I can't decide what's crazier... that I thought making this vid with a single-track editor was a good idea... or that I'm still making it.

OMG, there must be 200 cuts already, and I'm only 23 seconds in! Also, I have a horrible feeling I'm going to run our of source, even though I have about a zillion hours worth.

How on earth do vidders do this??? <--See what I did there? I totally took back my tentative vidder identification.

PS--The 1940s were on the good crack.

PPS--This announcement brought to you entirely because Captain Jack Harkness looks good in a uniform.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/334190.html.

Today Hope has kicked off our fest with some amazing fan art! She's taken classic pulp covers and Torchwoodised them. They're awesome.

Title: They Never Come Back; I, Robot; Shameless Game; The X-Machine
Artist: hope
Fandom: Torchwood
Medium: Photoshop
Rating: G
Summary: Four Torchwood pulp fiction novel covers. Various characters.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/333890.html.

So, a few weeks ago, Hope said to me, "Hey, Cath, why don't we have a fest? Just you and me! We can write a dozen Torchwood fics and post after Christmas!"

I pretty much did this: O_o

Then Hope said some more stuff, mostly about it being a "celebration of cliches" which she knows perfectly well is like catnip to me. Cliches! Grrrowr.

As a delaying tactic while I frantically thought about whether I wanted to write lots of cliche fics (duh, yes), and had time to do so (hahaha, no), I said, "Can I make vids?" and Hope, sensing my weakness, said, "Yep, of course."

Vids! About cliches!

"Oh my god, yes please," I said.

I am such a sucker. :)

And verily it has been so. I have made many, many vids in the last few days weeks, plus written some fic. This has been very pleasing and joy-making, but also rather terrifying, mostly because I've started to get ambitious with the vidding.

It's been a pleasure to revisit some of my favourite cliches too, but I won't meta bout that now, as Hope has already said everything more elegantly than I could in her announcement post.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that Hope and I have most of a fest kind of done. Except for the bits that aren't. *panics*

This is the plan: over the next twelve days, we're going to post twelve fanworks. It won't be every day, because some of the works go together, but there will indeed be twelve of 'em, and they are of many different types. We'll be posting here, and over at hope's journal. I'll link her posts when it's her days.

We've had a lot of fun putting our Cliche Fest together, and I hope you all have a lot of fun coming along for the ride.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/333616.html.

MistleTorchwood's prompt deadline is nigh

There's only 10 hours left if you want to leave a prompt for the mistletw fest. (I'm not going to police it strictly, as I'll be asleep when the deadline hits. *waves hands at timezones*)

You can still claim prompts up until the 31st. In fact, please do -- the more the merrier! But this is your final window of opportunity to post your own prompt.

mistletw is an end-of-year fest for Torchwood fans, so that we can give each other presents of fan fiction, art and vids. You can find the rules and sign-up post here. All pairing preferences welcome.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/333564.html.

I thought writing fiction was narcissistic, but it has nothing on vidding!

You know that old adage about writing the stories you want to read? I do that, a lot of the time (although not always). And once enough time has gone by, I have been known to go back and read those stories as though they were written by someone else, and they are so satisfying, because they hit all of my buttons and none of my squicks.

Vidding is like that, but taken to eleven, and without needing the cool-down period.

I honestly had no idea how much I was yearning for a certain kind of vid about Jack Harkness. Until I made it. Well, more than one vid, actually. Now I can't stop watching the bloody things. It doesn't even matter that I'm still a beginner, and I can see all the rough places in the vids. It's like... it's like having new episodes of my favourite show to watch!

I've been thinking about the timing of my foray into vidding, and how much it was driven by this want for a particular type of vid. Honestly, I was so spoiled by SGA, which gave me every type of vid I could ever want. There was just no need for me to try and make those kinds of stories myself. And now, I'm not only vidding, I'm creating soundtracks to vid to, because the music I want doesn't exist either. Necessity really is the mother of invention! Hahaha.

