Off the prompt "cuddles."

You may or may not have noticed, I've been posting to dw a lot less lately. I'm probably not going to go back to posting daily grumbles and random thoughts to dw, and if that was something you were interested in, or if we're friends enough that you'd want to keep up with me day-to-day, a lot of that kind of stuff is getting dumped into decontextual now. At first it was just going to be a "random shit people say" amusement ground, which is why it got named Out of Context Theatre, but then I started following some fannish accounts and I got weirdly social what the hell ever: I'm decontextual on twitter. Over here on dreamwidth I will probably be posting more essay-like content, things that have been percolating a while, as well as fanfiction and vids. If I ever finish any ever again.

Right, so that was online housekeeping. Moving on. Disjointed thoughts to follow.

Working was fucking nuts (redacted)

On Thursday I am flying out for the long weekend to see echan and jetpack_monkey (and diannelamerc and lizbetann). If there is anyone in the LA area who would like to meet up with me and/or them while I'm visiting, HOLLA.

I have this I don't even know, it might actually be a disorder, but apparently I am more likely to feel things are right with the world if I move all my crap around every year or so (if I'm not actually moving from one house to another). At present I'm considering essentially switching the TV/guest room and my bedroom--because my bedroom is bigger, and I want to turn the TV room into the VIDDING ROOM, and have my desk and vidding computer in there as well as the fiendishly clever ikea sofa bed the TV. While it would make it difficult to vid from bed, it would make vidding a) potentially more social, as covidders could hang out and clip from DVD or betas could hang out and watch random crap until needed but, like, in the same room and b) more likely to happen from some members of the House of Torres who don't like climbing over my endless piles of laundry to get to my vidding computer.

I measured everything and found a decent free designer online, floorplanner.com, and then took some screenshots:

( probably only interesting to people who will actually spend time in my house )

My to-do list is full of boring, grown-up things like endless piles of laundry and car maintenance and shoes. My plotbunny list lately is all:

--Harry Dresden is Not a Lesbian (Harry always-a-woman AU, ( spoiler cutting here for echan, who's only read to like book 2? but this should be safe for ysobel, who said she's up to book 4 ))
--WHERE ARE ALL MY PEPPERBOT NOTES, DAMN IT THIS NEEDS MORE PLOT, hahaha Steve is all "cool! the future is awesome! who else is a robot?"
--These Mistress Pepper notes are surprisingly complete, hahaha Steve is SO confused by them switching between Mr. Stark and Miss Potts and Tony and Pepper, because it's a scene/not scene thing that they're not copping to
--somewhere in the corner, Ivan is hiding from me all smug. I'll get you, my pretty.

We were all wearing futuristic armor with the ridiculous boob cut-outs and waving bat'leths.

Dear id: feel free to run that fantasy again as much as you like.

echan made a White Collar vid we've been calling The Suit Vid, it is funny and I am excited that she posted it!

Hey, does anyone else vid from bed? I just moved my desk over expressly for that purpose--possibly this is a function of me and deadlines and "I can keep working if I don't have to be upright for it." But bafflement has been offered by two of my hausmates, so I'm wondering, am I completely atypical?

I have echan's vid stuck in my head, and I don't even have a copy of her draft to watch here. Very frustrating!

Stuff other than Final Cut and Quicktime I use in the course of vidding on my mac (and forget the names of between vids sometimes)

(most of these do way more than I do with it, yay multitools)

--MacTheRipper, for directly-off-the-dvd-minus-DRM rips (as opposed to transcodes)
--MPEGStreamClip--multipurpose, the two big things I do with it are fix broken timecode on DVD rip files (this is another form of DRM) and switch containers on final files for the interwebs (the free/trial DivX codec I use in Quicktime for my interwebs encodes pops out a .divx file, but I prefer to put that data in a .avi container, because that's like, fandom standard)
--xACT--converts .flac files to .aiffs or .wavs, which are more Final Cut friendly

