hmpf

is that I always get tempted away from social things by books or comics (mostly books and comics, that is. Occasionally TV or games.)

I really think, sometimes, that I need therapy to learn to cope with *people*. It can't be normal that even *pleasant* social interaction is so draining for me that I shy away from it, can it?

I've been job hunting and doing housework and reading, mostly. Yes, I stopped the LJ catch-up almost immediately after I'd started. There was a rather large number of interesting job ads recently, but that's no excuse, really.

Gah.

Have some recs:

beccatoria made another awesome Farscape vid! Actually, I'm sure she's made at least a dozen good vids recently, because she went a bit crazy last month and tried (possibly even managed?) to make one vid(let) per day. So head over there and enjoy!

Did you realise you can read shitloads of classics of the fantastic genres for free on gutenberg.org? I've decided it's time to check out some of that old stuff, and have read Peter Pan and am currently reading The Napoleon of Notting Hill (I read The Man Who Was Thursday years ago, though maybe a reread is in order...) Peter Pan was much odder, and darker, than I expected. TNoNH is about as odd as I expected, because after TMWWT I expect major weirdness from Chesterton. Got any recs of other old stuff I should check out? Maybe A Voyage to Arcturus? That's definitely available there. Or I could try to get back into News from Nowhere, I started that two years ago and then was interrupted by uni stuff...

I've also reread two webcomics I'd more or less stopped checking regularly because they were (and still are) in the habit of going on really long hiatuses. They're both really really good, though. Dicebox is social science fiction with beautiful art and very three-dimensional characters and relationships. Hero is fantasy with religous/mythological overtones, possibly set after some apocalyptic(?) conflict between some analogues between the forces of heaven and hell. Or something. Beautiful digital watercolour manga art, and a surprising sense of humour. (For even more webcomics, check out the links in my sidebar here.)

I've spent a bit of time playing flash games, too:

I really enjoyed Little Rocket, despite the fact that it took me ridiculously long to learn how to control the rocket. But when I finally had the hang of it, I played the entire game through twice.

Endeavor is a nice, big-pixeled exploration platformer.

Looming plays like an extremely minimalist, retro version of Myst.

Seasons is another beautiful web toy/experience by the maker of Windosill.

The Dreamerz (don't ask me about the stupid "z"!) is a charming little point-and-click adventure that feels like you're reading a slightly surreal picture book.

And Transform is another example of patented Eyemaze madness. In other words, it's awesome.

****

I just rediscovered a very fitting old tag so I'm using it...

... is alive again. I think.

Go here: fs_10percent.

Kick my ass if I ever let it fall out of use for so long again.

I've been staying with my parents for the last week (being ill while having to prepare for exams is a good excuse for that sort of thing). Whenever I'm at my parents' my fanvid consumption increases, because absent the internet, this is the easiest 'five minute fandom boost' to get. This reminds me that maybe I should post a reminder to people here about my vidrecs journal, because that's actually active now. Mostly. I may still shut up again for a few weeks, when the exams phase gets hot, but I have several entries already in the pipeline so I should be fine for the next two or three weeks at least.

The other thing increased fanvid consumption reminds me of is that Farscape is and remains the One True Show. Sorry Life on Mars. I may be writing more about you these days, but Farscape will always be closer to my heart - and not just because it didn't so callously break it. (Everyone who knows Farscape knows that Farscape breaks hearts lovingly, not callously.)

Dammit, I need new people to 'scape. Preferably live and in person. Any volunteers? K., maybe? C'mon, you like science fiction, you like sf tv, what could possibly go wrong? *veg*

***

Speaking of infecting people with shows - I may have found a new victim for Life on Mars. Time will tell.

***

A note to the British: you may want to rethink how you spell and/or pronounce place names. ;-) When I learned, recently, that "Happisburgh" is pronounced "Hazeborough"... well, it did set me to wondering, for about five seconds, if this was all just a bizarre prank you play on us foreigners. I mean... Salisbury... Edinburgh... Worcester... surely you can't be serious? :-D

A whole bunch of very cool people had their birthdays on the 5th, 8th, 9th and 10th of August, namely:

dashan (5.8.)
non-LJ user but occasional commenter Kiki, magnifica7, (and me) (8.8.)
knorgk (9.8.)
beccatoria (10.8.)

