Notes and queries:

[raven]

Here, lovely flist! Have a list of things that are on my mind that are not doom and gloom.

1. Vidding! I was at Vidukon last weekend, which was a lot of fun - I had a day off work, hung out with a lot of awesome people (after vaguely intersecting with cosmic_llin for years it was great to finally meet her) and I also met isagel and carawj and lots of other people. And I had a lovely time, and saw a lot of vids, and I sort of vaguely tried to start vidding a couple of years ago before my computer got stuck on permanent beachball and now I have a new computer and... you see where this is going. I have started to try and learn to vid, mostly by opening up the software and poking stuff until it goes swoosh or beep or ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong, and I have learnt some terribly basic things. I sort of hope I will keep on learning terribly basic things until I know enough of them to learn not quite so basic things? I hope. I'm not someone who's ever had any hobbies which require actual stuff - me, I write, I read, my real job can be done with a pen and an open mind - so learning how to use actual tools is quite new to me. such_heights pointed out that you learn because you have a vid in your head and you learn everything you need to know get the thing on the screen to look like the vid in your head - you won't learn in the abstract. Which I think is true, and so I can't decide if it's a blessing or a curse that the vid in my head is a multifandom vid about land registration.

(Yeah, I know. I know. One day I'll sit down and articulate why I sincerely believe land registration is important - and I suppose the vid is that, too, it's not about land registration itself but why I spend my whole life doing it, why land and people are the same thing inside themselves. In the meantime, swish, beep, ding.)

2. TV with gay detectives! I am watching the Donald Strachey series of TV movies, after seeing this gorgeous vid at Vidukon. They’re a series about a gay private investigator in Albany, NY, who largely (but not always) gets involved with crimes relating to the queer community, and they’re just delightful: funny, warm and comforting. Strachey is in a lot of ways a typically hard-boiled private investigator protagonist (his office in particular is hilariously clichéd, down to the glass panel door with ‘Donald Strachey Investigations’ in peeling letters!) but he is realistically and unremarkably queer in a way that’s both refreshing and rings very true. In her review, thingswithwings said everything I'd want to say about how much I enjoy this: a queer story that's about queer people, living their lives with kindness and realism and without melodrama. But even if is as much about the cases and crimes as the queerness, I still think having Donald Strachey be a queer, hard-boiled, hard-drinking, loner PI wouldn’t have been an awful lot of a step up from dead queer people or offscreen queer people – it has minimal impact on the narrative – even though that’s indisputably how the genre works.

But he's not a queer loner PI, he's a queer, happily married PI, and I have been flailing at T'wings a lot about this recently but Timothy Callaghan, Strachey’s long-suffering long-term partner, hits a number of narrative kinks for me in ways I wasn’t able to articulate before. (They're not legally married but as-close-as - the canon is set a few years before marriage equality in New York). There is a scene in one of the movies – I’m yet to find out if it’s in the books – where Timmy can’t fire a gun. Not as a matter of physically being able to, of course – it’s just that even with Donald’s and his own life at stake, he can’t pull the trigger. Strachey’s response to this is :“I love you.” Now obviously it’s no surprise to anyone that I adore this trope, and the broader trope that it’s an instance of, too: the single voice of dissent against the exercise of power. Like Daniel in SG-1, and Toby in The West Wing, and Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H (“Hawkeye Get Your Gun” is the episode about how Hawkeye, too, can’t fire a gun – even when drunk and having shells dropped on him (“Why are they bombing us? We’re already bombed!”)), Timmy is, explicitly and implicitly, the moral compass of the story – like T’wings says, he’s what stops Strachey being like Batman. But I did not know until now how much I needed to see that role queered, and the thing is, it damn well ought to be queered. Timmy is a senior aide to a liberal senator, and the canon likes playing with that – it likes leading you down the garden path of telling you that this cute, entirely non-aggressive, wandering-around-barefoot-with-his-hands-in-his-pockets man is the comic sidekick to his super-cool private investigator boyfriend, and then Timmy finds out that funding for one of his anti-poverty initiatives is being withdrawn and manages to secure $200,000 of charitable donations in five hours – because of course it’s engaging with the idea that there is more than one way to fight. To lead a queer life is in itself a political act; to live in public by a clearly-defined set of beliefs, informed and framed by queerness, is a political act. And Timmy does, and I needed to see that on television. (Basically the only thing that could make me like this more if it were the other show, the flipped-up version about the queer senator’s aide with the PI boyfriend.)

(Also, one of the movies has land registration as a plot point. I'm just saying, this is a thing that happens.)