I wonder if it's like this for other vidders? <-- See what I did there? I said before that I don't think of myself as a vidder, but I'm starting to. I just love this thing: remixing so many different elements at once. Love it. I've yearned to make a multimedia story for a long time, and finally, I feel like I have the tools within my grasp to do so. It's so exciting!

Anyway, I wonder if other vidders got started because they wanted certain stories; so they made them, and then rewatched them over and over (the way I used to watch my favourite SGA vids, now that I think about it).

I'm not sure I even need to post the vids I make. There isn't the same kind of response to vids as there is to fic, in any case, so it doesn't feel like anyone is particularly waiting for the next thing I do. And that means that affirmation really isn't the driving force (not that it's the only driver for fiction either, but it's certainly a factor). I'm starting to understand why kiki_miserychic says she mostly makes vids for herself and doesn't post them.

It really is a strange new world!

*goes to rewatch my latest Jack vid*

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/333082.html.

skuf posted Where's all the meta?, which is an interesting discussion on the changing ways we're producing and consuming meta. There's a nifty poll and everything.

There's lots of good discussion there, and lots of good reasons why we might not be engaging with meta in the same way anymore.

I just wanted to snapshot one of my comments (with some tweaking for clarity)...

*

People are still talking a lot, and it's still about fannish stuff -- it's all over both of my flists and my delicious feed.

So what I'm wondering is if maybe some meta looks different to what we're used to, and so isn't pinging as meta.

For instance, you've written a fairly traditional meta post here to get this conversation started: laying out the topic, discussing various possibilities, asking for comment. It's a successful formula and a common one for meta (in the past anyway).

Now you've made me think about it, what I've been seeing recently (and admittedly, I haven't scanned my flist as much lately, so it could be a very biased sample) are more posts with short musings, or just questions, or a discussion that's not contextualised as meta, but clearly is. There are also several people on my flist who write meta almost daily, in these little soundbites -- it's their blogging style, but it would be hard to link one of those posts on a newsletter without context (mecurtin, for instance, does this, although less often lately).

These sorts of non-typical meta posts refer to and are using the language of earlier debates (we have a meta shorthand!). Sometimes they start with a single fandom, but then relate it back to bigger fannish issue, or vice versa. I take them in as meta, but kind of like meta twitters.

*

Maybe all the huge discussions of the last two years have actually changed the face of meta, because we feel more comfortable in just using that language and making short comments, rather than having to scale up our meta thoughts into full-blown essays. I kind of like that idea, although I don't know how you'd snapshot that kind of spread-out commentary to share to a wider audience.

Have you guys noticed a change, or changed your meta ways lately? Or maybe your fandom ways? Is the media changing the message? Is fandom going through a sea change?

ETA: OMG, I have the best cherry jam on crunchy toast. NOM NOM NOM.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/332824.html.

There are several reasons I have accounts on two social bookmarking sites. Mostly, I began by wanting a back-up site for my recs on delicious; but having now compared the functionality of diigo and delicious, diigo is the clear winner in nearly all respects.

Social bookmarking
Ironically, delicious wins this category. I started out on delicious because everyone else in fandom was using it, and that meant I could tap into the recs other people were posting and have a good chance of finding things I'd be interested in reading without having to wade through whole newsletters. The 'Subscription' feed is brilliant for this -- I can find everything with the 'torchwood' tag (for instance) that other people think worth bookmarking. I also pick up a lot of meta and vid recs from my Network, plus sooper-dooper stories in fandoms I don't follow. I actually scan these feeds to find things more often than my flist now, and the noise to content ratio is better (don't get me wrong, I love my flist's noise, but I just don't have as much time to read now, so prioritising is more important).

