Like a dandelion up through the pavement, I persist

Challenge #13

Make a rec list! Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I think I've mainly recced fics for this challenge, or similar ones, in the past, and I remember regretting not reccing any vids, so I am here now to remedy my past self's oversight there. In no particular order, here are ten vids that I give my strongest possible endorsement to. There are content warnings for several of them that are listed in the AO3 works themselves that I have linked here, but, all other things being equal, I would absolutely recommend that you watch all of them whether you are familiar with the canons in question or not.

Fun, Fun, Fun by cosmic_llin

Fandom: Lower Decks (Beckett Mariner character study vid)
Song: Fun, Fun, Fun by the Beach Boys

This is a Beckett Mariner vid about her relationship to responsibility that cosmic_llin gifted me for festivids last year. Full disclosure, many of the vids on this lists were gifts to me, and of those four were gifts I specifically got for Festivids 2022/2023, because it was an absolute banner year for me in terms of both the quantity and quality of vids that were so kindly gifted to me.

It's such a gorgeous, joyous vid that captures so much of what I love about Lower Decks in general and Mariner in particular. It's funny, irreverant, fond, and never afraid to be silly. Llin did a wonderful job with creating a strong narrative in this too about Beckett's relationship with her captain (who is also her mother) and fitting into the structure of Starfleet's hierarchy as an anarchic free spirit who will become a square peg to avoid fitting into round holes out of pique. I love her so, so much.

Get This Podcast Started by findmeinthealps

Fandom: Only Murders in the Building (Mabel Mora & Oliver Putnam & Charles Hayden-Savage ensemble vid)
Song: Get the Party Started by P!nk

This is another vid that was gifted to me last year for festivids and was, I think, the first one of the vids I received that I watch post-reveals. It's an ensemble vid and an absolute non-stop riot. Alps is an amazing vidder and, like everyone I've recced here, I could honestly have a rec list of just their work, but to keep things trim I'm limiting myself to this one as an introduction to their oeuvre.

I love humour in vids so much and I think that ironic pairings of clips and lyrics can be so effective, which this vid just absolutely nails. It's also visually such a treat and marries the visuals and the music in such a satisfying way, with so many satisfying little moments that land on exactly the write musical cue, and the editing is as smooth as butter. If you're not familiar with the fandom, I also think it's a great sales pitch for it and what makes it so fun, as it centres on the central trio from the show and their various amateur (and amateurish) murder investigations

Be Okay by cosmic_llin

Fandom: A League of Their Own (2022) (Shirley Cohen character study vid)
Song: Be OK by Ingrid Michaelson

And now for something completely different! This Shirley Cohen vid was another gift that the lovely cosmic_llin made for me for festivids last year and it was the second vid I watched. Even hot on the heels of the giddy fun of Get This Podcast Started, I welled up watching this within like a minute. I also cried again rewatching it when I was putting this list together and it hit me every bit as hard.

Llin is the only person who got two vids on the list, but I hope my naked partisanship can be excused here because I think that including both of the vids I've recommended here show her range really well. She's, of course, not unique in being able to nail more than one tone, but she pipped everyone else to the post by giving me two lovely vids last year and I wanted to include all my festivids 2022 gifts, haha.

Content warning: discussion of OCD, homophobia and medical abuse

Shirley can be a polarising character, or at least certainly was when the show came out, and in a show that centred and celebrated queerness so much, a character who struggled with homophobia—which, in my reading of her (and I think this is a pretty surface level take, honestly) is a manifestation of her OCD and her obsessions about contamination, and I cannot despite a mentally ill young woman from the 1940s with a "masculine" interest and talent who was terrified of being gay, because it would mean she would "have" to be lobotomised. Shirley also faces the things that terrify her so she can disprove her own fears out of love of her queer friends. I think that honest and compassionate represtations of the less "relatable" and sympathetic manifestations of mental illness, in particular with stuff like OCD, is so important and this vid was just so, so pitch perfect in how it handled its subject matter.

There is a lot of repetition in the song's lyrics and the vid uses this to its advantage by using repeated refrains, in particular, "I just wanna be okay, be okay, be okay" to edit montages of visually similar clips together, often showing Shirley repeating the same compulsive rituals and movements in different scenes. This is so effective and really helps to centre Shirley's point of view and anxieties really solidly at the heart of the vid. And, having established this motif, then transitions away from it in the last section, and instead shows several different instances of Shirley being happy and joyful with her teammates in very visually different scenes over the refrain.

