brainbow

Dear Equinox Vidder,

Thank you so, so much for making a vid for me of one of these fandoms. I don’t think I even realized how desperately I need a vid from these fandoms until I started writing about it and O.M.G. — I would be grateful for a vid from ANY of these fandoms. Obviously, I know how much work goes into vidding, so thank you for putting your vidding energies towards vidding for me. I know finding the right song or clip or trying to fiddle with that one section for the 10th time (not to mention rendering!) is all a very laborious process and you are a fandom hero to me. Make the vid you want to make! Please know the squee of my letter is there for fannish sharing. Also, when I actually sit down and start writing about fandoms I have a hard time stopping. I rarely write longer than 140 anymore!


Music:

My taste in music is really eclectic and I'm pretty open about which style of soundtrack you choose. Whether I’m searching for my vid songs or watching others’ vids, vidding is the primary way I learn about new music. However, I really, really would prefer a female vocalist. Instrumental or experimental tracks are great too!


Princess Bride:

I love everything about Princess Bride. I would enjoy a vid about anything Princess Bride, but I NEED a Princess Buttercup vid. A Buttercup character study vid! Oh my gosh. I was Buttercup for Halloween 2 years in a row as a kid because she was just MY FAVORITE. I love her. Really anything with Buttercup would be awesome.

I would also welcome a meta-narrative crossover about Robin Wright's Princess Buttercup and her General Antiope... So if I understand the guidelines correctly, I am proposing Buttercup BECOMES Antiope, or some other conceptual integration of Antiope into Buttercup’s Princess Bride universe. Cracky? Yes? Double Robin Wright? Double wonderful! I have zero idea how this would practically work, but there it is.

Also, I love Buttercup/Westley, but in my experience focusing on the ship with this pairing is often Westley centric as the story is told from his POV. I would welcome a Buttercup/Westley vid if it is firmly rooted in her perspective and experience. In other words, a more transformational take on that relationship. I very much enjoy a kinky reading of their relationship (ha, surprise! Lol) in that Westley is a masochistic bottom who lives to be Buttercup’s service top fulfilling her every desire...for what it’s worth...


Hidden Figures:

Katherine Johnson. Dorothy Vaughan. Mary Jackson. I. Love. Them. ALL. I love their friendship and their solidarity. I love their persistence. I love Dorothy’s commitment to her team and strategizing to make themselves invaluable. But, another big part of this movie for me is a sometimes subtle current running throughout the story: their loves for math, science, and space.

A character study vid. Friendship vid. Political resistance vid. KJ+DV+MJ/math+science+space vid. All would be fabulous! I don’t particularly ship the three of them, but I am always up for femslash elements. I also am not particularly interested in a ship vid with Katherine and her sweetie, but I’m up for a bigger focus on all of their extended families and kinship.


.......And now the “I read this book the year I came out (...15 years ago)” choices


Carol / The Price of Salt:

Therese Belivet/Carol Aird. I ship it HARD. This might have been the first lesbian novel I ever read. I had a lot of concerns about the movie because the book was so secret and precious to me and all these years later, I wasn’t sure I wanted to share it. Then the movie was gorgeous and Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara had amazing chemistry and now I just want a precious ship vid or a Carol character-study vid so I can visit it over and over. One thing I really appreciated about the movie was the change in Therese’s interests from ___ to photography. Not only did it work really well within the form of a movie, I feel like it has such queer resonance? The act of looking. The female gaze. The camera as phallus. Anyway, I love the original story in the book and what it became.

There are a wide range of interpretations of their relationship. Needless to say, I am here for all of them. Make it as innocent, pure, kinky, dirty, complicated, angsty, layered, or true as you want.


Desert Hearts:

My other beautiful age difference ship! I don’t know how to describe my feelings about this book or this movie. The names change, there are small character and plot changes, but the heart of the story remains. (I am going to use movie names to remain consistent with the visual source. But I might like the book better because the prose disassemble my heart.) It’s super deep and I don’t know if I have all the words for how it makes me feel.

Vivian makes sense of her life through books. Her relationships with people are relationships with characters. She always feels alone because she doesn’t allow herself to know herself, or let others really know her. She’s super accomplished in a time when I do not think it was incredibly common for professors to be women, even in the liberal arts which are frequently characterized as more feminine and therefore lesser.

Vivian is aware that her performance in compulsive heteronormativity is a performance, whether or not she wants to be married to another man or anyone, she married and performed the role of wife because it was expected and her soon-to-be-ex-husband seemed like the best option. Vivian’s awareness drives her to Nevada in the first place. And for all of the logical reasoning about why Nevada, a large part of it is Vivian’s impatience to stop pretending and put this performance behind her.

Vivian’s story isn’t entirely about Cay. And, for her very large role in Vivian’s transformation, Cay is not the inciting factor — Vivian’s dawning awareness that her failures as a wife (which she feels shame about and I just want to hug her and tell her there’s nothing wrong with being a failed heterosexual) and that she wants to be fair to her husband open this chapter. It’s the first thing she’s done to try and live more honestly and it opens the door for Cay. And so when Cay becomes part of her world, it is SUCH A SURPRISE that this is what’s on the other side. I think Vivian thought she was going to be married to books forever. Cay helps her connect with people as people. Anyway, I LOVE THEM. And I particularly love Vivian. And there are a lot of things you can do with them that would make me happy. I just don’t want the narrative reduced to “Cay helps Vivian become a good lesbian,” because it’s not the romantic Coming Out narrative the 90s created, it’s more complex and honest than that.

IF YOU HAVE NOT READ “DESERT OF THE HEART” BY JANE RULE, READ THE BOOK FIRST! The movie adaptation is INCREDIBLE and I love it, but the prose of this book and the pacing of reading this book... Evelyn/Vivian is an introverted English professor, and as a reader, it is greatly beneficial to start/go back to the book version where you get quite a bit more of her interiority.


Tipping the Velvet:

The book that taught me oysters are sexually suggestive. Also, the book that taught me about the several varieties of lesbian relationship! The coming-out and being in love with your best friend who is totally cool with betraying you and then sticking with boys (ha! did that one!). The older woman who takes makes you feel seen and cared for and introduces you to kink (some variety of this, yes). And then the one who teaches you the world can be more beautiful than you knew and that you have the strength within you to fight for it! (Is there an award for living the same relationship trajectory of Nan??)

Nan’s story is beautiful and painful and fascinating, but it is also FUN. In spite of the betrayals and the inherent danger in being in such a vulnerable and precarious social position, her story has a lot of joy and excitement to it, and I appreciate that dualism: vulnerability and excitement.
Ship vid, character study, queer kinship, or however you go, I just want to revisit the joy with the dangers.

~

I think that wraps it up?

Have fun making the vid! Thank you for making it! I am very excited to share one of these fandoms with you <3