What the Opera House Really Meant (Battlestar Redactica Meta)

[beccatoria]

I feel vaguely indulgent posting meta about Battlestar Redactica. And kind of guilty, like I'm cutting out everyone who hasn't seen it from the discussion.

But I figure I'm gonna have to get over the first issue, or what's the point? And the second issue, well, firstly it's kinda true and for that I apologise. But secondly, everything in Redactica comes from the original show. And I mean that more than literally because it's a re-edit. I mean that the only major changes are things vast tracts of fandom were expecting and then never got. So like, perhaps this can also read as AU speculation on themes and ideas that were/might have been present in canon and a discussion on what those might have meant/might still mean?

So. To get on with it -

Something rather extraordinary just happened here at chaila43's journal. Somewhere in that mess of comments, chaila43 and I, um, fix the Opera House in the context of Battlestar Redactica. I am still somewhat in shock.

It's a weird explanation, but it's one I love, one I think fits, and one, most miraculously of all, that allows the final five minutes of BSR: Resurrection to function as an endgame and fulfillment of the Opera House prophecy as much as a promise of its forthcoming fulfillment in ways more awesome than the televised series gave us.

I think there are three important things to point out here:

1) This works because many of the underlying broad strokes of this thesis were (or appeared to be) already present in canon, though the show inexplicably chose not to follow through with them.

2) This works because many of the slightly more specific but fairly broad strokes of this thesis were exactly what cvm_productions was going for in terms of the thematic function and purpose of the Opera House and the various participants and its role.

3) I doubt this could ever have worked if it were not a collaboration. The details, the specifics that tie so many disparate elements together into a satisfying (for myself and chaila43 at least; I completely understand if it is not so for others) plot-based conclusion, to provide an answer, "This is what the Opera House is; this is what is happening; here are the answers to the prophecies," came together when Redactica turned into a shared, collaborative universe.

chaila43 didn't just make an amazing vid, she fundamentally contributed to the Redacticaverse and we ended up pulling together an ending with our bare hands vidding programs.

I'm probably biased, but I think that's a fairly extraordinary and exciting fannish event. Certainly I feel extremely lucky to have been a part of it if only because -

You guys. For the first time in so long I am excited about BSG Mythology.

All right. I've talked it up, I'd better explain what we made up.

Firstly, it's all in metaphor. I wish, I so wish that it didn't have to be. That we'd gotten actual answers and amazing explosions of epic awesome to explain the Opera House.

But we didn't. So. With the help of chaila43, here is a story of Epic, Operatic Metaphor.

The end of BSR runs thusly:

Kara plays her father's music to Sam. The Opera House visions, shared by Athena, Laura, Caprica and, seemingly, Hera as a consicous participant, restart. Caprica walks into the Opera House with Hera as always. She looks up and sees the Final Five on the balcony. Sam, in his semi-conscious state, starts speaking - the suggestion being he, one of the Final Five on the balcony, is now a more conscious participant in the visions. His speech is, by necessity, recycled, a little nonsensical; more tone-poem than answer.

Resurrection, I thought, succeeded in moving the visions forward, but not in giving them resolution.

Sam's speech was always intended as a metaphorical celebration of hybridity and the wonder and absurdity of their existence - an antidote to Cavil's nationalistic rage.

Kara's hybridity, the decision to save Nicky's cylonicity, to save Liam, and, essentially, everything about Resurrection was a conscious effort to keep blurring those lines and to say, "HYBRIDS YAY!" Because quite honestly, beyond, "HYBRIDS YAY!" Resurrection doesn't have a plot. (SSSSSSH! THIS IS A SECRET.)

As I said, the broad strokes were always there.

What chaila43 did, that started everything snowballing, was remind me that in addition to being half-cylon, Kara Thrace was half-dead. It's still not so clear in the fan-edit because it happens first, but within the scope of the vid there was a wonderful moment where chaila reverses the order of some scenes and it looks like Kara is putting her picture on the memorial wall in solidarity with her people on both counts; the dead Cylon.