3. Trying to find a new fandom! I just got to the end of Fringe, a show I like a lot, but even given that I’ve been more in the ebb than the flow of fandom recently. (It’s frustrating for me that basically every big fandom of the last couple of years has passed me by, or I’ve given it a try and not been into it: witness Community, Avatar: the Last Airbender, The Avengers, etc). The last big fandom I had any involvement with was the last Star Trek movie and that was 2009, for heaven’s sake. (As for the new movie: I saw it, I liked it, but musesfool’s review here basically hit everything I didn’t like about it. Even without the whitewashing – and there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say – I just, no, I did not want this. Funnily enough this ties in with a little of what I was saying above – it’s Scotty who embodies the moral conscience trope in Into Darkness and predictably, I loved that. I loved that he refused to sign for the torpedoes. I love that Uhura wanted to negotiate with the Klingons rather than shoot at them. I love that Spock told the truth in his report. I’ve always loved McCoy. I loved Kirk and Spock’s rapid-fire snark, I even think Benedict Cumberbatch is a ridiculously good actor. There was so much I liked about this movie. But I remember Khan Noonien Singh, the brown guy who was a superman, and it just makes me weary. Some people have said that they couldn’t really win – they could either whitewash Khan, or do the whole main-villain-is-villanously-brown thing – which is absolutely right, but (newsflash!) they didn’t actually have to make a movie about Khan. There is a movie about Khan. It’s called The Wrath of Khan. So I am tired.

Anyway, new fandom! I am watching various things on and off. Haven’t managed to get into Warehouse 13 – I’ve tried the pilot and a couple of other random episodes, and it’s okay I guess? I like the idea more than the execution so far and haven't really picked it up again. Ditto Defiance, the new Syfy show – I watched the pilot, because hey, show with aliens! Yay! – but haven’t yet been inspired to watch any more of it. I’m told the aliens do start acting a little more alien later on, but, hmm. I am enjoying Orphan Black, the new Canadian thing – at least I think I’m enjoying it; I keep getting really tense! and pausing it! and thus not watching it terribly fast, but I think that means I do care about what happens to these people. So. So. Life notwithstanding, I'm still here.

Comments

[scribe]

Vidding! \o/ I definitely agree with the idea of learning as you go in order to create the thing you want. Also I am totally fascinated by the idea of your multifandom land registration vid.

Donald Strachey sounds excellent! I will add it to my to-watch list. :-)

[raven]

Seriously, I don't think I've met a steeper learning curve recently. But I guess it all adds to the sense of achievement at the end. :) I am hoping that I will be able to launch this land registration vid on the world at some point, despite the babiness of the baby steps.

Donald Strachey is very excellent and you should definitely do that.

[scribe]

Ugh, yes, I recently spent a while trying to learn a new video editing software and just about threw my computer out a window. >_>

What software are you using, by the way? I'm sure you have many resources, but I have in the past been employed teaching people FCP 6 and 7, if I can be of any help. :-)

[surexit]

Someday I would love to hear about land and people. ♥

[raven]

Believe me, it's my favourite topic. Watch this space. :)

[hedda62]

I look forward to your adventures in vidding; I feel certain if you master the technology you'll do wondrous lyrical things with it.

*adds Strachey to list of things-to-be-watched* I am alas a one-trick pony these days, but I can certainly try recommending Person of Interest, which I summarize here. Also The Good Wife, which is my other trick.

[raven]

Strachey is great, and I think you would like it a lot. I am touched by your faith in me re: vidding! I am plugging away.

Shim and I tried the POI pilot, which we didn't like much (I liked Finch, but Reese gave me metaphorical hives). Can you recommend the stand-out episodes, or does it not work like that?

[hedda62]

I had pretty much the same reaction to the pilot and in fact the first few episodes - it was okay, but I only stuck with it because it came Highly Recommended. I am the sort of person who likes to watch things in order, but if you are not this is a pretty good plan of action. And I think you'll know by the end of 1.05 whether there is any hope you'll like it. I won't hate you if you don't. :) The development is slow because the main characters are the epitome of clam, and it isn't until the shells start opening a little that it becomes more than a number-of-the-week series. But it does. (And then you go back and watch the pilot and say "OH I SEE NOW.")

[raven]

Thank you for this! I will investigate.

[lemon_badgeress]

I wish to presumptuously ask to hug you now, because your post about your happier things made me happier.

Good luck with your vidding! I will watch your master work with great interest, and I salute you for learning! Tools are hard. Not having enough hobbies myself yet *coughs* I've been poking at crochet and knitting, and at this point all I have to say is fuck sticks, man. Fuck sticks. Right in the EAR.

