Guest Lectures

I've been absolutely drowning in work lately as I try to meet PhD writing deadlines while teaching and getting things ready for the Revise conference as well, so forgive my lack of posting. But I wanted to share the slides from two guest lectures I recently gave on fan-related topics here at UOW, just in case anyone was interested.

The first was for a second-year sociology subject on "Youth Cultures", where I gave a talk on Japanese anime and manga fandom as it exists in the West. Check out the Powerpoint here:

SOC206 Lecture: Anime Fandom in the West




The second was for a third-year soc class, "The Body and Society", and I had the pleasure (no pun intended) to talk about pornography, sexuality, feminism, and all that fun stuff. The lecture is called "Bad Girls", because in the second half I talk about female subcultures centered around sexual material (namely, slash and yaoi/BL).


Bad Girls: Pornography, Fantasy, Sexuality



I hope to post some more soon, once the semester ends and I get back from a trip to Hong Kong!

We Want YOU!

Abstracts are pouring in for the conference I'm helping organize here in Wollongong. (Check out the website here: http://revise2010.blogspot.com) We are hearing from a lot of academics, postgraduates, and DJs, but I'm hoping to get some excellent contributions from the vidding community to this event. I've received a few thus far, but if you're interested in coming to the event and speaking about your work, your editing, or vidding trends and styles, I'd love to hear from you! Any vidders who are interested in submitting their vids to be shown at the conference are also welcome. Please just email me a link to where your vid can be found, and a short description of it (like a curated art work).

I'm welcoming any submissions of any kind in terms of style or content. I want this event to be open to non-academics in order to foster some communication between the artists and fans out there and the researchers.

Send your abstracts, submissions, suggestions, etc. to the conference by emailing : revise2010@gmail.com. If you have any questions, you can contact me separately here on my blog or by email at fanthropology@gmail.com.

First publication!

Kinda embarrassingly excited right now as I have just gotten my first publication. It's just a short essay on Counteragent's wonderful Supernatural vid "Still Alive", but you can check it out here if you're interested:

"I'm glad we got burned, think of all the things we learned": Fandom conflict and context in Counteragent's "Still Alive"

Let me know what you think!

Official Announcement: Fan & Artist Submissions Wanted

Here is the official announcement looking for fan and remix artist submissions for our conference. Please feel free to send us an email with any questions you might have about the event or what sort of submissions would suit.


Revise: The Art and Science of Contemporary Remix Cultures
Dec 2-3, 2010
University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia

An upcoming conference on remix cultures is seeking contributions from remix artists and practitioners. This event aims to bring together researchers whose work investigates aspects of remixing, alongside practitioners working in remix cultures, for a collaborative conference. We invite remixers of all kinds to submit artworks in the media of their choice, and/or to speak on their style or aesthetics, or other features of their practice. Live performance submissions are also welcome.

Expressions of intent of 200-250 words should be sent to revise2010@gmail.com by 15 April, 2010. Please include your full name (and/or artist/fan name), email address, and institutional affiliation (if applicable) along with the proposal, and include any tech requirements.

Please see http://revise2010.blogspot.com for more information, or email revise2010@gmail.com if you have any questions.
You can also contact me individually at fanthropology@gmail.com.

Call for Papers

I've finally gone and done it! Chris Moore and I are now hosting a conference here at UOW. It's called "Revise: The Art and Science of Contemporary Remix Culture" and it's coming up on 2-3 December, 2010.

We are seeking both academic papers and fan submissions of artwork, video remixes and mashups, DJ work, and literary remix. I would love to see practitioners and fan artists attend this event, and you are welcome to submit a short abstract (200-250 words) to revise2010@gmail.com and speak for about 15-20 min about your work or your style. It is our hope to combine the academics and the artists in a collaborative event that everyone can enjoy.

We created a blog for the event over at http://revise2010.blogspot.com with the details of the Call for Papers - submissions are due by 15 April, 2010!

"Men who say women don't like porn don't know the right women."

That's from a t-shirt my friend owns. Currently brainstorming for a guest lecture I'm going to do in Sociology called "Bad Girls". I have been specifically instructed by the course coordinator to blow some minds with the delightfully filthy things that women are doing out there on the Interwebs. (He asked the right person!)