In turn, this brought up the issue that while to me, the Opera House was first and foremost a place of human/cylon interconnection, to chaila it was always primarily - as we were introduced to it with D'Anna - a place of life/death interconnection.

So:

Hybridity of two sorts. Human/Cylon/life/death. Hybridity as a sort of death because both old things die to create one new.

Another of chaila's remarkable vids: Child, You're the Revolution.

This posits Hera as a Revolution. She is a revolution simply through virtue of her existence and it's so true. She cannot help but make ripples, socially, politically and metaphysically.

I still firmly believe, first hybrid or not, that Hera is the face of the hybridised future - she is the Revolution. Kara is a forerunner; a prophet/apostle/leader/harbinger of death come to make the future Hera will live in and Roslin will never live to see.

But let's take the idea of revolution through existence and apply it to Kara. What if her realisation, acceptance, and publicisation (thank you Baltar) of her hybridity (both forms) is completely revolutionary, not just for her personally, but on a social, political and metaphysical level?

The Opera House is the cybrid event horizon; the point of no return. Sam's speech isn't just a prophecy regarding the shape of things to come, it's a welcome speech to the shape of things as they are right now, because it's already happened.

So, if, either coincidentally, or, as my preference, through the act of realisation and acceptance, Kara has effected the cybrid event horizon, how does that answer:

1) All those prophecies?
2) What the Opera House is and why everyone's chasing Hera?

chaila43 and I were shocked to discover that upon positing each question against the above basic hypothesis, answers came very easily.

I cannot answer why the Opera House looks like an Opera House but shared conscious space has to look like something, and perhaps ancient Kobol is as apt a shared projection as anything else.

But what it is is a space of hybrid consciousness. I enjoy the idea that in addition to becoming more and more physically hybridised, the future cybrid society is becoming more and more revolutionised and hybridised in terms of their awareness and consciousness, but less pretentiously, the dead/alive/human/cylon blurrings have always been there.

It seems to be accessible to people in altered states of consciousness. Baltar is lead there by his hallucination; D'Anna during the moments between life and death. Roslin when taking chamalla.

It fits remarkably well with the Five's partial presence - because those identities and memories were dead, deeply buried, if at all self-aware then on a very altered level.

All the participants in the Opera House visions seem to access it while sleeping, and Sam is, again, in a comatose or altered state when regaining his Opera House memories or participating in those visions.

Since this is the iteration of the vision when we finally do have something happen in the Opera House beyond Caprica simply staring in wonder and wondering what will happen next, I'm going to take the final five minutes of Resurrection as the actual culmination of that sequence. The "real" version, if you will.

Hera is comfortable in the Opera House because she has always been there. She has always been acknowledged and raised a hybrid - I imagine Kara got any sign of mystical projection abilities beaten out of her swiftly. But yes, Hera, I imagine, projects herself into the Opera House as easily as breathing. Why would she fear the future it heralds? She is that future.

But what's with Caprica picking her up and taking her in to witness this moment - this point at which the scales tip and there's no going back?

It's easier to start with why it's not her mother, Athena, or Laura who shares her blood.

It's not Athena because Athena fears the Opera House. She fears Hera's future and cybridity because she had to forge her identity by picking a side and sticking so hard she could demand the murder of her sisters.

chaila43 aptly points out in the comments-discussion that her vid - Child, You're the Revolution - is partly about Athena's war against Hera being the Revolution. Because you don't really want your three year old to be the Revolution. You want her to be your three year old.

It's not Laura because of her prophecy. And because, while she is the human representative in the Opera House, and arguably one of the first hybrids because she was saved by Hera's blood, she doesn't welcome hybridity with open arms. Laura, like Athena, is far more hybridised than Caprica (who is not really hybridised at all, to the point that her son is an impossible, pure Cylon), may recognise she cannot fight the future, but neither is she the future.

If the Promised Land too is a metaphor (it is never actually stated to be Earth), and the promised land is hippie harmony between Human and Cylon on their beat-up Battlestar with lovely algae to eat, then she lives to see it but cannot set foot there.

She witnesses the moment of its birth, as Caprica takes Hera into the Opera House, but cannot follow. It was not meant for her. And in the real world, she will die before ever seeing the full implications of the world she has led them to.

