dancing barefoot

Battlestar Galactica: "The Hub"

2008-06-08T02:48:06Z

My favorite moment of last night's insane Battlestar Galactica episode was during the destruction of the Resurrection Hub, when Helo looked into a room full of Sharon bodies and seemed to realize what he was losing. The fact that the Sharon who loves Helo and had used her Cylon-ness to access Athena's memories was the one who encouraged him to go on, not to think about it, was also interesting to me. After three years of humanity struggling not to die, the Cylons had to ask for human help to do that exact thing. Helo already thought Athena was human, will his ensuring her immortality make her more so?

I felt myself resisting the paired Laura/Bill episode structure from this week and last week at first. I mean, I love the two of them together, even enough to have made a video about them, and in my general fannish life I love when episodes focus on my favorite pairings. But for some reason I shied away from putting one relationship so much at the forefront of this particular show. (First of all, where the HELL is Starbuck lately, seriously?) But in the bigger picture, it was about leaders being human and inhuman, and about the soul of a people being reflected in the soul of its leader, as that priestess was saying.

And love is the biggest picture sometimes. People, including me, seem to want to resist that, and to place meaning in a hierarchy where life and death and battles and heroism -- the public sphere -- is far above such domestic concerns as love. But the personal and private is what makes life and death matter to us as cosncious beings.

Anyway, I'm trying to ease my way back into fandom a little bit, so hopefully this journal will come back to life somewhat. I used to very much love having people equally obsessive to discuss my favorite shows with, and I hope to have that again.

Gossip Girl Vid: "Barbie Girl"

2008-05-21T01:40:43Z

Title: Barbie Girl
Music: Aqua
Fandom: Gossip Girl
Synopsis: "Life in plastic -- it's fantastic!" Blair Waldorf character study.

STREAM LINKS:
imeem
youtube

DOWNLOAD LINKS:
High Quality wmv (48 MB)
Low Quality wmv (8 MB)

Identity Change Announcement and New Vid

2007-07-07T02:00:03Z

Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Characters: Starbuck, Roslin, Six, Sharon, D'Anna
Music: Jewel, "Hands."
Summary: {...I won't be made useless...} A video about faith and femininity in Battlestar Galactica.

28 MB wmv
8 MB wmv
imeem

NOTE: I am vidding under a new name, ebstarr -- well, not quite new if you happened to frequent the ER section of TWoP between 2004-2005 -- from now on (and will most likely change my livejournal name soon (when I can afford the fee) because the current one refers to an inside joke with people I'm not close to anymore). I'm trying to phase out using "Kristen," but it's not my goal to like, confuse people... hence the announcement.

Vid Announcement: Farewell to the Old Me

2007-05-03T00:39:41Z

Fandom: Felicity
Artist: Dar Williams
Summary: Felicity character study. { and i used to think that things were meant to be }

HQ avi, 42 MB | LQ wmv, 10 MB | imeem

Vid: "The Body Breaks"

2006-06-03T14:08:48Z

Title: The Body Breaks
Fandom: ER
Music: Devendra Banhart
Summary: Romano/Corday. It whispers at first, but it ends with a shout.

High Quality (avi, 35.7 MB)
Low Quality (rm, 9.5 MB)

Devendra Banhart is, I think, a weird choice for vidding and common vidding sense would've told me to stay away. This is an odd, unsettling little ditty that hasn't much in the way of arc or climax to work with. I chose it for the lyrics and for the sheer oddness, which seemed to fit with the pairing and the focus character, Romano. I wasn't sure whether I was vidding for an audience of vidders -- people who probably haven't been into ER for years and who were probably never into this particular pairing -- or people who are actually into Romano, which is a fairly small demographic, but I mean, the narrative shouldn't be too hard to figure out: Guy gets chopped up by copter. Guy then gets smushed by copter. In any case, the hard thing about vidding to this was the lack of material to really work with; I was going on lyrics a lot instead of music or the beat, which probably adds to the generally disorienting nature of the song. I sort of see why a lot of people don't use songs like this. On the other hand, it was a fun experiment, and only a two-and-a-half minute video that took six days of work to make (generally they stretch into weeks and months).

Feedback and suggestions welcome. Thanks! :)

Vid Announcement: Soul Patch (Tony Almeida, 24)

2006-05-01T02:49:49Z

OK so I made my Tony video, finally. The entire idea was a pun on the song title (Soul) and his online nickname (Soul Patch). Only it was supposed to be a joke and then I ended up taking the actual vidding part so seriously that it turned into a real video. I'm like, insanely tired of it by now. The syncopation killed me -- I have no sense of rhythm, so figuring out where to cut was kind of torturous, and by torturous I mean Kiefer style, not the half-assed kind they do on Alias.

Right click on the picture and save :)

Fandom: 24, Tony Almeida
Music: Matchbox 20, "Soul"
Summary: {...there's always something tearing you apart...}

This is a huge file (78 MB) but I had a ton of trouble saving it to a smaller size because it's widescreen and my program didn't seem to like it. Here is a very LQ and badly-aspect-ratioed version for those who need a smaller size (17 MB). If anyone has advice please share!

Cutting on the beat wasn't the only difficult thing about making this vid. I sort of laid clips almost haphazardly, instinctually, and then figured out where the narrative lay and rearranged them to fit that. I used Nina and Michelle as counterpoint, which, I don't know why. And Virtuous!Tony alongside MorallyAmbiguous!Tony, which made more sense to me, but might seem incongruous to other people. I love him with Michelle, I really do, so even though this is from Kiefer's point of view I think of it as a basically canon vid, and I used lots of stuff with her. Tony and Jack are an odd pair, sometimes like Jekyll and Hyde, sometimes more like Jack 1 and Jack 2, and they probably lend themselves to slash pretty well. Whatever. My thesis here is not anything that deep, it's more like "Tony's cool! Look how he holds that gun! Whoa."

I don't know why we don't see more 24 videos. It's sci-fi and action-y, with cool camera movements, and plenty of people love it. *shrug*

On Veronica Mars: OMFG. Logan/Veronica fannishness is returning big-time. I think he's a jerk, I really do, but actually I totally don't care. That party scene at the fake-prom this week, and the scene before it when he watched her in the school hallway with those big dark eyes of his... gah. Color me slain.

I just don't understand why we have to choose between Veronica and House. :(

bemused face

2006-04-09T15:24:15Z

How has it been this long since I've been on LJ? Real life has been terribly... interesting. Not in a bad way, but in a wonderful, hectic, I never, EVER have time to be a geek anymore way. *shrugs* I'm still really into vidding, anyway. This whole week I've been working on a Tony video for 24, a kind of "R.I.P. Soul Patch" project. (What a sad death! No silent clock?!) I'm having mad trouble with it because I'm not really good with character studies. I feel a little more ambitious when I do one, as opposed to, say, a Pacey/Joey cheesefest, which is one of my favorite kind of vid to watch or make. There has to be more thought about parallels of motion and theme, more thought about pacing and structure, more use of the multiple layers of music (as opposed to "Can I make Pacey start to smile on this downbeat?" :) ).

I might start casting around for a beta. Only ... I really don't know people to ask, so I may not bother. I've been fairly reclusive since I stopped posting at TWoP and I wasn't very active there either. Haha. Anyway, it's just a thought. I'm posting basically to resurrect this journal, although I don't expect many people to read the above blathering since I am not on many active vidders' lists. *g*

Things I didn't post here when I made them:

My Yuletide 2005 assignment, How to Save the World. Odyssey 5, ensemble. Rating: R. Summary: "When all is over, we bequeath the world to its rightful death."

My last video, Look at My Life (wmv, 37 MB). (Also available at lower quality, 9 MB). Good Will Hunting, Will character study. Summary: "I'm a lot like you were."

OMGyuletide, and some TV stuff.

2005-11-14T18:36:26Z

OK I am beyond excited about my Yuletide assignment. I don't think I'll be able to start till November is over (my Nano is slightly behind schedule, in fact about 8000 words behind schedule) but yeah... I think I already had this fic in my head waiting for an audience. Yay.

