A Woman's Place (Is In The Resistance) Dear Vidder letter

[obstinatecondolement]

Dear Vidder,

I'm SweetPollyOliver in disguise as my Dreamwidth alter-ego. Thank you so much for offering one of my requested fandoms! I'm very excited to participate in this event and I can't wait to see what you come up with.

I am pretty easy to please, so feel free to take or leave any of the ideas I've suggested here if they don't speak to you. I also don't have physical triggers that I need you to avoid.

General vid (and music) likes

click to uncollapse

• Humourous lyrics or ironic pairings of clips with lyrics for a humorous effect
• Vids with a narrative/emotional arc
• Character study vids
• Ensemble vids
• Uptempo vids with lots of quick cuts on the beat and a sense of movement
• But also: slower, contemplative vids with long clips
• Music specific likes:
• Vocal jazz, especially Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Chet Baker (my token white man in this category, lol). I mostly listen to stuff from the 1930s-1960s, but I'd be thrilled to get something set to more contemporary jazz too
• Great American Songbook singers, i.e. anyone known for singing things composed by Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Rodgers & Hammerstein, etc. but especially Judy Garland
• Motown, e.g. Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5 and Smokey Robinson
• Disco, e.g. The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Boney M., Earth Wind & Fire, Chaka Khan and the Village People
• Rock and pop from the 1960s-1980s, e.g. The Mamas & the Papas, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Cher, The Turtles, The Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie, ABBA and Queen
• Contemporary pop, e.g. Carly Rae Jepsen, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, Mitski, Hayley Kiyoko, Marina (& the Diamonds), Florence + the Machine
• Contemporary hip hop and R&B, e.g. Lizzo, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Shea Couleé and Janelle Monáe
• Pop folk, e.g. Simon & Garfunkel, Sufjan Stevens, Belle and Sebastian, Mumford & Sons and Joni Mitchell
• Musical theatre e.g. Patti Lupone, Audra McDonald, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel
• Country, e.g. Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Trixie Mattel, Skeeter Davis, Loretta Lyn, Woody Guthrie, Willie Nelson, Shania Twain, Norah Jones, Lil Nas X, Sheryl Crow and Miley Cyrus

Other relevant notes on vid preferences

click to uncollapse

I don't mind "talky face" and I don't mind dialogue from the canon being used, but I prefer if you do use dialogue that it doesn't overlap with any lyrics and that there is no score from the canon source audible.

There aren't really any genres of music that I actively dislike and if you get the vibe that I would like something based on the things I have listed above, and it's not a DNW, then you're probably right. I don't listen to a huge amount of instrumental music, but I do enjoy it! Also feel free to vid something to a non-music audio source, such as poetry.

Subtitles would be nice, but are not essential.

DNWs

Vids set to music performed by Taylor Swift or Michael Bublé.

Requested fandoms

There are spoilers in each section, so read at your own risk!

Willow (1998) [SAFETY]

click to uncollapse

• Why I like this fandom: This is a real comfort fandom for me from my childhood and I really love all the female characters in it (well... love to hate Bavmorda—she is delightfully camp and evil). It's kind of interesting that, besides Willow himself and Madmartigan, almost all the key players in Willow are women, which feels a bit atypical and special for 1980s fantasy movies, which is a genre that I dearly love.
• Fandom-specific vid prompts: I think that something that taps into the fairy tale adjacent vibe of the movie (or, alternately, that completely contrasted with it in an interesting or funny way) would be great. I'm very happy to receive a vid featuring more than one of my requested characters if we've matched on multiple characters.
• Requested characters:
  • Sorsha: I love Sorsha so much. Having rewatched the movie recently, I think that my memory of her arc was a bit more fleshed out than it was in the actual film, where she just sort of decided not to be evil anymore because Madmartigan flirted with her, but I actually don't even care because I consider my rose-tinted glasses to be the true canon here. She's just so compelling! She's that kind of "daughter of the evil wizard who turns towards the light when a male hero falls in love with her" archetype, but that is complicated by the fact that the evil wizard, in this instance, is a single mother (who doesn't seem to value her or treat her very well, but that's another matter). She's also a military commander! She's not a passsive figure in the narrative who gets traded off between the bad guys and the good guys as a trophy, she goes from active antagonist to active ally. I think something about her relationship with her mother and/or her heel-turn would be amazing. I do ship Sorsha/Madmartigan, so feel free to include that if you like, but it's not necessary. You can also incorporate footage of Sorsha from the Willow TV show that came out last year, if you'd like!
  • Fin Raziel: Raziel! My beloved! She's just so... I don't even have the words. There's something so tragic about her lost youth and then something so interesting in how she pragmatically just moves on after a brief "Has it been that long?" when Willow finally succeeds in turning her back into a human, and just gets to work. I'm also always a sucker for characters who are physically transformed. I'd be really interested in any kind of Raziel vid, whether it was angsty or about her being a #girlboss who gets shit done or anything else between those extremes of emotion and seriousness.
  • Bavmorda: As I said above, Bavmorda is fantastically camp. I love villains and she really has it all. The deranged laughing, the plot to not only kill a baby but banish her to a realm of eternal suffering to prevent her being reincarnated. I think that something silly along the lines of something set to Eartha Kitt's I Wanna Be Evil would be really fun here. Also! If you happen to have matched with me on both Bavmorda and Raziel, I recently had the galaxy brained idea that maybe they are ex-girlfriends, so if that's something that appeals to you and that you'd like to run with then that would be amazing. I love enemies to lovers, but lovers to enemies is also extremely good.
  • Cherlindrea: She's so cool! I don't know how feasable it would be to do a whole 1 minute Cherlindrea-only vid, since she doesn't have a lot of screentime, but I think that you could probably get creative with including things that sort of evoked her as well as footage of her. I think this one would probably work best played straight, with sort of ethereal and magic overtones to it.

