Beyond Selidor

Today's post is going to be a quick one — just answering the current snowflake_challenge prompt, which is: In your own space, rec three fanworks that you did not create.



I'm going to use this post to rec three of my favourite fanvids of all time. By way of preamble, I'll clarify a couple of things relating to how I define 'favourite.' Firstly, I'm not an avid consumer of fanvids, and far less a creator (as I said in a previous post, any kind of fanwork involving graphics is basically like witchcraft to me) — I tend to engage with fanvids when someone I know has either a) created or recced a fanvid and b) it's in a fandom with which I'm familiar, so my engagement is somewhat haphazard. I have pretty clear things that I look for in a fanvid: I have to like the music, I have to feel that it fits well with the focal character(s) and the story being told in the vid (or is so outrageously incongruous that that's basically the point), and the editing has to be smooth enough that errors are unnoticable to my untrained eye. I also personally dislike fanvids that have dialogue from the source spliced into the video — I want it to tell a complete story with music and images, without needing source dialogue as a scaffold.

There are some well-known, beloved fanvids that get recced to everyone wanting to know the greatest hits of the medium, and I like them a lot, but I've steered clear of them here as most people will have had them recced before.

With that in mind, here is my totally biased, subjective, created-from-a-place-of-complete-ignorance list of favourite three fanvids:

( Vid recs )

Do you have any particular things you like in fanvids? Do you have any particular favourites?

Another month, another batch of TV shows watched. I think my viewing and reading was down in the second half of June, certainly compared to May. In any case, in this past month I finished watching (or watched in their entirety) the following:

Jane the Virgin: I had been trying to finish watching this for about a year, and the pandemic finally gave me the uninterrupted time I needed. I really, really love this show: it's such a celebration of the relationships between mothers, daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters, and of the parts of life that are viewed as unremarkable and unimportant because they happen to women (work inside the home, caregiving work, parenting), as well as of genres of fiction that are viewed as frivolous (telenovelas, romance novels, soap operas). Obviously the premise is inherently, and deliberately ridiculous, but at its heart, no matter what outlandish things are going on, this is a story about family, mothers and daughters, immigration, and home. I loved it so much.

Diablero: this is a Mexican show on Netflix about a team of demon hunters. These include an Indigenous brother and sister duo, a priest, and a young woman who can be possessed at will by demons and use their powers. The tone is deliberately silly (I feel it's what Supernatural could have been if it hadn't taken itself so seriously) and a lot of the mythology is extremely hand-wavy, but I love the core four characters, as well as the secondary characters, and found it delightful.

McMillions: this is a documentary about the McDonald's Monopoly scam in the 1990s-2000s. It's got a similar vibe to the Tiger King documentary that everyone was watching earlier, in terms of outlandish characters, exploitation, and that particularly American kind of scam that I find hard to define, but which involves bizarre attempts to get rich quick. It's possibly too long — I think it could have done with being two episodes shorter — but interesting if you like this kind of thing.

Glow: Matthias and I finished off the third season, which takes place in Las Vegas. I found it a lot bleaker than the preceding two seasons — it's as well written and acted as ever, I just felt it had an even darker edge of hopelessness than the seasons that came before it.

I also watched three films/film-length documentaries:

The Vast of Night: this is an alien invasion film set in 1950s New Mexico, shot in the style of films of that genre of that era. I found this really impressive — it's a very talk-y film (it's no coicidence that the two main characters are a telephone exchange operator and a late-night radio DJ), and relies heavily on the dialogue and atmosphere to do the talking. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Becoming: this is a Netflix documentary about Michelle Obama's tour promoting her memoir of the same name. I have read the memoir, and the documentary didn't really tell me anything new about her (it follows the same beats as the book), but what it brought home once again was not just how incredibly clever and kind she is, and what a good public speaker, but also how incredibly polite a person she is. No matter who she's speaking to, she gives the impression of her full attention, and she never forgets to thank every person she encounters (catering staff, security guards, etc). This shouldn't be remarkable in a public figure, but given the current state of the world, it made a huge impression on me.

Mad Max: Fury Road: Matthias and I couldn't figure out what to do on Saturday night, so we rewatched this. This is still a flawless film, it's still my favourite film, and I don't really think anything more needs to be said.

What have people been watching this month?

I was watching a documentary about Australian film last night, and George Miller appeared on the screen, and I was overcome with emotion all over again. I made Matthias pause the show, because I had to give words to what I was feeling: this overflow of relief and gratitude and astonishment that this white, boomer male filmmaker had understood, and depicted — mainly without words — how angry so many women are all the time,* and why we are angry.

(Incidentally, I met George Miller, decades ago when I was a teenager at some New Year's Eve party in Sydney hosted by one of my mother's friends. And there were moments of connection like that throughout the documentary, whenever various talking heads appeared: Sigrid Thornton, who once overheard my mother, sister and me talking loudly in English, with Australian accents, in a clothes shop in Paris, and advised me as to which winter coat I should buy out of the two over which I'd been deliberating. Gillian Armstrong, whose daughter? stepdaughter? was at school with my sister. Paul Mercurio, who danced with my aunt back when she was a professional dancer. Said aunt is now an economics lecturer. I don't move in particularly exalted circles. It's just that the arts/media/journalism circle in Australia is extremely small, and was even smaller and more incestuous when my parents and their generation were establishing their careers.)

*I mean, when I say 'all the time,' I don't mean I'm brimming with rage constantly, but it's buried there, and can be summoned at a moment's notice by a news item, an interaction, an anecdote by one of my younger sisters, friends, or a stranger, and back it comes.

The links this week are a bit of a mixed bag, partly because I've been somewhat distracted, and as a result this post is a bit shorter than usual.

Tade Thompson made some important points about literature and diversity, storified by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. I see Tade's thoughts as another part in the conversation I linked to last week.

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz had some further thoughts on the matter.

Zen Cho posted 'Ten Things I Believe About Writing'. There's also a great interview with her up at Kitaab:

I write stories as a way of answering questions.

Another post by Rochita talks about language, identity, and the process behind writing her latest published story, ' Bagi: Ada ti Istorya':

While thinking of language recovery, I found myself thinking too about what lies buried in language. What narratives had I chosen to erase when I chose to leave behind that language? What narratives could be pulled out of a text or a few lines or a word? What memory–what emotion would rise up from the use of a language that has lain dormant for so long.

More on language and storytelling: Samantha Shannon interviewed her Dutch translator, Janet Limonard.

I loved this new, bilingual Ghostwords post.

Kate Elliott had lots of thoughts about Mad Max: Fury Road, and Charles Tan storified them.

This review of Mad Max: Fury Road by Julianne Ross really resonated with me:

But where Fury Road really surprises is in its genuine respect for the five women Furiosa is trying to save. They are beautiful, generous and kind — deliberately feminine traits that have allowed them to survive as long as they have, and which the movie refuses to treat as a burden or incidental.

This Mad Max fanvid by jocarthage is simply breathtaking.

Happy Friday, everyone!