Fandom Appreciation Day (Vids) - "Zebra", "Push", "I Don't Care As Long As You Sing"

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

Title: Zebra
Vidder: Lady Shalott astolat
Character: Detective Ray Koawalski
Why I'm reccing this vid: This is one of my all time favorite vids. It perfectly captures Ray and his dorky, twitchy energy. Watch this vid. It will make you happy.

Title: Push
Vidder: fenlings
Pairing: F/K
Why I'm reccing this vid: You know all those sweet, funny F/K vids out there? This is not one of them. "Push" shows an angry, frustrated Ray. He wants a real, equal partnership with Fraser. But Fraser's always gotta be in charge. Fenlings uses effects and cutting to make this vid one of constant, almost abortive motion. She's telling us a story here, and one that I prefer to think of as an AU. Check it out!

Title: I Don't Care As Long As You Sing
Vidder: sdwolfpup
Pairing: F/V
Why I'm reccing this vid: It's sdwolfpup, so you know that the vid will be technically excellent, with a captivating use of movement and inter-cutting. When I had to pick just one of hers to rec, this vid immediately came to mind. I'm not normally a big F/V fangirl, at least not in a happy ending sense. But this vid makes me a believer.

The licking scenes near the beginning make me laugh out loud. There's a clever juxtaposition of Fraser in a white tux, in a straitjacket, in the tux again. Benny doesn't care - to him it's all the same thing. And Ray gets pulled out of his comfort zone to someplace where he doesn't care either. This vid shows their friendship, their love, withstanding every test. It's a thing of beauty.

Fandom Appreciation Day - Vid Recs!

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

The fandom appreciation challenge assignment for today is to point out your favourite "other media" recs, so here are just a few of the amazing fanvids out there.

Title: Be Gentle With Me [vid - link takes you to comprehensive list in Voiceless's journal. Her due South stuff is right at the top of the entry]
Author: voiceless009
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG
Length: Uh, 3min? *g*
Why I'm reccing this ficvid:

I'd just pointed out another one of Voiceless' fabulous dS vids, "Can't Stop This" in my journal a couple of days ago. Viewed together, you can get a pretty good idea of what an amazing visual artist Voiceless is. "Can't Stop This" is a sexy, frisky little romp, a cheeky homage to the men's-room fumblings and kinky hijinks that make PwP F/K fics so much fun to read. But V happens to be an amazing visual storyteller, as well as someone who wants to wink at us via Final Cut: there's a hilarious narrative at play in "Can't Stop This" that works in concert with the 'look! she makes the Boys seem dirty!' snickering, and that's part of what makes the vid so thoroughly rewatchable. But "Be Gentle With Me" is, for my money, equally as enjoyable. I'd compare it to heresluck's amazing "In the Mirror" vid; what heresluck does for RayK in that 4min tour-de-force, Voiceless does for the F/K relationship here. It's a wonderful portrait of their friendship and romantic potential, and I love the way she utilizes editing tricks and the lyrics of the song (and dudes, if anyone can hook me up with an MP3 of The Boy Least Likely To's single, I will forever be in your debt) to illustrate that damaged-but-optmistic sense of second chance hope the Fraser/Kowalski romance offers us. As much as I like it when they're wounded and wary (and, okay, occasionally dismembered) F/K always feels more authentic when it's presented as an act of trust: one person, having been beaten down by life in the past, takes a risk and and says, "Hey, I'm trusting you to take care of my heart." (Ray/Ray hits me the same way, but on a different register, if that makes any sense). Anyway, seek out this vid, young squires, and be amazed.

Title: That's All [vid - link takes you to SD's dS vid site. It's listed as the second entry on the page]
Author: sdwolfpup
Pairing: Ray/Ray
Rating: R (it's suuuuuper suggestive, okay?)
Length: ~3 min (my sense of time - everything is 3 min long)
Why I'm reccing this ficvid:

What can one say about SD? Yes, she's an excellent writer, a bringer of squee, a funny and warm and endlessly supportive friend...and one hell of a vidder. She created an instant fandom classic with "You Can Call Me...," wherein due South collides with Paul Simon's classic from Graceland, and the result is like a warm hug on a cold day. (YYCM always makes me cry, 'SHOW!' and make a *smooshcake* noise when I watch it. You know the noise). SD's vids are always characterized by great use of humour, an absolutely flawless gift for matching musical cue/lyrics with editing to create the perfect emotional response, and an ability to cut to the core of these characters and tell us a story about them in just under 3min. I think that, while I love YCCM, "That's All" is SD's best dS vid. It's a technical marvel, crafting a whole narrative about the rise and fall (and rise) of Ray and Ray's troubled romance featuring characters who have just a scant few minutes of screen time together in the series. SD utilizes some technical wizardry, including the clever use of film clips from another source (*cough* Dante's Cove *cough*) and a jaw-dropping splitscreen technique to amp up the sexual tension, and she perfectly encapsulates the testy, sexy and tumultuous connection that keeps drawing us fans back to the Ray/Ray well. I think catwalksalone said it best: this is the Rays in all their confused, angry, fucked-up glory, and this is the vid I've used to demonstrate why the pairing works to skeptical fangirls. (*waves to omphale23*) I'll close by borrowing some advice from SD's own essential article on providing feedback for vids (that'd be Vidding Feedback 101) and share my honest response to her work: it knocked my socks off. And it made me download a Genesis song. You have much to answer for, SD! :-)