And then of course codec packs so Quicktime and therefore Final Cut will read .avi episode files the internet provides (and if I didn't have that particular neead I would just watch everything in VLC):
--Perian (if you use mac's ichat videochat Perian interferes with it, but other than that is brilliant)
--DivX for making fandom-friendly interwebs final vid files (from Quicktime, because for some reason it doesn't play nice directly with Final Cut, even though in theory Final Cut is built on and has all the capabilities of Quicktime)

I am probably forgetting some things I use. There's something I don't need every time, like FFMpegX was the app we used to get a semi-useable file out of a very old realmedia file for remaster last year (and echan, if MpegStreamClip doesn't do what you want to your .flvs, you might try FFMpegX).

Vids I want to see that people around me have pitched lately:

echan's vid for White Collar to the How I Met Your Mother musical number about Suits

My brother's SGU vid to "Cabin Fever" from Muppet Treasure Island

The Red Dwarf vid traykor and I are making to "Never Set the Cat on Fire"

jetpack_monkey's plan to vid Farscape to Alice's Restaurant OH MY GOD every time I think I've found the most hilarious line in this concept ("Just sittin' there on the group W bench") I think of another one ("And there, at the bottom of the cliff, was ANOTHER PILE OF GARBAGE!"). He hadn't heard of the revisited version and I don't know what you could do with the 18 minute gap story but I am cracking up at the mental visuals of Farscape to "I looked deep into the man's soul and I said, Chiiiiiip, was it open?"

Um so. Happy fun times crack vids in Julstown.

I made a vid. It premiered at Vividcon tonight.

Title: The Boy King
Vidder: jmtorres (with an assist from niqaeli)
Fandom: Supernatural
Song: Sheep Marketing Ploy by Tom Smith
Warnings: Dude, it's Supernatural. Specific warnings here.
Summary: Sam Winchester, the Death Sheep from Hell.

Download link (please right-click/save-as): The Boy King. (27MB avi) (Link updated 18 April 2019)

( embedded on youtube )

I am going to be brave enough to put this list out here publicly, because as much as I might irrationally fear it, no one's going to poach my vid ideas, for two reasons: vidders all have more ideas of their own than they will ever have time to make (I know I do), and no one can make the vid I would make, because I am unique (just like everyone else).

Vids that live in my head:

Being Human - Season of Illusions by Ladytron (the abusive boyfriend vid)
Big Wolf on Campus - Scott Bakula by Sunspot (the Merton's gay dilemma vid)
Enterprise - Mrs. Robinson by The Lemonheads (the trashy holonovel vid)
Merlin - Falcon in the Dive (the ysobel is going to vid with me damn it vid)
Meta - Tradition (the two finger salute vid)
Multifandom - Beautiful Things by Bobby Darin (the OOH SHINY heist tribute)
Multifandom - Woodstock by Joni Mitchell (the escaping dystopia vid)
Multifandom - various (the Badfic vid)
Red Dwarf - Never Set the Cat on Fire by Frank Hayes (the co-vid with traykor)
Sherlock Holmes - Bad Romance by Lady Gaga (the objectifying the masculine vid)
Supernatural - Please Don't Leave Me by Pink (the candy tears vid)
Supernatural - Come Out and Play by The Offspring (the thesis on season 4 vid)
Supernatural (ish) - Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups (Janie's vid)
Supernatural (ish) - Dark Eyes (the history of Ruby vid)
Supernatural (ish) - Turning the Page by, probably, Metallica (the fixing your con vid)
Tru Calling - Madeleine by Jonathan Coulton (the I had to watch it, I have to mock it vid)
White Collar - The Distance by Cake (the Kate as quest object vid)
White Collar - Pisco Bandito by Moxy Früvous (the everyone needs a themesong vid)

This is not all-inclusive, though I am a little startled at some of the older projects that sat up and said HEY when I was making this list.

*ponders list* Three vids primarily about heterosexual relationships (all negative!, in different ways), three vids primarily about homosexual relationships (hmm, more ambiguous), three vids that are essentially male character studies (ranging), three vids that are essentially female character studies (all sympathetic), three vids that are primarily about social issues before any specific fannish content, three vids that my brain files as crack (instead of in any of the preceding categories).