Diigo doesn't have this infrastructure in place, as fandom hasn't picked it up en masse in the same way. So I still use delicious for the social bookmarking aspect. However, after delicious had suffered service interruptions a few times, I started getting more serious about backing up my library of links. That's why I first signed up for diigo, and after testing it out, I pretty much moved over to using it for everything other than the reading feed.

Web 2 functionality
The thing about diigo is that it has added functionality that's way ahead of that offered by delicious. For instance, when I bookmark something on diigo, it will automagically push the bookmark out to delicious for me, with no extra effort on my part. I can also automagically post the links to twitter, to livejournal and various other places, if I so wish.

Behind the cut, I give a quick run-down of the neat tools I use on diigo, and how to set them up.

( How to use diigo )

Anyway, there you have it: the quick and dirty guide to diigo. If you end up giving it a try, let me know and I can add you to my network.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/332715.html.

Just a quick post to link to my diigo account, which is a mirror of delicious. So you can still find recs, even if delicious is down.

Let me know if you're on there too, so I can add you to my network.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/332319.html.

I'm feeling very pleased with myself tonight. I've just finished coding the last of my Songvid Oddities rec set for Crack Van! Thank goodness.

I'd already picked all the vids way back at the end of November, but there were so many that I've been coding up the recs in stages. You know how many there ended up being in the set? Thirty-seven songvids. Can you believe it? I kind of can't.

There really are some stunning songvids out there; it's always so hard to pick. My current faves are tearful_eye's Souvenirs (fandom = Life, PG-15, warning for violence) and aycheb's Silence (fandom = Minority Report, PG-15, warning for violence).

I love the way both vids use intercutting and effects, and the way the unusual song choices give the vids an unexpected depth and poignancy. They both just blow my socks off. That's the kind of visual art I want to be able to make one day.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/332105.html.

Have you seen the trailer for James Cameron's latest yet? It looks utterly gorgeous. But the plot (as it's advertised in the trailer, anyway) is making me grind my teeth.

Why is this a story about a white guy donning an indigenous skin and becoming the hero of the exploited natives? I... don't want that story, and I've been asking myself why all afternoon. I mean, I didn't mind Kevin Costner going native in Dances With Wolves -- in fact, I liked it a lot -- but in that story there was never any pretence that he was not still a white man. It's the white man gaining indigenous cred through a removable skin that's bothering me, I think. It just icks me out.

I should know better, but I keep expecting mainstream stories to interrogate colonialism and sexism, because here we are in a hyperchangeably embodied world for real, right, with online avatars and all. There's a lot of room to explore ethics (or the failure of them) in that kind of world, and some mainstream texts have started to go there, like Battlestar Galactica. But a change of virtual skin doesn't necessarily change our politics, as the internet so ably demonstrates every day. And implying that it's that simple just seems like a massive cheat to me, not to mention it cheapens the real issues of real indigenous people (because, oh right, they should just change their skin and then everything will be okay for them; why didn't they think of that solution sooner?).

Have any of you seen the film yet? Is it really trying to tell us that a skin change is all it takes to become a postcolonial equalist? I'm thinking I might have to go and look, just to prove/disprove my reading of the trailer. But on the other hand... do I want to spend money on that story, even in order to critique it more effectively?


In other news, Victoria Bitter is back it seems. Wow, what a perfect demonstration that virtual avatars don't necessarily change what's underneath!

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/332011.html.

The last few days I've been so hungry, which, I know, is totally out of step with the season.

I was at a wind-up meeting at a cafe yesterday, and all the other people there were saying, "Oh, I couldn't face food. Everyone keeps thrusting it at me, and I don't want to get fat this Christmas." They just ordered peppermint teas all around. And I'm like, "Oh my God, gluten free cake! Bring me that now!"

Then last night for dinner, I was so hungry when I got home that I made gaucomole and ate it with half a (large) bag of corn chips. Then I made myself a poached salmon salad as large as my head. Then I had a bowl of cherries for dessert. A large bowl.