I plan to talk in detail about some old research I did on yaoi / boy's love fans, and how these explicitly erotic texts are consumed and used by young women (mostly teenagers and young adults, 14-24). I'll also be talking about slash, of course, and going through some of the different uses and reasons for its popularity.

(Word to the wise, this post has nothing to do with the current LJ storm a-brewing on straight female and gay male fans of slash. I'm hoping not to become involved in that at the moment.)

While there are a myriad of reasons I personally enjoy the stuff, I'll admit that one of the main ones is that I appreciate how these genres objectify male bodies in a way that appeals to me as a heterosexual female. It's just really great to see shiny, ripped men in various stages of undress. And while I do read het erotica as well (nothing will keep me from my Ten/Rose shipping), I sometimes find myself over-analysing the feminist politics of such works, especially in mainstream/commercial products. And nothing kills the fantasy for me more than my own brain's over-analysis of feminist politics.

So, friends and comrades, what is it about slash that appeals to you?

New law could block access to anime, manga and slash fan sites in Australia

[NB: What follows is an alert for all slash / yaoi / boy's love / anime / manga / gaming fans about new legislation that could potentially make large parts of fandom illegal in Australia. Please circulate this as widely as you can to any and all Australian fans. I did not write this: the author prefers to remain anonymous. However, I am happy to answer questions or provide more information where necessary.]


Alert!

In 2010 the Australian Government proposes to go ahead with a mandatory ISP-level internet filtering scheme which, if passed into law, could have a massive impact on anime, manga and slash fans. Why manga and slash fans? Because the main target of the law is to prevent the circulation of ‘child abuse sexual imagery’ – BUT in Australia ‘child abuse sexual imagery’ covers even FICTIONAL representations and includes ‘under age’ characters in anime, manga and slash. If the law is passed, any fan site that contains or links to this material could be added to a government ‘blacklist’ and access denied in Australia.



The proposal

The Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has recently announced measures to require internet service provider (ISP) level filtering of overseas-hosted internet material classified Refused Classification (RC) under the National Classification Scheme. Such material includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act (Consultation Paper, 2009).


The problem for ACG/slash fans

‘Child sexual abuse imagery’ is a primary target of the proposed filter – as it should be when dealing with pictures of actual children. Yet, in Australia ‘child sexual abuse imagery’ is an extremely broad category that extends even to purely fictional representations of ‘under-age’ characters in violent or sexual scenarios – including animation, comics, art work and text. Hence, existing legislation targets not only a small coterie of adult paedophiles dealing in representations of actual children, but extensive communities of ACG and slash fans whose activities involve the consumption, creation and dissemination of representations of young persons that would be classified in Australia as ‘virtual’ child pornography.


In Australia child pornography and abuse is legislated at both state and federal level. State legislation defines child pornography and abuse as

material that depicts or describes (or appears to depict or describe), in a manner that would in all the circumstances cause offence to reasonable persons, a person who is (or appears to be) a child:

(a) engaged in sexual activity, or (b) in a sexual context, or (c) as the victim of torture, cruelty or physical abuse (whether or not in a sexual context) (Criminal Code Act 1995 [Commonwealth] s.473.1).

The federal legislation refers not only to images or texts referring to actual ‘persons’ but also to ‘a representation of a person’ and ‘material that describes a person’ who ‘is, or is implied to be under age 18’; (however, most state legislation puts the age at 16 – leading to confusion as to what, exactly, is the legal minimum age for such representations). That cartoon representations fall within the definition of a ‘person’ in the Act was clarified by Justice Michael Adams in his ruling in the case McEWEN v SIMMONS & ANOR [2008] NSWSC 1292. The case was an appeal against an earlier conviction for possession of ‘virtual child pornography’ (in this case images of the cartoon children from The Simpsons TV show engaged in sexual interactions). In his interpretation of the legislation, Justice Adams upheld the judgement of the original magistrate, commenting:

In my view, the Magistrate was correct in determining that, in respect of both the Commonwealth and the New South Wales offences, the word ‘person’ included fictional or imaginary characters and the mere fact that the figure depicted departed from a realistic representation in some respects of a human being did not mean that such a figure was not a ‘person’ (McEWEN v SIMMONS & ANOR [2008] NSWSC 1292, para 41).