In general I think I'll be fairly easy to please, except for the one caveat that I'm not a huge fan of smut. I do like R-rated stories, where people have sex but I can use my imagination as to the exact play-by-play. Other than that, any mood, light or dark, is fine, and I also don't have a problem with character death or anything like that. (Rape makes me mildly uncomfortable, though.) I mean, pretty much anything with the characters I requested would be an awesome fic, though - that's why I requested them, so whatever you write I will most gratefully read.

Specific fandoms:
Odyssey 5: Kurt and Angela are one of my favorite pairings and so rarely written that I have yet to find a fic I really love about them. I would love something that explores their relationship in the past or present, but it doesn't have to be the primary focus of the fic if you're into plotty or ensemble stuff.
Garden State: Mark broke my heart in this movie, he really did, and I'd love to see more of his backstory, private life, whatever. I'd prefer gen, or a ship fic of whatever persuasion that focuses on Mark's personality.
Man in the Iron Mask: This is the film that started my love for Gabriel Byrne because, basically, D'Artagnan is the man. I'm not really into slash or unconventional pairings in this fandom, but something about him and Anne would be cool, as would a gen fic.

OK, just a couple random ramblings on TV, the stuff and substance of my life. Grey's Anatomy hasn't been grabbing me in the same way this season. I can't explain the difference, but it's edging a little too close to Ally McBeal for my tastes - even though that was my favorite show ever at the time, I'm not so into stuff like that anymore. Still, the relationship between Burke and Cristina, and the manifold slashy possibilities between Cristina and Meredith and Izzie, and even Izzie's tentative cutesy thing with Alex (I do so love a well-written asshole)... that stuff works for me, so I still watch.

When did The OC get good again? I loved the twist where Taylor is in love with Seth. Awesome. Julie Cooper is evil and delicious. My friends and I are in love with quoting Marissa's line about how "I'm in public school! College is the LAST thing on my mind," because yeah, sure, Marissa, public school kids never ever go to college. Whatever! *g* (Six of the seven of us, with myself as the one exception, went to public school and now they're all doing quite well in the Ivy League, thank you very much.)

And I just found out a good friend of mine from elementary school, who I lost touch with over the last few years, is in Commander in Chief! I can't believe I am not watching that show but I'm definitely going to download all the eps now. Woot.

I'm alive...

2005-10-31T00:46:19Z

...and kicking. Sort of. I've been barely keeping up with TV, which is so sad. I think Gilmore Girls has had a few good moments this season - the scene where Rory told the priest that "the gift ship sailed quite awhile ago" comes to mind, and some of the stuff where Lorelai and Rory give each other longing glances - and Alias has been way, way uneven (shut UP, stupid weepy blonde not!Sydney, and bring Vaughn back!) - and Grey's Anatomy is meh except for my girl Cristina and, okay, fine, the Cristina/Burke stuff makes me kind of happy. But I am finding that if you actually take school seriously, which I wasn't doing last year at ALL, keeping up with that six-hour-a-week TV schedule can be HARD.

The other day I had lunch at my school's Faculty Club with some expository writing teachers. One wouldn't shut up about Desperate Housewives, and the two others were obsessive Lost watchers.

And there's like, what, 28 hours till National Novel Writing Month starts. I'm really excited about it, actually; I feel inspired, like I can do anything, even if it's maintaining my current pace of four reading-heavy courses, working out every morning from 7-8 (really!), AND write a novel in a month. Yay.

TV and more TV

2005-09-21T13:33:41Z

So I totally cut out of last night's big sophomore activity in my new house early so that I could catch the last half of Gilmore Girls and the new House ep. Yay for taking advantage of my undergraduate educational opportunities.

I'm really getting into this show again. Luke and Lorelai, of course, can't be the main draw anymore, but I like that the show has shaken up the Lorelai/Rory dynamic a bit, and that they're at least perfunctorily exploring how the new Luke/Lorelai relationship is going to affect the parenting. I like that Lorelai isn't trying to keep Luke away from Rory's upbringing the way she did to Max; it's at least one small thing that she's doing right in this relationship that she didn't do before. But this is definitely not a must-see thing for me anymore, unfortunately.

Mmmmm, this was one of the slashiest episodes yet. Wilson nearly broke my heart when he told House to go to hell. Cuddy is excellent as ever, and I thought I caught a couple of meta moments: House's comment about Chase's great hair, and his order to Cameron to stay away from the patient so she wouldn't get warm and fuzzy. If only he did the same at the beginning of every episode, the show would be perfect. Or Cameron could just, y'know, leave and take her ugly hair with her.

My House/Veronica Mars buddy has been reading Veronica Mars spoilers and telling me which ones he's read without telling me what they are. Our basic conversations go like this:
Him: "I know whether Logan dies."
Me: "Does he? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. OK, I wanna know. Is he dead? No, don't tell me." (etc.)
Him: "I know who's at the door."
Me: "OH MY GOD. It's Weevil isn't it? No, wait, they wouldn't be that obvious. I bet it's, like, Duncan. Is it Weevil? IS IT LOGAN? It's Logan. You smiled. No, don't tell me. Don't tell me. Wait, who is it?"

...

Conclusion: I need the new season to start IMMEDIATELY. And, yay, Lost tonight.

The first reality show I've ever been interested in watching.

2005-09-12T02:12:09Z

Once upon a time...

...when I was a really little kid, Amy Grant's "Every Heartbeat" was a big pop hit, and it was the first song in my life that I identified as one I liked and wanted to hear again. I got excited every time I happened to hear it (it was on the radio all the time, which was how I discovered it). I actually thought we had a tiny Amy Grant singing to us from inside the car radio and was extremely, privately puzzled as to how little Amy knew which car radio to get into before the moment when someone pressed "play" and she had to be ready to sing. I briefly theorized that maybe there were many little Amys, one in each car radio, but discarded this as highly insensible, since there's only one of each of us non-popstar types. The mystery seemed inscrutable, so I gave up on it and focused on what I did know, which was that I freaking LOVED that song.

And so, fifteen years passed. My mom bought me the cassette tape of Amy Grant's album Heart in Motion, I bought the CD to add to my new digital collection, I converted that collection to Winamp and my 30MB first-generation mp3 player, all those mp3s found their final resting place in iTunes and my beloved iPod, and somewhere in there I not only figured out how radios worked but became an mp3-blog aficionado who can cite self-consciously pretentious music tastes like the Arcade Fire and Antony & the Jonsons. But "Every Heartbeat" is still one of my favorite songs.

Now, I hate reality TV. I do. I've seen episodes or bits and pieces of many, ranging from the Apprentice to the Real World, Trading Spouses, Queer Eye, you name it, and I just can't get into them. It's not a deeply-held conviction, it's just... I like serialized fiction. I like to watch characters develop and relationships build. I like to get into it so much I start counting down the days of the week till I can continue watching the story. I like to finish an episode gasping, "Why didn't you KISS HIM!?" or "Oh my God, I can't wait to see how she gets out of this one" or "What the hell is your name if it's not Michael Vaughn?" You know, things like that. But Amy Grant is getting her own show. It's called "Three Wishes," and I guess she goes around... granting wishes. Or something. Anyway, I'm SO EXCITED. Seriously.

*skips off like the dork she is*

The OC

2005-09-09T12:01:28Z

Erm, yeah, how did Mischa Barton actually get worse at acting over the summer? Every time you think she's hit a new low, her voice has less intonation and her face less mobility and she keeps doing that thing with the lip-pouting and...

I'm gonna stop talking about her before I hyperventilate. There were three moments I enjoyed in this episode: 1) Ryan and Sandy hug. It would've been a typical, not-so-special moment if it had just been a fatherly arm around the shoulders, but Ryan does that cute little head-roll and just slumps into a hug, which was adorable beyond adorable. 2) Ryan carries Seth along the beach. Nuff said. (Stop KISSING, Ryan and Marissa! YOU HAVE NO CHEMISTRY.) 3) Ryan makes fun of Summer. That was fricking hilarious, and Ryan should be funny more often.