Why is it Caprica? Here I feel I may be betraying my Six fangirlism, but I can't help it and if you have a better explanation, I'm open to hearing it.

But Caprica, all Sixes, are remarkably able to cross boundaries borders without losing a part of themselves.

I can't explain why Caprica was the chosen third party in that vision, but of all three of them, I guess I do think she's the most likely to embrace the future we're talking about.

Which only leaves;

You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end.

Well, firstly, I still love that that's partly in reference to the Hub. Cus it's nicely literal and I always wanted it to be grimly literal. I still don't quite get why it was referenced again in 4.5 (when they could legitimately have said it referred to the events of 4.0) since it was never mentioned after her discussion with Leoben, but I digress.)

We've already spoken about hybridity as death and that's a nicely fuzzy metaphorical way of answering the question of her role. Bringing end/death = bringing hybridity.

HOWEVER, other interesting things to note that tie Kara nicely up with life/death, with um, harbinging shit, and also with being a revolution simply through her own existence:

1) the unsolicited Opera House visions start the same episode she comes back from the dead.

2) the Five become aware of themselves the same time she comes back from the dead.

3) while it doesn't explain how she came back from the dead, it does make her life/death hybridity an integral part of her character, role, and ability to effect, um, the cybrid event horizon? And it's probably just me but I think that if it was divine, a god who chooses to affect reality by creating hybrid zombies is infinitely more interesting and creepy than what we actually got.

So there you have it folks.

Kara brings about the Cybrid Apocalypse because she accepts she's half robot and lets Baltar tell the fleet she's half dead. Same way she accidentally woke up the Five and gave everyone creepy visions about the day she'd bring about the Cybrid Apocalypse, otherwise known as Hera Agathon's Bright, Shiny Future.

Hera is the Revolution.

Athena doesn't want her three year old to be the Revolution.

Caprica shows Hera the Cybrid Event Horizon, but Laura's not allowed to set foot in it.

The Opera House is all things alive, dead, human, cylon and generally out of its mind, but at least Sam Anders is there to welcome us.

I'm....fairly impressed with us, myself.

chaila43: If I got anything wrong or misrepresented your awesome opinions and ideas, please correct me.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Very good. Now print this off. Roll it up. Slip it inside a length of quarter inch steel tube. And beat the living daylights out of BSG scriptwriters.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Hee! Glad you liked it.

I'd rather not resort to violence; how's about I just glare really hard at the writers and ignore their scripts?

[chaila.livejournal.com]

EEEEEE you wrote it up!!! And masterfully so—I don’t think I have a single thing to add except MORE FLAIL. *metaphorically runs around in an excited little circle*

"This is what the Opera House is; this is what is happening; here are the answers to the prophecies," came together when Redactica turned into a shared, collaborative universe.

It is a HYBRIDIZED project! *snuggles you*

I totally agree that it’s particularly awesome because it could only have come out of this collaborative discussion--my vid commenting on Redactica which was commenting on the themes in the show. Which is like THE WHOLE POINT of making things, to tease out connections and ideas that were only implied. And it's way beyond my expectations of reclaiming that I could actually be excited about BSG meta again--whatever proportion actually remains about BSG that is. REDACTICA YAY.

Hybridity of two sorts. Human/Cylon/life/death. Hybridity as a sort of death because both old things die to create one new.

My favorite part is that this basic premise is so stunningly simple--such an obvious explanation that then serves as the jumping off point for all these complicated things. And also, like you say, that it really came together b/c we combined our primary views of the Opera House. I can't conceive of how that's not just really cool. And I'm with you, I'm still kinda shocked at how smoothly it all really does seem to come together. We really don't have to reach that hard for these connections.

1) the unsolicited Opera House visions start the same episode she comes back from the dead.

2) the Five become aware of themselves the same time she comes back from the dead.