This morning? I woke up and crawled out of bed and my pajama pants fell off. Then I ate a bowl of cereal which contained about 18 recommended serves, plus a banana.

I think it's going to be one of those days weeks.

I suppose all of you are stuffed to the gills and groaning about eating too much, right? But the important questions is: What have you been eating??? Share your food porn with me, guys. Nom nom nom.

I think it's time for second breakfast!

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/331764.html.

The results for the last ever McShep Awards are in! I'm stoked -- I got a Puddlejumper for Happily Ever After in the Romance category. Can you believe it? And tardis80 came Runner-up for the gorgeous Cover Art.

\o/

I think this is my first (and no doubt last) SGA award. I am filled with glee. Plus, I have a spiffy banner. Score.



Thank you McShep Awards organisers. I can imagine how much work it took to herd all us cats. You rock. <3

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/331399.html.

First up, LJ notifications aren't working, so drop another comment or email me directly if you think I've missed your request (cupidsbower at gmail dot com).

Google Wave -- Sent to all who asked for invites. The Google invite machine tells me that it's not automatic, but that invites will be doled out shortly. You should get one soon! I still have some left, so go ahead and leave your email address if you want one.

DreamWidth -- I've sent invites to all who asked, which should happen right away. I still have some left, so just leave an email address in comments if you want one.

AO3 -- This was very popular, with many people asking. Sadly, I only had one to give out and it is gone. I'm not sure how long it will take to get to you, but give it 48 hours. If you want an account, you can request an one yourself from here.

Comments on this post are screened.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/331163.html.

Right. Here's the thing. While I was away conferencing (and then home and kind of sick and wuzzy for the last week), a whole heap of invites accrued in my various inboxes.

If you would like one of the following, let me know in comments, which I have screened. You need to give me an email address so I can send the invite(s) to you.

Google Wave -- I now have many of these to give away, so anyone who asks will likely get one. ETA: Sent to all who asked; I still have some left.

DreamWidth -- Likewise, I have many. And DreamWidth is now very stable and increasingly cool. I haven't quite entirely switched over yet, but I'm using DW first, more often than not. The features are getting awesome too. ETA: Sent to all who asked; I still have some left.

The Archive of Our Own -- This is now in open beta, so you can request an invite yourself. But I have one, just sitting here. Let me know if you want it. First asker gets it. This was by far the most popular request, and it is gone.

Don't forget to give me an email address, or I can't send the invites. Make sure it's the address you want linked to the account.

ETA: Stupid LJ isn't sending through notifications. Grrr.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/330797.html.

I can't stop smiling. My face is starting to hurt! YOU GUYS!!!

Thank you! So many virtual cookies. It's just as well they're virtual, or I'd have the worst stomach ache in the world. Nom nom nom. :)

The best part is that it's so out of the blue. You will all have noticed that I haven't been posting as much lately... or at least, not newsy stuff here on my LJ. I'm still doing crack_van and flashfic-hub, and rec_room and all that. But that kind of posting feels invisible somehow. As though I'm not really here, taking part in the hurley burley of fannish passion.

I haven't minded just having this year of quiet space -- I figure I'll go back to posting more often soon, as I'm writing fiction again, and vidding and all those fun things. But even though it's been nice having this quiet stretch of time, even though I needed it, I've missed the wonderful conversations, the casual, everyday ins-and-outs of online fannish life.

I've missed all of you!

And I'm just so unbelievably touched by all the presents I've been getting today. Thank you all so much!

If any of you (not just the people leaving cookies) fancy a chat, leave a comment. Ask me questions. Tell me what you want me to talk about. I don't think I'm quite up for an LJ party yet, but maybe a bit of a love-in would be nice. :)

You know how sometimes people write, "OMG, I had this flashfic idea, and then I wrote this! So much for sleep," and they post a 20,000 word epic?