In conclusion, my transition from Seth girl to Ryan girl is definitely complete. Also, I can't wait till the shows that are still watchable premiere for the season. Too bad I have to miss House so I can get back to school in time to catch a few parties before classes start.

Pacey/Joey Vidlet: "You Move Me"

2005-09-04T14:14:28Z

I've just posted a mini-music video to my website. In case the artist's name sounds familiar it's because she's a fairly well-known character actress - has played sister to Luke Danes and Susan Lewis, among other things - and a fairly obscure singer of cute little folk songs. I actually found her on womenfolk.net, one of my favorite mp3 blogs where I go to satisfy my hidden yen for folk music.

Title: You Move Me
Artist: Kathleen Wilhoite
Fandom: Dawson's Creek
Summary: {...each time, I learn something more...}
Download: HQ (avi, 28.5 MB); LQ (wmv, 7.9 MB)

I had been reading some vidding meta to occupy myself during the long weeks of summer between the time when all my friends get to go back to school and the time when my stupid nonconformist school opens its doors to upperclassman (we can move in starting the 10th, but I'm not going to get there till the 13th). And I read about song choice, and why the music needs to have more than fitting lyrics, it needs to have a driving narrative. Basic stuff, but it made me think about the Pacey/Joey project that has been lingering on my desktop. It was... a love song. A ballad. No narrative, not really, and I'd created one with storyboarding but I knew deep down it was just going to be another Pacey/Joey video with cute making-out scenes, because that's pretty much all you get with those two. On the other hand, with the first verse and chorus I'd already made a fairly cohesive little argument about why she chose Pacey at the end of season 3: the challenges, the comfort, the sexiness, all of that. So I cut out all of the song that I hadn't vidded yet, which was going to go into the later seasons, and made this a mini-vid, because I was loath to let go of it altogether... and that's the long, boring story of why this video is a little short. (Not even that short, though, because the song is slow, but it's not a full vid, it's the equivalent of maybe a 500-word ficlet rather than a drabble/vidbite.)

I finished the first draft of the Good Will Hunting vid in THIRTY-SIX HOURS. It was fucken amazing. Of course then my computer died about ten minutes later (no joke!) and had to go be repaired, but I have it back and all is intact. Yum. I love my laptop so much, even though it hardly works and definitely doesn't have adequate video equipment. At least it's here. With me. *pets computer with creepy smile*

Just kidding. But I'm glad to have it back and jump back into the second draft of "Old Man."

vidding blather that no one will be interested in...

2005-08-30T12:18:00Z

I just started a new video after my stupid computer with its completely haywire video capabilities (more like lack thereof) took FOUR DAYS to rip "Good Will Hunting." It's to Lizz Wright's sexy little cover of "Old Man," because it's such a perfect song but Neil Young frigging gets on my nerves for reasons I probably don't have to explain. Anyway, my last video took literally three months for a first draft to be done, and this one is already 2 minutes out of less than 4, and literally I started it less than 24 hours ago. (I feel truly inspired and productive for the first time in months, which I think is because I finally got up the nerve to look for psychiatric help I'd needed for some time, so I'm happy about this on more levels than the fannish.) Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what makes some videos easier to make than others for me, and I've finally come to a conclusion that a couple of vidders from Vividcon were talking about: I'm never going to make the flashy videos. Even playing around with little overlays and colors - nothing major - in "Tunnels" was somewhat beyond my technical interest or capabilities. I'd rather work on emotion on the source level, maybe because it's less intimidating or maybe (working on not being self-deprecating here) because that's just my vidding style. This is not an original conclusion, people have been talking about it since the latest Vividcon, so basically it's just a "me too" kind of post, but whatever. :)

I also saw The Brothers Grimm and, yeah. People who tell you it's a silly or just plain bad movie are only saying things that mild because there are no words in the English language for what that movie actually is. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but on a "Why the FUCK did that lady just explode? Wait, there's a blob of mud eating that child? Oh, just kidding, that was gingerbread batter" kind of level. I love really bad movies because, let's face it, they're funny, and this took craptastic to a whole new level. Unfortunately Matt Damon and Heath Ledger definitely weren't as yummy as they should have been, because of their hair, but who cares? I sincerely recommend that everyone go see it, because you may never have a chance to see such crazyfun stupidity on the big screen again. EVER. (Well, until... next week, anyway.) I promise it's worth the ten bucks.

Random recs

2005-08-26T15:11:35Z

I picked up an advance proof of Salman Rushdie's new novel Shalimar the Clown at the bookstore where I worked this summer . I don't know enough about current events to draw the parallels as tightly as I should, but as far as I could gather it was a political fable. Anyway, despite my own lack of understanding, I found myself completely blown away by this book, which basically tells the story of a young lover's descent into terrorism, but with lots of interweaving and parallel stories about his family and the family of his oppressors and victims. Starts slowly, but it builds a smoldering kind of power and then just explodes on you in the last third or so. It won't be released till September 6, but it's way, way more intense than the other Rushdie novel I read a long time ago, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, although the latter was more accessible (I read it in middle school). Highly recommended.

And The 40-Year-Old Virgin is possibly the funniest movie I've seen all year. I thought I was going to have an asthma attack, no joke: and I'd actually been afraid I'd hate it. I don't like movies that take such obvious and pathetic targets as a 40-year-old virgin, but this one ended up being a much more generous movie where everyone is pathetic in their own ways, whether they get laid every weekend or have never gotten laid at all, and everyone serves as the target of a joke at different points. It was sometimes smart humor, sometimes stupid humor, but pretty much constantly funny and a little poignant. Oh, and who knew Catherine Keener was such a hottie? Er, I mean, for an older woman...

Vid: "Tunnels"

2005-08-09T16:02:18Z

Title: Tunnels
Music: "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" by The Arcade Fire
Subject: Veronica Mars' Logan (and a generous helping of Veronica on the side)

Please right-click and save this to your hard disk. :)

I'll probably post in a few days with a couple of dumbass meta notes on vidding that I've been thinking about during my MONTHS of working on this vid (on-and-off).

Freeversefic

2005-07-16T01:32:46Z

I've simply lost the energy to write nowadays, so I ground this out over the last week and I have a terrible feeling that it sucks. Nevertheless. Feeling properly humbled and challenged, I give y'all: my freeverse fic.

Title: Or the Damaged
Author: ebstarr4 / Kristen
Fandom: House, MD
Characters: Cameron, House

Notes: If anyone knows Cameron's dead husband's real name... I didn't think he was given one, so I made it up, but I could be wrong.

Poetry snippet:
Booze and bright lights
and compassion.
The Eightfold Path of Perfection.
And nothing is like the stillness,
the quiet code of his hand

i.

The night after Café Stiletto, Dr. Cameron had not slept at all.

This time, she woke gasping from a dream in which he, Rich, was alive and well, but both of them trapped in a morgue deep underground with a hospital above them, and a fire licking at the walls, and she turned to her side to cuddle up to her husband and let the dream wear away in his sleeping arms, but he wasn’t there.

It was the first time she had dreamt of him since she met Gregory House, and it would be the last time she ever woke believing him alive.

Chilled by the feeling that smoke was still scratching in her lungs, she stood up from her bed and made coffee, a pitcher of it, and drank four mugsful one by one. In the end, caffeinated to the point where her heart beat often enough for two hearts, she went to work two hours early and started catching up on the paperwork House never really made his minions do. Her muscles vibrated with tremors of exhaustion and caffeine and aftershocks from that terrible dreamt fire.