Tubthumping by usuallyhats

Fandom: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (ensemble vid)
Song: Tumbthumping by Chumbawamba

The summary on AO3 for this vid is:

"If the existing plan fails, I make a new plan."
"So you make plans that fail."
"No!"

and... accurate. So, so accurate. I love each and every vid I've ever seen set to Tubthumping, but, truly, I am quite convinced by this one that Chumbawamba had D&D: Honor Among Thieves (2023) in the front of their minds when they were writing this back in 1997.

This is an ensemble vid and it is non-stop laugh a minute fun, very much in keeping with the tone of the movie. I saw this in the room when it premiered in vidukon_cardiff last year, and it was a huge crowd pleaser. If you are a fan of plans ganging agley and people getting knocked down and getting up again, I cannot recommend this vid highly enough.

I won't spoil it for you, but the choice of clips for the "Oh, Danny boy, Danny boy, Danny boy" section makes me almost cry laughing no matter how many times I see it.

Pray Be Silent, and Join Me in a Dance by theletterelle

Fandom: Pride and Prejudice (1995) (Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy)
Song Shut Up and Dance by Walk the Moon, covered by Eric Wuest

Using this instrumental cover of Shut Up and Dance on strings was such an inspired choice for this vid and I am stunned to this day by how effective it is. There are several parts cutting to musicians at the various dances and balls featured in the vid and I find it very immersive. And fun!

'Shut Up and Dance' is also just such a fantastic song choice as-is for a P&P vid, given how much of the stop and start development of Lizzie and Darcy's relationship and their mutual fascination in each other, in all its cautiously spiky glory, involves dancing together and using this almost neoclassical arrangement of it just elevates the vid even further.

I Can Cook Too by Tafadhali

Fandom: Big Eden (Pike Dexter/Henry Hart)
Song: "I Can Cook Too" from On the Town, performed by Alysha Umphress

The last of the recs from my wonderful pile of the Festivids gifts I got last year! This is such a charming and fond little vid for a charming little movie I am so hopelessly fond of. It is just under a minute long, but feels exactly the length that it needs to be.

It centres Pike, the sweet, shy love interest of Big Eden, and his understated, modest courtship of Henry through cooking for him and does such a good job of showcasing Pike as the unqualified dreamboat that he is. Very sweet, very swoony: both the character and the vid.

I Want You to Want Me by hartknyx

Fandom: Much Ado About Nothing (1993) (Beatrice/Benedick, Claudio/Hero)
Song: I Want You to Want Me by Cheap Trick, covered by Letters to Cleo

Well, the last vid in the list was the last of my Festivid gifts from last year, but this vid is one that I got in Festivids 2020/2021, haha.

I will always hold the Kenneth Branagh adaptation of Much Ado very near and dear to my heart and I was unspeakably thrilled to be gifted this vid by hartknyx. It encapsulates everything I love about this adaptation so perfectly and it's so fun and makes such wonderful use of the physical comedy and delightful facial expressions and acting choices in the film. It's also really effective in how it shows Claudio's deep and profound regret over wronging Hero. I did watch this film very young, so maybe I was softer on Claudio then than I would be on a first viewing now, but I do think that Robert Sean Leonard is one of the more redeemed-in-my-eyes Claudio and I think this section of the vid shows why very well.

It was also such a fun choice to use a song from the 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack for a vid to another film adaptation of a Shakespearean play! And, as I said at the time, even though there are a lot of repeated refrains in the lyrics, the vid never for one second feels anything but fresh and lively in how it rattles along. It also, as with the P&P vid, uses diegetic elements like showing a character playing a drum over the drum solo section that really, really work and marry the song to the visuals beautifully. Ten thousand out of ten stars, no notes.

Notice Me by lilly_the_kid

Fandom: Cobra Kai (Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence)
Song: Notice Me by Alexa Ray Joel

It does not matter how many times I see this vid, I fall in love with it again every time. It's so wonderfully adolescent and dumb in its portrayal of these fifty-something-year-old guys who re-light the flame of their teenage karate rivalry with each other almost four decades after the fact and become, once again, completely absorbed by thoughts of each other. Don't pretend you don't see me, baby!

