bironic

1. You know you've got the blues when you scoff at your own Mary Sue fantasy story from last year because there's no way those other characters would treat her as special.

2. The blues only present themselves sometimes, though. This weekend was generally lovely, including attending a Hanukkah party, heckling Fifty Shades Darker with thedeadparrot*, and allowing myself to buy a handful of treats from Cardullo's in Harvard Square, one of which I had been eyeing for years. Then I triumphed over past culinary disappointments by making a roast beef that wasn't overdone! Third time's the charm, I guess. That and cooking it at 275° F.

*2a. Still not as bad as the book, and I think better than the Rotten Tomatoes critics' score of 10% gives it credit for as a close adaptation -- there are several funny moments, most of them seemingly intentional! the character arcs are at least somewhat coherent! the, uh, color palettes are pretty! -- but still, yeah, this relationship makes no sense, the acting and/or direction to not-act is terrible, the main characters are allergic to substantive conversation, it's unfortunate to reinforce the idea that a woman can change a man's lifelong behaviors and deepest values by loving him, it's offensive to claim that enjoying BDSM is an easily corrected pathology driven by a bad childhood, and the pacing choices are odd. My genuinely favorite part was that this mainstream movie not only featured a spreader bar but also showed it being ratcheted open and used for pleasure rather than some villainous torture.

Reviews I liked:

• New Republic - Sustained comparison to Working Girl; appreciation of Dakota Johnson's attempts to transcend the material. "Fifty Shades Darker, which fails so many tests of basic storytelling competence, is all the more stunning for its success at a task that most movies don't even bother attempting: depicting a woman's sexual pleasure."
   
• MTV - Made me laugh out loud; similar appreciation of Johnson's acting abilities; agreement that director did indeed intend to be funny. "Dornan's handsome, even if his cold, accusing eyes make you think of a catfish slammed onto a pier."

3. "Feast or famine," the library clerk said as I picked up another armful of books that came in all at once after being on hold for weeks. Having just finished Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols. 3-4 and Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection, I'm working my way through the 400-page My Favorite Thing is Monsters, while stacked up on the nightstand are Call Me By Your Name, The Book of Dust, Ms. Marvel vol. 1, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vols. 5-6, Lumberjanes vols. 1-2, and if I can get to it before it's due back, Alif the Unseen. (I needed to read ~7 books this month if I was going to reach my arbitrary goal of a book a week on average for 2017, so I requested a bunch of graphic novels, heh, not realizing how intense Monsters is.)

4. Help can be hard to ask for, even for small, mundane things. I'm grateful to serenadestrong, seascribe, mollyamory and Mr. disgruntled_owl for ferrying me around while my car is in the shop (yes, still) and now also to thedeadparrot for providing laundry access while our in-house washer/dryer is on the fritz. Between those, the autumn fire-alarm malfunction, the elusive kitchen mouse, and the humidifier and nighttime white-noise fan giving up the ghost this week, it feels like everything is breaking. Much like in the world.

I'm grateful to the wider fannish network for chiming in with guidance on yet more SF/F/horror sources for this auction vid, now that we are down to the TV shows that don't really appeal to me. I sent out the final (?!) batch of pleas last weekend and then had to go sit under a blanket because I hate asking people to do work for me. This is going to be the last multifandom vid I make for a while that involves sources I don't know.

5. Speaking of which, I was invited to co-mod a panel next year at Vividcon on multifandom vids, and I said yes? I'm already nervous. I haven't moderated or presented at a con since 2006, and never at Vividcon. Good thing the other co-mods who've signed on so far are non-scary people. Need to ask jetpack_monkey his thoughts, since he modded a panel on the same topic just last year. Maybe take a longitudinal perspective on multifandom vids in general or lessons learned from each vidder's own experiences over time. Not that I know enough to talk about the former, but our possible VCR-vidder co-mod might.

But there is something fitting about finally doing something like this at the last Vividcon.

One of the vids I'm making for the Fandom Trumps Hate auction, requested by sigridellis, is a celebratory snapshot of characters of color in current SF/F & horror film and television. It is a neat project, although it means I've gotten myself into a pickle with the scope! I haven't quite figured out how many sources will be feasible, but we've started a list off the tops of our heads and flagged characters who are Sigrid's favorites and/or who feel particularly important to serve as the core set.

If you're willing, I could use some help on two things, outlined below. I hesitated to post about it because I don't want to be That Person Who Keeps Making Big Vids That Require Other People To Do Work, but then a friend said that she finds contributing fun, and I do believe this will be a better (and more efficiently produced) vid with a little help from some friends, so here we go.

(1) Flagging important characters and identifying major gaps in the character list. I don't want to turn this into an encyclopedia entry, and in fact don't even know if I can include everyone who's already on the list, but I don't want to miss someone significant either.

General guidelines as things stand now: non-white characters, who are not covered in makeup (i.e. Gamora) nor are only voices (i.e. Maz Kanata), in live-action SF/F & horror sources from the last 3ish years. Prefer them to have a significant role of some sort in their canon. There may be more space for women than for men. Am not sure yet how the vid will handle villains. Feel free to pitch me an argument against these limitations if you think they unfairly distort the portrait we're trying to sketch.

How does the Google spreadsheet look so far? Is someone not marked as "important" (bold font) who should be? (Female characters are in the top half, dudes below. Don't mind much beyond columns A and C.)

(2) Volunteering source knowledge. I've never made a vid before with so many unfamiliar sources where clips from those sources need to be appropriately contextualized with the lyrics and narrative flow. i.e. This isn't like the electricity vid, where visual parallels took precedence over needing to know characterizations and plotlines. The song we're using will work best if I can tell stories about these characters' struggles and triumphs.

Now, I've already begun to watch some of the sources I don't know (Sense8, Suicide Squad), and there are more in the queue, but others I can't handle (American Horror Story, The Walking Dead), and still others are big and/or not super interesting to me and I could use some pointers on key episodes for the characters in question.

With that in mind, is anyone willing to serve as a consultant on the following sources?

( A poll )

Thank you. <3

ETA: Follow-up poll.