'Do you have any comfort foods?' asked by lokifan

So this one is tricky for me as I do have a disordered relationship to food, tho I am doing much better with it these days.

However, toast, eggs, avocados are always both safe and comforting. (I love all three of these foods a normal amount.) Likewise tea, coffee, hot chocolate. Custard, fruit. Carrots. Yoghurt, smoothies. Some of these I should remember to stock more, honestly.

Porridge with brown sugar, milk, cinnamon, pears, and raisins.

In terms of a bit more complex, soup and a toastie. Moussaka, lasagne, pasta cheese. Katsu curry.

Ice cream!

I had this vision when I proposed this meme that I would use it as a bit of a writing exercise and that hasn't really happened so far, but there is still time. ;D

'What's your favorite source to vid?' asked by aurumcalendula

Critical Role! Next? ;)

OK, no, I'll be a bit more detailed than that.

By sheer numbers it definitely is Critical Role though, it's long since eclipsed any other fandom in terms of number of fanworks or vids.

Yeah. Having thought about it I actually don't have anything else to add. I love vidding Critical Role. It has everything I want. Now that we have Legend of Vox Machina it even has footage that changes rooms/scenes and shows people with legs. And I feel like if I wait long enough most of it will wind up animated.

'What's your favorite vid you've made?' asked by aurumcalendula

Ooh, this is hard!! Cuz I could talk about a lot of other things but I'm bad at favourites at the best of times.

And one thing that I love about vidding is I enjoy the end result, which is not true of writing or podfic, honestly. I might come to appreciate the finished result there, but not enjoy it to the same degree my audience seems to.

There's definitely vids I love more and vids I love less, so I have favourites, which include Something Beautiful, Odds Are, Beautiful Hopeful, Read All About It, Never Look Away, and Ready For The Storm.

This makes me think I love my high concept, feelings-y vids more, and I'm interested that I apparently have a favourite of the Legend of Vox Machina trio. I'm also interested The Call wasn't on this list.

I do love my comedy vids too, and in some ways I think they're showier of my skills, but what can I say, I'm all about the feelings.

So yeah, short answer, I guess it's one of the above. Narrowing down further I could get it down to Something Beautiful, Read All About It, and Never Look Away but that's the best I can do.

If I had any sense I'd add links to all these.

I'm in a mood, and I thought I'd write about it on my dreamwidth like it's 2005 or something.

So I think it's mostly just SAD, even though I can see a strip of blue sky out the window. (Oop, no, it's gone.) I also think I'm just tired and done.

I also think I know there's a bunch of things it would be really great to get done but I can't quite summon the motivation.

So, once again, like it's 2005 or something, I'm going to write them out and see if that helps.

Work related:
- Expenses to finance and uploaded to SharePoint
- Email IT updates to some address lists
- Figure out the spreadsheet thing (an attempt was made, punting to next year)
- Two bits of diary wrangling for head of dept and deputy head of dept
- Two room bookings
- The bits of training lurking in my inbox since March (punting to next year)
- Ideally tidy up my OneDrive and get it moved to SharePoint (punting to next year)
- Handover emails, one to co-admin and one to entire team
- Out of office for me and the various shared inboxes I monitor

Non work related:
- Laundry
- Wash my hair
- Wrap presents (done and given one, snerk)
- Any food shopping for bits of 23rd to 27th I'm feeding myself for
- Figure out where I'm sleeping Xmas Day and Boxing Day and plan outfits/packing accordingly
- Start packing for visit to V's (complicated by being unclear what the weather is doing over there and some extra bits of luggage)
- Ideally clear the absolute chaos of clothes all over the floor resulting from room redecoration and inertia
- Produce a first draft of my festivid (in progress)

I think part of the problem is I think I have time and while that's true, not as much as I think, I have a couple of hours this afternoon and tomorrow for the work stuff, and then a bit of the 23rd and Xmas eve for the non work related stuff, and the laundry needs time to dry.

