new vid - "Climbing up the Walls" - Supernatural/Firefly/Heroes
Climbing up the Walls
Fandom: Supernatural, Firefly/Serenity, Heroes
Song/Artist: Climbing up the Walls by Radiohead
Duration: 4:21 minutes
Summary: Siblings. "I am the pick in the ice."
Warning: Contains sex scenes and contents may disturb. Use your own discretion.
Premiered at Vividcon 2008. The tortured older sibling to bradcpu's Tear You Apart.
Password: siblings
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
This was a project far outside my comfort zone, and I couldn't have pulled it off without the following contributors kindly lending me their artworks and video composites of various incesty activities: dayln03, kiki_miserychic, sleepingincars (original artwork here), and sweetgirl78 (original artwork here). Much thanks to everyone who responded to my clip-searchy call-outs, but in particular millylicious and nonsenseprocess for pointing me in the direction to sorely-needed clips. Thanks to thedothatgirl for the awesome banner artwork. And the most thanks to my incredibly patient, generous and helpful betas, Nina H, 12_12_12 and of course the ever-amazing bradcpu.
I am the key to the lock in your house
That keeps your toys in the basement.
And if you get too far inside
You'll only see my reflection.
It's always best when the candle's out,
I am the pick in the ice.
Do not cry out or hit the alarm,
You know we're friends 'til we die.
And either way you turn, I'll be there
Open up your skull, I'll be there
Climbing up the walls
It's always best when the light is off,
It's always better on the outside.
Fifteen blows to the back of your head,
Fifteen blows to your mind.
So lock the kids up safe tonight
And shut the eyes in the cupboard.
I've got the smell of a local man
Who's got the loneliest feeling.
That either way he turns - I'll be there
Open up your skull - I'll be there
Climbing up the walls
Notes
On content
Six months ago I was walking down the street sipping a giant iced Extreme Toffee Coffee and listening to Radiohead, and I thought, boy this song is really, really disturbing. What can I vid that can be equally disturbing?
And then I remembered watching The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, and sadly the title is probably the best thing about the film, though it did have Emile Hirsch and Kieran Culkin and Jenna Malone and Jodie Foster and an otherwise brilliant cast of people-I-liked, and I remembered Jenna Malone's character talking about having sex with her brother as [paraphrasing] something that makes you feel powerful and loved, a secret that divides you and the rest of the world, but somewhere down the track you start looking at what you're doing and inter alia you can't help but wonder, what kind of monster am I?
I love Sam/Dean and Simon/River and Peter/Nathan. They're my OTPs of each respective fandom. But sometimes I wonder if we don't think enough about what shipping them actually means. On the one hand, I wholeheartedly support adults having the right to decide with whom to have consensual sex. On the other hand, we have an overly protective older sibling and a often mentally disturbed younger sibling; we have death and self-sacrifice and a certain level of guilt flying left and right; we have control issues, power issues, not to mention domineering and/or absentee parental figures and, well, this is all starting to sound like a big melting pot of Bad. Add sex and stir. And now I'm stuck with Serious Thoughts each time I have an iced Extreme Toffee Coffee.
This vid seems to invite a lot of readings, which is very exciting. I think the crux is because a lot of things in the vid were left unsaid, whether or not I had actually intended it for it to be a certain way.
From my perspective, this is told definitively from the older sibling's POV. From start to end I consider it a story of overwhelming responsibility and guilt. The way I see it, just because POV was carried out less clearly during the sex scenes does not in itself remove the POV from the older sibling (i.e. more an error in execution than an intended shift), though I agree that can be read differently.
The fact that it doesn't go into an argument of whether power is being ultimately exercised by the younger sibling doesn't mean that I don't think they have any agency. I don't think this vid comments on this aspect in any explicit way, so whatever the viewer reads out of it is more likely to be what they had originally brought into it. As always, it was a matter of cutting down a complex issue to only a few key parts so that it can be told adequately in vid form. For what it's worth, it's certainly not my view that objectively the younger siblings are powerless and victimised by the older sibling. I feel that both sets of siblings exercise the same degree of victimhood and power over each other, if in very different ways.
I'm extremely happy to further discuss any aspect in the comments.
I've been reading some amazingly well-thought out meta on the vid, and present a selection below if you're interested in exploring particular aspects:
- Detailed post and discussion on agency and victimhood by cathexys and commentators.
- Alternate views on agency and victimhood by seperis and commentators.
- Why the manips did not work for me by amathela. My personal response in the comments.
- Why the manips and imagery worked for me by futuresoon.
- In-depth review by 12_12_12.
- Panel notes at VVC in-depth vid review transcribed by thuviaptarth.
On tech
I randomly took external source from everywhere, but most notably David Lynch's Lost Highway. Due to popular demand I can confirm that this is from whence The Angry Vagina came. And no, I have no idea what it actually is. ;)
Other sources include QAF for the gay sex. And, somewhat oddly, The L Word for some of the straight sex.
Spent a long time doing the Nathan/Peter video composites, and they still ended up looking like crap. Lesson? Don't do shit like this frame-by-frame in Photoshop. It takes ages and the output is so not worth it. I attended astolat's very informative After Effects tutorial at VVC and am now dying to test it out. As I was moaning to everybody within earshot, why couldn't this tutorial happened before this vid? But I digress. Can't think of any more tech notes to add, mostly because all the hard work was done for me. If you want to know more about the vastly more superior Sam/Dean video composites, ask dayln03 - she does wicked fancy things in Vegas.