“Don’t shake,” she told herself, attempting sternness of a kind that she was able to maintain only with herself, the same tone of mental voice that accompanied the last burst on a five-mile run. “What is it about this dream that shakes me so much?” she wondered then, when her hands did not obey her command. “Any worse than the ones where I did watch him die, in ever more horrible ways – or the ones where I watched him crawl whole and unblemished out of the ground, in so many ways worse than mere visions of his death – or the dreams about worms in his eyesockets, or maggots in his mouth…”

She paused, her pen hovering at the big loopy “C” that marked her otherwise-unreadable signature. She knew the answer to this. “I must have thought that House would cure me of that past and instead, he tried to use it as a weapon to drive me away, knowing nothing at all about what I had with him, knowing nothing, really, about anything…”

Except about love, for wasn’t that what she’d seen in his eyes when he looked at his own past through the window? He hadn’t denied it, either, yesterday when she tried to communicate what she was beginning to understand. You are human, yes, you can love. But you do not want me.

She had never encountered this problem before, not really; though of course, there had been men who thought they loved her when it was only the beauty of her big doe eyes and delicately emaciated face that convinced them of whatever depths they wanted to see in her. House was not so easily fooled. She could tell, for she’d caught him looking and recognizing her beauty when she interviewed, that he wasn’t blind to her face; it was the fact that on the inside she was too pretty, too wholesome and unmarred despite
the “damage” he claimed to see, to push his buttons.

“Yes you can.”

Cameron turned around, horrified to hear his voice as if in response to her thoughts.
“I know it seems like it’s hard to finish a signature once you’ve done half of it, but if you’ve done it once you can probably do it again.” House leaned against the doorframe, backlit so that she couldn’t see his face. How long had she paused in the middle of signing this? How long had he been watching? “I’ll give you a lollipop,” he offered.

Cameron made a hieroglyph that bore only a vague resemblance to the second half of her usual signature. House came closer. Suddenly, after that conversation yesterday, he was able to look her in the eyes again; he hadn’t, really, since that date, and often had seemed to find it difficult before.

“Daylight savings is only once a year,” he cracked after a moment.

She looked up. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“They have pills for that,” he said.

“That’s not my way of dealing with things,” she said with slight, conscious emphasis on my.

“People shouldn’t enjoy their job so much that they come in at five-oh-three in the morning to do it.” At her startled face – how did he know exactly how long she’d been here? – he explained, “Janitors know all.”

“Why shouldn’t I enjoy my job?” she asked. “Because you haven’t enjoyed anything in years?”

“On the contrary, I enjoy a lot of things, and work is at the top of the list (with getting high a close second.) But you don’t want to end up like me, do you?” he said with a snide wiggle of his eyebrows.

“No, not really,” she said, abandoning the pretense at paperwork and slamming down the pen.

“Then get the hell out of here and go eat some breakfast.” He made a blatant appraisal of her thin body. “Have some bacon.”

She stood up, more angry than his comparatively mild snark should have warranted, and stalked out. The anger didn’t dissipate, her blood was still boiling, as she sat down at Starbucks for a triple espresso and a muffin, and she realized she was angry at herself.
She’d made a vow yesterday to give up, so why was it still like this? She was not in the habit of making promises to herself that she could not keep, and so she renewed this one, setting her teeth against a mysterious rebellion that threw the picture of House’s face before her eyes as she told herself this: I will not throw my heart again to the mercy of the dying or the damaged; I’ll regain possession of it and give myself only to someone whole enough to grow old with.

*

Three weeks after Stacy left town and four weeks before Cameron got engaged to a surgeon named Sam Colby, House went off Vicodin for good.

This surprised everyone, even those who didn’t know how much he loved and would always love his ex-wife, because the whole hospital had heard at least whispers about the affair that had destroyed a young marriage but somehow not resurrected an old one, and now that she was gone for good this time (no one knew that story, except Wilson, and he wasn’t telling) he had nothing left in his life but getting high.

It didn’t surprise Cameron, though. She had not been watching him, most definitely not been watching him because she loved another man now, but she couldn’t help but notice, working with him so closely, that he took the Vicodin only with a moment’s hesitation first, now. No less often at first, but with shame, and then one morning he came in and mentioned off-handedly to his three minions that he’d quit cold turkey.

“It won’t last,” Foreman predicted with his usual arrogant calmness. “He’s just reacting to something with Sela, but in awhile he’ll be back to his old self.”

“Maybe he’ll be his old self before he hurt his leg,” Chase suggested. “I heard he was pretty much the same, just not a junkie.”

“He’s not a junkie,” Cameron said instinctively, and her two colleagues laughed and rolled their eyes.

“Still nursing that crush of yours, are you? What about what’s’is’face with the Mercedes?” asked Chase.

“Just because I’m not interested in House anymore doesn’t mean I’m going to turn around and change my mind about who he is,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster with those two snickering boys acting like they were her twin thirteen-year-old brothers.

“He’s a junkie,” Foreman said. “He’s admitted it himself, last time he tried to pull
this stunt.”

“Actually, I think the word I used was ‘addict,’” House said, popping in behind them with his usual stealth. “Junkie’s kinda harsh, don’t you think? I mean, when I hear junkie, I think about old scruffy guys living in cardboard boxes. I’ve got an M.D., don’t you think I earn enough money for a kind euphemism?”

Cameron flushed and found herself wondering what she seemed to spend her whole life wondering: how much House had heard. His blue eyes, as they darted in amusement from Foreman’s shit-eating attempt at nonchalance to Chase’s hangdog embarrassment and avoided Cameron altogether, gave away nothing more than they ever had.

*

Dr. Colby, more affectionately known as what’s’is’face with the Mercedes, had an emergency appendectomy that night, and Cameron was too tired to wait around for him. With the resignation so often seen on the faces of doctors who dated within the hospital, they agreed to push off the long-awaited night in with each other that they’d planned. Tomorrow night they said, but it would probably not end up working out till next week.
Such was the life.

“It could be worse,” she said to him with a smile; “at least we do have each other to reschedule with.”

Sam laughed and kissed her forehead. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather postpone than you, Allison.” (He was one of only two or three people in the hospital who called her by her first name; it was one of the things Cameron liked about him, the way he said her name differently when they were alone.)

Still, unaccountably, she had thought of House when she made the lighthearted remark, and felt guilty; it wasn’t funny to be lonely, it wasn’t good to be smug when you weren’t. And she wasn’t, naturally.

On her way out from the surgical lounge she realized with an irritation made mild by numbing exhaustion that now she had no excuse not to read up on lupus for a case House was working on. Forcing herself not to think about how lovely it would be to sleep for twelve hours straight right now, she picked up a coffee from a vending machine and swung towards Diagnostics.

The place was almost deserted by now; Chase and Foreman had gone home, and most of the offices were closed and unlit. It was because of this, not because she was specifically looking, that Cameron all the more easily noticed House standing in his office, his back to the glass wall and his body facing the corner, holding a small object in his hands and staring at it.

Cameron shoved open the door, feeling brave and stupid, knowing she was interrupting what no one should witness.

“You’re never the last to leave,” she said, attempting lightness. “What’s special about tonight?”

He had tensed, clearly angry, when he heard the door open; at the sound of Cameron’s voice, he relaxed again and turned to her, holding the Vicodin bottle loosely but not secretively in one hand.

She stared at it, realizing that he’d privileged her with honesty, and unsure what to do with confirmation of what had been obvious but could have been ignored. “Have you taken one yet?”

“No.”

“…Are you thinking about it?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for forty-eight goddamn hours,” he snapped. “I’m tired of thinking about it.”

Cameron stepped closer and, as always, House began to flail for a way to back up, to look somewhere else, to avoid proximity to his beautiful intern. But she only held out the coffee she’d bought. “Trade?”

He squinted, irritable.

“Your pills for my drink,” she said.

“Caffeine is child’s play compared to drugs,” he commented sarcastically.

“I’ll trade you,” she repeated more softly. “Let me keep the pills.”

House thought a long time about this, and when he handed over the pills it was suddenly and wordlessly, with a slight shrug. “Flush these,” he directed her in a low voice, “or something. I don’t care, I can get more anyway.”

“You won’t get more,” she said with certainty.

