So at one point I said I was going to talk about vids? My vids? I've made two FYI - or maybe five depending on how you count them.

I made my first (four) vid(s) in 2009. I only made a second vid this year. There’s an eight year and some months gap in between those two data points. That's not because I haven't had ideas. My spotify "VIDDING" playlist is currently over two and a half hours long. I have another spotify playlist where I quarantined most of my Star Trek ideas. It's called "USS SHAME SPIRAL." I have an iTunes playlist for some songs that aren't available on spotify. Probably ~30% of these ideas are more or less immediately viable, where "immediately viable" means I'm still full steam ahead with the idea, I already have the skills and tech to make it, I've watched/read all my source, all I need to do is acquire everything in the right format, clip, and vid. I'm just clinically bad at being self-motivated.

So, I'm going to talk about what motivated me those two times I did actually vid and maybe it will unlock the secrets of brain.

Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers of Death

I made my first, four-part monstrosity of a vid because I had time.

In 2009, I was out of school and unemployed. I had nothing to do and I had nothing to do for a long ass time before I found gainful employment. I had enough time to futz around the internet, read a bunch of vidding guides, install a bunch of programs, figure out a bunch of programs, clip three long-ass movies, cut up and stitch back together a bunch of songs in audacity, and bang my head against windows movie maker which was terrible and crashed constantly. I did all this without knowing a good goddamn what I was doing beforehand or talking to anyone to walk me through it.

I made my first, four-part monstrosity of a vid into a four-part monstrosity of a vid because the Lord of the Rings is an epic fantasy trilogy that was adapted into a trilogy of epicly long movies with an epicly large cast of white people. I felt I needed just as epicly long a vid with as epicly varied a cast, each saying their part just to take it down. It's why I chose the Wu-Tang Clan with its many rappers and varied styles, their epic - and I do mean epic - recitations of names and places. Really, I was trying to do Tolkien justice.

I made my first, four-part monstrosity of a vid because I was angry. RaceFail 09 did that to a lot of people and I was only watching from the sidelines. I think any one of those parts does a good job of conveying a good old "fuck you," but I was going more for a "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKK YOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUU. FUCK. YOU. Fuck you, fuck Tolkien, fuck allayou. You want to talk about trolls? About nithings? I'll fucking show you nithings." I have never given a shit about Tolkien and y'all can't make me. Other people have written careful breakdowns about The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the racism inherent therein. When I made this vid I hadn't even read the books. (When I did, years later, it was on audiobook to keep me from chucking it across the room.) I wasn't trying to carefully explain anything to anybody. I made that vid because I wanted to burn that lily white fantasy to the ground.

I actually wrote a meta post about that vid just after I released it. It's still up on my abandoned livejournal. What struck me the most rereading that - other than the kind of embarrassing fangirling over the Wu-Tang Clan, the best thing to ever happen to hip hop by younger me's standards obvsly - was the Beloved quote. I forgot I knew that quote.

From Beloved if you don't want to read it in the original post:

The day Stamp Paid saw the two backs through the window and then hurried down the steps, he believed the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead. Very few had died in bed, like Baby Sugs, and none that he knew, including Baby, had lived a livable life. Even the educated colored: the long-school people, the doctors, the teachers, the paper-writers and businessmen had a long row to hoe. In addition to having to use their heads to get ahead, they had the weight of the whole race sitting there. You needed two heads for that. Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn't the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own skin; the red gums were their own.

I love that passage. What a beautiful, lyrical articulation of what double consciousness is. What it feels like to always be looking over your own shoulder. I have carried that image with me for year but had gradually forgotten where it came from.

I made my first, four-part monstrosity of a vid because some days I don't feel like a person. Instead of feeling like a human being, I feel like I'm burning from the inside out, like my charred skin is peeling away to reveal the monster lurking just beneath. Somehow I had tricked myself into thinking that feeling was newer than it was, that younger me's feelings were softer, more naive, less visceral. It's simply not true. I don't know why it surprises me constantly to remember I have always been myself.