This is just an all time favourite feel good vid for me and I love it to distraction.

Parachute by thingswithwings

Fandom: Leverage (Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer)
Song: Parachute by Ingrid Michaelson

I almost cut this from my shortlist a few times, not because it is not phenomenal, but because I wondered whether there was anyone left in fandom who was not already well acquainted with its majesty. This is an absolute classic fanvid that everyone I know who I've mentioned it to, even if they're aren't into Leverage, even if they aren't into vids, has seen and was stunned by. But it will no doubt be new to some of you, so it would be a crime not to include it, and not the fun and morally-just kind of crime.

Parachute is such a wonderfully dynamic and active vid, both in terms of its use of movement through the visuals and its overall narrative arc and how each section flows into the next and progresses the central theme of the vid.

There is this wonderful bit near the start that transitions a section about Hardison and Parker's relationship into including Eliot and his relationships to both of them, where it cuts from Parker and Hardison jumping off a bridge onto a moving train, to Eliot landing in the middle of a brawl in a warehouse. The editing is utterly sublime and it's such a rewarding vid to watch closely every time I go back to it.

Batter Up! by videobaths

Fandom: Succession (Gerri Kellman character study, Gerri/Roman)
Song: Swing! by Ellie Dixon

Gerri alert! And, I mean, okay, do I think Gerri Kellman effectively utilised girl power by funneling money to cover up the worst abuses that occured under Logan Roy's leadership? No, and if she was real I would not be remotely sympathetic to the misogyny she faces as a cog in the machine of late stage capitalism and serving the interests of the richest people in the world. But also... she is a fictional character and she is baby girl and I love her very much and everyone who has ever patronised or overlooked her at WayStar or thrown her under the bus as a scapegoat should be publicly executed for crimes against Blorbo.

This wonderful vid was gifted to me by videobaths for the womansplace exchange in 2023 (which I feel very bad about defaulting from and which I hope comes back this year so I can have another crack at it).

The pacing is so effective in this, both in how it builds the momentum of the vid from an excitement per second perspective and also in how it captures the fast pace of the world Gerri operates in and how sink or swim it is to survive in the waters she has been a shark in for decades. It is not constant go, go, go though and has great peaks and valleys in how it handles the pace and the length of each clip to reflect tone in the song.

The lyrics are also just... such a perfect fit for this vid "thought I left the oven on, 'cos your such a gaslight" and "if you're gonna play these games, I'll join in" are just so perfect for Gerri and the narrative thrust of this vid in particular.

The Gerri/Roman shippy sections are also just such an unparalled delight and it is always so fun seeing how actively she chose the awful series of decisions that led to their thing and how into it she is. "Now I'm lucid" oh, girl, are you? But I'm glad you had fun, you deserve it. Not... many of the other particulars that this particular relationship involved, but you deserved the fun part of a thrillingly terrible idea like getting involved with Roman Roy in the manner in which you did.

I pretty much rewatch this vid three times through every time I go back to it because it's so exciting, and it never, ever gets old.

Dear Purimgifts creator,

I'm SweetPollyOliver! Thank you so much for offering one/some of my requested fandoms! I'm really excited to see what you cook up.

This is my first time participating in Purimgifts, so I am not very familiar with the culture specific to the exchange and how important or unimportant letter writing is considered to be, so please take this simply as an "if this is useful" kind of thing. I'm very easy to please, provided you steer clear of DNWs and the archive tags I have asked to be excluded in my sign-up (i.e. Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con and Underage), and I'd be much happier to think that you made something that you had a great time making than that you got stressed worrying about what I might like or dislike.

I'm writing a letter largely because in other exchanges I have participated in people tended to prefer having some level of guidance from their recip, but nothing I say here should be considered written in stone. Feel free to create a fanwork featuring any characters or ship, I am equally happy with something shippy or gen and I don't have a preference in terms of ratings. If I've strayed too far in the direction of not giving enough ideas, I'm really sorry. Prompts don't come very easily to me and I enjoy being surprised.

( General likes, DNWs and fandom specific likes beneath the cut )