Seeking Ferret

Title of vid: Nightswimming
Vidder: seekingferret
Fandom: Fringe
Music: Nightswimming by R.E.M.
Summary: Olivia/Tank OTP
Responsible for lack of consistent title block from vid to vid: seekingferret
Content notes: Fast cuts, needles, body horror, violence, child abuse
Acknowledgements: Thanks to sanguinity and kerithwyn for beta and brainstorming discussion.
Premiered at: Vividcon Premieres 2018




"Nightswimming" is a part of CTY Canon, the songs played at all of our summer camp dances. This is because of a precocious and absurd self-reflexive streak in the people who designed Canon, right? Nightswimming is a song about being a grown-up looking back and remembering your teenage years and how vivid they seem in memory in contrast to the paltry record they left on the physical world. Being a bunch of teenagers living through those vivid moments in the present and gathering in a circle to listen to "Nightswimming" is silly. None of us really understood "Nightswimming."

But I have deep affection for "Nightswimming" anyway because I associate it with those fierce teenage memories. Like I implanted a trigger for the time when "Nightswimming" would actually be able to speak to me? I dunno, it's hard to explain.

I was relistening to it, as one does, and I was in one of those vidder phases where you free associate every song you listen to with the vid it could be. And bam, you get to the lyric "September's coming soon" and obviously, it's a Fringe vid. I relistened a few more times with that in mind and it became really clear what it could be as a Fringe vid- The nightswimming of the song, the reckless skinny dipping of the song, reimagined as Olivia jumping recklessly into the tank. It almost vids itself.

Well, not really. The visuals of the chorus are perfect, but "Nightswimming" is an empty shell of a song. "That bright, tight forever drum / Cannot describe nightswimming". It's a song about memory, but what memory? It's a song about bravery, but which bravery? Setting the choruses to Olivia entering the tank required almost no thought, but once I'd filled out the frame, I needed to give a lot of thought to the narrative to hang on the frame. Who is Olivia Dunham and why is she the person who will always risk herself to find the truth? What does she see when the enters the tank and why is she willing to engage with that memory-space no matter how much it costs her?

And so I slowly infilled the pieces: John the lost love, ever faithful Charlie, lost mom and sometimes distant Rachel and Ella, constantly intertwined Peter, demandingly loyal Broyles. They are the reasons why Olivia throws herself into the pain of past memories... not just to save the future, but also for the sake of the memories themselves. kerithwyn gave me useful feedback about emphasizing Olivia's relationships with her family as a way to access the emotional heft driving her decisions.

It got a warm reception at VVC- people liked the nostalgic look at Fringe and Olivia Dunham after a few years had smoothed out some of the ragey edges of their emotions, and people appreciated my doggedly on the nose lyric matches.

Fringe Season 5 DVDs have arrived. Which means I actually have to buckle down and try to make the Etta fanvid I've been plotting ever since I saw season 5. Scary. I have song, I have some imagery in my head, but I've mostly only watched Season 5 episodes one time, so probably the first step is to rewatch Season 5 two or three times. You don't see me complaining. :D

I have a few half-written posts with my thoughts on Season 5, but basically speaking I enjoyed but was not bowled over by the ending, because it constrained some thematic developments that I thought were better left ambiguous and because it was a little bit too assured about its happy ending. But as far as the plotting and characterization went, I was gripped for the whole fifth season from beginning to end. I loved that they used the previous four seasons as building blocks to tell this completely different story in such a fascinating future.




I submitted a bunch of vids for tightpresent. Vids are revealed on Sunday, then creators will be revealed a week after that. I can't wait for that to happen. Honestly, I have no idea what my recipients are going to make of the things I created. They are such pure concentrated versions of my artistic id that people who know me will know that I made at least two of them within the first ten seconds of the vid. I'm going to have to seek out other vidding challenges, though, because as with fanfic, I love working to challenges. Constraint heightens my artistic impulse.


Today is the forty third day of the Omer

Last night I marathoned six episodes of Only Connect, a British quiz show/ puzzle show named after Forster. They give people sets of four things with a connection and people have to guess the connection. It's wonderfully brain-stretchy, though my problem with British quiz shows is that two thirds of the questions are hard but fair and one third of the questions are hard because I'm an American who doesn't have British pop culture knowledge. When the connection turns out to be "Last names of news presenters on BBC Radio," I just throw my hands up in frustration. My other problem is that I have no interest in the vowelless lightning round at the end, though this wasn't all that much of a problem since it made watching episodes go faster.


In other watching news, Fringe Season 5 continues to be better than my wildest dreams. When I watched 4x19 I said "I want to watch a whole show of this." And then they gave it to me! S5 is a totally different thing from what came before, I'm in basic agreement with the people who've said they regard it as a fanfic AU of Fringe, but it is a really great fanfic AU and the actors are totally on board.

My only problem is how much the show completely gave up on every plotline it developed in S4. I watched the Nina/Olivia scenes in this week's episode with total Nina's Back Glee, but kept wondering why they didn't do anything with the fact that Olivia and Nina had some heavy emotional dealings in S4 and shouldn't be quite the same with each other as they used to be. Did they work through that stuff in the years between getting married to Peter and getting ambered? Presumably, but how? Nina's "I never thought I'd see you again." was like early S4 Nina, not late S4 Nina.

I know S4 was a mistake, but... it happened. You didn't walk it all the way back, you know, you only walked it awkwardly half back and then acted like you'd walked it all the way back. The main reason I fell in love with Fringe is because it is a show where emotional consequences exist and choices matter, and Fringe S5 is acting like choices matter, but only choices made in S5, not choices made in S4.