searches for answers, but finds only more questions.
comments: This vid is fully committed to Scully's POV, immersing itself in the theme of faith. Not the sexiest theme, but between Scully and the talented vidders, they make it sexy here. The sequence of scientific images gave me CHILLS, and by the end, the boundaries had blurred until I couldn't tell where the science ended and the faith began. Classic X-Files, and a classic vidding style.

vidder(s): [300]bradpcu [301]
title: Living Dead Girl [302]
music: Rob Zombie/Charlie Clouser
fandom: BtVS/AtS
availability: download (xvid avi), stage6
summary: Only one sure way to bring the giant down.
comments: Predictably, what fascinated me most were the self-reflexive references to a wide range of media texts and conventions (from silent film intertitles to TV static). I don't think their meaning is transparent, but they made for a very provocative juxtaposition with the highly corporeal horror imagery (blood, monsters, zombies, and more blood). Especially filtered through all the violence done by and to Faith (who I have to love, being our fanon dyke), I think there's a complex exploration of the ways gendered bodies are mediated folded into this vid.

vidder(s): [303]bradpcu [304]
title: Working Class Hero [305]
music: Green Day via John Lennon
fandom: Firefly/Serenity
availability: download (wmv)
summary: "If you want to be a hero well just follow me." Mal/River via Simon, Zoe, Jayne.
comments: The politics of Firefly! This vid makes a very clear, very hard-hitting intervention in/through the source, one encapsulated by the title. It's gritty, and difficult, and ambitious, and quite the rousing indictment of The Man.


other reviews: multifandom

vidder(s): [306]counteragent [307]
title: Destiny Calling [308]
music: James
availability: imeem
summary: Made for the More Joy Day 2008 Challenge. Vids = JOY! This is a video commentary on the joy that other people’s vids brings me.
comments: The vid that makes all my cataloging and reccing work obsolete! A remarkable compilation of clips from remarkable vids, complete with some smart metatextual framing.

vidder(s): Jackie K
title: (If You Were) In My Movie [309]
music: Suzanne Vega
availability: DL at the bottom of the "misc" section (mpg [rar-ed])
summary: Jane and Daria work on a multimedia project.
comments: A powerful multifandom reverie on some of the tropes that run through mass media, and on media viewing itself. Includes a unique frame story constructed from Daria clips.

vidder(s): [310]sol_se [311]
title: Filthy Mind [312]
music: Amanda Ghost
availability: download (wmv, avi, mpeg), imeem
summary: A fandom free association, stream of consciousness. With dancing. (Club Vivid 07)
comments: A spectacular showcase of movement, with amazing cross-fandom matching. I don't think the selections are as freeform as the vidder self-effacingly claims -- I found it to be a pretty cohesive study of characters who are crazy, disturbed, or otherwise troubling.


other reviews: BSG

vidder(s): [313]sdwolfpup [314]
title: Fix You [315]
music: Coldplay
focus: ensemble
availability: download (divx avi), imeem [316]
summary: They just want to help.
comments: The vid that prefigures the WGA strike! Seriously, though, its brilliance haunts me, day and night. I hear this was a test case for living-room vs. con approaches -- apparently the VVC audience had very different reactions depending on whether they were familiar with the show. I taught a section around it once, and we discussed how our varied interpretive competencies affect the meaning we can draw from it. The uninitiates did, in fact, seem to get the gist of the narrative, enough for us to go on to the very complex question of how this vid aligns the viewer in terms of identification, and how we might extrapolate from these alignments to the extratextual battle that frames it -- the one between fans and TPTB. In conclusion, one of the most fruitful critical projects I've ever seen executed in a vid.

vidder(s): [317]sockkpuppett [318] (luminosity)
title: More Human Than Human [319]
music: ?
focus: Cylons
availability: download (divx avi, wmv), imeem [320]
summary: -----
comments: My favorite vid about BSG's technicities. Beautiful editing, brutal energy, and a palpable attention to the materiality of Cylons (including the non-humanform models) as machines. I have also taught this vid in classes.

vidder(s): [321]flummery [322]
title: Jerusalem [323]
music: Anouk
focus: Laura, Kara, Sharon
availability: download (divx avi, etc.), imeem [324]
summary: ---- (VVC05)
comments: A female-driven epic swept along by a thrillingly perfect song choice. It's everything these women are: uncompromising, tragic, violent, complex, and full of grace. I don't think I have the technical vocabulary to explain why it's so gorgeous -- but believe me, it is. The structure is flawless: the characters are clearly delineated in sections, but always interconnected.

vidder(s): [325]tallulah71 [326]
title: Sunday Bloody Sunday [327]
music: U2
focus: ensemble
availability: download (avi)
summary: A general BSG vid showcasing the similarities between humans and cylons.
comments: Yeah, I also went, "really? isn't that a bit heavy-handed?" but it turns out to be everything one could possibly want from a vid to this song. It manages to be simultaneously a biting political commentary and a heart-wrenching emotional juggernaut. And there are these beautiful sequences of parallel clips in it about humans and cylons, in hate and in love. (And iamsab said, "it had really good 'people pointing guns at each other while trembling.' not just Lee. he's usually the trembler.") It gives me chills, man, every time.

