fray-adjacent

These are all Xena vids! After this I'll post 2022. Download links to all vids are available at their respective AO3 links.

Chicken Man
A vid about forgiveness and redemption but mostly about how wacky this show is. Song by the Indigo Girls.
AO3 link.


Exile
A vid about my complicated feelings about the Xena series finale. Includes significant use of non-source footage. Song by Taylor Swift.
AO3 link.

Freakum Dress
A vid about hot chicks with superpowers. Song by Beyoncé.
AO3 link.

+ I made a bunch of Xena vids, including finishing my Xena x Indigo Girls series. Vidding Xena has become so fun and easy, and I enjoy the interaction on youtube, but I fear my ideas are getting repetitive, so I'm ready to move on to other sources.

+ My friends' and my virtual Xena watch ended, and we started watching Farscape. We're just about to finish Season 1. So far watching with other people is helping me like it more, but I also remember in later seasons just...generally wishing that it was more of an ensemble show than it is. And also having John Issues, so we'll see if those hold for this rewatch.

+ I watched Everything Everywhere All at Once three times in the cinema and once more at home, which is unheard of for me. Is it my favourite movie of all time? Why yes, yes it is.

+ I quit my job (a Senior Research Scientist at a university) and am waiting for all the government approvals so Mr. Adjacent and I can start a childcare business. After years of angst, it turned out leaving academia was pretty easy.

+ I went to Xenite Retreat, which was wonderful. I did the leap of faith and talked to Jacqueline Kim, and the second was much more terrifying. Alas, it is very expensive, not just to attend but also to get to, and they are moving to an even more expensive location, so I will not be going again for many years, if ever.

+ I went to VidUKon in person, which was even more wonderful because it truly has become my fannish home. If only I could get these people to have a dance party, it would be literally perfect.

+ I attempted to manage my chronic hip pain, and seem to have settled on "sleep with pillow between my knees and my legs straight"

+ I took one last work trip, to Nairobi, which was great. I had been there before and I really like it there. I traveled a lot for work and Nairobi was one of my favourite places I visited

+ I restarted Animal Crossing after quitting my job and am playing pretty nonstop rn. I am trying to make an island inspired by Becky Chambers' solarpunk Monk and Robot series.

Title: Touch Me Fall
Fandom: Xena Warrior Princess
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Artist: Indigo Girls
Summary: A six minute meander through Xena's sexuality.
Content warnings: Flashing lights, jump cuts, stutter cuts. Sexualisation of violence. Blood, references to torture, and show-typical violence. White people in indigenous-coded clothing; orientalism; and cultural appropriation. A white woman killing a Black man.

Download | AO3 post

Fandom: Xena Warrior Princess
Song: Butterflies by Kacey Musgraves
Summary: Now I remember what it feels like to fly.  

I wanted to celebrate the sweet and lovely aspects of Xena and Gabrielle's relationship, as so many of my vids focus on the dark or morally complicated aspects. I love these two goofs.

Download || Watch on youtube || AO3 post

This evening I randomly decided to see what the first thing I ever posted about Xena was. And it was hilarious. This is what I wrote (c 2012):

Once I'm finished I can't wait to watch vids and maybe read some good fic: I've been vaguely spoiled on the ending and imagine it'll be a rare moment when I'll seek fic to directly contract [sic] cannon and be my fannon. But I don't see myself getting more fannish than that. I enjoy it, but don't think about it much when I'm not watching.

As I write this I am sitting opposite the framed Xena fanart on my wall, next to the Gabrielle candle. I don't wear necklaces much, but when I do it's a chakram. My favourite currently airing podcast is Xena: Warrior Podcast, and four of the last five vids I've made were Xena vids. Also my WIP is a Xena vid (sorry not sorry, VidUKon).

Previous years: 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

I've written an end-of-year vidding reflection post every year since I started vidding, and I want this year to be no different. But, once again, I only made two vids this year, so the usual meme doesn't quite make sense. Instead I'll follow the format I used a couple of years ago, a year when I only made one vid.

Vids I made this year:

Shed Your Skin: a Xena character study, made for VidUKon 2018.
Virginia Woolf: a Xena/Gabrielle vid.

Both of these are part of my 90s Lesbian Icon vid series (AKA Xena vids to Indigo Girls songs), which now has five vids.

What was your outlook on vidding a year ago?

Here's what I wrote at the end of last year's meme:

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.

