Equinox Exchange Dear Vidder letter

[obstinatecondolement]

Dear vidder,

Hi! I'm obstinatecondolement, or SweetPollyOliver on AO3. Thank you so much for offering one of the fandoms I've requested! I can't wait to see what you make :D

Apologies for being a bit slow off the mark in posting my letter! I obviously am not going to expect you to have seen this when it was still a placeholder when the assignments went out, so while I have some DNWs listed below, I understand that it's more of a suggestion than anything.

Also, please feel free to take as little or as much guidance from anything I've written here, and I'm more than happy to be surprised. I have not picked specific characters or relationships for any of the fandoms I've requested in my sign up, and I'd love for you to go with whatever approach that appeals most to your creative impulses if something really grabs you, whether it's something I've mentioned here or not.

General vid and music related likes

• Humourous lyrics or ironic pairings of clips with lyrics for a humorous effect
• 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
• Vids with a strong narrative/emotional arc
• 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, 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 notes regarding vid preferences

There aren't 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 often enjoy vids set to covers of well-known songs, so that would be really cool. 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. I don't have strong opinions about talky face, so unless it's something you personally prefer to avoid then don't worry about it on my account. I also don't mind dialogue in vids, but I prefer that it's over instrumental sections of the music with no lyrics, that there is no audible music from the source's score, and that the volume of the song the vid is set to is adjusted so that the dialogue isn't fighting with it.

DNWs

• Vids set to music by Michael Bublé or Taylor Swift
• Footage of rats
• Strobing or sudden bright lights

Requested fandoms

Dogma (1999)

I was obsessed with this movie when I was an edgy 13 year old with an ambivalent relationship to religion and I retain a lot of fondness for it. I didn't select any characters or relationships in particular and I'd be very happy for you to go in whatever direction you wanted with this, whether it was more focused on Bethany and her journey (including her canonical death and resurrection), or Rufus, or Loki and/or Bartleby's lives/deaths and relationship to God or wanting an end to their punishment, or Azrael's slant on that for that matter!

Interview with the Vampire (TV 2022)

This show has me deep in its clutches currently. I feel like you could go in so many different directions for the theme with this one and they'd all be great. Whether you went with a more literal interpretation and did a character study of one of the undead characters, or an ensemble vid about vampiric existence, or if you wanted to go with something along the lines of the "after life" of Lestat as a hallucination after Claudia and Louis "kill" him, or Daniel's near-death and then life after he met Louis and Armand in San Francisco.

I would also love to see a Claudia character study vid because the way she's frozen in puberty and alienated from the living and the dead alike is endlessly compelling and tragic to me in ways I cannot get enough of.

The one thing I'd mention as a "probably not" here is that I'm not a fan of Armand (I don't dislike him, I just don't find him very compelling), so a solo-Armand vid might not be the best use of your time and effort.

The Umbrella Academy

This is another great fit for the theme and I think there's a lot of different angles you could take on it. Either Klaus and his relationship to death/the dead/dying, Ben and his post-death existence as a ghost, Number Five who saw the whole world die and who was dead to his family for years, any and all of the Umbrella Academy and their lives after various deaths/losses.

Ghosts (TV 2019)

I'd love to see something for this fandom! You could do almost anything here and have it be on-theme, given that the majority of the main cast are ghosts, but I think that something specifically about Allison, who died and can now see ghosts, would be interesting, or about Robin remaining for so many thousands of years after he died and growing so accustomed to loss that it makes him seem even more inhuman to the others than not being a modern homo sapien does, or the Captain growing to accept himself in death where he couldn't in life. Or, y'know, something fun and silly! Don't feel obligated to do something maudlin by any means, I mentioned those examples mainly just to give you some options in case you wanted scope beyond silly and funny.

Ghosts (US TV 2021)

I know some people have a very firm preference re: the UK or US versions of Ghosts, but I feel that both do different things very well. The US show is a lot more sentimental and less cynical and it develops the characters more as opposed to having them mostly static as they were at the moment of death, and I think there is a lot of value in both approaches. Given that the US show does emphasise character growth for the ghosts, something about being able to do things in death that you couldn't in life, or learning and growing in ways that you could't when you were alive would be very interesting. I do ship Trevor/Hettie and I would never say no to something along those lines, but it's not essential. I'm not hugely shippy about Isaac/Nigel, so I'd prefer not to have something that was mainly about their relationship, but including shippy Isaac/Nigel elements in a vid more broadly about Isaac, or about him accepting his sexuality, or in an ensemble vid, etc., would be more than fine. Again, I don't dislike the ship, I just don't find it particularly compelling on its own merits.

Bill & Ted (Movies)

The boys! Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted Theodore Logan, my beloveds. I don't think there is anything you could do with this franchise in a vid that I wouldn't be on the edge of my seat to watch. I love all three iterations in the trilogy and whether you went with something more literal along the lines of their canonical deaths and resurrections or something more thinky about the future in the Bill & Ted universe, or their wives' lives hundreds of years after they would have died otherwise, or the lives of historical figures seeing the future (which includes Bill and Ted themselves in the context of the movies), anything would be fantastic.

The Mummy (Movies 1999-2008)

I'm a millennial bisexual, so it's basically mandatory for me to be obsessed with these movies. I think that there is so much scope for things on both the silly and the serious ends of the spectrum that would be on theme for the challenge (bonus points if you could hit both extremes in the one vid, like the movie itself does). I think that there's something to be teased out in the implicit cloud WWI throws over several of the characters and their attitudes to life and death, but I'm not sure how the best way to get that across in a vid would be.

ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon

I am an anime-only fan, so I don't know what's coming down the line beyond what has been adapted so far, but I love this story so much! I love how much of a focus there is on environmentalism and the importance of both good food and a good relationship to food and living/persisting. Death and life are so intertwined in the show from the larger stakes with resurrecting Falin, but it exists in the smaller stakes of killing to eat and death feeding life. I am also intrigued by Marcille's anxieties about outliving her friends, which I suspect also inform the Mad Mage's motivations. I'm very pro-her using forbidden magic to resurrect her gf, but I'm also deeply compelled at the idea of how a desire to preserve life can potentially be perverted.