Yeah, well I pretty much just did the same thing in vidding terms. I said to Hope on Friday night, "Dude, I'm gonna make a flashvid for the Omens Challenge on Flashfic-hub. Help me pick clips!" which she did, because she's awesome like that. And then there was a frenzy of vidding that just would not stop. So many cuts! So little sleep! So hard to export from bloody MovieMaker! So many, many reboots of my computer when it spat the dummy at how many applications I had open at once. I seriously cannot wait until I get my new computer and Sony Vegas. I feel like I'm doing the vidding equivalent of charcoal scratchings on a cave wall with my current setup.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's my flashvid, with full-colour Ianto Jones. It's my first Ianto character study vid. I'm so proud. :) Oh, and it's definitely all about the black humour, so don't click if that's not your cuppa.


Title: Creep
Vidder: cupidsbow
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-15
Music: "Creep" by Frank Bennett
Summary: Starring Torchwood agent Ianto Jones as himself.
Warning: Spoilers for CoE, and adult themes.
Note: Thanks to the awesome Hope for good suggestions and general inspiration. For the Omens challenge on flashfic-hub.

Links: Download (29.05MB at FileFront), Streaming (BAM Vid Vault).

( Embedded behind the cut )

I'm liking Brisbane so far. Caught the river cat to the south bank for dinner of Moreton Bay bugs. NOM NOM NOM. So good, and gluten free.

Conference starts tomorrow, and I'm presenting on Friday. Should go well, as my partner and I are well rehearsed and know it backwards and forwards. Touch wood.

The Saturday is for fun. Or maybe sleep. I don't seem to have done much of that lately. Oh, I could go to bed right now! Novel thought. :)

So, what's good to do on Saturday in Brisbane? Art gallery? Food? Markets? Tell me, oh flist.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/330272.html.

Finished the first draft. \o/

And only three days after I thought I'd have it finished, although that was when I thought it would come it at 2,500 words. *laughs at myself* So much for posting in celebration of the AO3.

You should go check the Archive out, by the way. It's in open beta, and you can request an invite. It's awesome; all the hard work of the various teams involved really shows. Go OTW!

Anyway, the first draft of The Fic Of Much Self-Reflection is currently sitting at 5,500 words, so will probably hit 6,000 ish by the time re-writes are done.

I'm waiting on tenterhooks to see if betas think it makes a lick of sense. I'm too close to it; I can't tell any more. For all I know, I need to add more scenes, twizzle the sequence around some more, and change the ending (which is, in fact, par for the course with my stories. My first draft endings always, always suck to the max).

And while I'm being reflective, re-writing isn't as fun as doing the first draft, even though 1) the pressure is off, so I'm not sabotaging myself, and 2) I'm good at it. I get bored, is the thing. I've already done all the hard/interesting work, and re-writing is largely tedious nit-picking. Sadly, it really does show when I don't bother with the nit-picking stage.

Apart from the boredom factor, there's the whole story circle of life thing, which is quite different to the destructive internal monologue I was writing about before. The cycle goes like this:

• I adore the story while writing it -- it's the best thing I've ever done and sheer genius, etc. etc.
  
• Once I've finished it, I very quickly come to hate it; it's drivel, every line is dull, and I can't think why I bothered.
  
• Shortly after I've finished the re-writes and sent it out into the world, I love it again, kind of obsessively. It's a bit disturbing and very narcissistic.
  
• Finally, after a few weeks I forget I ever wrote it until someone mentions it, and then I might go and poke at it, and stare at it like a strange artefact dropped from the heavens -- Did I do that? I think. That's quite a useful stage, because I have enough objectivity to see the strengths and weaknesses for what they are, without all that emotional baggage.

And so ends the circle of a story's life.

Do you have a story cycle like that? I've always assumed everyone does, but maybe not.

Okay, I'm off to bed. All that writing and reflecting has worn me out.

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/330069.html.