Willow (TV 2022)

click to uncollapse

• Why I like this fandom: As I said above, the Willow movie is incredibly dear to me. I was really looking forward to this show for a long time (it kept getting pushed back, which made waiting feel agonizing) but it turned out to be everything I could ever have wanted from a sequel/reboot. Visually, it's so in keeping with the aesthetic of the movie, with the higher production values not implying a disrespect or reinvention of what came before. Also! The new characters are so, so amazing! The returning characters are also amazing and there isn't this kid-gloves treatment where they're afraid to present beloved characters as complex and flawed. If you haven't seen it and you like the original movie, I really recommend it.
• Fandom-specific vid prompts: I think that, again, you could span the whole spectrum from a very straight epic fantasy vibe to something more irreverant and silly. The show handles both tones very well and either (or a combination of both) would be very in keeping with that. I think a contemporary choice of music would work well—maybe a cover of something from the 80s if you wanted to get meta with it?
• Requested characters:
  • Kit Tanthalos: Oh Kit... trashfire gay baby of my heart. She's so, so awful, I love her. She's privileged and proud and jealous and hurt and loving and- argh! It feels so refreshing to me to see a female character get to be this messy and not be relegated to the "holder of the brain cell." Something about her relationship with her family (or her mother Sorsha, her brother Airk, or her father Madmartigan specifically), or the responsibilities and privileges her nobility brings, or something shippy about her and Jade, or something about her jealousy of Elora would all be awesome. I am also a fan of her BroTP with Boorman.
  • Jade Claymore: Jade! Sweet precious angel! She is a bit saddled with being the keeper of the brain cell, poor thing, but her character is not flattened or sidelined by this, I feel? She's just so... I love her. I love that she tries so, so hard to be what her mentors/Kit/Tir Asleen needs and how she has been failed by all of the people and things she's devoted herself to. The fact that she was the child of General Kael and was, essentially, kidnapped by the Knights of Galladoorn and raised to despise the Bone Reavers is really compelling to me and I like how it complicates the more simplistic Good vs Evil broad strokes of the movie.
  • Elora Danan: I'm so, so delighted with how they handled Elora. She's such a great take on the Chosen One archetype and the fact that she is so human and feels so authentically like a young person with big, complicated feelings who is dealing with A Lot. I think something about identity and finding yourself or coming of age might work here? Or anything about any of her relationships (platonic and romantic) in the show, or about her efforts to live up to her foretold destiny and how it feels when she thinks she's falling short of what is expected of her.
  • Scorpia: Scorpia is someone I really hope we see more of in future seasons if the show gets renewed. As I mentioned in Jade's bullet point, I really like how the show has expanded and complicated the role of the Bone Reavers and she is such a big part of that, both as Jade's sister who was separated from her, as one of General Kael's two living children (of twelve) and as a leader. I also ship her canonical relationship with Boorman and if you wanted to include something about that, go for it.
  • Mims Ufgood: It was so lovely seeing Mims all grown up! There is so much tragedy and dignity in her and I wish she was in more of the show. I think that something played straight is the way to go for a Mims vid and probably something pretty angsty.