This ruling is of great importance for Australia-based ACG and slash fans, since it clarifies that in Australia child pornography legislation applies equally to ‘fictional or imaginary characters’, even in instances when such characters ‘depart[..] from a realistic representation’.

Given the ubiquity of such representations on both ACG (BL, Loli, etc.) and slash (Harry Potter, Narnia, etc.) fan sites, it is easy for fans to stumble across material that would put them at the risk of prosecution. As the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995 makes clear, an individual is guilty of an offense if said individual, among other things, ‘uses a carriage service’ to access child-pornography material, cause the material to be transmitted, distribute, publish or otherwise make the material available (Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995, 474.19). Hence Australian fans of ACG and slash who routinely access sites that may contain or link to representations of under-age characters in sexual or violent scenarios run the risk of arrest, prosecution and entry into the sex-offenders’ list.



The effects

Accessing fan materials that transgress the above legislation is already illegal in Australia. However, if this ‘clean feed’ legislation is passed it would result in the issuing of take-down notices to affected fan sites located on Australian servers, and the establishment of an ISP-level filter that would block access to a blacklist of overseas fan sites. Given the concerns raised above, it is likely that a huge number of fan sites could be affected, seriously diminishing the ability of Australian fans to participate in these global fan communities.


What can I do?

If you are the owner of an Australian or overseas fan site that may be impacted by this legislation please consider making a submission to the Government consultation process outlining (1) how existing ‘child abuse publication’ legislation is overbroad and unfairly targets your community and (2) the deleterious effects that this filtering plan would have upon your community.



A Consultation paper outlining the proposed filtering scheme and detailing how to make a submission can be found here (note the deadline of 12 February 2010):

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/funding_and_programs/cybersafety_plan/transparency_measures/consultation_paper

Not dead!

Well, I seem to have fallen off the blogging map for a while there, for which I am sorry. I had disappeared into writing farr, as I had a deadline for a completed chapter in November, and then got eaten by the (Australian) summer holidays. But I have survived my first Christmas away from home, and I now have two completed (ish) chapters for my diss, which is always a nice feeling. But now, no more slacking, gotta get back into it.

I'm hoping to post more in the upcoming weeks, but two quick things now:

I requested and received permission to change how I get consent to use vids in my research. Basically, many people verbally agreed to allow me to include a vid they had made, but we all have busy lives and lots of things on our plates, and it was extremely difficult to get signed copies of the consent forms returned. If you've already given me written consent to include a vid, that's still fine. However, from now on I am able to receive verbal consent (either over the phone or via email) to include vids, rather than needing a signature. Hopefully this will make things much smoother from here on in.

The second (and infinitely more exciting) thing is this:

Boppy and I in the planning stages to host some sort of vidding convention in Australia, broadly conceived. This means we are hoping to include more than just (mostly) Livejournal-based live-action vidding - AMVs, mashups, trailers, machinima, and any other sort of remix/appropriated video are all welcome, in addition to vids.

In addition, I have been in talks with one of the research groups here at the University of Wollongong (specifically, the inter-faculty Innovations in Cultural Research group) to pair up a fan-run convention with an academic conference on the topic. I have several colleagues here who study different types of appropriated, grassroots media (DJ culture, machinima, yaoi/boy's love fandom, that sort of thing), and we are hoping have a call for papers on "remix", broadly conceived, for this event. We're also hoping to make it a little different from other academic conferences: creators will be invited to speak and showcase their work, in addition to academics, and digital media students from the uni's Faculty of Creative Arts will also create an exhibition on the theme of "remix".

Tentatively scheduled for the end of 2010 (Nov-Dec), I think of it going something like this:

Thursday & Friday: Academic conference at the University of Wollongong
Saturday & Sunday: Fan-run convention (possibly also in Wollongong?)

Having the events next to each other in this way will allow the fans and academics to mingle and attend each other's events if they like.

Of course, this is all still in the very rough planning stages. Everything is subject to change, and we're looking for feedback on pretty much everything - planning, hosting, programming, tech, premieres, all of that!

If you are interested in attending either event, pretty please let me or Boppy know!

More posts on this upcoming in the near future, so stay tuned.

Vid Workspaces

Hey vid world, hope you've all been doing well. Pretty wrapped up in writing chapter 3 of my thesis at the moment, and I was wondering if anyone out there would care to send me a photo of their vidding workspace, maybe with a word or two about what kind of equipment you use.

