I'm doing that
vidding meme! And am happy to take more requests.
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violace asked:
Is there a genre or style you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole?I don't know that I'd call it a genre or style, but anything with a lot of graphic violence -- or, more accurately, certain specific types of graphic violence. I can't even stand to watch that stuff, much less vid it. I also probably wouldn't do much with explicit sex/porn, but I won't say never. Actually the more I think about it the more it appeals to me as a challenge -- some day.
I suppose there is a style of vid to cheesy love ballads (e.g. Celine Dion) and whatnot that I can't really imagine making because I can't stand the music. I do genuinely appreciate the earnestness of such vids though. And I had to talk myself out of including
Power of Two as a candidate vidsong for Xena Vid Series From Hell, so even that boundary is apparently squishy.
thirdblindmouse asked:
Is there a section of canon above all others that inspires you just a little bit more?So, since TBM asked, I'm going to talk about
Xena canon here, because it's a shared interest and because that's the fandom where this question is easiest to answer. Because as much as I enjoy the camp and the slash and the fun of
Xena, there is basically one thing that has inspired my intense fannishness for the Xena/Gab pairing and for the show overall, and that is Xena and Gabrielle's ongoing debate about How to Fight the Good Fight*.
For me, the two parter "The Debt" from Season 3 and Gabrielle's pacifism arc which is a focus of season 4 (but resonates throughout the series) are the center of this debate. In the early seasons of the show, Gabrielle is generally shown to be -- and believed by the characters to be -- the one with a more developed moral compass. "The Debt" tears this apart by showing Gabrielle how much more complex the world is, and that a knee-jerk "killing is wrong" position can cause more harm than not. It is forever to my dismay that the S3 Rift Arc focuses so much on Hope and leaves Gabrielle's betrayal of Xena in "The Debt" as background, but I choose to read it differently, and that is an important part of both my XVSFH vids so far ("Become You" and "Starkville").
As Gabrielle spends more time with Xena and her worldview grows more complex, she finds that her love of Xena and her wish to not commit violence are irreconcilable. For a while she tries to practice non-violence while accepting that this is not an option for Xena, and tries to make it work. But it doesn't. It can't. So ultimately she chooses Xena, and I think breaks a little bit of her heart doing so.
I continue to be blown away by this arc, because I so often find the presentation of pacifism on shows to be obnoxious, heavy-handed, or dismissive.
Xena takes pacifism seriously, and it also takes the violence of the world the characters live in seriously, and it integrates those themes into the characters' relationship -- it makes it deeply personal. And that is why I love it.
(OK, the other main reason I love Xena/Gab is because those two are always telling each other how much they love each other. That kind of open, honest communication is my relationship catnip, see also my love of
Friday Night Lights.)
*This is also like 80% of my love for
Angel the Series, and Gunn's character arc in particular, the other 20% being Lorne.
