cosmic_llin

 Hello all!

I'm running a Star Trek friendship-themed ficathon... 

Details here...

At the moment we're in the tag nominations stage, so if you're thinking of participating, check out the profile/FAQ and then head over to the tagset and check out which friendships are nominated so far, and nominate any extra ones you might like to write or read about!

Actual sign-ups open on July 12, until July 20! Tell your friends! :)

For anyone wanting to know, my fandom_stocking is HERE!

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amaresu said: Vidding!

Quite a broad topic there! :D 

Like so many people, I started vidding because there was a vid I had to make. When I was living in St Petersburg as part of my year abroad, when I got homesick I  would watch Sarah Jane episodes of Doctor Who. At around the same time I discovered a Cerys Matthews song called Open Roads (Never Said Goodbye). I  realised that it would make an awesome vid, but from previous failed experiments I knew my computer was too slow to handle it. (Someday I will remake that epic Scully sciencing vid that just refused point-blank to render.) So I played the song over and over and thought about what clips would go where, for months, until finally I  got a new computer that could just about run Windows Movie Maker ok.

My next stint in Russia was in a rural community with basically non-existent internet access, and I made some of my next few vids there as a way to amuse myself and make myself feel less lonely. For the first couple of years that I vidded I only made Sarah Jane/Doctor vids - when The Sarah Jane Adventures started I branched out into that, but at first for me vidding was very connected to Sarah Jane and the community at sarahjane_fic on LJ, where I spent most of my fannish time. It wasn't until I dived head-first back into my first fannish love, Star Trek, that I started to branch out a bit, and now I vid mostly Star Trek but also other things now and then.

That was when I realised that vidding, as well as being a fannish activity in many fandoms, was also a fandom in and of itself. It was an interesting change - I went from being basically the only big vidder in a very small pond to discovering that actually there was way more to vidding than I'd thought and that some vidders were hugely popular across fandoms, and some vidders were doing amazing things with special effects that I hadn't even imagined, and some vidders were using vids to make their own narratives, and some vidders were having conventions that were all about vidding! 

Sometimes now when I watch my early vids I cringe a bit, but when I watch that very first vid, it still says exactly what I want it to say, albeit possibly in a different way than I  would choose to say it now. I'm still on a very steep learning curve, vidding-wise, and I don't think I'm naturally talented at it, especially the whooshy, make-it-pretty side, but I do have a lot of fun doing it!

such_heights said: I know you've had awesome fantasy Star Trek crews before - if you were in charge of bringing back the show for a new 7 year series, what would you like to do with it?

Oooooh, good question! Yup, my dream Star Trek crew is here and I still think it would rock! But more generally... hmm... top of my wishlist are things to do with casting - any Trek series worthy of bearing the name at this point really ought to have at least as many women as men in the cast (and possibly at least one character who was neither male nor female, especially since there's a canonical basis for it, and even more so in the extended canon), wide racial diversity, and at least one queer character whose name is in the main titles - as a bare minimum. Also I'd put more aliens than humans in the main cast, and a less Earth-centric view of Starfleet and the Federation. A non-human captain would be a good place to start with that, I think.

It'd be set on a ship. DS9 is incredible but I'm not sure you could do it again. Things I would borrow from DS9, though - the excellent character development and arc-based plots. I think people expect that much more from sci-fi now than they used to, anyway. I'd like to dig deeper into what it's like to live on a small ship with the same group of people for several years. I'd like things to have consequences, I'd like characters to take their time recovering from things they went through.

I'd also like to steal the epic Bechdel-passiness of Voyager, and the sense of adventure in the unknown. I love love LOVE TNG but sometimes it did feel a little like they were boldly running little errands for the admiralty. The ship in my Trek series would probably not be totally out of reach of the rest of Starfleet, but they also wouldn't often be in a position to get help quickly or come home a lot. Maybe some sort of long-term exploration mission, which could bring them into contact with new allies and adversaries whose issues would lead to interesting storylines.

I'd set it a comfortable amount of time after the end of Voyager (perhaps roughly 15 years or so, so that characters from earlier shows could cameo now and then and be around the right age.) and I'd try to make it not outright contradict at least the more sensible extended universe canon - a lot of people are invested in the continuation books as the story and I'd like for it to fit in, within reason.

Above all, I'd try to keep Star Trek's optimism and hope for the future. I think DS9 did a great job of walking that fine line, telling sometimes quite dark stories but still keeping the overall tone hopeful. A lot of stuff these days seems so grimdark, cynical and pessimistic - Star Trek shouldn't be about that, it should be about imagining a better society, even if it's one that's still far from perfect. So the show would acknowledge the flaws of its characters, of Starfleet and the Federation, but also it should be about trying to figure out how to make the universe a better place.

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you did not create. See if you can rec fanworks that are less likely to be praised: tiny fandoms, rare pairings, fanworks other than stories, lesser known kinks or tropes. Find fanworks that have few to no comments, or creators new to a particular fandom and maybe aren't well known or appreciated. Appreciate them.


1. Poker Face (the she can read you remix) - by Lorraine - Perhaps it's cheating to rec a remix of one of my own stories, but Lorraine took my initial idea and explored it in ways I hadn't thought of at all. This is a brilliant and sad look at how having an additional sense sometimes makes life more difficult for Deanna Troi. I love Deanna character studies, and I'm fond of young!Deanna, and this story gets it just right.

2. Raven's Honour - by kelly_chambliss - This is a non-magical AU in which Professors McGonagall, Sprout and Hooch open a boarding school for girls. If you're not already clicking on the link, I don't know what else to tell you, to be honest. 

3. Like an Elephant - by biichan - I'm a femslasher in Who fandom, which means I will happily ship any female companion with any other female companion, but Mel/Donna makes more sense to me than most, and this story perfectly illustrates why.

 Just a little post to say that the DS9 Rewatch episode for this weekend is one of the funnest and cutest and best episodes of all time: Looking for Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places.

I'm really looking forward to watching it, details are HERE if anyone else wants to join in! :)