[raven]

*squish* thank you, honey. Tools are super hard! Learning is hard. FUCK STICKS AND FINAL CUT.

[soupytwist]

Your thoughts on Timmy and Donald MAKE ME SO HAPPY. YES YES YES YES YES EXACTLY.

I also think that you doing a vid about land registration is the best idea ever and I heart you a lot and can it start with "This land is a fertile land! We shall rule over all this land, and we shall call it, this land!" "I think we should call it YOUR GRAVE!"

(NB I entirely realise that it would almost certainly be hideously inappropriate and wrong and yet? The suggestion is now in my brain making me giggle. Because I am wrong.)

[raven]

Awww, yay, Timmy and Donald! I am so glad you have also seen these. I love them sooo.

That... cracks me up. Seriously. Yes it would be hideously inappropriate, I kind of want to do it anyway. CURSE YOUR SUDDEN BUT INEVITABLE BETRAYAL. I am giggling away to myself happily, don't mind me.

[marginaliana]

This post made me interested in land registration!

[raven]

Well, my work here is done. :)

[skywaterblue]

Your thoughts about land registration have deeply influenced me over the years, so much so that I run a Pern MUSH where that's one of the main drivers of conflict. (It helps that it drives a large chunk of the conflict in the canon, too.)

[raven]

This makes me so, so happy!

[celli]

STRACHEY OMG.
:D:D:D:D:D

[raven]

ICON YAY :)

[cosmic_llin]

It was awesome to finally meet you too! Also I looked on your AO3 the other day and it's like a million fics that I've loved over the years. *high five*

I'm quite excited about this vid of yours. No pressure. ;)

[raven]

*high five* yay! I am excited about vidding! It's kinda fun, when you're not yelling at technology. :)

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't really get into Warehouse 13 until the second or third seasons when it started doing plots from Torchwood but in ways I liked better than when they were on Torchwood?

Ooh, you got further with Defiance than I did! I watched one clip and was...meh.

Hehe, it can be hard to tell sometimes about entertainment whether it's enjoyment or not. I've only watched a scene or two of it either. I do really like Lost Girl though. It's Canadian as well so I used to have to download it through "special means" but now I can watch it on Syfy.

[tau_sigma]

Have you tried Grimm? Anwar & I have been watching it, and loving it; it's not necessarily what I'd call particularly good, but it's both hilarious and suspenseful. The title character is, in many ways, not that interesting, but his not!boyfriend is great, and they are so clearly in love omg (there's even an episode where they discuss testicles in an adorably awkward way, while not!boyfriend makes sausages).

There's also general folklore and fairytale excitement, and intrigue, and hidden identities; it's a lot of fun, basically. I think you would like it. *g*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I have not! I will make a note, thank you!

[sarah.livejournal.com]

Warehouse 13's great but I didn't really like it at the start. Seasons 2 and 3 are better than 1. They haven't shown 4 yet on Syfy Belgium so I don't know about that.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'll skip to season 2 - you're not the first person to tell me that.

[sarah.livejournal.com]

It starts getting way better once a certain someone is in it. I won't tell you who or anything so I don't spoil anything. But that's season 2. (I couldn't stand this person on other tv shows they've been on but they're awesome in Warehouse 13)

[mirabile-dictu.livejournal.com]

I love Warehouse 13 the way I love the Stargates: it's goofy but the characters are great, the way they become a family makes me smile, and the cheesy special effects make me laugh. I never miss an episode.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Well, I love the Stargates too! I will give it another try.

[minttown1.livejournal.com]

Gratuitous icon usage. I'm not interested in the books, personally, due to some major differences I read about on wikipedia (I am kind of incapable of really enjoying two adaptations of the same work), but these movies make my life. I was just talking to my mom about them last night! She is a huge fan, as well, and watched them with her partner, who also likes them, and they are basically the perfect movies for my family for all the reasons you mention: entertaining crimes stories with a huge heart behind them about queer folk who seem very real.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Awww, bless, what a sweet icon! I'm really pleased to have found them, they have done my heart good.

[tafkarfanfic.livejournal.com]

Warehouse 13 has been canceled, so on the bright side you won't have to worry about a growing canon...

[wishfulaces.livejournal.com]

Oh, oh, the Strachey movies! They're so marvelous, and I wish more of them had been/could be made. (Last I checked, there were no plans for more.) I think I prefer the movies to the books, but then I also started with the movies before the books. (And yes, TIMMY IS MY HERO.)