Cagney and Lacey

click to uncollapse

• Why I like this fandom: Full disclosure: I started watching this show primarily for reasons of being thirsty for Martin Kove. However! It's so much more than that. It is, of course, a cop show, with all that that entails, but I think that, in many ways, it does a better job of portraying nuance and honesty about the failings of the police than a lot of more contemporary police procedurals? Your mileage may vary, of course. I certainly think that it holds up very well compared to its contemporaries in the genres at any rate though.
• Fandom-specific vid prompts: I think that there's a lot of ways you could go on this! You could do something about gendered expectations of the 1980s (in the police force and more generally), you could do something about friendship, you could do something that was explicitly critical of the show's more overtly copaganda moments. Music-wise, I think something from the time period would work well, but that's not to say that something more modern, or something from an earlier time period, like something deeply sexist that came out when that sentiment was less controversial in the mainstream, along the lines of Wives and Lovers.
• Requested characters:
  • Ginger Cohen: I looooove Ginger. Honestly, if I had only requested Ginger's episodes then I'm 99% sure this would have counted as a safety fandom. But even if she's not a main character, she is to me. She is Detective Victor Isbecki's eventual wife and, basically, the first woman he's seen who he didn't go out with because they were young and cute. She's older than he is, academic, a divorcee, a mother. I mean... maybe she went out with him because he was young and cute! I'm also interested in if and how she helped Isbecki explore his Jewish heritage after he found out that his father had been Jewish. Whether you wanted to go with something serous or lighthearted with this, it's all good! I think if you were going lighthearted something like Does Your Mother Know would be a fun Ginger/Victor vid from her POV.
  • Mary Beth Lacey: I started watching Cagney and Lacey because I was thirsty for Martin Kove, but when I got into it I swiftly started being thirsty for Tyne Daly. I really like that in the odd couple pairing of Cagney and Lacey, it's Lacey who is the one with left wing politics and that they didn't go with the easy "Well, she's married and has kids, she's probably the Republican" route. Something about how she's in the era of "you can have it all!" and how demanding it actually is to try to have it all would be really great, as would something about her partnership with Cagney.
  • Christine Cagney: Oh Christine... you problematic fave, you. I probably would not remotely like Christine Cagney in real life, but as a fictional character I find her facinating. The contradictions in her poltics where she's very against sexism as it pertains to her, but then she's typically on the right elsewhere and seems quite happy to pull the ladder up behind her with regards women who make different choices to her or who aren't from a background she finds respectable. I see her as a closeted (even to herself) lesbian who has been very messed up by being raised by her socially conservative father. Something about her struggles with alcoholism would be very interesting, as would something about her politics or her partnership with Lacey or her issues with maintaining romantic relationships.

Succession (TV 2018)

click to uncollapse

• Why I like this fandom: I actually actively resisted watching Succession for a long time, because I saw a lot of people on Tumblr poking fun at people blorbifying capitalists and I was like... okay, maybe not. Also I mostly saw stuff about Tom/Greg which, no hate to that ship, didn't really seem to be unmissable given that, as I so often say, we have white dude slash at home. However! Then I found out about Gerri/Roman and my kinky older woman/younger man ship loving ears pricked up. And I'm really glad I did, because I love all of these awful people now and I am unironically blorbifying all of my special little 1%ers.
• Fandom-specific vid prompts: I'm madly in love with the scoring of this show and I think it makes great use of dissonance to imply the dissonant relationships of the Roy family, so I suppose my possibly-not-very-helpful suggestion here is to try to find something that uses a lot of dissonance or music that supports the themes in terms of the music itself as well as the lyrics (if you go with something that has lyrics).
• Requested characters:
  • Gerri Kellman: As I said above, Gerri is one of the main reasons that I watched the show in the first place. I would die for Gerri. I love how she's so calculated and careful, but then also does things that are wildly reckless, like starting up that quasi-affair with Roman (and then gaslight, gatekeep, girlbossing her way into pretending it wasn't happening). I think that she is a stone cold killer bitch, as Roman called her in one episode, but I also think that she has a vulnerable and soft side that she's wary of exposing. I think that being widowed had a big impact on her, because as well as losing her life partner she lost possibly her only guaranteed ally in Waystar Royco. She is also very flawed and has gotten her hands dirty being the Roys' sin-eater, but, as she says to Tom, it is a great job and you get to eat a shit tonne of cake. I'd love something about her ambivalence, either about her role in the business or in her relationships.
  • Shiv Roy: Shiv is so great. I love that she thinks she's the good Roy. Like what I was saying about Christine Cagney in the Cagney & Lacey section, I really love the contradictions and willful self delusions in Shiv's politics. She is A Woman™, so she must be progressive on that basis alone, right? She plays at being a campaign manager for Democrats to piss off her dad and to differentiate herself from her family, but she has no moral convictions, or at least none that she won't sacrifice for her own self interest. In the words of her father she's blue but she "gets it" and she never betrays her class interests. I think that something satirizing the #girlboss #leanin nature of Shiv would be really fun, but if you wanted to go down a more serious route and look at her various emotional wounds and the context of her awfulness that would also be amazing. I also, for what it's worth, think she genuinely does love Tom, which I imagine is very embarassing for her.