Happy birthday to all - and also, belatedly, apologies to everyone whose birthdays I've already managed to miss this year - I'm notoriously bad at the social skill of birthday remembering, and can only remember this particular bunch so well because they form a remarkable cluster that happens to include several of my closest friends and both of my main betas(!).

*

I got a nasty stomach bug for my own birthday, btw - started the day vomiting and spent most of the weekend recovering. (I'm fine again now.)

*

Speaking of my beta and birthday-neighbour beccatoria: I've been meaning to post a vid rec here, but I wanted to do it well. As so often, that meant postponement after postponement, as I tried to find the time to write up a post detailing why exactly I think beccatoria is one of the best vidders I've had the joy of seeing work by. As I still haven't found the time, and other tasks - among them demanding ones such as starting on my thesis writing - are piling up as well, I've decided to just do a short rec instead:

This is beccatoria's vid website. It doesn't look like much, but the vids are superb. Her early work already showed great promise - in fact, already showed a level of accomplishment that many vidders never attain, with the only serious problem the sometimes poor image quality due to poor quality source material. She reached an early peak with "Jesus Walks", marrying BSG's Laura Roslin with hip hop with amazing success. I've recced that vid here before.

She's recently been vidding a lot, and making great progress. I could rec any of her recent vids - well, let's just make that: I *do* rec all of her recent vids. Particular favourites are the latest three, though. "There's a War Going On For Your Mind, Laura" is just... mind-blowing in its cleverness (and, if you've ever vidded in Windows Movie Maker, knowing that she achieved that vid in that infernal program will add another layer of mind-bogglement). It's also another successful combination of hip hop and president Roslin. "Tricks" and "Ghosts" I love (among other reasons) for their great sense of rhythm and movement - large parts of these vids play out almost like a dance, and this, for me, is one of the highest achievements in vidding.

So, go and download some of beccatoria's vids. Better yet, download all of them. There's not a single bad one among them, just mindbogglingly awesome ones and merely very good ones. *g*

*

In other news: I have a due date for my thesis: January 30, 2009.

in my last entry.

What I really meant to say was this: if you download just one vid in the next twelve months, let that vid be "Improper Dancing". It's like a drug. I can't stop watching it.

(There's a list and detailed description of all the clips used in the lj entry I linked to yesterday. It's helpful to read, to get some of the finer details.)

Another one by Di, whose "Love and Peace" I already recced. Di is probably the best vidder who's posting exclusively to Farscape Fantasy - most of the really great vidders seem to move to their own webspace after a while. Her latest, Jerk It Out, is another very... kinetic vid, with fast, very effective, on the beat editing. One thing Di is incredibly good at is making use of internal movement and effects; she doesn't need to resort to special effects provided by the editing software to add a sense of rhythm and movement to her vids - she makes do with what's there in the show. Which, as we're talking about Farscape, is a lot - Farscape never was one of those SF shows where characters would spend the majority of the ep standing around delivering exposition. I think this is probably one of the reasons why it developed such a great vidding culture. It simply makes for excellent vidding fodder.

"Jerk It Out" is a season one vid, and due to its sense of energy and fun I'd say it's a great one to show to newbies you want to scape! (space_oddity_75 - since I hadn't seen this vid yet when I made your cds it's not on there - I put a whole bunch of vids on them to fill them up - but if you want to get a good, not too spoilery impression of the first season, I really recommend you download this vid. :-))

Welcome to Livejournal land, anduranova of the TBFC tribe and of the Scape Sisters. Anyone who followed my rec for Poison recently and liked it, go tell anduranova - she's the editor.

*

I'm totally running out of time on uni stuff and still haven't made my Important Decision, so of course, I did the logical thing and spent most of today tagging all my LJ entries for 2002, and sorting through the rest of my Farscape vid backlog. Arrgh.

At least the Farscape tag in the tags list here is about as big as the Life on Mars tag now, as it should be. As I continue to tag the years between 2002 and 2006 it will probably grow even larger.

And I have 1.200 well-sorted Farscape vids, now.

