fray-adjacent

I briefly considered switching to Final Cut Pro X, so I decided to make an impromptu vidlet with the trial version.

Title: Sparrow's Lullaby
Fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Artist: Amy Ray
Characters: Gabrielle, Xena
Relationships: Xena/Gabrielle
Content Notes: show-typical violence, dissolves. Feel free to contact me with questions about content.

Download | AO3 post | Direct YouTube Link


Working with FCPX was mostly good. I used FCP 7 for my first year or two of vidding, so between that and my more recent experience with Premiere it was easy to use.

• The import and the clip previews (on the timeline as well as in the window for imported media) were well designed to make it easy to glance at and find out the content of a clip.
• Editing transitions was easier than in Premiere.
• Making speed changes was similar to premiere, and easier than FCP 7.
• It also had a ton of preset effects that I would have made good use of (that short clip of Ephiny's face early in the vid has the 'combat' effect, which I found pretty). I know that I could learn how to do those effects in Premiere, but I am lazy.
• I had a few issues with the magnetic timeline that probably would have been resolved by watching one or two youtube tutorials (see above RE: lazy). When FCP 7 was discontinued and replaced with FCPX, I was horrified of the magnetic timeline, but it was fine.
• I disliked the way that clips were organised (by the date they were made!) and couldn't figure out how to change it, but if I were committing to using FCPX I would have googled it and found the workaround that no doubt exists.

In the end I decided that I'm going to stick with Premiere if I can find a way to get my educational discount back (I had it my first year but have subsequently lost it, but I was using an email address from a previous university rather than the one I work for now). The main reason is that I use other Adobe apps, mostly Photoshop (both for work and vidding) as well as Audition and, in principle, After Effects. My partner might also start using Photoshop. Also, I'm wondering if I could ever clip with Media Encoder, if/when MPEG Streamclip goes bust. If I can't get the discount, I will stop my Adobe subscription when it expires in June.

Title: Virginia Woolf
Fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Artist: Indigo Girls
Characters: Gabrielle, Xena
Relationships: Xena/Gabrielle
Content Notes: show-typical violence, fast cuts, flashing lights. Includes events from the series finale. Feel free to contact me with questions about content.

Download | AO3 post | Direct YouTube Link

My wrist injury has flared up again, so I've been off computers as much as possible lately. Be back soon I hope! xo

 For the last ten years or so, every time I’ve seen Ursula K Le Guin’s name in the news, I’ve had a jolt of fear that she’d died. It snuck up on me this morning, reading Dreamwidth bleary-eyed over my coffee. I’d like to write a proper post about how much her writing has meant to me, but for now I just want to mark the moment. I wonder what is happening at her beloved Powells in Portland today. I wish I could be there for it. 

snowflake_challenge  Day 5

Recommend a fannish or creative resource. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Someday I will build up the nerve/mental spoons to challenge Youtube blocking a few of my vids (especially my favourite vid by me, Starkville, which is blocked in the US and Canada -- but not on Vimeo, hence the link!). When I do, I will definitely make use of Lim's post about fighting back against YT and the BBC and winning. It's especially useful for vidders in the UK -- I learned too late that my references to 'fair use' were not relevant here.

snowflake_challenge Day 3:

In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

1. goodbyebird iconned Xena: Warrior Princess! I have heart-eyes for these and will be grabbing some if/when I get my paid account back*.

2. I love maariamph's adult!Steven fanart. Favourites: watering plants; charging on lion; hanging out with Connie.

3. restfield's amazing Drusilla manip.

*I'm planning to re-purchase my paid account once I get back in the habit of posting regularly. Please don't take this as a subtle hint that I want someone to gift it to me!

I've decided to give 2018 snowflake_challenge a go!

Day 1

In your own space, talk about why you're participating in Snowflake and, if you’ve participated in the past, how the challenge has affected you. What drew you to it? What did you take away from it? What do you hope to accomplish this year? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I apparently only attempted the challenge once before, January 2014. I made one post! /o\

But I like other people's posts, and I sincerely want to get back in the habit of posting and checking Dreamwidth regularly. I let my paid account lapse last October because I just wasn't using DW any more, except to post vids. But I like and miss people who are still active here, so I'm going to try to be more active as well. If I manage it I will reward myself by upgrading to a paid account again. So, well, I have a few things I hope to accomplish in 2018, and more time on DW is definitely one of them.