Regarding the first paragraph: I didn't meet my goal of making three vids, and one of those vids (Virginia Woolf) also had quite a bit of work done prior to 2018. Then again, it is five and a half mintues long, so there was still plenty of vid to make.

On the other hand, the second paragraph is referring specifically to Virginia Woolf, a vid that, among other things, attempts to deal with the Xena finale, Friend in Need. Everything I said in the second paragraph still holds true, and reading it makes me glad I finished Virginia Woolf, because I know I'll re-watch it a lot. Also, I have so many more Bard!Gab feels now than I did before I made that vid.

Xena Warrior Podcast continues to keep my fannish feelings high, which helps a lot with motivation. If you like Xena, or are considering watching it, I highly recommend it. I particularly like that they bring so much cinematic/film industry knowledge to the podcast. And that they like a lot of the same things about the show that I do. :)

How was vidding life in 2018?

I spent much of the year without a good physical space for vidding. I need a setup that accomodates, as much as possible, my chronic wrist and back injuries. I also got sucked into other hobbies this year, things that were OK but ultimately less rewarding than vidding is. And I was busy with work, like most people are, and tired at the end of the day. For all of these reasons, I often went months without vidding at all. But when I did, I really enjoyed it and was motivated to work consistently on it.

The usual meme has questions like "what was your favourite vid?" etc, and I don't want to answer questions like that when I only have two vids. But:

• The usual meme asks what my favourite vid of the year is, and Virginia Woolf is possibly my favourite Xena vid I've made yet. Time will tell if it will beat Starkville.


• The meme asks about the sexiest moment.The first five to ten seconds of the Callisto section of Shed Your Skin is in the running for sexiest thing I have ever done in a vid.


• The meme asks which vid is most under-appreciated by the universe. Please excuse this moment of honesty/pettiness: As I've drifted a bit from LJ/DW-based vidding fandom, my sense of how well-received my vids are increasingly comes from Youtube views. Therein madness lies. I'm not the best vidder ever, but I think my Xena vids are pretty great compared to a lot of what's out there. But a lot of what's out there has orders of magnitude more views than my vids. I keep reminding myself of two things: 1) what many people want in a vid is not necessarily what I want to make. Plenty of Xena fans just want to relive their favourite scenes set to current music that they like, and that's fine. 2) *I* do truly enjoy re-watching my vids, and as said above, I started this vid series mainly because I wasn't finding the kind of Xena vids I wanted to watch. That's slightly less true now than it was in 2014, but still mainly holds.

What's the outlook on vidding next year?

I now have a home office with a desk that fits me, and so I'm cautiously optimistic that I will vid more in 2019.

I want to continue my Xena vid series. I also have an idea for The Good Place, and I plan to re-watch Season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery which might lead to vid ideas. It would be nice to make vids for shows that people are currently fannish about -- although Xena fandom is pretty healthy. I've had a few Steven Universe ideas kicking around for a while, but one of them got Jossed by a big reveal earlier this year. I find that the scheduling of Steven Universe makes it difficult to plan vids. When I vid a show that's still airing, I like to vid it during a hiatus. SU has lots of hiatuses, but you never know how long they're going to be. Also many of them are so long that I completely forget that the show is still airing.

Title: Shed Your Skin
Fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess
Vidder: fray-adjacent
Artist: Indigo Girls (feat Ulali)
Characters: Xena
Content Notes: show-typical violence, fast cuts. Feel free to contact me with questions about content.

Premiered at VidUKon 2018

Download (includes subtitles; delete the .srt file if you don't want them) | AO3 post | Direct YouTube Link

Three years later I have a third installment in my Xena/Indigo Girls series! Much thanks to Xena Warrior Podcast for re-igniting my enthusiasm. This was a WIP for way too long.

Title: Airplane
Fandom: Xena Warrior Princess
Song: Airplane (edited for length) by The Indigo Girls
Summary: Travelling with Xena is hard

Content Notes: Comical, show-typical violence. Feel free to ask specific questions about content.

Download | AO3 post

I do not have subtitles available yet for this vid. Lyrics for the edited version of the song under the cut below the embedded vid.

 

( Lyrics to the edited song )

This one is for endeni! I'm so sorry it's late.

I carry on about my love for my primary ship, Xena/Gabrielle, fairly often, at least for my level of dreamwidth talkiness. So I'll just say a few things that I love about this ship.

The first reason is that it's femslash, which I tend to go for more than het or guyslash (with the general acknowledgement that I'm not super shippy generally, and also the hopefully obvious caveat that I'm not criticising het or guyslash, just saying that it doesn't usually hit my buttons). Another reason: the characters have great chemistry together.