This is what tips it from regular awesome to mind-altering awesome because even though it may not answer every question, it ties EVERYTHING together—Laura, Athena, Hera, Caprica, Kara, the Final Five—and makes them interconnected in a way they should always have been, and always seemed to be, and in a way that organically makes sense and cements the Opera House as representative of all things in between. Without robbing it of its mystery or its creepier elements or tying it up with a nice little bow. Which is totally awesome. To us, anyway. :D

ETA: ONE MORE THING. Because we might as well reclaim season one theological awesome while we're here, you know where the Arrow of Apollo and the Tomb of Athena (found through mind-altered visions!) REALLY point them to? The pretty purple Nebula of Resurrection and Mystical Visions and Magical Music and Awakening Consciousness. \o/ This obviously isn't perfectly apt since they go to the nebula just b/c they recognize it, but whatever! *fanwanks*

So, in all seriousness, exactly how awesome do you think we are?

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

It is a HYBRIDIZED project!

!!!!

And it's way beyond my expectations of reclaiming that I could actually be excited about BSG meta again--whatever proportion actually remains about BSG that is.

Yes! Exactly! It was beyond my expectations too. I honestly thought, at best, it might stop me from feeling my previous excitement was now invalid. To actually get new excitement - not of a "it got SAVED" way but of a "it got NEW AND INTERESTING" way is...beyond my wildest dreams.

And you say, the basic idea is so simple but it ends up leading to all sorts of interesting, complicated connections right out of the gate.

I mean, technically, canon tied up all these disaparate elements, but the tool it used to do so was "God did it," which felt - to me - boring and bland and reductive because it didn't feel like an organic mystical, powerful force. It felt like a (excuse the quasi-pun) deus ex machina. It really feels like something unrelated tying everything together because they had no other idea.

Whereas this - okay, yes, perhaps there's still a "God" or "gods" or "something" somewhere at the end of the chain of events sending Kara back or making the Opera House look the way it does or whatever but it keeps that first progenitor of mystery a) secret and mystical and b) creepy. So...yeah. For us at least, I think it's infinitely better.

And I agree - a lot of the awesome is in the specificity of being able to take Kara's two states of hybridity and tie them not just THEMATICALLY to what's going on, but literally use them as the explanation for the actual plot-based events that create many of these themes.

ETA: ONE MORE THING. Because we might as well reclaim season one theological awesome while we're here, you know where the Arrow of Apollo and the Tomb of Athena (found through mind-altered visions!) REALLY point them to? The pretty purple Nebula of Resurrection and Mystical Visions and Magical Music and Awakening Consciousness. \o/ This obviously isn't perfectly apt since they go to the nebula just b/c they recognize it, but whatever! *fanwanks*

*HEAD EXPLODES FROM THE AWESOME*

OMFG. YOU'RE RIGHT.

But also, they wouldn't have known to follow the nebula they recognised if they didn't find all this stuff. It did eventually lead them to nuked Earth, which might not have been the Promised Land but it was the devastation of it that forced them to band together for survival and thus create this new society.

Kara leads them to Earth and Earth is shitty, and Earth's shittiness is an integral part of why the cybrid event horizon can occur because mutinies just cannot, practically, be allowed to proliferate or they will all die.

So first she leads them to Earth, which forces the truce that ultimately lets her pull another "I exist; watch me fuck with reality," except this time on a human/cylon level instead of a life/death level (what a lovely pair of bookends for S4), which in turns, 'leads them to their end.'

And now I'm getting hella pretentious but the point is: \o/

So, in all seriousness, exactly how awesome do you think we are?

On a scale of one to ten?

CAKE.

That is how awesome we are.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

I think it's really neat that you've created this huge Alternate Universe. It's sort of...uberFanfic. I don't plan to participate in it, but I bow to your multitude of talents.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It means a lot to me to hear that, mainly because the absolute last thing I want is for people who aren't interested in participating (and frankly, I'm somewhat surprised ANYONE else joined me in my insanity!) is to feel attacked or excluded or something? Which I am honestly a little concerned about?

Like you say, it's my (now a?) crazy fan project AU, but it's rather reassuring that from the outside it at least looks fun?