I rewatch this vid that I made somehow and I am reminded of who I have (always) been. When I can shut off the part of myself that itches at the things I could have done better and swears to be technically better about beat and motion in the future, I can look at my vid and admire it for what it is and what it's saying. I can converse with a past version of myself. I forgot I curled a fiery whip around Gandalf's ankle to drag him down into the dark abyss with me. I can laugh at my own jokes which are obviously all hilarious. I can wonder about some sequences. I can't remember what exactly I was thinking when I vidded all those clips of Mordor and Moria and the burning White Tree of Gondor over those place names in part four. Did I do it just to do it? It stands out to me so much now in a way that it must not have then. The RZA shouts out Atlanta and Chicago etc. all I can think is 'behold! a scenic overlook of what fox news an 'em think we all live at. all us black people living in a lightless hell. can't even leave the house for bread.'

And I can say definitively that I ended on the right clip: tongue out, defiantly wagging.

Desperado

And then I took an eight year break that I did not mean to be an eight year break.

Vidding is an interesting hobby to have for someone like me. I’m clinically bad at being self-motivated and the process of vidding frontloads the most tedious part of vidding (clipping) so you have to slog through that before getting to the fun, immediately gratifying, ‘hahaha i put the explosion where the music goes boom just like i pictured it in my head’ part of vidding.

When I made my first vid, I had the advantage of not knowing my limitations. You can't reclaim that the second time around. So why this vid now?

"Desperado" was my second vid because I needed the distraction. Clipping alone kept me off twitter for hours at a time in the god forsaken year of our lord 2016. I don't know if I can make a more ringing endorsement of vidding than that.

"Desperado" was my second vid because it was at the easier end of vid ideas I had. It's just a single two hour movie, nothing fancy.

"Desperado" was my second vid because I was determined to make this vid before the next film came out and I got jossed into non-existence or it fit but now I had to integrate the new film into my old vid idea and now I had to wait even more time for that film to come out on bluray and then have to clip that film and, and… *pinches nose* (Talk to me about the Marvel vids I have not made.)

"Desperado" was my second vid because I might have been a little irritated. Not angry, of course. Just irritated. There has been a lot of "discourse" in the Star Wars fandom. Some standouts from which have given me new grudges that I will hold near and dear to my heart to my dying fannish day. Just, everytime we get on the fannish merry-go-round where someone dares to say out loud 'Wow, fanfiction fandom managed to make a whitecock juggernaut ship out of practically nothing once again. What an interesting pattern we can all observe in the behavior of mass migratory fandoms. I wonder what auspices we may divine from it.' and then someone else writes a 16k word essay in an attempt to 'well, actually' people into never shaming people for their bigoted vaginas (their words, not mine) again… That may have gotten a little specific. Back up. I like John Boyega's face. Every time this stupid shit happens I feel like I have to justify liking characters of color. Like I can't possibly be doing it for the right reason. Obviously, I'm only doing it because it's my ticket into the prestigious purity police academy. But, you know, I'm just a tad irritated. Nothing else.

"Desperado" was my second vid because Rihanna made the perfect song. It was perfectly suited to Finn and the story I wanted to tell. It was also suited to me and where I was when I made it. Out of all the vid ideas I have, the one that opens with FN-2187's squadron massacring captured, defenseless villagers and whose bridge is space genocide might be the most cheerful, hopeful vid I have up my sleeve. As a general rule, I'm not good at being hopeful, especially when it comes to big, long-term things. It's actually why I like bright, cheerful, hope-filled storytelling. It's like going to the ballet. Down in the audience, you look up at the dancers on the stage performing feats you have neither the flexibility, the strength, or the grace to do yourself. When I see Finn, I see someone who was raised from childhood to be an anonymous cog in an imperialist death machine, someone who wants to do the right thing, who tries to escape and runs just far enough away to know that there's only so much he's willing to leave behind, someone who knows better than most the vast resources that are arrayed against anyone who dares to rebel, who is scared absolutely shitless by it, who knows he can't do it alone and never wanted to, someone who draws strength from companionship, who will fight even after the last light of hope has faded from the sky…

What I'm trying to say here is #relatable #goals.

"Desperado" was my second vid because the past year has been a garbage fire. I don't have it in me to be hopeful, I wanted to find a way to say I want to fight with you guys anyway.
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(I may have accidentally on purpose made hands a secret motif in this vid all because one tumblr post annoyed me but that was my one concession to pettiness, I swear.)