Por ejemplo, here's mine...




This is my uni office, where I have a standard desktop PC I never use, but I hook my personal laptop up to the awesome widescreen monitor for spreadsheets, multiple Word documents, and most importantly, vid watching (pictured here: killabeez 's "Little Lion Man" for SPN). The unfinished LJ post I'm in the middle of writing, and pics of Australia I've taken are there, as well as some from VidUKon... and ten miles of tangled headphone/microphone cord. My laptop is a beautiful little HP Pavilion dv6 with an 18" monitor, 500GB memory, and 2GB RAM.

In any case...

If you wanted to email me a photo of your workspace, there is the possibility that I might include it in my dissertation, so be aware of that. I'm over at fanthropology@gmail.com. :-)


And I'm starting to feel a little guilty for constantly asking for stuff without giving anything back. But I can promise is 100,000 words on vidding sometime in the next 18 months! *sheepish*

Seriously, though, you guys rock. And now, in proper Aussie fashion, I'm off to a springtime BBQ.

Recommended Readings on Virtual Worlds & Second Life

Boellstorff, Tom. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

• A bit of a tough read, but well-worth the effort. Anthropologist Boellstorff applies traditional ethnographic research methods to Second Life.
  

Meadows, Mark Stephen. I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life. Indianapolis: New Riders, 2008.

• Unusual and fascinating look at some of the personal and subjective issues involved in having a virtual world representation of yourself.
  

Malaby, Thomas M. Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Labs and Second Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

• Another anthropologist, but in this case examining the Linden Lab staff, and detailing how the libertarian ethos of the company affects the thousands of Residents of Second Life.
  

Castronova, Edward. Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.

• Analyzing the economic and business side of online games.
  

Au, Wagner James. The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World. New York: Harper Collins, 2008.

• Written by the founder of influential Second Life news service, New World Notes.
  

Dibbell, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.

• A highly personal and engaging tale of life lived in the virtual world.
  

Dibbell, Julian. Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. New York: Basic Books, 2006.

• Dibbell attempts to make a living for a year solely from virtual cash, and then claim it on his income tax.
  

Ludlow, Peter and Wallace, Mark. The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

• The rise and conflicts of the Second Life Herald. Deals a lot with The Sims Online as well. Documents the strange conflicts between the news service, the virtual world residents, and the companies that own the systems.
  

Taylor, T. L. Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006.

• An ethnographic study of popular MMO Everquest, looking at the role of gender and gaming.
  

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

• A classic study of MUDs and their social lives. Heavily influenced by psychology, this book explores how and why different people use MUDs for different reasons.
  

Looking for sources

hey vid world, i'm looking for anyone who might happen to know who created these two LJ icons:





i'm hoping to include them in my dissertation, and I want to make sure I give credit where credit is due.

*fingers crossed*

Writing continues, and how I use quotes

I may not be dead, but I have fallen into a pit of writing, conferences, and research work here at uni. Probably about time, though, lol.

For anyone who was curious, I've completed my second chapter (barring some minor edits). This chapter is about my methodologies - what types of data collection methods I've used and what - and a general introduction to the vidding community online - about how many people, some demographics, and that sort of thing. I also address issues like privacy, consent, confidentiality, and things like that.

I've now moved on to third chapter, which I've tentatively titled "The Practice of Vidding". It is sort of a background information chapter for my readers who may not be familiar with vidding, and covers the 30-odd year history from slides to digital, and then gives a summary of how current digital vids are made (as I've mentioned before, I am focusing on contemporary, digital vidding for my dissertation).

I already have, and probably will continue to, be sending out some emails in the near future to various vidders I've met or interviewed, and also some I haven't, asking for permission to quote sources outside the range of personal interviews or focus groups (which is covered by the consent form you would have signed). This may include things like individual's Livejournal posts, or comments in someone else's LJ. I will be quoting from general posts to communities without tacit permission, because a larger/more public audience is assumed for these. However, I will request permission to quote by email for any comments in any LJ, and personal LJs. And I will ask permission for each quote, and not just assume a blanket permission to take words wherever I please (unless the vidder indicates this is okay).