vidder(s): [328]keewick [329]
title: Signal to Noise [330]
music: Peter Gabriel
focus: ensemble
availability: download (avi)
summary: "All the while the world is turning to noise/Oh the more that it's surrounding us/The more that it destroys/Turn up the signal/Wipe out the noise"
comments: I think I skipped this the first time through because it's listed as a Lee vid. Wow, is it so much more than a Lee vid. It's a beautiful and thought-providing ensemble piece that draws out the parallels and imbrications between technology and theology in BSG -- a theme that makes me fail with glee. Screens and computers, serpents and haptics, humans and cylons.

vidder(s): [331]super_kc [332]
title: Meant Well: The Occupation [333]
music: "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap
focus: ensemble
availability: download, imeem, youtube, zshare
summary: The story of the occupation of New Caprica and the people left on the ground.
comments: A visually stunning and quietly disturbing portrait of the occupation. The ending sequence with Hera just gutted me.

vidder(s): [334]dualbunny [335]
title: God Is A DJ [336]
music: Pink
focus: Starbuck
availability: download (divx avi, wmv)
summary: Kara says get your ass on the dance floor!
comments: I'd be hard pressed not to say this is the greatest Starbuck character study ever made. It's her destiny before she had a "destiny": just dancing to the beat of the divine (Pink is, actually, God, right?). The work with movement in this vid is incredible, and it's exuberant and in-your-face and profound all at once. [see also: the sequel, Cuz I Can [337]]

vidder(s): [338]gwyn_r [339]
title: There [340]
music: Grey Eye Glances
focus: Laura Roslin
availability: download (divx avi), password provided; hopefully coming soon to her imeem
summary: How do you sustain hope in others in the face of unimaginable loss, when you're in danger of losing hope yourself?
comments: I kinda hate the song choice, personally, but there are many other things to love about this vid. It tells the story of a spiritual journey -- a very emotional, human one, rather than a remote theology as it's sometimes rendered. A notable Laura character study.

vidder(s): [341]beccatoria [342]
title: Jesus Walks [343]
music: Kanye West
focus: Laura Roslin
availability: download (wmv)
summary: Laura Roslin's not allowed to rap about Jesus.
comments: This probably remains my personal and subjective favorite BSG vid of all time. Laura, in all her power, conviction, desperation, and contradictions. The tension between the song and the source is generative of such richness. (Watch with the BtVS Gunn vid to "Jesus Walks" for maximum cognitive dissonance.) [see also: Jesus Walks [344], a Gunn (BtVS) character study by [345]mimisere [346]]

vidder(s): [347]beccatoria [348]
title: Hummingbird Song [349]
music: Tom McRae
focus: Kendra, Cain, Gina
availability: download (wmv)
summary: "It is such a quiet thing, to fall. But far more terrible is to admit it." (Quote: Kreia SW EU)
comments: I can only speak subjectively about this vid, which juxtaposes some of Razor's most brutal scenes and themes with a sort of sad lullaby; YMMV. I found it so achingly... romantic. it's the music, but also my personal ability to see all Razor's horrific violence as the fruits of profound and tragic love between women. includes some of my favorite Cain/Gina sequences so far in a vid -- they just gutted me. and the Kendra POVishness is great, totally chilling (and with Kendra and Gina, glee!). It feels dreamlike, with all the fades to black. so gorgeous! it's hard to explain how the material meshed with the song, to me -- it was like hallucinating? sort of hushed or hazy, not tempering the impact of the violence, which is laid out very potently, but making it seem far far away, a memory.

vidder(s): [350]kiki_miserychic [351]
title: Ain't No Reason [352]
music: Brett Dennen
focus: Kendra, Cain, Gina, Kara
availability: download (wmv/divx), stage6
summary: A character and relationship study of the women of Battlestar Galactica: Razor.
comments: A gently both beautiful and political meditation on Razor, which does a great job of evocatively incorporating its larger context of war and heartbreak. Hints of Cain/Kendra and Cain/Gina.


vidder(s): [353]drgnfille [354]
title: I Already Met You [355]
music: Superfine
focus: Cylons (humor, het)
availability: download (wmv)
summary: It's about the various versions of the cylon agents and their wacky escapades with the humans who love (and hate) them.
comments:
"I already met you / you're like my last girlfriend / and the girlfriend I had before her" - A delightfully snarky romp through the myriad relationships between humans and cylons. In addition to the hilarity, it offers a clever commentary on the mindfrak of living with/as many copies.

vidder(s): [356]martoufmarty [357]
title: Sex, Violence, and Cylons [358]
music: Violent Pornography by System of a Down
focus: ensemble (humor, het)
availability: download (mpg), imeem
summary: Warning: Video contains coarse language, violence, and sexual content throughout. Parental absence is suggested. Contains scenes from the mini-series all the way until episode 2x19.
comments: Partly amusing, partly DISTURBING! It might be perverse to classify this vid as humor. An acid trip through BSG's more adult themes, via much excellent use of short clips. I especially love the self-reflexive touch