navel gazing

[fan_eunice]

I am...struggling with the Owen vid my brain has insisted I at least try to make. But hey, it's all new struggles in my vidding process, so here's the part where you'll find me blathering on about both that and my Owen issues and how they intersect behind the cut,



Right, so, I'm sure it comes as a shock to no one that when I'm actually vidding (as in the part where I'm putting clips on the timeline and engaged in the making of the thing) that process is coming from an almost entirely emotional place. I almost never know what I want to say when I start a vid, only how I want it to feel. This is why me and storyboarding will never be OTP, and why I'm more likely to start scrubbing through likely episodes and scenes rather than any sort of deliberate clipping. I put stuff together that feels right until patterns start to emerge and then start working backwards more deliberately to tie those patterns together (yes, my timelines spend most of the process a godawful MESS). Intellectual and thinky my vids are not. And I am mostly okay with that.

But. And here's where the new twist comes in. Up until now the emotional place my vids have come from have been all about love and connection and squee (and, y'know, hugs and kittens). Even the two vids involving the deaths of main characters are about love. This vid? The one about Owen? Is not. It is coming from a place of deep discomfort and a gut level squick reaction to the character that I have to constantly work past in my own head. I have no idea what the final structure of the vid might be when it's done, or what it might say, about me or about Owen...but I do know how it feels when I'm working on it, the reaction that goes 'ping, yes that' when scrubbing for clips, and there are no kittens there.

That's...uncomfortable enough. Here's the part I'm thinking about today though, because more than once I've laid a clip that felt right on this vid and thought "I should back off on that, that isn't fair if I think about the blah, blah, blah, and I'm deliberately misrepresenting that there" Which...bothers me when I think about it. The part where I think I have to be fair. Why do I have to be fair? Moons of Jupiter is not fair. I so totally cherry picked around the source for the combination of clips that felt only like a specific emotional reaction to Ten, the one where I make flaily hands of joy at him and his shoes, and cheerfully chucked all other sides of the argument out the window without a second thought, because that's what I wanted it to feel like. Is it anywhere close to a full and accurate picture of Ten? Oh, hell no. Just an expression of the overwhelming side of emotion I tend to fall down on when watching him in certain contexts.

So what, if any, difference is there to vidding an overwhelmingly negative reaction or feeling? Where does 'fair' come into it? Part of it is flat out social concern. I want people to like me. I like it when people like me. 'Hi, here's a vid that dumps on a character you like' is not exactly on the list of ways to win friends and influence people. And there's the whole thing where, somehow, a negative emotional reaction seems less, I don't know, valid? Like it has to be defended with stronger arguments than straight up squee? Or is that back to the social argument, that, declaring love for something is unlikely to make anyone feel defensive, but strong negative reactions can, because it can feel like that person is calling into question one's own tastes and preferences? And does that mean there is more responsibility when making such a statement, even if it is mostly a personal one?

Is there a point at which this is what it feels like for me when I react to this is just not buddies to do? Or at least not buddies to share it in a wider context. I'm not entirely sure where the drive to make this in the first place is even coming from. I can guess. Torchwood is my current place of happy, fun squee, and in order to maintain that I've worked to incorporate Owen as I'm meant to, to be fair...and it works. Mostly. Except there's still a part of me that kind of resents it. And obviously wants an outlet to scream about it. And what do I do when I get hit with an overwhelming response to something? I vid. In a weird way, I kind of think doing this will help me stay 'fair' in other contexts. I don't know. I'm just...feeling deeply uneasy right now on many levels. Especially since poking at a sore tooth isn't exactly how I like to do fandom to begin with. Argh.

Hell, who knows. I could make the thing and it ends up accidentally being something entirely other than what I intended or felt making it. That happens. And it'll be all "What were you on about? That's not so bad. It's just some Owen vid." Maybe I'm just so used to not going to any sort of dark place (and yes, I'm including the death vids too, see above re: love and bonds of friendship and family) when I'm vidding that it feels far more explosive to me than it would to anyone else. Hell, that's probable. I joked to laurashapiro in another post about the one time at Club Vivid where I dressed up in vagabondage's punk clothes and instead of looking tough I ended up getting pat on the head a lot. :D This is not an unusual experience for me (see also: my attempts to be butch). That I'm currently elbows deep in my own angst, only to end up getting pinched on the cheeks with a "d'awwww...she thinks she's being *dark*, isn't that sweet?" is, y'know, not out of the question.

I really don't know what I'm on about here, other than that, while I am okay with this vid not getting finished for a lot of other reasons (given the number of half finished projects wandering around my hard drive, that's not out of the question either), I don't want it not to get finished because I'm scared, or because I'm worried what people will think of me. Or something. *flails*