I am planning to include a DVD of several vids along with my dissertation for the examiners / my supervisors. I am going to be sending out consent forms which need to be signed by the vidder in order to include it here. You can check out the consent form here if you are curious: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfn5rwh3_114cbkv3pfd. It usually comes with the participant information sheet, which looks like this:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfn5rwh3_7gdktk2d6

Of course, if you receive a request to quote or for vid use, you can always refuse me with no hard feelings. I'm not here to expose anyone or disrupt anything.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to run a final focus group as I may have desired. I have some tight deadlines coming up and really need to get on those. My apologies to everyone who volunteered! However, if there is anyone out there who would like to read portions of my thesis as it is written, please let me know. I am looking for some vidder/vid-watcher feedback. :-)

duh

editing second chapter particularly painful today. for those keeping score at home, chapter 2 is the only one i've written, and it's kinda multi-pupose, an introduction/demographics/methods/ethics chapter. it's probably 85% complete - fully written, but needing some sections expanded on.

decided to take a break from the editing struggle to crunch some statistical data that i'll need for one part of this chapter, where i basically describe what sort of vids are posted to the main community, what shows are being vidded, and what the community is talking about just to give an overview.

so for the past 6 months (feb-july) i've been writing down a basic summary of everything that's been posted in an excel spreadsheet. i figured it would be a bit tough to analyze later on, but at the time of recording i only wanted it to be easy to take down.

and now i'm kicking myself in the face for it.

i never studied statistics, or learned how to crunch quantitative data in my undergrad, or even in my postgrad. i'm sure it would have been excruciating to sit through such a class, but MAN do i wish i knew a better way to do this.

bumped into a colleague of mine on the way to the library, another arts postgrad, and i was telling her about this problem, and she turns to me and says...

"you know, they have computer programs that do all that for you now, right?"

duh.

Wrapping up Interviews

It's weird, but I get a bit sad when I'm wrapping up interviews with my participants, both in-person in scattered locations around the globe, at conventions, and by email over the course of a month or two. I almost wish I had more questions to ask, because I want to hear more about vidding, and keep the conversation going. But I've got to move on from collecting information, and into analysis and writing.

I'm considering the possibility of an online focus group to wrap up my data collection phase, but am not sure of the best way to do it. (I'd like to go out with a bang!) Drop me a PM or a comment if you're interested in participating (if you've been interviewed before or not). Also: any suggestions on a good place to host it? Maybe a communal Google chat? Here in my LJ? Skype? What do you think?

The multi-faceted definitions of vidding

Or... "Can't we all just be friends?"

You know, this whole vidding thing that's been going on (which I'm going to call The Great Vidding Kerfuffle of 2009) makes me suddenly really terrified to actually make any sort of statement about vidding one way or another. It seems like such an ephemeral thing, such a contentious thing, and it's obviously something that people care a lot about (myself included) that I'm almost hesitate to say anything about it, one way or another. So... I'm just hoping that I can avoid any possible vitriol or shit-storming in my journal. Please play nice in comments.

The definition of vidding I have used for my thesis is: "a fan-made remix video (known as a "vid") whereby favourite television or film texts are edited to music and shared online", with a second line describing it as "a unique new media form that combines pre-existing sources in new ways which often convey meanings not intended by their original creators".

I was trying to create a definition that was relatively more inclusive, because at the time I was unsure if I was going to include a chapter on trailer mashups or AMVs (although I no longer am for length/focus reasons).

And I can see a hundred contentious issues pop in just my two sentence definition. I think many traditional vidders (coming from the slash/VCR/Escapade line) would take issue with the phrase "new media form", as this refers explicitly to digital vidding and suggests that it has arisen in the last 5-10 years. I've also noticed that vidders tend to avoid the word "remix" as well, as this brings up connotations of DJs, political remixers, and other digital media artists. I've also included that vids are "shared online": while this has not always been the case, I believe it is such at the current moment. The last section I think is especially important: imho, vids often convey new meanings, but not always. I think vids are inherently transformative, but not necessarily interpretive or analytical. That's a criticism that's often heard of AMVs - they're not vids because they are not critical or interpretive. There's a value judgement there. So many vids are simply about joy, about love for fandom, about expressing that joy. And that's what I love about vidding the most: the emotion. (Please don't hurt me.)


