(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I looked at this vid again last night after months away from it and was like "You know, I think this thing is pretty awesome. I know I still see problems with it, and I could probably tinker at it for more years, but it's good enough." So vid amnesty on a vid I started a year and a half ago. (Also, a trial for using dailymotion, since vimeo now seems to have song checking copyright crap that I don't want to deal with, and I'm going to need streaming hosting for festivids) Thanks to kass and thirdblindmouse for betaing- mistakes that remain were probably pointed out by them and ignored.

Vid Title Joy to the City
fandom Fringe
song: "Joy to You Baby" by Josh Ritter
vidder: seekingferret
Warnings: None that I can think of, tell me if I missed something
summary Etta's full season 5 arc.

Comments

[ghost_lingering]

This makes me wonder if I am numb enough to finish the last two seasons of Fringe -- I always loved the sound of season five and you make it look fascinating and wonderful here. So, from someone who hasn't seen season 5, I like it! I particularly like sequence with all of the resist posters with Etta's face. I also love how you use cutaway shots of objects and land/cityscapes -- I always find character studies best when they're placed in the larger context of everything else, which is absolutely what you do here.

[seekingferret]

I... have a lot of confusing feelings about Season 5. I think it would have been a lot more enjoyable if I hadn't seen Season 4, because they tried to pretend the character movements of Season 4 had never happened and it made for some annoyingly dissonant moments, where on the one hand I didn't want those things in Season 4 to have happened, but they did happen, and Season 5's refusal to engage with their consequences frustrated me.

In general, I think Season 5 is the greatest AU fanfic ever, and I love the visuals and a lot of the storytelling. But there are frustrating parts. And let me be clear- the narrative I sketch out in this vid is not at all counterfactual, but it is... somewhat narratively counterfactual? Etta ought to be the central character in Season 5, but instead she fades into the background and they waste time telling stories about Peter that aren't actually very important.

I think of this vid as being a sort of sequel to A New Day in New York Town because it's an acoustic ballad that I'm using to tell a character story and also to comment on the different versions of New York Fringe is talking about. Season 5 New York is the one I left out of that first vid, because it's a different kind of New York that didn't fit into the narrative of that vid, but I wanted to finish the story of Fringe New Yorks, and so I'm glad you liked how I fit that urban context into Etta's story.

[ghost_lingering]

Hahaha, why am I not surprised that Peter takes over a story that should have a female protagonist front and center. D: But I can absolutely see how it's the sequel to A New Day in New York Town -- both have the same interweaving of place and people, which I love.

[seekingferret]

I mean, even in the Peter stuff, there's some really cool storytelling things going on. There are about five good, understandable reasons why they did the stuff with Peter that they did, and I even enjoyed some of it. Joshua Jackson totally rocks it. I don't want to steer you away from Season 5, I think it is one of the most interesting TV experiments I've ever seen and you should watch it if you can suppress enough Season 4 rage.

[ghost_lingering]

Yeah, Joshua Jackson is great, I just ... wish that Peter wasn't the focus. I really like how he's positioned in the story as the secondary lead in the first two seasons. But when they push him to the center I get annoyed. I might skip season 4 and just watch season 5. Or maybe I'll watch backwards -- season 5 and then 4. I've considered doing that for Angel, which I still don't think I'm numb enough to finish if I watch it the normal way.

[monanotlisa]

oshua Jackson is great, I just ... wish that Peter wasn't the focus.

This, this, everything you say here.

(I do love Season 4 because of Blue!Lincoln, I won't lie. But I would give my bespectacled boy up for Olivia where she belongs: front and center.)

[kerithwyn]

Etta ought to be the central character in Season 5, but instead she fades into the background and they waste time telling stories about Peter that aren't actually very important.

That, precisely that.

But the vid is utterly gorgeous and it's lovely seeing Etta again, despite my irritation with s5 in general.

[seekingferret]

:D Thank you.

[cahn]

Oh man, I am watching Fringe as fast as I can! (This is, admittedly, pretty glacially slow.) Then maybe I can watch this! :)

[seekingferret]

:D How far in are you? I love talking Fringe. And I might suggest you check out these posts of sanguinity and I talking through the first couple seasons in the comments: http://sanguinity.dreamwidth.org/88589.html?thread=512525#cmt512525 and http://sanguinity.dreamwidth.org/90819.html

They progress through the show, and are mostly annotated and mostly ordered by viewing order, so you can read up to where you are and avoid spoilers.

[cahn]

Just finished Season 3 Ep 4 ("Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?"). I seem to watch about one ep a night on weekends, maybe one or two episodes during the week. It depends a lot. I mainlined the second half of season 2, of course, and it took me several weeks to get through the first episode of season 3 (I think I may have reacted badly to Olivia's personality-torture situation).

ase hooked me on it, and usually in the middle of watching an episode I'll google chat her and real-time CAPITAL LETTERS RANT AND/OR RAVE about something. For example, this last episode: [AW, I LIKE RAY SO MUCH HE IS TOTALLY DEAD]; and [I'm not up with TRUE LOVE > UNIVERSE But True Love makes it possible to actually notice things about True Love you might not otherwise? Yeah, all for that. (See also Roy/Riza. I am so predictable!)]

Maybe I should look into how to ping you both at the same time :) Or start a thread... I am definitely enjoying the sanguinity ones! And I appear to have watched all those eps, so no risk of spoilers. I got burned heavily by spoilers when reading FMA, and am really trying to avoid them now.