“Yeah,” he said with a short laugh. After a pause he added, “Good night.”
Cameron stepped back a little. “House—”

He lifted his eyebrows, waiting.

“Well, I… I’m sticking around to do some research tonight,” she said.

“Thanks for the update,” he said, hearing and answering the subtext with the mercifully direct cruelty he saved for Cameron.

“OK. Good night,” she said, making a hasty retreat from his office. Oh God, there was Sam still to think about, and this could lead nowhere, could not help him, could not end well for her.

Behind her, he leant on his cane, heavily. The hospital was still, and dark.

ii.

Ginger Callahan was a Southern belle in her third year of undergrad; still sounding exactly as she’d been brought up to sound in her Louisiana hometown, she came into the hospital wheezing, with symptoms that had been puzzling other doctors until one morning she woke up blue in the face. None of this made her particularly special – certainly those who had spent their early years training with House had seen stranger things on a daily basis – except that she was deadly afraid of doctors, and this made Cameron impatient.

She had, after all, enough to deal with, without patients who didn’t want her help getting better. There was Sam, who had been distant lately (Cameron wasn’t stupid – she knew the difference between the ups and downs of a marriage and something else, and this was the kind of thing that might break them if she cared enough to find out why he kept coming home so late) and there was the new intern in immunology, Janice Brewster, who was irritatingly earnest and cared far more about the patients than their medicine (a fault that needed to be nipped in the bud early).

And there was the problem without a name, the one that had made her throw up three mornings in a row this week, undignified, in the hallway bathroom that was fortuitously three steps from the door of her corner office. (On the third morning, she’d run into House as she came out. Did that man know everything simply by looking into people’s eyes, or did he merely have the gift of making them feel more conscious of their deceptions? If he knew, he was the only one, for she hadn’t told Sam yet. She might never have to, if she did what she thought she might.)

She saw that the time was noon, exactly when Sam went on break for lunch when he could (he was a creature of habit, of the clock, her husband, a mild tic she hadn’t noticed till she lived with him – meals weren’t enjoyable when they weren’t on the clock).

“Sam?” she asked when the phone picked up.

“Hi, honey,” he said in the same tone, the same cadence with which he always said “Hi honey.” “How has your day been?”

He was so relaxed… so normal. What had she needed, reassurance that he hadn’t run back for a nooner with some blonde on their couch? Cameron faltered. “Good. Yours…?”

“Not bad. Appendectomy. The usual.”

“Good.”

“Are you feeling less tired today?”

“Not really.” She fingered her stomach gently. “But I think I’ll get better soon.”

“I’ll make you some soup tonight.”

“Thanks, Sam.” She had a sudden thought – image, really – a child, sick in their house; Sam, serving him homemade soup, childishly proud in the way men were when they made food by themselves. “Sam?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

The door opened. Brewster poked her head in – “Dr. Cameron?”

“What?” Cameron snapped.

“Ginger, the wheezing in 2, she wants to talk to you. She’s really freaking out.”

“Tell her I’m going to cure her, not hold her hand,” Cameron said curtly. “I’m on the phone right now, Dr. Brewster. Pay closer attention next time.”

Brewster nodded timidly and left; when Cameron went back to the conversation, she’d lost her nerve to say anything true.

“You take good care of me like this,” she finally said. “Thank you.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said, but the note of caution in her voice had infected his. They hung up after a moment’s pause, each waiting for the other’s goodbye to set the tone.

When she looked up House was watching. He’d heard it all, she had to assume. As always, the bastard.

“I assume your stomach flu is going to cure itself pretty soon,” he said.
She could not answer him, could only stare, as surprised by his cruelty as she always was in practise despite expecting it in the abstract.

He leaned against the doorframe; she imagined he must feel sorry for the remark, but he didn’t indicate it except by the change in posture, and that might mean nothing. (He still threw her off-balance, even though with everyone else she had learned first to project confidence and then truly to have it. She overanalyzed angles of glances, twitches of mouth muscles, everything, anything.) “You were harsh with Brewster.”

“I—”

“But that’s not what intrigues me. That’s just good sense, after all you can’t boss them if they want to take their own initiative all the time (very inconvenient). But you were harsh about the patient, too.”

“I learned it from you,” she said, trembling with the urge for tears.

“And very little else,” he joked mildly.

She stood up because her stomach was rumbling again, but, holding off the sickness for a moment, walked deliberately towards him and looked him in the eyes from a mere twelve inches away. He was daring to approve of her, that man, daring to telegraph that he liked the way she’d turned out after all, for he had lost with Stacy the gift to love and was left with only the ability to appreciate whatever in other people was like himself.
There was a twinge in his expression, too – small, but it was there – and she wanted to believe it was because he was remembering who she used to be, and perhaps missing that unadulterated sweetness a little. (Projection, Dr. Cameron. He doesn’t miss it; he isn’t that kind of man.)

House looked down at her stomach and back up to her eyes and broke the silence with, “I would say I’m happy to see my little Allison is growing up, but the word ‘growing’ is just too cheesy a pun, don’t you think?”

She straightened and said slowly, hoping to give her words the impact his had had on her, “You’re happy to see me be cruel once in awhile because if other people fail themselves once it makes it less terrible that you do it to yourself every day. Oh, you quit the Vicodin, but you’re just as pitiful and lonely as you were when you were popping your stupid pills every hour, so don’t pretend that my mistakes make me your equal, because I’ll never stoop that low.” She saw that she’d hit a mark somewhere, although it was as ineffectual as her weapons against him always were and made him merely blink as if to avoid a bug flying in his eyes.

“Excuse me,” she said then. “I have to go be sick now.”

*

The worst thing about black-tie functions, Cameron decided as she stared in the mirror, had to be the fancy shoes.

Dressing up she could certainly deal with; she’d always enjoyed looking good and, today of all days, she needed to look good. Screw him, screw all of them. But her feet hurt like hell, and standing tall was necessary, back straight, posture elegantly upright. Even breathing became a chore when your spinal cord hurt this much.

“Oh God,” she moaned in the mirror, melodramatically, and took another swig of the Scotch from the glass she’d placed in easy reach on the bathroom counter. (The Scotch in question was her fourth, but who was counting?)

Above her she could hear footsteps and some laughter, and she closed her eyes in self-pity, then had to reach out to hold the counter in order to keep her balance. The bathroom was silent – she’d searched out the one in the basement, which was one room rather than a proper public bathroom with stalls, because she was still sober enough to know that this was not how one was supposed to behave at benefits for one’s own hospital.

“Nor is one supposed to have AFFAIRS with one’s wife’s subordinate,” she thought, tears welling again in her eyes until she pressed her fingers to just the right spot to wipe them without wiping off the makeup as well. She’d known for so long and allowed herself to know without saying it, but when she caught them… in her own bed, no less, when she came home early from a scheduled conference… and with Janice Brewster herself, a bitter
pill to swallow… it was different than the knowledge in the abstract.

Cameron leaned closer to the mirror, examining her face. Perhaps Sam had been like all the other men, falling for her beauty and imagining he was falling for her soul. Or, worse, perhaps he fell for whatever in Janice was an echo of the woman Cameron used to be, before she discarded it in pursuit of a lifestyle she thought was more realistic and hardened herself to the appeal of merely healing people, which was what she’d originally loved.

Her face had lost none of its delicacy with the five years that had passed of their marriage, but she was reaching the point, she thought as she ran her fingers over her cheekbones and felt the slight loss of tension in the skin, where instead of beautiful she was “still beautiful.” She’d wasted the last of her cheated youth on pursuing the clarity and managability that she’d thought would come if she learned to be realistic rather than idealistic. And now she was merely older and harder, and no more sure of anything than she’d been the night she set herself on this path.

She should go back to working the crowd at the benefit, and quit the self-pity, she thought. “Oh…” she groaned when she tried to move and contemplate returning to the crowd, where Sam himself was circulating – they’d decided to play it off for the night, not to let anyone know of the catastrophe that had happened only last night. “I’m too drunk to talk to people…”

“And too drunk to lock the door,” added House from his position in the doorway.
She spun around, horrified. “How did you find me?”