So maybe I'll put the laundry on and knock off the quick wins work-wise and try the bigger bits tomorrow.

Looking at that list it was pretty stupid to book 3 hours of sailing on Saturday but consider, I *really* wanted to go sailing.

Looking at that list I also think I have some sort of deadline panic spiral where I've got 3 sets of deadlines (work, festivids, stuff that needs doing before Xmas/I go away) that's made me freeze and not do any of them.

I'm new!

Wait, no.

As per previous entry, I've been meaning to get back on here, I miss that there's like, a decade of my life not recorded here. Not quite as long as I was using it for prior to that, I don't think, but getting there. It was a good habit, Brent, and I'd like it back.

I'm not even going to attempt to summarise my life to date, though I will be taking questions at this time, and now here I am staring at this text box devoid of ideas of what to talk about.

Well, OK, here's something I've been enjoying considering: rewatching films.

I feel like any film that's come out since I went to uni struggles to compete with films I watched as a kid/teenager because a) I had a lot more free time then and I spent a fair chunk of it rewatching films (mostly musicals) (mostly Evita lbr) b) any new films added to the "will endlessly rewatch" list have to compete with what's already on the list, and those films have a head start, see a).

So I was surprised the other day by how many times I've seen Frozen and Frozen II, despite usuallyhats pointing out that a) I have a lot of friends who are children and I've watched it multiple times with many of them b) I watch it without children too. Which does make sense but good work Frozen and Frozen II for competing with the likes of Evita and The Secret Garden. (Ooh, DW doesn't have emojis, this is weird, it's like a whole other language. I guess it would if I typed this on my phone but no thanks.)

It's also fully wild to consider that none of my kiddo friends were born when Frozen came out and only a couple of them when Frozen II came out. We were chatting at D&D the other day about how Frozen really has honed the Disney crack witchcraft, the fact it reigns supreme with jakera.livejournal.com and H's twin girls (who are 2) ever since their first week at nursery is kind of wild really. It's also apparently the only film my friends A&P's kids, M&S will sit through.

Which obv makes the stealth aro agenda of Frozen II even better. :D

This is a post, right? This is how that works?

Ok, fine, some news.

Last time I updated here I had one (1) tattoo, the raven for prysmicdork.

This year I got, um, six (6) new ones. One of them in NZ in January, five in one day in March in London, and my biggest one to date on Monday, again, in London, same artist as the other five but at their new studio. (Which I like better than their old studio.)

I got a bunch of flowers on my left shoulder for my mum (she died November last year of the cancer diagnosis I mentioned in January last year. Last year sucked; this year wasn't much of an improvement, being the first one without my mother in it.), a picture of best beloved pup Missy, of late lamented blessed memory, curled up asleep on my left calf, where she used to sleep in life, a rainbow hummingbird and some Leonard Cohen lyrics for purplefringe, and some koi fish on my left inner arm between wrist and elbow. Those are partly for Phoebe too, partly for my aunt Ana (who also died last year, see previous statement on last year), and partly just for me as a kind of self soothing practice written on my body.

The tattoo this week is the first one just for me, and it's also the biggest (and consequently most expensive) one. I've been through a full range of emotions about spending that money on just me but ultimately I'm glad I've done it. It's a fat selkie across my right thigh. It's huge, I love it so much. I was originally considering a mermaid, but tattoo artist suggested selkie when I said I didn't feel as connected to mermaids cuz of all the connotations with conventional beauty (and I know there's a lot of excellent work being done to reclaim that, but it still feels like challenging something in a way that wasn't working for me for this tattoo) and something in my brain was just like yes. I love referring to my fat as my blubber, particularly since discovering it genuinely helps with cold water swimming!

The thing I learned at this tattoo session is I'm good at being tattooed? Which seems like a ludicrous thing to claim to be good at, but here we are! I'm good at sitting still when uncomfortable, I don't find it particularly painful (ok except by hour 6, then I get a bit "UNHAND ME" when we're going over what feels like the same spot repeatedly), I'm happy to just zone out and entertain myself, I take direction well (do with that what you will).