ETA: Also, the ACTING on this show. THE ACTING. Okay, I just had to say that :)

[seekingferret]

Ah, okay. Yeah, after that point in S2, sanguinity and I shifted to email to talk about the show, because it seemed more practical and also because she was up to speed enough that the conversations started to partially be about brainstorming my first Fringe vid.

I'm not a fan of True Love > Universe, and I think Fringe sometimes falls prey to it, especially later in the show's run. I am, however, a big fan of pursuing True Love is a choice people have to make that has consequences, which is very often Fringe's narrative (White Tulip is my favorite episode of the show). (And sometimes when it isn't Fringe's narrative, I squint really hard until I can see it.)

[sanguinity]

Heh, I doubt I could keep up my end of the convo now -- most of the eps have become pretty murky in my memory -- but for my part, Ferret is welcome to send you the email threads as I don't think I've got anything all that personal in them. (Assuming you two have an emailing-about-shows relationship, I don't know.)

(ETA: ...on reflection, nothing more personal than I already tend to post publicly when I'm ranting about TV shows. Because emotional reactions to shows are personal, and sometimes they touch on life-history stuff when you're trying to explain them. You know. :-P )

The acting is fucking amazing. I'm going to leave Ferret a comment about the vid in a moment -- if I can come up with anything more verbose than "Etta. Olivia. Etta." -- but the bit in the vid where Olivia hugs Etta for the first time... Anna Torv is such an AMAZING actress.

[cahn]

Argh, okay, am reading the sanguinity thread and MUST SHARE. Not sure if this is the right venue or if sanguinity's thread is, or somewhere else: I am choosing here because it seems like a better place to put spoilers. (The ep titles refer to my early-season-3 reactions to your discussion about them, and not necessarily to the actual episode.)

Pilot:
-Nina Sharp's hand! Seeing that come back in "Peter" was SO COOL I MAY HAVE FLAILED AROUND QUITE A LOT
-Perfect Peter: I never minded Peter that much, although I could see him annoying me if Olivia wasn't so awesome. I really like him now.

Someplace a couple eps later:
-Olivia's magic hair, hee.
-ASTRID, WHY DIDN'T THEY DO MORE WITH ASTRID. Although I adore alt!Astrid. I want to be alt!Astrid.
-Oh, Stargate Universe. I have such a love/hate relationship with that show!

"The Cure":
-Speaking from the perspective of Season 3, why does John Noble not have an Emmy???? (All of them, really. But mostly John Noble.)

"The No-Brainer":
-CHARLIE HE WAS MY FAVORITE WAH. That being said, it took me a while to warm up to alt!Charlie, because he wasn't MY Charlie, but now I really like him. He better not die. I also like Lincoln. I have been warned that he dies, because this is the kind of thing I HAVE TO KNOW NOW, so at least I can prepare myself for that.
-I love Broyles. Both of them.
-Yep, this is where I started to get hooked too. (ase linked me to an ep recap where I actually ended up skipping many of the eps in between, which I think was a good move.)
-I was also really, really worried about Charlie betraying Olivia. If he had, I would have ragequit the show right there.
-have I mentioned: CHARLIE. ase had to put up with a lot of my "I LOVE CHARLIE SO MUCH" at this point. I just... platonic utterly-bedrock-trust partnerships are my THING, okay? And there's so little of it in TV!

"Unleashed"
-Usually it would be the girl getting tortured by parasites and the guy riding in to save the day (hi X-files! hi SGU!) -- I just loved that it was reversed in this ep. ALSO CHARLIE

"Dream Logic"
-I too am not at all happy about Amy Jessup just... fading away!

And, randomly, a couple of nitpicky things that bug me about Fringe:
-YOU DON'T EAT IN CHEM LAB, WALTER. Apparently none of the incredibly random bio and chem gets on my nerves, but this? UPSETS ME EVERY TIME.
-Harvard... is... not made out of stone. Just saying.
-In one of the eps I just watched (I think 3x03): NO, THE PROBABILITY IS NOT IDENTICALLY ZERO, ASTRID. You know I love you, alt!Astrid! But no.

[sanguinity]

CHARLIE.

ALSO MPREG CHARLIE.

ALSO CHARLIE.

CHARLIE.

...and it makes me evilly happy that there are protocols that you can't let go. (I cannot stop chortling about your outrage about eating in chem lab!) This show irritated me so goddamn much on some professional-knowledge fronts.

[sanguinity]

Oh, this is very much a sequel to New York Town, isn't it? Watcher-modified New York, guerilla-warfare New York. Both of your New York Fringe vids make me wish I knew the city better, so I could understand more fully the things you're trying to show me. But even if I'm not properly equipped to get it all, I do still get some.

But mostly: Etta. Olivia. Etta. Olivia.

ETA: Oh, and I meant to ask! How do you like DailyMotion for vid-hosting? I was just browsing their legal stuff, and it looks like they have audio-scanning? ...but that they don't deploy it, what?

[seekingferret]

Yeah. I think I'm a lot less deliberate about my NY imagery in this vid. I don't so much wield images with specific meanings as I wield all of the NY images for the same meaning: "This whole city looks wrong." I can see how that would seem a little inaccessible to you, but still, Etta. Olivia. Etta. Olivia. :D

[monanotlisa]

By the way, I rec'ed this -- thank you so much for giving us Etta! <3

[seekingferret]

Thanks!

[cahn]

ETTA. WAAAH. *sniff*

I finally a) finished Season 5 and b) came back and watched it! I have so many FEELINGS about Etta, and you brought them all back.

[seekingferret]

Thanks. Yeah, major Etta feels.