“Someone saw you disappear with a full glass… which is now not quite so full,” he remarked as an aside. “Most women choose the ladies’ room to cry, but you’re not the public type, so I figured this bathroom was the place to go.”

“As can you see… as you can see,” she corrected herself, “I’m not crying.”
House examined her closely; her eyes were unarguably dry. “I haven’t seen you cry in years,” he said. “Odd – once there was no off button for the waterworks with you.”

“Things change… I don’t cry.” She remembered to hate him then. “And I definitely think you should go away.”

He paid no attention to this and came inside, locking the door. “How’s the hubby?” he asked.

Cameron’s mouth fell open, partly in shock that everyone already knew, and partly in disgust, that he would try to tease her about this, of all things… “That’s not funny,” she said. “If you’re going to be an asshole and try to rub my face in this, then you might as well just leave.”

“So I am right,” he remarked without any real satisfaction in his tone. “You know, I didn’t know for sure if there was any juicy gossip to be heard, although you just told me there was with that quaintly angry response – but a woman doesn’t get drunk and stare at her crow’s feet in the mirror when she’s worrying about her career.”

“You think I have crow’s feet?” she gasped.

He lifted his eyebrows, case made.

“There’s another woman.”

“There always is,” he said, almost sympathetically, and came closer, standing just behind her and watching her face in the mirror.

“Janice Brewster.”

“Now, that is juicy.”

“You’re not helping. If you want to help you should go get me another Scotch.”

She held out her glass towards him and he took it instinctively, then held it away from him as if to refuse it. Cameron met his eyes in the mirror, wondering if he’d do it, if he’d get her drunk so he could watch the fireworks, or if he’d do something unexpected, pull another rogue trick out of thin air and save her as if her deadening sadness were just another mysterious curable ailment.

He seemed caught off-guard for a moment by the pleading in her eyes. All at once the part of Cameron that was still coherent realized that she’d given herself away, that in that glance she had revealed how she’d felt about him all along.

House opened his mouth, but seemed, for once, unsure of himself. Finally he said, putting down the glass, “I’m all for substance abuse, but I don’t really like dealing with sloppy drunks, so why don’t you stick with that one and then stop?”
She looked down, swirling her finger around the rim of the glass to make a high-pitched, musical noise. “You wouldn’t have to stay for the sloppy part.”

“Not your call,” he said.

She looked up into the mirror to meet his reflected gaze, still circling her finger around the rim, a melancholy accompaniment. “So… you’d stay.”

Her voice cracked a little on the last word, and House reached in front of her to stop the nervous motion of her fingers around the glass. It was an oddly tender gesture and the first time, she realized, that he’d ever voluntarily touched her in all the years they’d known each other. Everything in her focused on that long-absent contact, on the touch, the softness, of his hand.

But House withdrew and the moment was over, whatever it had been. “Benefits are boring,” he answered quietly.

He was so close to her now, and she wanted to plead with him: come closer, closer, hold me now and erase this godforsaken night and last night and all the nights before this that I’ve wasted. But he would never come closer than he was right now; he did not love her and he was not fooled by her beauty, and this was it, this was all she’d ever receive from him.

Cameron bent her head in defeat.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

2005-07-12T15:07:28Z

Yesterday I finally managed to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith (I have free passes that only get me into old movies, or I'd've seen Dark Water instead... and I can't afford an actual $10.00 movie while trying to pay rent and feed myself on the salary of a part-time retail worker!). The movie was actually really fun, mainly because everyone in it was pretty. The car chase scenes and most of the gunfights were definitely undistinguished, but I'm not gonna lie, the parts where fighting turned into foreplay were kinda hot, and the domestic stuff was amusing. Also, Adam Brody was in it, so that bumps it up a notch, and Cameron from House (what's the actress's name? Eh, I have no idea) had a bit part as well. My verdict: totally worth the subway fare.

Oh, and I can't wait to see Flightplan... I can't actually decide who I have a bigger crush on, Jodie Foster or Peter Sarsgaard. (Someday soon I really hope a movie will come out in theaters around here that's worth seeing for more than the hot actors...)

I am sick and need help.

2005-07-08T12:22:33Z

I was sorting my CD-Rs the other day and came up with piles for documents, musics, etc... and with a pile for each of TWENTY-ONE different TV shows. The list:

Shows I actually collect and watch: Alias, ER, Gilmore Girls, The OC, Daria, Dawson's Creek, Joan of Arcadia, Odyssey 5, Grey's Anatomy, Boston Public, Ally McBeal.

Shows I have collected in order to marathon this summer: House (which I've now seen all of, I guess, and which owns my soul), Lost (not bad so far, up to ep 14), 24, Farscape, Miracles (have seen and liked pilot), Farscape, Moonlighting, Wonderfalls.

Shows I have a couple episodes of: Rescue Me (because a friend of mine from elementary school was on it), Friends.

As the title of the entry says? I'm SICK, I tell ya. The other day I told someone I watch a lot of TV; he said, "I'm sure it's not that bad. What do you watch?" I was about 30% of the way through the list when he lifted his hands and said, "All right, all right, you do watch a lot." Heh.

Video update: I have finished a first draft of my Logan/Veronica vid. Yay. :) Also have started a Pacey/Joey for a break from the more complicated editing of the L/V one (what? they were cute...!).

My thoughts go out to everyone in London.

ebstarr4 @ 2005-06-17T17:36:00

2005-06-17T21:44:10Z

Mmmm, summer.

OK, so I'm working two jobs and dead tired, which is why I haven't been much on LJ and I'm going to catch up on commenting stuff this week... maybe. :)

Shows I'm marathoning this summer:

1) Lost (up to episode 13 so far). Oh my God so good. Sayid is far, far ahead for my favorite character; I'm disappointed that there are no women characters that I truly truly love, but Kate could be worse and I suppose I like what I've seen of Sun. It's just that none of them have any fire. However, because I am so willing to have Sayid's babies, I hardly notice the absence. :)

2) 24. Only seen two episodes so far. I don't understand why the guys in my dorm tell me it's better than Alias because, um, it's not. However, it should be fun and with 4 seasons to catch up on... it'll actually fill my summer.

3) House. I got into it through a friend who's dead obsessed, and I don't really share the obsession, but it's funny and anyway I've loved Lisa Edelstein since she played the transvestite on Ally McBeal. (In fact, I still think of her as Cindy and hear the shout, "SHE HAS A PENIS!" every time I see her. Hopefully with more House that will change.)

4) Miracles. I saw this interesting vid "Darkness, Darkness" a couple years ago and always meant to watch the show, but after downloading and burning all the eps I forgot to do it. I should have time this summer, though.

I am all but a minute from finishing my latest vid... yay.

Vid Critique: Kid Fears

2005-06-10T17:18:43Z

Ehhh, I’ve been away from lj for SO. LONG. I don’t know what it is, I think not having AC around here makes me too lazy to do anything but watch downloaded TV or sit at the beach. Anyway, I swear to myself I’m going to keep up this journal this summer.

And I finished the second vid critique for the vid feedback challenge… below the cut, for shalott’s “Kid Fears.”

Title: “Kid Fears”
Artist: Indigo Girls
Vidder: shalott / astolat
Fandom: Star Wars
Page where vid is located: http://www.intimations.org/vidding/

Wow, I seriously, seriously have to apologize for the lateness of this. I keep forgetting I have a second critique to do, and that’s very bad because astolat actually wrote a critique for me, and it was so amazing that I feel way ashamed for my tardiness and what’s probably going to be a clumsy effort in comparison.