The Tick (TV 2017)

click to uncollapse

• Why I like this fandom: I am so, so fond of this show. I watched The Tick cartoon as a child, but wasn't really aware of the other adaptations until the 2017 show came out. Having explored the franchise more now, the 2017 show is far and away my favourite of them. It's so sincere and sweet, while also being hilarious and quite cutting at times. Truly, it has it all.
• Fandom-specific vid prompts: I think, like the show, you could go either goofy and heighted or play the more devastating parts of it quite straight (or do both!). I don't have any specific thoughts about music for this fandom, but I don't think there's anything that really wouldn't work.
• Requested characters:
  • Dot Everest: I love Dot so much. Her arc from being her brother's keeper as it were, to going completely off the rails of her sensible, carefully planned life and embracing chaos in season two when she drops out of school and quits her job to become a masked vigilante. You love to see it. I think that something about her being so tightly coiled and type-A and compartmentalising her own trauma to prioritise her brother's and how she let go of that would be really great. I do also ship her with Overkill, so I'm very happy to have some Overdot vibes included.
  • Ms Lint: Ms Lint is such a beautiful marriage of a campy villain that you can enjoy hammy around chewing the scenary and also someone who is genuinely very chilling. I also love that she isn't ever truly redeemed! She gets to go around doing her evil thing and if she's nominally on the same side as the good guys sometimes then that's purely incidental. Like Bavmorda, I think that something about enjoying being evil would be a really great fit. If you were able to do something that balanced the tone between silly, fun camp and something more chilling then that would be amazing, but I'd be happy with either take on its own too.

Quantum Leap (TV 2022)

click to uncollapse

• Why I like this fandom:I grew up on the 1989 Quantum Leap show and I couldn't be more thrilled with this reboot. It's everything I could possibly want as a continuation and/or reboot of the original. It's true to what made the Scott Bakula show so special, but it's not so reverent of it that it's not afraid to do its own thing and it improves on the representation of the original. To date, there are no recurring white male characters and that's never treated as something remarkable.
• Fandom-specific vid prompts: Oof, this would really depend on the character you wanted to focus on! I think that, similar to what I said about the Willow TV show, that a fun thing to do with the choice of music would be to use a modern cover of a song from the 80s, but that's just an idea.
• Requested characters:
  • Addison Augustine: Addison is so, so interesting and compelling to me. Her fury at choices being taken away from her and her inability to physically help Ben on his leaps is really powerful. I love Addison/Ben, so something along those lines would be great, but if you wanted to focus in on her specifically I think something about her perfectionism and desire for control would be great.
  • Jenn Chou: Jenn! Reformed criminal of my heart. I love that she's kind of the big stick that Project Quantum Leap carries while walking quietly, in a way. There is also so much depth hinted at but not spelled out explicitly with her characterisation. I think that she's someone who has had a lot of tragedy in her life and who has had to be self sufficient and is just now learning how to rely on others.
  • Ian Wright: My sole non-woman request! I love Ian and I love their casual inclusion in the main cast. They are maybe the first canonically non-binary character I watched without bracing myself and who I turned out not to have needed to brace myself, or certainly among the first (thinking it over, Jim Jimenez from Our Flag Means Death might be numero uno). And, with that being said, the casual nature of their inclusion and the fact that they are not used as a didactic tool for cis viewers does not mean that their gender is never relevant! I think the ways they talk about gender are very true to how real non-binary people talk about it and it never feels tacked on or forced or fetishistic. I also love that their skill as a programmer is the main focus of their characterisation. Also, let's be real, a transfeminine computer scientist who keeps a cat ears headband in their desk "in case of emeowgencies" is literally the most accurate trans represenation I've ever seen.
  • Janis Calavicci: Janis, as Al's daughter, is such a vital link to the original show! It's kind of an interesting meta thing that she's explicitly excluded from Project Quantum Leap because of her ties to the original project, which could maybe act as a metaphor for this show doing its own thing? And yet, she insistently inserts herself into the narrative and is the whole reason that it kicks off in the first place. I'm so intrigued by her and what her Deal is. Also, I kind of ship her with Jenn, but that's another story.
  • Ziggy: I felt incredibly cheeky nominating Ziggy, given that, as an AI, she has no embodied presence on the show, but colls said it was okay, so I will let go of my scruples about requesting something that would be very challenging to vid! I think that this could be a really interesting challenge though, tbh? I think that something from Janelle Monáe's album Dirty Computer or something by Daft Punk or Kraftwerk, or something else along similar lines, could be really fun. Feel free to pull footage of the handlink from the original Quantum Leap show and from any non-canon sources that help to evoke Ziggy.

To anyone else reading letters to look for people to treat, hi there! I have gifts enabled on my AO3 account, so treat away if you so desire, and thank you for the kind thought.