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?

Day Nineteen: Favorite non-human female character

Cameron Phillips (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles)

Do you remember this meme? I'm sorry for completely dropping the ball on it, but things elsewhere got so hectic that I lost the will to blog. Anyway, I'm picking this meme up again today.

Can a cyborg be said to have a gender? I don't care, because I'm going with Cameron anyway. Certainly the other characters in the show call her 'she', and that's good enough for me.

One of the things I love about Cameron is that, just like the human characters on the show, she grows and changes, and lives, even if she is made of wires and metal and computer chips. Her motives are opaque, and the other characters frequently wonder if they should trust her at all. In Cameron the show's theme of the tension between fixed destiny and free will finds its purest expression: she was literally created for a single purpose (to kill John Connor, and, by extension, all the hopes of humanity), and then she was remade for another. However, as the show progresses, Cameron reveals that her old programming is returning, but that she is actively fighting it and choosing to defend John (and humanity) because it's what she wants to do.

Summer Glau, the actress who played Cameron, has said that she had her own interpretation of what drove Cameron and where her loyalties truly lay, but that she wanted to leave it up to the audience to draw their own conclusions. It's certainly possible to read Cameron's actions as antagonistic or at least as muddying the moral clarity of John's cause. However, I've always been of the belief that once Cameron developed the ability to override her own programming, she developed something close to a moral compass and the ability to perceive and understand emotions. Once she had these, she was unable to avoid empathising with human beings.

I've always felt strongly that where most stories of human and non-human interaction fall down is in the characterisation of the non-humans. Writers always feel that they have to make them essentially humans with fangs, humans with wings, humans made of metal and so on. This, to me, is wrong. Human morality is tied up with human mortality. If you live forever, if you're invulnerable, if your existence isn't even really living, why would you feel things in the same way as a human being? I prefer it when non-human characters regard humanity with a sort of baffled wonder, and if they grow in their understanding of humanity while never becoming human themselves. This is Cameron Phillips in a nutshell. Every note in her interaction with her human charges is perfect, and my only regret in her characterisation is that the show's cancellation meant viewers never really got a chance to know what moved and drove her.

( The other days )

Also, please check out my latest post on my reviews blog. It's an essay on The Fall, and I'd be interested to discuss it with you either here or on the post itself.

( Recs behind the cut )

For the history lovers out there, I've also got a couple of fascinating videos. The first is archival footage of my Cambridge college (and the wider university) during the 1940s.



The second is something I encountered just today, and is truly amazing. It's a virtual map that traces the growth of London from Roman times to today, and is the best thing I've seen on the internet for a long time. I'm getting a very Troy Game vibe from it!



Finally, I've noticed some people have been complaining about the latest changes to Livejournal. As far as I can tell, I've managed to avoid them because I never chose to have the 'new' friends page (if I wanted have to endure endless scrolling, I'll go to Tumblr), and I'm only seeing differences on the login page, and if I comment on other people's posts. However, I think there's a possible way to avoid them if you go to Display section of the Settings page, and select 'View all journals and communities in my own style' and 'View comment pages from my Friends page in my own style'. That may make things slightly better. The only other thing I can advise is to keep your friends page in the 'old style' as long as possible. I'm not going to change until it's forced on me.

This has been a somewhat disappointing and frustrating week, so aside from mentioning that the snow is finally starting to melt so I can finally run outside again, I'm not going to talk about life stuff that makes me unhappy and instead talk about fandom stuff that makes me very happy indeed.

( Once Upon a Time spoilers )

( Pretty Little Liars spoilers )

( Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, spoiler-free )

( Musings about the Wars of the Roses )

In other news, I simply cannot stop listening to this playlist:

...since I have a take-home essay to do, I'm here, on LJ. However, I've been very good with my internet usage today, and didn't allow myself to go online until I'd written 1000 words.

( Here be life, rants and raves )