Anyway, first things first, this is a gorgeous vid. I flat-out adore it, although to be honest I’m not sure I totally get it (more on that later). I thought the sections with the light sabers were particularly good because they make use of contrast between a more dynamic, colorful shot with the sabers and then a static close-up of a face either with overlay or dissolve. The overlaying itself is judiciously and subtly used as are some of the more unusual transitions, like a few wipes etc. Also, even though the song was slow and the cuts matched that pace (as they should), the video didn’t drag at all – even when I hit somewhere around thirty viewings trying to find constructive criticism for this.

I did have issues with the framing story of the video, first of all. I don’t know canon that well (have seen four out of the six movies, but find it hard to pay attention… it’s not my genre), so I had to read it online to realize that Natalie Portman is supposed to be looking into the future of her twins. I guess to me that structure usually indicates flashback, so it’s interesting that the vid played with expectations that way, especially given that I don’t think the character can in fact see the future (although I could be wrong about that too). On instinct I guess I interpreted the song to be about Luke and Leia’s “kid fears,” rather than Natalie Portman’s fears, but the beginning and ending seem to frame the video from Natalie Portman’s perspective, which would probably indicate that I’m wrong. Anyway, I thought I’d point it out, that I found it somewhat confusing.

Also, I think astolat asked for opinions on balancing the Luke and Leia stories. I have no objections to putting them both in there, actually, and the slant towards Luke, while I wouldn’t say it’s not there, is not distracting in itself. However on the whole, while the parts of Leia’s storyline that involved Han Solo were just as strong as the Luke stuff, I guess I thought there was an overuse of reaction shots or at least context-less close-ups of Leia, which is problematic for someone who doesn’t know canon very well (ie, yours truly) but might not be for someone else. That said, these slight quibbles really didn’t detract significantly from my admiration of this vid.

A couple more specific notes:

0:25-0:27: I found the overlap of the heads during the overlays a little bit distracting; it was the only place I thought the overlaying could have been improved, maybe by a better selection of clips or by moving it around some in the frame.

0:35: “Flowers for the ones you know” is an interesting line for a shot of Darth Vader… I ended up interpreting it as flowers on the grave of the younger, innocent Anakin who turned into Darth Vader…

1:22: I like the shot of Leia and Han in front of the fire, really well-used, and actually this whole section is very cool the way smoke and fire keep repeating; a nice ominous shot of Darth Vader at the top of those stairs, too.

1:30: Darth Vader drawing his sword on the “oh, oh, oh.” One of my favorite parts, a nice way to open into the meaty part of the vid.

2:32: I like this, where the planet/whatever it is gets zapped (?) – another thing I thought this vid did really well was using footage like this, stuff on the cosmic scale, to balance out the human stories.

3:33: The beat whore in me loves the swords clashing on each drumbeat.

3:40: Luke sort of sighs in post-battle exhaustion and relief – a nice marking point for the intense section of the video to give way to the quieter ending.

I had seen shalott’s “Uninvited” before, but not any of the others until now. I’m very glad I did see this as I think I learned more about vidding by watching it over and over than shalott will learn from my critique. ;) If you do happen to see this, shalott, I’d love to hear your response!

Vid Critique: Somebody Says

2005-05-15T20:46:19Z

Oh god, this was so hard. I've read so many wonderful critiques through this activity and now I feel hopelessly inadequate posting this one of agent_alpo's Donnie Darko video "Somebody Says," located at her website Ribbons Undone. I have no idea if I'm on target with anything I'm saying -- but here goes -- :)

First Overall Impressions
I am a huge fan of Donnie Darko, and I appreciated the way that you made use of the atmosphere/mood of the film in the vid as well as having a narrative clear enough for me to follow. (My biggest flaw as a vid-watcher is being mentally challenged with interpreting narratives that are even remotely opaque.) I think your depiction of the tangent universe and the circularity of time is excellent and clear enough for someone who doesn't know the source. Also, I liked the light/dark, night/day contrasts you had going through the whole thing.

Focus
This is probably going to sound completely contradictory, but even though I think the story/plot here is clear and well-done (like I said above), my biggest problem with the vid is synthesizing the focus of it. In the beginning and end it seems to me that the point is Donnie and his aloneness: ie, saving the world by himself, alone in his heroism, fear and eventual death. That I get, but what I had trouble with was understanding how exactly the other people in the video fit into that point, and I think that relates to song choice. The feel of the instrumentals works very well with the video, but I didn't feel that the lyrics really worked. Sometimes the "somebody" who keeps saying "I love you" and "I need you" seems to be Frank, but why is it Frank? And at 2:31 both the "I need you" and the "somebody says" fall on a long shot of the Sparkle Motion dancers, which puzzles me further, because they don't have very much to do with the interaction between Donnie and Frank. Also, at times when the song falls into an "I" narrator, I can't tell whether Donnie is the "I" narrator (making Cherita blush at 2:05-2:12, for example), or whether the "I" is Donnie or someone else (at 2:19, who is the little clone?).

But there are many great vids, like heresluck's "Superstar" just to name an obvious example, where POV is even murkier than this and it doesn't detract from the vid... maybe my real issue is that sometimes your focus itself isn't clear. There are whole sections that Donnie is not in, so maybe he's not the focus at all, yet the first and last sections definitely suggest that he is. I know your video description on your website says "General overview of Donnie Darko," so I suppose that might be why you're putting in all the characters, but I think videos need more of a point than just retelling a movie... and as far as I could tell your point ran along the "every living creature on earth dies alone" idea, but in relation to Donnie. So the digressions into those other characters often worked as far as atmosphere/editing goes, but I wonder if they were important enough to the vid as a whole to merit their inclusion.

Technical
I love the white flickers. Love love love. They had a kind of unrealistic, this-is-a-tangent-universe-about-to-collapse feel to them, which is obviously appropriate. :) I know a lot of people are iffy on the use of text in vids, but I'm not a huge stickler for rules like that, and I thought that you were justified in spelling out what, exactly, Frank says in the beginning of the movie; plus, several other shots you used had diegetic text anyway, in fact Donnie Darko: the Director's Cut had more text onscreen than any other movie I can think of off the top of my head, so why not add your own? But to be honest I thought the actual execution of it dragged what with all the cutting between similar shots of Donnie and Frank, and I think the section could have been sped up or made more interesting. In general I liked the editing in the sections with faster cutting, but several sections were fairly slow, in particular that first one, as well as the shot of Sparkle Motion and Cherita Chen, and other places where the clips went on without cutting at all for unusual lengths.

0:08: A sound glitch (which occurs a couple times later as well)
0:18: I think if the cut came a beat or two later when the sharper drumbeats start it would be more effective.
0:56: Ditto, I think the cut was a little off and if it came exactly where the style of the music changed it would be a really great transition-into-daylight moment.
1:27: I really, really like the use of the progressive mosaic/blurring effect here.
1:38: I liked the idea of having the chandelier's sudden motion come on the big beat. But again, it felt like the motion was a little bit out of synch with the beat.
1:52 and 1:54: A couple of stray frames.
1:55: I like the transition into a quieter shot with the quieter music, without losing the eerie disjointed feeling at all. This is one of the places where a longer shot without cuts did work for me.
2:40: Love the way the edgier music correlates with nighttime/darkness. This is an especially good contrast between bright innocent girlies and Donnie waking to another hallucination of a malevolent six-foot-tall rabbit.
2:40-2:56: At first I was thrown by having so many shots of Frank and Donnie together with "you're always alone" in the lyrics, and then I realized, well of course, not only does Donnie believe Frank is imaginary anyway, but he also has to commit his crimes and wreak his havoc alone, doesn't he? So, I liked this section after I thought about it. Again, I'm slow -- don't mind me.
3:02: Like the use of the "They made me do it."
3:05-3:19: A lot of these cuts felt off to me. They didn't feel like they were to beats, or to lyrics either, though. I could be wrong?
3:35: Finally Gretchen appears. I like that you used her here; I wonder why she hasn't appeared before or after this.
3:55: Great job making the transition from end-of-tangent-universe to real-life-twenty-eight-days-ago but I felt like the Big Moment in the song came right in the middle of the swoop through the wormhole, where it should have come either at the beginning of the swoop or the end (I'm sorry to use "swoop" but it's the best word I can think of. :) )

Despite the difficulty of doing this -- it's so much harder than it looks! -- I really enjoyed the challenge, and agent_alpo, I loved having a vid to do FB on that I didn't mind watching over and over. :) Good stuff!