There's also something there about being ace and kinky I think, like how can you explore kink without sex, and I wonder if the answer isn't things like, oh, I don't know, tattoos, aerial, pointe.

And on that thought, I'm out.

Dear Festividder,

Hi! :D

First off, thank you so much for making me a vid! I can't wait to see what you come up with! The stuff below is mostly meant to help, not hinder, optional details are optional. I'd much rather see the vid of your heart than have you get hampered down with the below.

Like there's a couple of things that I'd be less keen on receiving but I'll try to be clear about flagging those.

(Also a lot of this is fairly shamelessly copy/pasted from previous letters. ;D)

Music

I've been introduced to so much music I adore that I may never have discovered but for vids so I don't want to rule anything out. Possibly not famously faily artists or songs like Blurred Lines or like, Chris Brown maybe, but other than that, go wild!

I particularly adore Taylor Swift, Dar Williams, Vienna Teng, Emeli Sande's 'Our Version of Events' album, and female vocalists/singer/song-writers in general. I've also recently got very into Delta Rae, Dessa, First Aid Kit, and Sara Bareilles. I also really love musicals. I used to feel weird about them being used for vids when I connect them to their show but I've seen enough vids with musical theatre songs now that if you have an idea, I want to see it!

The most important thing is that the song be right for the fandom/character/vid, and seriously, some of my best beloved music has come to me through vids soooo...surprise me! :D

General

I am far more interested in female characters, and with a few of the requests below I am actively less interested in the guys. This is quite a binary way of looking at it and I will point out anyone who is outside that binary I either do or don't want a vid about but with say, Critical Role and Wheel of Time, I would adore a vid about almost any lady but don't care so much about say, Rand, or Liam O'Brien and Sam Riegel as I do Moiraine, Laura, Ashley, and Marisha.

Tonally for Festivids I'm variable depending on source but I think with the exception of Wheel of Time lean more to the upbeat. I love found family as a trope, people doing their best to do the right thing and trying to change the world for the better as best they can within their own sphere, be it little or big, character studies are great, ship vids are great, "yay we love this source" is great.

Fandoms

The Adventures of Tintin and Adaptations [UMBRELLA]

OK I know what I just said about female characters, don't worry. With this one you really can't go wrong. If you're looking for ideas, usuallyhats made me an incredible one for Festivids last year that was basically everything I wanted. I just want more. Shenanigans would be lovely, Haddock/Calculus/Tintin would be lovely, how great Snowy is and how hard his life is would be lovely. I asked for the umbrella but the books and cartoon are my childhood favs. But I'd also love to see what you did with the whole umbrella. I haven't seen the live action film but it looked like good vid fodder. I think I'd be less interested in something only about the film but if you have an idea, go for it! There's also a radio play series that's excellent but harder to vid.

Critical Role (Web Series) RPF

So I love these doofuses with my whole entire heart, they've been my primary fandom for coming up on 6 years now and I've never been this monofannish for this long. I've never requested them in festivids before so this is uncharted territory.

As I said above, while I adore all of them and would be very happy with an ensemble vid about their beautiful faces and how much they love each other, I wouldn't want a vid focused only or even primarily on any of the boys.

I would be overjoyed if you were to do a "ladies of CritRole" vid, and included people who've guested at the table, I'm very slowly working on one of my own. (Depending on how you felt and what you chose I'd love to see the various nb folks make an appearance too but leave it up to you to handle that in a way that doesn't invalidate their gender.)

A theme in my vids I'm not getting tired of anytime soon is how they've come from where they started, charting their success, etc.

Something that incorporates the stories of the campaigns would also be lovely, or something that explores the storytelling medium. Really, anything, these are just a few ideas if you need them, the only hard thing here is "not just the guys, please".