Previous years: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

Vids I made in 2017

Electric Lady (Steven Universe, premiered at VidUKon in June)
Airplane (Xena, September)
Partition (Buffy theVampire Slayer, November)

Favourite

Partition — I enjoy re-watching it, and it’s a different sort of vid, with a different take on Buffy, than I have done in the past.

Least Favourite

Airplane — it’s a fine vid, but it’s my weakest Xena vid IMO. I had a lot of trouble getting something that went with the music like I wanted on the bridge. And I struggled a little with conceptualising it — at first it really was a Gabrielle vs Horses vid, but that was too narrow a concept for an entire vid so it became about the discomforts of travel, but I’m not sure how well the second half connects to the first half.

Most Successful

Partition, I think, in that I saw a few people reccing it. Electric Lady in terms of comments though — I got some really lovely comments on it on DW and at VidUKon.

Most Underappreciated by the Universe

I secretly hoped Electric Lady would take off on youtube because I think it’s better than a lot of the Steven Universe vids I’ve seen out there. (Not all of them of course! Becca’s SU vid, for example, still blows my mind every time I watch it.) Alas, that didn’t happen.

Most Fun to Make

Electric Lady, before my laptop was stolen (see below).

Hardest Vid to Make

Electric Lady, because I was about halfway finished with it when my laptop was stolen. I’d had Premiere installed on my laptop from my previous job, but when I bought my new laptop I couldn’t get it back. I ended up remaking Electric Lady in Lightworks. Now, I’m sure Lightworks is a lovely program, and it’s fantastic that it’s free. But as someone who was just trying to (re) make a vid and wasn’t actually interested in learning new software, it was very frustrating in some ways. It wasn’t just small differences along the lines of those I discovered when I switched from Final Cut Pro 7 to Premiere, but major differences in the workflow that I really struggled with.

Not long after I finished, I decided to splurge on a subscription to Adobe CC even though the cost and subscription program piss me off. I get the educational discount because I work at a university, and I do use Illustrator for work so I can kinda justify it on those grounds. So the work I’d done on Airplane and Partition — both of which I had started in 2015! — was mostly not lost, thanks to my backups.

Also Partition because the process of making it made me so angry at the source that I almost lost all motivation, when it was 90% finished.

The Things I Learned This Year

Back up my vid projects! Keep my laptop upstairs and not where thieves can see them (only helps with middle of the night robberies, but still).

Also, put more effort into vids. Resist the urge to just post it because I’m sick of working on it. It’s the difference between having a vid I rewatch for years to come and almost never rewatching it. This isn’t good advice for perfectionists, but I am definitely not one of those.

Planning for Next Year

My goal is three vids again this year. I managed it last year, which I’m so pleased about because I only made one vid in 2016 and two in 2015. But two of the three vids I made in 2017 (Airplane and Partition) had significant work done on them in previous years. So making three vids again this year is still a step up in productivity.

Also, Xena Warrior Podcast has inspired me to  return to my Xena vid plans, and has also given me courage to go ahead and make one or two of the darker Xena vids I’ve thought about. Not all vids need to appeal to everyone. More than any other fandom, I vid Xena so I can have the kind of vids I want to watch, and sometimes I want to watch a vid that explores the sad and difficult parts of that show.

I've been travelling a lot, which means plenty of time for reading but not much for DW posting.

What I've finished reading since my last post:

Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty. What I thought would be a fun, tight-knit murder mystery turned out to be a big story covering hundreds of years, major political upheavals, and some thought-provoking ideas about clones. I enjoyed this a lot.

Redshirts by John Scalzi. It was a fun book and made me laugh, but as my first Scalzi novel, I can't say it made me want to read more.

