...oh look it's another new vid!
It has been OVER A YEAR since I last posted a vid, and now I am posting two in three days \o/ One for a current zeitgeist fandom, and one for...90s Star Trek. :) It feels so GOOD to be vidding again, I can't even tell you. The vidding hiatus was partly due to tech issues (my old computer was really too old and slow to cope with vidding any more...and then I finally did an OS update and suddenly it no longer supported Final Cut Express, and it REALLY couldn't cope with Final Cut Pro /o\) and partly due to with general all-pervading sadness at the world sapping any will I had to do anything creative.
BUT. Now I have a shiny new computer and the will to make things again! It is GREAT.
This is my Vidukon premiere (VIDUKON <333 I HAD SUCH A WONDERFUL TIME) and - like the other vid I posted at the weekend - has been in my head for...quite some time. I made a bunch of notes for it and watched a load of relevant and less-relevant Trek episodes four years ago, before I'd even finished watching DS9 (!) and then got distracted by other projects and lost momentum. But gentle prodding from
cosmic_llin prompted me to pick it back up again.
I really enjoy Star Trek trope vids, which juxtapose common experiences from across the series - I am particularly thinking of raven's heartbreaking vid Disappear, about violence and identity, and also Might As Well Be Mars by thirdblindmouse, a wonderful vid examining the treatment of holograms in Star Trek. And more recently, there's Into Dust, by Trelkez, a truly haunting look at the unwritten timelines of Star Trek.
After watching The Inner Light, and mentally putting it together with Far Beyond The Stars, I became interested in the number of times Trek characters unwillingly - or unknowingly - experience alternate lives, and how that impacts their conception of reality and their own identity. There are a bunch of different ways this happens in Star Trek - it happens a LOT, especially in Voyager, it turns out. (it happens EVEN MORE when you take time-travel-related shenanigans into account, which I made a deliberate decision not to include in this vid as that's really a whole separate thing. And then Trelkez went and made that vid anyway, so I didn't have to.)
Sometimes - as in the case of Sisko and Picard - they have a whole life poured into their heads, to the extent that their original reality seems like a dream. Sometimes they manage to maintain their sense of their own identity, but come to question the whole rest of their reality. Sometimes they have experiences inside their own heads which seem so *real* they can't possibly be mere hallucinations/false memories/holograms - and who's to say what's 'real' anyway? Sometimes they have their memories wiped and have to create new identities for themselves from scratch - which they then have to lose, when their 'real' identities are given back to them. Sometimes the new reality becomes so convincing that they start to doubt their own memories and everything they know to be true about themselves. And the thing is, with perhaps the exception of DS9's Hard Times, these experiences - these often traumatic, transformative experiences - are never treated with the gravity they deserve. (And lbr, even the events of Hard Times are never mentioned again after the episode ends, though you have to assume the impact on Miles is profound and lingering). So, as ever when I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on a subject, I (a) made a spreadsheet and (b) made a vid.
Many many thank yous to
cosmic_llin for her very insightful beta comments, and for patiently listening to me dither about which episodes to include and giving very good advice. Also to
raven,
such_heights &
usuallyhats for watching and making reassuring noises at me <3
One Prairie Outpost
edited by
purplefringe
fandom: Star Trek (TNG, DS9, VOY)
music: One Prairie Outpost by Carbon Leaf
summary: Alone in a flatland 'tween the dream and the real
content notes: some flashing lights; a shot of someone's palm being cut; a few context-specific upsetting shots but nothing graphic.
download: 128MB @ mediafire
stream:
Lyrics
BUT. Now I have a shiny new computer and the will to make things again! It is GREAT.
This is my Vidukon premiere (VIDUKON <333 I HAD SUCH A WONDERFUL TIME) and - like the other vid I posted at the weekend - has been in my head for...quite some time. I made a bunch of notes for it and watched a load of relevant and less-relevant Trek episodes four years ago, before I'd even finished watching DS9 (!) and then got distracted by other projects and lost momentum. But gentle prodding from
cosmic_llin prompted me to pick it back up again.
I really enjoy Star Trek trope vids, which juxtapose common experiences from across the series - I am particularly thinking of raven's heartbreaking vid Disappear, about violence and identity, and also Might As Well Be Mars by thirdblindmouse, a wonderful vid examining the treatment of holograms in Star Trek. And more recently, there's Into Dust, by Trelkez, a truly haunting look at the unwritten timelines of Star Trek.
After watching The Inner Light, and mentally putting it together with Far Beyond The Stars, I became interested in the number of times Trek characters unwillingly - or unknowingly - experience alternate lives, and how that impacts their conception of reality and their own identity. There are a bunch of different ways this happens in Star Trek - it happens a LOT, especially in Voyager, it turns out. (it happens EVEN MORE when you take time-travel-related shenanigans into account, which I made a deliberate decision not to include in this vid as that's really a whole separate thing. And then Trelkez went and made that vid anyway, so I didn't have to.)
Sometimes - as in the case of Sisko and Picard - they have a whole life poured into their heads, to the extent that their original reality seems like a dream. Sometimes they manage to maintain their sense of their own identity, but come to question the whole rest of their reality. Sometimes they have experiences inside their own heads which seem so *real* they can't possibly be mere hallucinations/false memories/holograms - and who's to say what's 'real' anyway? Sometimes they have their memories wiped and have to create new identities for themselves from scratch - which they then have to lose, when their 'real' identities are given back to them. Sometimes the new reality becomes so convincing that they start to doubt their own memories and everything they know to be true about themselves. And the thing is, with perhaps the exception of DS9's Hard Times, these experiences - these often traumatic, transformative experiences - are never treated with the gravity they deserve. (And lbr, even the events of Hard Times are never mentioned again after the episode ends, though you have to assume the impact on Miles is profound and lingering). So, as ever when I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on a subject, I (a) made a spreadsheet and (b) made a vid.
Many many thank yous to
cosmic_llin for her very insightful beta comments, and for patiently listening to me dither about which episodes to include and giving very good advice. Also to
raven,
such_heights &
usuallyhats for watching and making reassuring noises at me <3
One Prairie Outpost
edited by
purplefringe
fandom: Star Trek (TNG, DS9, VOY)
music: One Prairie Outpost by Carbon Leaf
summary: Alone in a flatland 'tween the dream and the real
content notes: some flashing lights; a shot of someone's palm being cut; a few context-specific upsetting shots but nothing graphic.
download: 128MB @ mediafire
stream:
Click to viewLyrics