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Frankly, I did feel a little bit attacked (attacked might be a strong word) when you starting posting about it, which is why I didn't say anything for a while, but I participate in several active AUs involving Stargate Atlantis (except these are all super AU, Westerns, Spies, Mutant Superheroes, Renaissance...), so I get the need to play with the people you love.

Also, you are a very emphatic person, and sometimes liking something you don't is hard. ;)

[nightxade.livejournal.com]

Also, you are a very emphatic person, and sometimes liking something you don't is hard. ;)

Her passion is one of her most beautiful characteristics.

<3

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

The thing that upsets me most about the whole fan reaction to the finale is how attacked everyone feels on all sides.

This is not the first or even strongest hint of caution regarding the project that I've heard, although I do find myself wondering if I'd written instead of vidded it, if it would have seemed less threatening? This is not particularly a question aimed at you, more a general observation that the medium of the project is pretty unusual to the point I'm not sure I've even heard of anyone else doing it for television, and therefore there's no framework within which to place it or understand it easily? And in addition it was released at a time of intra-fandom stress?

Relating it to an elaborate, personal canon AU is kind of the first thing that occurs to me, but it's also something that doesn't occur to everyone, I've noticed. I may be reading too much into a short comment, and if so, I apologise, but it seems that being able to put it in that context (big damn AU) also helped you understand it in a way that was more easily relatable to your own fannish participation?

I can't say that there was no element of critique in the project - or that I have any intention of being less, um, emphatic. But I can say with sincerity that I'm sorry you felt attacked (or whatever less strong word would be appropriate).

It's why I say I hate what the finale did to fandom more than anything about the finale itself. This was the most productive and positive and joyful way I knew how to respond, and still I end up causing rifts.

Perhaps the best thing I can do is offer an amnesty - I always knew you liked the finale and therefore wasn't expecting you to jump on board this project - nor do I expect you to continue posting when I post about it (which I'm sure will die down with time). Although obviously your posts are welcome.

If you would feel more comfortable without me on your flist, I also have a completely open friending/unfriending policy and will understand if you want to make that choice. This is most emphatically not said in the hopes that you will unfriend me, but simply if it's an elephant in the room and you'd rather do so, the best thing I can do is try and make that decision okay?

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

This is not the first or even strongest hint of caution regarding the project that I've heard, although I do find myself wondering if I'd written instead of vidded it, if it would have seemed less threatening?

Totally. Almost everyone in fandom writes at some level. Vidders are the elite, whether they do it on purpose or not. This is especially true of the BSG fandom, for some reason, probably because it attracts a particular kind of dork. :)

Also, it's new (and HUGELY TALENT RELIANT), which makes it...not scary, but...bigger? Something?

One of the reasons I've struggled with this whole concept of yours is the title: Redactica. It's fucking brilliant (though Galacticake will always be first and foremost in my stomach heart), but it's also a bit...strong. Redact. Make Better. Fix. Because the original was terrible and everyone who liked it is a moron. (That last part is implied.) Virtual Seasons are fun projects that people use to play with characters that got the short shrift. This is...bigger.

I would never, ever unfriend you over this! I unfriend people because I forget who they are or because they insist that using "your" instead of "you're" isn't a bit problem. I certainly don't unfriend people I've actually met (and who have saved my life :p).

I do think that this is an exceptionally positive way to respond, and I wouldn't go so far as to call it a rift. The fallout of BSG (and Atlantis, I think) left me a little bitter with fandom, but I've made my peace with it (Thank you, Nathan Fillion!), and I am okay. I am super glad that you've found a way to do it too. :)



....OMG GROWN UP DISCUSSION! :)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

....OMG GROWN UP DISCUSSION! :)

RUN! RUN FOR THE HILLS! :p

I think that vidding is a smaller subsection of fandom because it's more time-intensive and tech dependent. There's an actual level of computerness that you need to have to be able to do it - though it's becoming an increasingly achievable level and the number of vidders is, I think, rising accordingly. Which also gives me hope that this kind of project can become more common and then maybe it won't seem so intimidating in concept.