But the bigger reasons have to do with the kind of epic love story that Xena: Warrior Princess tells. Xena and Gabrielle's relationship is built on the kind of trust that comes from years of fighting alongside each other, seeing the best and worst in each other, and changing each other.

I also love that, while things like jealousy and insecurity exist in their relationship, it's not the primary source of drama in it (they're much too good at communicating for that, plus, like I said: years of trust). Their drama mainly comes from the ways that Xena's past comes back to haunt them. From their need to constantly negotiate the tensions between their love for each other, what kind of people they want to be, and what kind of people the world requires them to be.

I'd love to find an ace reading of Xena/Gabrielle, that presents their relationship as a powerful, emotionally strong and deeply committed asexual one. I think that would be cool. I think some of the Xena/Gabrielle "friendshippers" are probably homophobes and some of them are probably coming from a perspective like that one.

Other ships I like:

Root/Shaw from Person of Interest, my only antagonistic ship. Those two have amazing chemistry. (I stopped watching mid-S3, but goodbyebird's cap posts of Root/Shaw sometimes make me want to start again).

Buffy/Spike, but ONLY in season 7, and I like it as much as a non-sexual partnership as anything else. Their "I've seen the best and worst of you and fought at your side" thing is somewhat similar to Xena/Gabrielle in its appeal, though to a much lesser degree for me.

Mulan/Aurora in Once Upon a Time. I haven't watched since the mid-season hiatus last year, so my most recent thoughts on this one are that they disappointed me, but for a while there they were the butch/femme ship of my heart.

Willow/Tara, in seasons 4 & 5.

M'Lila/Lao Ma, in an AU where they both live. My only ship that isn't canon or super strong subtext, and entirely born out of vidding Become You and realising they'd be awesome together.

I feel like I should note that Tammi/Eric in Friday Night Lights would be my ship, except their ongoing conflict about how they prioritise Eric's career over Tammi's hits me way too close to home. It's well-handled by the show, but their relationship is often painful for me to watch.*

All in all, I'm a pretty boring shipper. I don't like relationship dynamics that seem unhealthy to me, I'm generally not into hateships, I am mostly delighted by loving, supportive, long-term (would not need to be monogamous, but usually are) partnerships. Especially if they are between women. I think this is related to why I have so few ships. ;)

*For the record, this is not an issue in my current relationship. I am one of the very few women scientists I know with a male partner who prioritises his career after mine.

Note: I made some changes to the curricula in June 2018!

It's no secret that I adore Xena, but I also recognize that it isn't super, um, accessible? Especially to audiences used to higher production value and less camp. So I've put together a set of "curricula" -- episodes to watch -- for varying levels of commitment. A number of people on my reading list have remarked in the last year or so that you'd like to watch or re-watch Xena. Well, now you can just watch the best if you want.

First things first: if you really don't like camp, you probably shouldn't watch Xena. You could maybe try my Top 5, but it probably just won't be for you.

On the other hand, if you loooooove camp but don't want to commit to the longest curriculum, feel free to comment and I can write up another list of favorite funny/campy episodes. My orientation is more toward a few of the dramatic plot arcs, Gabrielle's pacifism arc, and Xena/Gabrielle. Obviously this is a YMMV situation.

Also -- some of you probably know Xena better than me! If you see any lapses in good judgement, please let me know and if I agree I'll change it!

I've included content notes of a kind for some of these -- please feel free to ask for more details about specific episodes:

*r: racism of some sort. Included in this is depictions of groups coded as "primitive" or indigenous, generally played by a mix of indigenous, non-indigenous POC, and white actors -- however, this applies to any episode that the Amazons appear in, and I haven't noted it for all of those episodes, only the ones where I find it most egregious. I also note *r for orientalization of Middle Eastern or Asian characters.

However, it is common for Xena to disproportionately cast Maori actors to play "dumb" villains of the week (as opposed to epic antagonists like Caesar or Ares). I haven't noted this as it is very common and I haven't watched all of these episodes recently.

*dv: partner violence

*c: episodes that are particularly campy *and* not essential to an ongoing plot or character arc.

( Lowest commitment: Top 5 episodes for non (or not-yet)-fans )
( Low commitment: the highlights )
( Higher commitment: most of the important plot and character arcs, as well as the best stand-alone episodes )
( High commitment: all the major plotlines and character arcs; I've just removed what I consider the worst episodes. )