*

Farscape vid rec for today: back in 2001 or so, Birgit made some of the best fanvids in the entirety of young Farscape fandom. She then mostly disappeared (as a vidder) for several years before re-emerging in 2005 with some vids that I, personally, thought good but not as spectacular as the admittedly hard-to-beat Under Ice (which was the very first fanvid I watched, and which is probably the main reason I turned into the total Farscape fanvid nut that I did.) More recently she's made some rather remarkable vids, which sort of remind me of Under Ice.

J/A shippy vids make up the majority of the fandom's production, and they can kill you with kitsch, so whenever I open a vid to find it's shippy I tend to get wary (and just a tad bored in advance). Birgit's approach to shippiness and shippy angst in her recent vids is one that managed to capture my interest, though. She chooses somewhat jarring, in some cases almost dissonant songs, which somehow - IMO - fit the John/Aeryn relationship much better than your average love ballad from the top of the charts. Like the relationship, these songs have hard edges. She also eschews the 'smooth' look and editing that have been the hallmark of many of the better vids in recent years, using some very odd effects and blending images in a quick and sometimes deliberately messy succession that nevertheless somehow works. The overall impression is occasionally hectic and disjointed, but fits both the music and the relationship depicted perfectly. So hop on over to Birgit's Vids and download

- Missing (J/A shippy/angsty)
- Disarm (J/A shippy/angsty)
- Goodbye, Blue Sky (PKW, wormholes, time)
- Three Sunrises (J/A shippy)

*

And, for amonitrate and bimo and other Twin Peaks fanatics (as well as anyone else who's interested in superb vidding): astolat has made a Twin Peaks vid that is so good it leaves me speechless. You can download it here. The editing is perfect, the song is perfect, and the crazy thing is that that song has been linked to Twin Peaks in my mind since I first heard it, back in the same year I watched Twin Peaks for the first (and so far only) time.

ETA: Go and leave astolat feedback here!

This vid captures the essence of Twin Peaks so well it gave me Bob nightmares yesterday.

(Because occasionally I do take a five-minute break from uni work to watch a FS vid, so as to reduce the "unsorted" folder on my disk and be able to finally burn them all to DVD.)

Yesterday's discovery:

Love and Peace by Di. A vid about the final four of season two that makes *excellent* use of internal movement and internal effects to create a very dynamic impression. Nitpick: Image's a bit blurry, sadly. Still, as with the last vid I recced, it would be a shame to ignore this vid because of that. Simply watch it in small instead of full screen mode and the problem shouldn't bother you. If that seems like an unacceptable hardship, try to remember what watching vids was like in 2001! ;-) (I still have favourites from those days... and I still love them, even though you can only watch them by minimizing the player to stamp size...)

A note: When I play this vid in zoomplayer the image breaks up in the fast parts, so there's either a problem with my zoomplayer or with the vid. It plays fine in VLC, though.

Well, okay, not totally random. Ten out of the maybe fifty that are in my 'absolute favourites' folder that is permanently on my hard drive. I have some 25-30 CDs and DVDs of Farscape fanvids by now, but I need the crème de la crème where I can watch them easily when I need a little dose of Farscape. Which I did tonight.

So here's tonight's playlist:

Back Here by chasa - for the John and Aeryn angst

The Pain Gets Worse by tazey - for the Aeryn and John angst

I'll Be Yours by FieryHands - for the John and Scorpius angst

Adiemus by Birgit - for the sense of wonder

Prayer by chasa - for the Aeryn angst

Until It Sleeps by LithiumDoll - for the destructive!John angst

Somebody Told Me by FieryHands - for ass-kicking!Aeryn and slut!John fun

Under Ice by Birgit - for, uhm, angst, and nostalgia (this was the first fanvid I ever watched!), and still-brilliant editing

You Cut Her Hair by Fialka - for strong narrative

You Make Me Feel by tazey - for the John-Aeryn-Scorpy triangle Die Me Dichotomy angst

They're all brilliantly edited, btw. There's bits in all of them that make me go "*meeeeep*! I'll *never* be able to do that!" If you haven't watched them yet, I highly recommend you seek them out.

Chasa's website:

http://dearone.net

Tazey's website:

http://tazey.club.fr/musicvids.html

Birgit's website:

http://www.birgitsvids.com

The rest can hopefully still be found here:

http://www.farscapefantasy.com