Hmm.

Anyone wanna talk vids with me?

grey_bard made me a vid! It is to Adam Lambert's "For Your Entertainment" and it is a Supernatural vid about Gabriel. YOU GUYS I LOVE ME SOME GABRIEL. grey_bard MADE ME A VID.

I have so much heart for this. Gabriel is such as asshole and she got all of his best SMIRK. And *flailhands GLEECAPS* hi I love this vid.

traykor is looking for your favorite cliché angst shots from numerous vids of your viewing, for the purposes of a SUPERANGST vid. It should be hilarious.

niqaeli wrote an entry about the blood, sweat and tears we put into the vid Long Spear. I helped.

(Long Spear was the Trek vid. Yeah.)

So there's this thing, and they want to show Long Spear, and so I thought I'd check in with you gals--contributors to the vid that ate my summer, you up for this?

That is totally the title of this vid now.

grey_bard? News. IM?

Okay, SO. echan and jetpack_monkey are getting married. echan's putting together the music for their reception and they want to a sort of Club Vivid-esque reception; instead of just music, vids, lots of vids, playing on the movie screen.

The following is echan's current winnowing of playlist. My goal is to find (or goad people into creating) vids for oh, probably, 60% of these songs.

( find songs here! )

She's not too particular about what fandom stuff is in, doesn't seem to remotely care if it is romantic or even about a couple. ETA: she notes that she would prefer happy or bouncy, though./ETA So, please recommend to us any vids you can think of.

(If you happened to get inspired to make a vid for us, please drop me a comment of claim and be aware the deadline is Dec 1.)

echan's first vid ever premiered at Club Vivid last night, a Hustle vid called Smart Con. But to our bafflement it had the weirdest glitch I've ever seen--it looped. Seamlessly. It wasn't even out of sync. The part that repeated covered up another part of her vid, so the hilarious MTV con she vidded was not shown.

echan seems to be taking it fairly well. We assured her that someone's vid gets screwed up every year, it's just one of those things that happens when you have eleventy-billion vids to deal with, and it really was seamless. We don't yet know what it'll look like on that DVDs we all get to take home from con, because I checked the version we submitted and it was correct--so it could be a glitch specific to the Club Vivid playlist burn. In any case, it will be correct on the House of Torres DVDs ($3 in con suite on Sunday and thereafter perhaps on the internets) and for download when I get home on Monday.

So I'm compiling a DVD of our vids to be selling at Vividcon (and possibly on the webs if there is demand) for some cost in the range of $3-$4 US (plus a couple bucks shipping if webs) and I am trying to decide what all should be on the DVD, mostly because I have recently discovered that some of my early work makes me wince.

(My vid post, because I'm not going to link them all individually.)

( lists of vids, cut for length )

Vids of Juls' that Juls is considering not putting on the DVD because old and wince:

• I Want You, Witchblade


• American Tune, Andromeda


• Rain, Farscape

And now, a poll. This is partially to give me a clue how many DVDs we'll need to be making for VVC, partially to demand your advice re vids to disinclude.

(If you are coming from LJ, sign in at the OpenID page to be able to vote.)

I am a fucking rock star. niqaeli too. We are a fucking rock star.

(Is it normal to cry at your own vid? For like, three hours?)

Vid: Highway Café of the Damned
Vidders: jmtorres and niqaeli
Premiered at: vividcon '08
Fandom: Stargate (primarily SG-1, some of the original movie)
Download link: http://houseoftorres.dreamhosters.com/vids/jmtniq-SG1-highwaycafe.avi (24.6MB) (Link updated 21 March 2019)



( illustrated notes )

So, to sum up: you are not wrong to look for context and subtext and metatext. While our primary goal was to make a funny vid and it thrilled us that people laughed, we also had a lot to say. We are deep and funny. Our vid contains multitudes.

Oh, and one other thing. There's a story that goes with it.