Title: Pavlov's Bell [Link to Butterfly's vidding index]
Author: Butterfly
Pairing: F/K (F/V too, if you squint)
Rating: PG
Length: ~3 min! I think!
Why I'm reccing this ficvid:

This one's been around for a while and I was torn between reccing it and Sisabet's "Icebound Stream," which everyone and their deaf half-wolf has probably seen by now, but in the end this angsty and sometimes painful look at Fraser's past mistakes (and its message about the importance of moving forward) won out. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of dS vids set to Aimee Mann songs in this fandom, and I think Butterfly made a perfect choice: she does wonderful things with the interplay between lyrics of this sad, dryly amused song ("History shows/that's how I nearly fell...") and scenes from episodes like "Victoria's Secret" and "Burning Down the House." What I admire most, verbose creature that I am, is that there's no fat on this one at all: it's lean and mean and carries a pretty big emotional impact. If you like your Fraser-centric vids to be a little on the angsty side, I'd also recommend "Lord I Have Made You A Place In My Heart" by the fabulous laurashapiro, which you can find with the rest of her vids over here (and many thanks to sdwolfpup for the link).

Alright! I hope you found something new in that mix. Up next: podfics you have to listen to.

Fandom Appreciation Challenge - Podfic Recs!

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

Continuing on with day four of the Fandom Appreciation Challenge, here are some of my top podfic recs.

Title: Five Times Ray Kowalski Tried to Make Someone Feel At Home (even if it didn't always work)
Link to Podfic Here [right-click, "save as"]
Author: leafy22
Reader: vsee
Pairing: F/K
Rating: PG
Length: 14:50min
Why I'm reccing this ficpodfic:

vsee is a relatively new podficcer, but she's already amassed a pretty impressive body of work. Her readings are faithful translations of the original story, and she has a lovely and soothing voice that fits perfectly with the sweet and engaging and sometimes slightly sad stories she's chosen to read. Leafy's charming tale, which recounts Ray's attempts to make people feel comfortable, makes for a great audiofic. I adore this story a whole lot, and it was wonderful to see vsee tackle it with so much skill and professionalism. On a technical level it's clean, clear and very well-paced, and I truly hope Vsee will continue to record podfic for the dS fandom. You can find more of V's recordings here at general_jinjur's indispensable and highly comprehensive podfic archive.

Title: Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace
Link to Podfic Here [right-click, "save as"]
Author: slidellra
Reader: malnpudl
Fandom: For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (gasp!)
Rating: PG
Length: 11:30min
Why I'm reccing this ficpodfic:

I'm breaking a a cardinal rule here at ds_recsredux and reccing C6D fandom media, but luckly I have some pull with the mods, so you'll just have to bear with me. During the recent amplificathon, malnpudl kicked ass and recorded a (vast) number of short and medium-length podfics, one of which was this beautiful, sensitive, and achingly perfect recording of slidellra's equally-perfect Jerry Bines story. (Which was written for me. *preens* And yes - this whole thing is pretty damn incestuous). Nevertheless, it's an amazing reading: Mal's voice is so lovely and gentle, and she evokes the perfect mix of bemusement and confusion and peace that Jerry experiences as he lingers at his lonely hunting camp. It's a wonderfully performative reading, as well as a pleasure to listen to on a technical level, and I kind of just want to hang out at Mal's and beg her to read me stories. Even if you're not familiar with For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down, please check this one out. It's pretty damn amazing.

Title: How Ray Got His Groove Back
Link to Podfic Here [right-click, "save as"]
Author: Bone and Aristide
Reader: zabira
Fandom: due South
Rating: NC-17
Length: 3hrs 35min
Why I'm reccing this ficpodfic:

God, trying to pick my favourite zabira recording is like trying to decide between chocolate and...some other form of chocolate. It's all so delicious! And there is so much good stuff to choose from: Z has created a huge number of podfics, and they are all uniformly excellent. She always brings so much enthusiasm and care to her recordings, and it's always obvious that she loves the stories as much (or perhaps more) than the original authors. And Z has a deft touch for conveying the emotions behind very different stories: she's done humour (Juggling Act) and angst (Heavy Bag and Passion) and even, um, whimsical wingfic (Wings of Desire). In the end, though, this is the one I keep coming back to. "Groove" is a terrific story to begin with: it's one of the sexiest fics in dS, and while this fandom isn't exactly a slouch in the NC-17 department, the story always manages to offer new insight into the characters as the relationship between Ray and Fraser evolves, changes, and deepens. But I think the podfic adds an extra dimension to the story. Z has impeccable comic timing in the funny bits, and she does an extraordinarily good job of differentiating between the Fraser-POV sections and the Ray-POV sections. They sound like different characters here and that, as you might know if you've tried it, can be one of the biggest challenges in a podfic recording. I put this on when I'm looking for some writerly inspiration, when I'm doing housework, when I'm commuting between my jobs, and it always manages to improve my mood. And occasionally blush at some inopportune moments. *g*

These recs barely scratch the surface of the vast amount of funny, sweet, warm and heartbreaking stories available for your listening pleasure. If you're interested in downloading and listening to a podfic, I'd recommend you start with general_jinjur's aforementioned podfic archive. Isis (who did a lot of influential work early on and succeeded in getting a lot of people interested in recording stories), Keerawa, Slidellra and Lamentables have all turned in fabulous recordings of dS fics. I hope you'll check them out, and please drop them a line to let the podficcers know you liked their readings.