Hahahaha. Oh, me. I'm still writing my Torchwood story. It's now over 5,000 words, and it turns out it has a sex scene (who knew? after all that talking) that just. won't. end.

So this seems a good moment to just say that this news sucks! Apparently the rejection of a pro-gay political party is a-okay, because they would corrupt Filipino youth. I'm so fed up with that kind of homophobic bullshit. Badly done, Commission on Elections, badly done.

Lily Allen and a bunch of fans say just what I'm thinking right now, in this songvid. NSFW due to bad language. I'm embedding behind the cut.

*goes back to writing the gay pr0n*

( Lily Allen's pithy statement on homophobia )

In about two or three hours, after I've eaten dinner and had a cuppa, I'm going to write the final scene of a Torchwood story. It'll need a beta or two. It's looking to come in at maybe 4,500 words, ish. It's timey-wimey, and I need a plot-hole checker, as well as the usual pace and horrible-prose checkers.

Any takers?

If so, gimme your email addy, and I'll give you access to the google document once I'm done.


Writing Thoughts

While writing this story, I've been paying particular attention to the process of writing and how it makes me feel. I've been finding it so hard to do for a while now, and so I was genuinely wondering if I actually hated writing, and was just being a huge secret masochist or something at having chosen it as a career.

I can't tell you how relieved I am to rediscover that I love writing. I've loved most of the actual writing process on this story, and it's been typical enough. I loved turning over the plot in my mind, and making the connections so it would fit together like a logic puzzle. I loved getting inside the characters and learning more about what makes them tick. The writing itself was hard work, but I enjoyed it as long as I didn't think about what I was doing while actually doing it.

Here's the kicker, though: the minute I stopped writing, I started second-guessing myself. So I wrote the first part of the story in a white heat, and that was fine. And then the second half, I'd write a scene, and then go: "Oh, another talking scene. There should be more action and less talking heads. That's just not an efficient way to forward the plot. Also, the dialogue is clunky. Hmmm. And the sequence of the scenes is wrong. That one needs to go there, and that one needs another chapter added to it. Oh, and this next scene needs subtext. I can't just write it without having something to hang the turning point off. Also, that location I've chosen is so dull -- everyone writes Torchwood scenes on rooftops. Bor-ring. I need something fresher and more interesting. And less dialogue. No one actually does anything in this fucking story but talk and talk."

And after all that, I'm so psyched out, I can't actually write the next scene until I've psyched myself back up, like an Olympic athlete about to run the race of their lives. Even though I know I'm just writing it for fun, and it doesn't matter if no one reads it or likes it.

Once I'm writing again, it's all fine. But then I stop for lunch, and the whole thing happens over. And each time it happens, and the closer I get to the story's climax, the more intense the internal conversation gets: "This is a stupid climax. No one will be surprised by this twist. Except I've probably not put in enough clues, so it'll feel like a cheat rather than a twist anyway. Also, the story isn't really building up to the climax very well. There's still too many talking heads. A climax should have some action. God, I suck. Why can't I think of a better way to do this?"

I can't believe I do that to myself. But it explains so much, including why I have so many novellas in my Works in Progress file, which are stalled at 40,000 words, right before the climax. The pressure, with so much riding on the turning point, is just too much for me. And no wonder! No story could ever live up to that!

It's been interesting going through this process, though, because as I realised what I was doing, I told myself to just write the bloody dialogue scenes and stop worrying about it. And now here I am, with the climax written, and just one scene to go. O_o

And the stupidest part? I know I'm a shitty first draft writer, so it doesn't even matter that it's all wrong. Any talent I have is in editing a first draft into reasonable shape. So even if the criticisms are valid (they are, that's what makes them so poisonous), the whole self-sabotaging cycle is just redundant and pointless, because it can all be fixed in re-writes anyway.

In short: I am an idiot. The end.

*goes to have a soothing cup of tea*

This entry was originally posted at http://cupidsbow.dreamwidth.org/329533.html.