Vidder: P.R.Zed
Musical Artist: B.B. Gabor
Vidder on LJ:przed
Vidder’s website: http://przed.com/vids
Why this vid must be seen:

P.R. Zed is one of the best vidders around and I’ll watch anything she’s ever done, regardless of the fandom. With a background in cinema studies, she has a good eye for choosing the right images and a great sense of rhythm for montage.

Unfortunately, this is the only wholly MFU vid available on her site at the moment (we must nag her more, folks). It’s mostly about Illya (although Solo gets a few choice moments) and it’s simply a lot of fun.

To find the vid, just go to her site (it’s listed third). Please be sure to follow the instructions (ie: right click, etc.) for downloading it to your own system.

Fandom: SPORTS NIGHT
Pairing: Dan/Casey
Author on LJ:
Author Website:
Why this must be read:

Anna-Maria Jennings produced a number of lovely stories during her brief time in the Sports Night fandom. Her most famous would have to be the superb West Wing crossover Echos, but this sweet piece of schmoop is one of my all time favourites.

Dan is having trouble sleeping, something that has plagued him on and off since Sam's death. When it starts to affect him both personally and professionally, that's where Casey steps in.

Anna-Maria has a good grasp of these characters and all their faults and attributes. You can feel the affection Casey holds for his partner shine through in the tender way he looks out for Dan during this difficult time, never looking down on him, just treating him as always and making sure he's there when Dan needs him.

Sleep

Fandom: STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE
Pairing: Garak/Deanna Troi
Author on LJ: n/a
Author Website: Damar: Hero of Cardassia
Why this must be read:

Yes, you read that pairing correctly! Victoria usually writes about the life and trials of Legate Damar, but this story, written for the Garak Fuh-Q Fest, takes on an unlikely pairing and makes it work. It's fun and warm and sensual, and almost certainly the only story I'll rec which isn't in some way angsty.

Chocolates and Silk

Vidder: Rhianne
Musical Artist: Billy Joel
Pairing: Bodie/Doyle
Vidder on LJ: rhianne
Vidder's website: http://www.hiddenmuse.co.uk/index.htm
Why this vid must be seen:

I've just learned that the last Friday of the month is Friday Night Drive-In on crack_van, or the night for making vid recs. This seems like a great idea to me, so here goes (story rec to follow later).

There are so many fabulous, unbelievable Pros vids out there (for a comprehensive list go to The Hatstand). Most of them are older and were made before the DVDs were released, and the vast majority of them aren't online. This includes some of my very favorites - for example, the classic Media Cannibals vids - if I could rec any vid at all here, it would be Detachable Penis, from Media Cannibals 3.

I know that many people hoped that the release of the DVDs would give a boost to Pros vidding. I don't think that's really happened, at least not on the scale we might have liked - but lucky for us, there have been some wonderful Pros vids made relatively recently, and some of these are online. I spent some enjoyable time sifting through them this evening. Most I'd seen before, but not And So It Goes, though I'd downloaded it months ago. I clicked on it tonight expecting something pleasant, but I had no idea I'd be moved so much, almost to teariness (not a usual state for me!). Oh, this vid pulls your heartstrings. The vidder's summary is "Bodie loves Doyle from afar" - and really, that's what it's all about (though the ending holds some promise, at least for a hopeless happily-ever-after OTPer like me, that it might not always be from afar).

I'm not a vidding expert, and I don't know all the technical techniques or terms - but to my uneducated eye (and ear), the music is perfect for the theme, both the mood and the lyrics, lovely and wistful and moving, and the vidder's choice of clips and the techniques she's used, whatever they're called, do it justice. To me this vid represents the best of both worlds: it uses newer technology and vidding techniques, but not for their own sake, not so that you notice them; at heart it's a good old-fashioned fannish vid, with the total focus on the characters. Which really is what I love best, particularly in this fandom.

I can only hope that we'll be seeing more like this, from her and from other vidders.

And So It Goes

Vidder: Killa and Laura Shapiro
Musical artist: Heather Nova
Pairing: None
Vidder on LJ:
Vidder's website: http://seacouver.slashcity.net/killa/index.html, http://www.netwiz.net/~laurasha/vanity/

Why this vid kicks ass:

This vid is both a Scully character study and an insightful reflection on The X-Files' religious and metaphysical implications. Structured by the question "Maybe we're not only human," hauntingly sung by Heather Nova, Killa and Laura patch together Scully's search for meaning through science, Catholicism, and the X-Files themselves. Terribly clever and unique use of clips from throughout the series make this vid stand out. Its delicate negotiation of the tensions, desperation, and pathos in the development of Scully's hybrid spiritual-empirical-supernatural beliefs at a level of artistic complexity which far surpasses the show makes this vid truly remarkable. Cuts between human society and the natural world, human emotion and the realities of death underscore the universal relevance and depth of the chorus's timeless question, and lend this vid long-lasting resonance outside X-Files fandom and beyond the life of the series.


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