Would the real Uncle Inappropriate please stand up?

2005-05-15T00:03:18Z

Alias cracks me up. No, seriously, it does, because Arvin Clone is effing scary. Anyway, I don't have much to say on the episode -- I wasn't crazy about all the emotional pleading and begging between Nadia and Sloane, scenes like that have to be short and sweet or they lose all their impact and start going in circles. Understatement is key when you've got all these tough spies running around weeping over each other.

As for the OC, do I really watch for anything other than Julie Cooper anymore? No, no I don't. I'm glad Caleb is dead, because honestly he is sooooo boring. Sadly enough, the only other person I really liked this week was Marissa. It's interesting to me that someone who is so self-absorbed, me-me-me, all the time, is keeping her troubles private. It just shows you how badly broken she actually is. I really almost cried last week during her scenes with Ryan, and this week I felt for her too. It's a horrible, horrible thing to happen and it's great that she's not dealing with it by drinking, although she doesn't look like she's dealing with it at all. OH MY GOD DID I JUST SPEND FIVE SENTENCES SAYING GOOD THINGS ABOUT MARISSA? What is the world coming to that she's my favorite character after Julie?

Name 10 fictional women in fandom that you admire, adore, or just plain love...

1) Elizabeth Corday, ER. My biggest fandom love ever (even above all the hot male woobies, including Robert Downey Jr.'s character on Ally McBeal, who was on my laptop background throughout eighth and ninth grade, aaaand, moving on). Because she's a tough cookie, because she's smart as hell, because she knows how to have fun and it's not in a trashy or sad way but in an I'm-sexy-and-I-enjoy-it kind of way. And after the Mark fiasco ruined her character in some ways, I loved the wreckage. If I have to get old, I want to get old like Elizabeth.

2) Cristina Yang, Grey's Anatomy. Another doctor, another woman sort of along the lines of Elizabeth, but rougher around the edges and less obviously sexual -- although it looks from episode 5 like obviousness isn't everything. :) She's also hilarious, which is a plus, and can admit when she's wrong.

3) Angela Perry, Odyssey 5. Kind of a female woobie, because she seems all tough and smart at first but when it comes to Kurt and that lost baby, she gets vulnerable. Once in a long long while. She fit a classic male archetype, even to the point of having daddy issues as if she really were her father's son, but she wasn't just a man without a penis, and had a nice friendship with Sarah Forbes that didn't (usually) revolve around girltalk.

4) Veronica Mars, Veronica Mars. yahtzee63, who I took this meme from, wrote much more intelligently about Veronica, but I'll say I love her cause she's a badass.

5) Sydney Bristow, Alias. She's a little bit weepier than I usually like them, but hey, she's been through a lot. I like her because ... ehhh, I don't know, maybe it's because JJ wants me to and I'm his bitch, but maybe because after all the darkness she faces in her job (I'm paraphrasing Vaughn here, I think, sadly enough), she never did let it into her soul. Although the times when she's come close have been the most interesting.

6) Anna, The O.C.. I think my love for her is actually part of the reason the luster wore off Summer-lovin' TWoP for me. She was completely good at heart, she at least made an effort to be different, and let's face it, I wanted her to win Seth because I haven't forgotten high school. :)

7) Abby Lockhart, ER. I went through a hating-Abby phase with the rest of them, but going back I don't even hate season 9 Abby all that much. I think she's one of the most complex characters ever written. I think she'll never forget what Luka told her the night they broke up -- NTPNTS is how I believe the TWoPpers abbreviated, amusingly, the "not that pretty not that special" comment -- because deep down she believes it. I think she's never going to get over that lost child because she lost a part of herself with it. I think she's had to go through as much as Sydney and Veronica, and it did make her bitter but she's coming out the other side and finally becoming the person she's wanted to be.

8) Grace Polonsky, Joan of Arcadia. Oh, Grace. She's wonderful for so many reasons, not least of which is that she's butch and unapologetically so, but also because she's got a great mixture of precocious things (the social consciousness, the independence, the fact that she deals with things without complaining, the kick-ass poetry) and still-a-kid foibles (her fears of friendship/intimacy, her cluelessness about her own feelings for Luke).

9) Felicity Porter, Felicity. I don't know how to justify putting her on this list, because she was wishy-washy with her love triangle, a huge dork, and often kind of stupid. But I identify very strongly with her. It's really been an interesting year for me (my first at college) because, like Felicity, I appeared mature and responsible in high school because I didn't take risks, so when I got here, I did stupid things and had to catch up on all the growing-up I avoided in high school. It's made me relate to a lot of the mistakes Felicity made.

10) Clarice Starling, Silence of the Lambs. There's no need to explain what's great about Clarice, I hope. Plus, I like her for basically the same reason I like half the other women on this list, and I'm tired of trying to disguise the fact that I'm saying the same thing over and over. :) She's tough, smart, a woman in a man's world, just like Elizabeth and Christina and Angela and Sydney.

Not on this list, but maybe should've been: Irina Derevko and Julie Cooper, who would be #2 and #3 if they weren't both evil and therefore I don't technically "admire" them; Faith from Buffy, who would definitely be on the list if I could stand her show for long enough to watch an episode rather than just a plethora of music videos; Chloe from Smallville, ditto; Kerry Weaver, who I almost put but then changed for Felicity; and Janis from Mean Girls, who I guess I didn't put because Mean Girls isn't really an active fandom. "Your mother's chest hair." Hee.

I'm working on my vid critique and will be posting it, hopefully, later tonight.

Veronica Mars...

2005-05-11T03:10:01Z

...has officially broken my heart about seven times now. Everything that happened with Daddy Mars was just perfect, and Mommy Mars is the devil, and wow! Aaron! OMFG, and yay! Duncan is now a viable option, and aw! for the reunion in the hospital, and most of all, of course, my heart breaks for Logan, 'cause damn, I love him.

I never had a real prediction about Lilly's murderer. I was far too confused for that. But this Felicity-esque cliffhanger? Which boy's at the door? Well, it can't be Logan because she won't look all happy when her "bad boyfriend" shows up with his face bashed in, and it can't be Duncan because no way would he be there rather than at the jail (and besides, come on, she wouldn't be hoping for Duncan over Logan!!!). It's Wallace, y'all. Rob Thomas wants to make us wonder all summer, but he's totally going to pull a "just kidding" and make it Wallace. Just my prediction. I'll probably have a new one every week this summer...

ETA: Well, I was all proud of my little prediction but it appears to be everyone's. Shoulda known. *sigh*

End incoherency. Let's talk, instead, about how much fic I am going to write now that the show is finally leaving an opening. Oh, there's gonna be crazy amounts of ficcing now. I always write the most during finals. :)

Alias

2005-05-05T03:43:13Z

Damn, Alias was good. It just took our entire perception of reality over the past couple episodes and ripped that apart, and I feel well and thoroughly mindfucked right now.

I was so horribly squicked by the Jack/Sydney-as-Laura vibe, but it was a good scene, a powerful scene... Funny, too, with Sloane's discovery that Irina didn't like him, and so sad when Jack confessed his failures as a father. Considering how stony Jack is all the time, it's especially disconcerting to see him acting like this. I liked the way he said "Cute" just the way he did in my favorite scene ever, when Marshall showed him the picture of little Mitchell. I loved Elena in her hat; she was definitely sister to Irina there; on the other hand, the thing with the wine was so obvious I'm surprised Nadia didn't see through it.

I am also really glad there was no more picking stuff out of Jack's rotting flesh, by the way. That was a sight I wouldn't want repeated.

I can't wait for Irina to come back. Oh, I cannot, cannot wait. *dies of excitement*