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) [SAFETY]

I was delighted with this movie, I can't get over what a good job it did of being an excellent movie and a good D&D movie. You can't go far wrong here, really. (Well, possibly not Simon/Doric. They're fine, I just don't want a whole vid about them.) Found family and team shenanigans would probably be my top choice but if there's enough footage a Doric or Holga character study would be amazing. Again, usuallyhats made an incredible vid for this movie that is a great steer on what I'd love.

If you can somehow vid how well the movie embraced the fact it's a D&D movie I'd be thrilled but again, it's just an idea, excited to see anything!

Exandria Unlimited: Calamity (Web Series)

I was about to explain this to you but if we matched on it you know what it is. ;D

This mini campaign was incredible, for my money it might be the best thing CritRole have done to date. I love everything about it. Really anything you wanted to do would be fine. The caveat about not focusing only on the guys applies but otherwise, anything, genuinely. I love the characters, I love the players, I love the worldbuilding, I love every single story choice, I love the tone and message, I love what an amazing, hopeful, inspiring story they made out of something to which you knew the ending, you can't go wrong.

The Wheel of Time (TV)

OK I requested this last year and loved the vids I got but I have since gone feral for it and require even more.

Where to start? I love Moiraine, anything about her, her and Siuan, or her and Lan would be amazing. OR BOTH. I love both those relationships a lot and a vid about either or somehow with the limited footage we have, both, and how they relate to each other and Moiraine would be incredible. Or anything about the sacrifices she's made, yes delicious. This is the only fandom where I am not looking for lighter tone necessarily. (Though it does have its moments so if you're inspired, go for it.) I also love Alanna and her policule, and Egwene, and Nynaeve, and Elayne. (I ship them as a policule.) I'd love to see a vid about the choices and sacrifices everyone I've just listed and then some has had to make, the White Tower and the situation is fucking them all over pretty hard. (Loial's line in the finale about the heroes of today!) Absolutely fucking loved Verin too, would love a vid about her and the Brown Ajah. I'm also obsessed with the idea that the show is presenting the Light and the Dark as very literally black and white but then doing so much interesting work with how people can do awful things in the name of the light and great things in the name of the dark, so a vid on that would be incredible.

Less interested in the Two Rivers boys, so wouldn't be keen to see a vid focused on them, though obv as part of an ensemble, absolutely. I'm also not so bothered about the canon het ships, namely Egwene and Rand and Nynaeve and Lan.

Also, this show is fucking gorgeous so anything showcasing how the one power is wielded, or the scenery and cinematography would also be lovely tbh.

Title: Mineshaft
Fandom: Hamilton
Character/Pairing: Aaron Burr
Music: Mineshaft - Dessa
Content notes: I don't think so?
Summary: I've been here before, I know where it goes.
Notes: Turns out I have a lot of Burr feelings.
Download: here |173 mb
Also on: AO3 | Tumblr



Took me an entire year to notice a formatting error, so here, have last year's festivid that's been lurking under last year's Vidukon premiere, because I am good at this sort of thing.

Title: Something Beautiful
Fandom: Critical Role/The Legend of Vox Machina
Character/Pairing: Ensemble
Music: Something Beautiful - NEEDTOBREATHE
Content notes: It's a bit flashier than my vids usually are. Physical triggers, flashing lights at 00:06-00:09, 02:36-02:38, 02:49-02:51, 03:04, 03:13-03:15 seconds. These are all from the cartoon credits and logo sequence so if those are OK this won't be an issue. There is also a lighting effect at 02:53, which is from the original Critical Role credits from campaign 1, so again, if you are familiar and know you are OK with that that also won't be a problem. The pandemic as a theme comes up from 01:19 to 02:10.
Summary: "Waiting for something beautiful." A vid in which I attempt to express my feelings waiting for "The Legend of Vox Machina".
Download: here

PLACEHOLDER

(SHRIEK)

(Sometimes I am crap at these and also c/p heavily so if you want a flavour of what I like check out the tag for previous letters!)