Off the prompt "cuddles."

Vid: The Long Spear
Vidders: MANY--Please credit to "jmtorres, niqaeli, et al", not JUST to jmtorres. This was NOT a solo vid
Music: The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel, with additional material
Fandom: Star Trek and... Star Trek. Yes.
LINK (right-click or ctrl-click to download and save): http://houseoftorres.dreamhosters.com/vids/jmtniqetal-startreks-longspear.mp4 (60MB) (link updated 16 May 2020)

I promised since, oh, about the second time I saw the movie that this vid would say everything I wanted said and that if it didn't I would cry and hang up my hat as a vidder because clearly I would be no good at communicating in the medium.

So I will limit my remarks here and let the vid do most of the talking. I really only want to say three things:

1. An expansion of the credits:
jmtorres and niqaeli were the primary vidders in the sense of putting material on the timeline.

traykor, echan, and grey_bard did lots and lots additional clipping above and beyond what jmtorres and niqaeli managed.

grey_bard also recorded the vocal track for the last verse specifically for this project. The other women whose singing I sampled for this vid are Joni Mitchell and Lorenna McKennit.

killabeez and slasher69 are two vidders to whose work we paid homage. Those vids were: Killa's Dante's Prayer, because Killa is a seminal Trek vidder of the modern era (Dante's Prayer has been cited as "Hey, you guys! We can use those computers things for vidding!"), and Kandy Fong's Both Sides Now, which is, so far as I know, the earliest vid of which we have visual record (see this OTW journal article for more on the history of vidding).

The following fangirls took pictures of themselves in Vulcan salute for me to use at the end of the vid: ysobel, lierdumoa, settiai, lferion, azurelunatic, revolutionaryjo, gchick, zarhooie, missingwatch.

elfling made the awesome costumes we wore to Club Vivid.

I would also like to give a special nod to nshoe, who, while not one of our women's voices in the traditional sense, did help out with Memory Alpha abuse for clipping and making one of my hard drives live again. His wife, niqaeli, also notes that he was very patient with the crazy women in the house.

2. I did, briefly, want to explain the title, because I used a metaphor that I thought was not uncommon, but google entirely disagrees. So you may never have heard it before unless you read all the same stuff I do. papersky writes about her spearpoint theory; the example she was using it on when I appropriated it into my personal vocabulary was the Vorkosigan novels, how the later novels like Brothers in Arms and Memory are that sharp point on the long spear, they have an emotional impact because of the history of the other novels they carry. I consider the Star Trek Reboot movie to be the sharp point. Since I'm trying not to overexplain the vid, I'll leave the rest of the metaphor unspoken.

3. My hat is made of tin.

I will now take questions from the audience.

(Holy cow, it's harder to hear people cry than to hear them laugh.)