So for anyone wondering, here's the type of vidding I'm going to be discussing in my dissertation:

I hope to provide a snapshot of contemporary vidding. It will be heavily informed by the history of media fandom, and I hope to detail the evolution of vidding as a practice and a community from its inception with Kandy Fong's slideshows, through the VCR collectives, and into early digital collectives. But what really interests me is what has happened to this original tradition since the inception of YouTube, new media cultures, and the mainstream accessibility of digital remix.

I am fascinated by the tensions, conflicts, communities, changes, and individuals who are involved in vidding: the new styles, the experiments and ground-breaking changes, and how they affect and effect the original ethos of the group. What happens when new people start joining the group, and the dynamic shifts? When the definition of vidding is no longer so straightforward?

I've been fortunate that I have cast my interview net far and wide, and have managed to talk to AMV editors working on their first live-action vid, YouTube vidding community members, professional editors, VCR vidders with 20+ years unflagging love for editing, mainstream artists, and so-called visual fan-ficcers on three continents, men and women (and some in-between) from eighteen to sixty. But they've all got a few things common: they love TV, they love music, they love the craft of editing, and they all call themselves vidders.

I consider myself pretty lucky, as a researcher, to have shown up on the scene at such an interesting moment.

So I like to consider a more far-reaching and open-ended definition of vidding for myself, but simply for the sake of scope I will be dealing with the Livejournal-based vidding community with its roots in media fandom-- and how YouTube and digital remix culture has affected it-- for my dissertation.

A big part of me doesn't even want to post this at all, because I'm afraid of blowback. And I really wish I wasn't.

Vividcon Vid Recs

Finally, I've decompressed enough information to pass on my vid recs from Vividcon, which I just attended in Chicago. Here are just a few that have popped into my head. More later, probably.

"Intergalactic Friends" by dragonchic. Smallville set to a Beastie Boys / Dandy Warhols mashup.

Inherent awesomeness of the music aside, I really loved how this vid evoked the entire Superman mythos, pulling it up and out of the context of Smallville itself, and connecting it to the entire history of the character. Shirtless Clark and evil, plotting Lex also help. Michael Rosenbaum is the best Lex ever cast, no competition. (Sorry, Kevin Spacey.)

"Seven Nation Army" by Charmax, to the Matrix, I Robot, Doctor Who, BSG, and Terminator.

This vid really knocked my socks off by drawing the connections across so many franchises, and I really shook my booty to it at Club Vivid.

And the most inexplicable award goes to...

But is it a vid?

check out this entrancing remix for mary poppins:

Aca-Farr

Okay, so back in Australia... stressed out about all the things on my plate right now... but hey that's the life of the PhD student!

I'm currently working on an short article for the TWC's upcoming issue on Supernatural, and have been swimming through my mountain of SPN vids to choose which to talk about. And hey I'm just curious: what's your favourite meta-y SPN vid, or one that tickled your thinky brain, and why?

Vividcon Unpacking: Vid Recs

Absolute fav vid of Vividcon: bradcpu and laurashapiro et al: Hard Sun for Firefly. This vid pulled something right out of my brain, set it to music, and put it up on a big screen for everyone to enjoy. For me, it is an extremely intimate and personal vid of that little moment where you are walking along, listening to music, and thinking about Firefly. I've had that experience, and I know a lot of other Browncoats and vidders out there have had that experience too. And it was so beautiful to see it expressed in vid-form, utterly compelling and beautiful. It also gave me a powerful sense of SHARING that experience with other fans, walking their local streets doing what I'm doing. This vid just sang to me: "We're all in this together." Yes.

Closely followed by jescaflowne's vid Can Delight: Pure, cheerleading joy. I saw it at Club Vivid, and I just had to stop dancing and stare, slack-jawed, at the screen and admire it. A must-watch.

More recs to follow, and perhaps also some comments on the simmering bad feelings surrounding the con (which is a shame, because I enjoyed myself thoroughly and was upset to hear that some people didn't).

Vividcon by the numbers

Back from Chicago, finally. Utterly exhausted and useless, and here's why: Over 4 days, I collected:

16 hours of recorded audio.
10 interviews.
1 focus group.
75 pages of notes.
200+ vids watched.
15 library items checked out.
15 GBs harddrive consumed.

and 14 hours of sleep required upon return in order to recover.

But I had a fantastic time. Proper detox post still forthcoming.