The Thessaly series by Jo Walton (The Just City, The Philosopher Kings, and Necessity). An interesting series, especially as an exploration of utopia. I never thought I'd read a book that would make me excited about the god Apollo. I found that even though I wasn't enormously taken in by the plots or characters, I couldn't put them down, and I think that's just because the prose is so damn readable. I came to particularly love the character Maia, and was bummed that she wasn't in the last novel.

Lavinia, by Ursula K Le Guin. I've had the e-book for ages, and after I finished The Just City, but before I realised there were two more novels after it, I was in the mood for more Bronze Age fiction. Le Guin's prose is as wonderful as ever, and I loved the use of the device that Lavinia -- and everyone else -- was a character in the Aeneid, not a historical figure. I find Le Guin's tendency toward gender essentialism more annoying than I used to.

The Small Change trilogy by Jo Walton (Farthing, Ha'penny, and Half a Crown). Detective noir/political thriller series set in an AU where the UK made peace with the Nazis and the US never joined WWII. In the first book, one of the POV characters is happily married to a man with the same first and last name as Mr. Adjacent, and it was very strange! At several points I thought I'd have to stop reading it because this character was under serious threat and I thought he might die. The end of the series was narratively satisfying but politically annoying. Between this series and the Thessaly series I have read two instances in Walton where the oppressed and their allies basically convinced those in power (or rather, a sympathetic faction of those in power) to stop oppressing them. I'm with Fredrick Douglass on that one.

What I'm currently reading

My Real Children by Jo Walton. Yes, I'm on a kick. I've just started this, but I'm hoping it will be more the intimate, character-driven story that Among Others was. As much as I've enjoyed Walton's books that I've read since then, none of them can hold a candle to that one.

Also, I'm slowly re-reading Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand by Ursula K Le Guin. I read it for the first (and only) time more than 15 years ago, so all I really remember is the overall feel of the book.

What I'll read next

I pre-ordered the new Philip Pullman book, La Belle Sauvage, and it will be arriving in less than a month. I told myself I'd re-read His Dark Materials first. Also, last year I purchased N.K. Jemisin's Obelisk Gate but decided to wait until the third book was out before reading the whole trilogy (including re-reading The Fifth Season). Now the third book is out but I haven't bought it yet. And finally, I have four books on hold from the library and I plan to drop anything else to read them once they become available. In other words, I don't know.

Free book-shaped space

I finally got my account set up to get e-books from the library and my book buying is plummeting (excepting the Le Guin haul, described below) while my reading rate soars. I'm so pleased.

I recently learned that Worldcon 77 (in 2019) will be in Dublin! I really really want to go -- Dublin is cheaper to get to than London and almost as easy -- but it's within a week of my 10-year wedding anniversary, when we are also planning a big trip. I know this is nearly two years away, but August always ends up filled with family travel, so I feel like I do have to plan this far in advance in order for it to happen.

I went to Portland, Oregon in August, for the first time since probably 2003. I went to Powell's and re-purchased many of the Le Guin books I'd gotten rid of in a misguided purge a few years ago. All the books I bought were used -- I prefer to buy used books anyway, but these were necessarily so since I bought out of print books. Anyway, my Le Guin library is slowly being restored. Also, I almost bought a few missing Earthsea novels, but then a guy at the checkout counter told me that next year they'll be releasing a new illustrated version of the series, so I decided to hold out for that. Speaking of, the fancy illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is coming out soon. I seem to be collecting them all, but I'm really curious to see how they'll do the later books, as even The Philosopher's Stone is huge and unweildy.

Last weekend I got to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child!

non-spoilery thoughts:

Holy shit, the staging, the effects, the music, the choreography, the whole sound design, were all fantastic.

I am SO GLAD I resisted temptation to read the script. I'd heard that the play was good because of the staging, performances, and effects, not the writing. And it was really obviously true, even not having read the script. (Of course this sucks for the many, many people who will never be able to see the play.)

Witch Please (possibly my favourite podcast of all time?) recently released a fantastic episode about Hannah's experience seeing the play.

( Spoilery thoughts. Very spoilery! )