I'm ridiculously monofannish these days; but it's certainly interesting to get the perspective of a multifannish person. It hadn't occured to me that galactica vidders were more or less elite than others; quite honestly I just thought that we were decreasing rapidly in size throughout S3 and S4! But that's definitely something I will be thinking about.

My instinct is to agree that it's because it attracts a particular kind of dork and also that the text supports a particular kind of vidder?

The same way that (I have heard) Atlantis fandom is just chock-full of crack?

Fandom personalities = inexplicable sometimes.

As to the title and the concept itself, well firstly, I think that virtual seasons, missing scenes, AUs, etc. are ways to "fix" things for characters who got short shrift - or at least can be. It's just that we're more used to seeing them. There's so much fanfic whereas this is...the only project of its type?

I wouldn't be so slippery as to try and play semantic games over it - I acknowledge that there's a fair level of criticism both in the fan-edits themselves and in the title. That said, and I bow to superior wordsmiths if I have this wrong, but to me, "redact" has a much stronger focus on re-edit, reframe, recontextualise. Amend through presentation? I'm redacting rather than retracting the final season?

Now arguably all those things are, to one degree or another, about improvement, but I also think that a large part of what attracted me to the word was that I felt it was firmly rooted in the mashup/vidding/re-editing/appropriation culture that spawned it.

I think that the implied and everyone who liked it is a moron part is where the real problems arise. Namely because I've felt the exact same implication on occasion (not from yourself), that the original was transcendant and everyone who doesn't like it just doesn't "get it" and is a moron.

I think the problem is there's such polarisation and upset that even at points when no one is trying to upset anyone, simply expressing a strong opinion on one side or the other is perceived as expressing the corresponding insult to the other side?

And the fact that it doesn't matter how grown up we are - something big and important in a story we both loved happened, and we profoundly disagree about it. Those arguments I never bought about "it's just a TV show, care about the starving children in Africa," aside, that's...gonna be upsetting. We're each going to wonder why the other one doesn't understand what we think. 'Agree to disagree' is a very good idea, but a very hard one to actually put into practice on an issue people feel strongly about without some emotional cost on each side, and that's worth acknowledging and respecting. So you certainly have my thanks for being willing to have this conversation with me.

And, while I did think the original was terrible (actually, I thought there were lovely moments, right up until the end, or I wouldn't have made this whole thing, but you know what I mean), I definitely don't think you're a moron. And if I think your a moron, I am one. ;)

I mean, I don't think you DID think I thought that but it's sometimes nice to hear it clarified.

I'm also very glad that you're not going anywhere - I didn't want you to. :)

*KOREAN SOLIDARITY*

...I can no longer stand to each rice and chicken with ketchup because it gives me flashbacks...

[chaila.livejournal.com]

I totally understand that the mediums are different and I mostly like the ways they are different, but honestly, the idea that an argument or opinion, or whatever, that I express is somehow more aggressive/challenging to another POV because I vidded it instead of writing is it kind of disconcerting? I don't really know what to do with that information, even though I don't disagree with what you're saying here.

And I think Redactica is a special case in that it took actual entire swaths of canon and made something slightly different but not entirely different to address specific issues that large parts of fandom had specific problems with. I would like to think that this doesn't apply to a more run of the mill vid??? *hopes and ignores last two vids*

Then again, I may actually just be arrogant. Because if pressed, I maybe would have categorized my BSR vid as AU on, like, the fifth try but I would have called it a whole host of other kinds of things--character, ensemble, meta--first. But of course it is AU.

I liked "redacted" for the implication that certain things would be blotted out. :D

Vidding is SO FASCINATING. If asked, I would have said that save for a few (and I would've counted you! Deal with it), the Big Damn Vidders left BSG vidding before I got here. There seems to be this widely held notion that vidders are intimidating, expressed even by many vidders themselves, yet I think most vidders would eschew the label? I mean, maybe not, but people I would call Big Damn Vidders almost always, once I have gotten to know them, self-identify as not that kind of vidder and refer to this elusive "elite" vidding community as somebody else. I guess I just don't understand where that comes from and why it seems to be such a pervasive opinion.

I think this comment is pointless.

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

I think there are two issues here.

One is that Redactica is a special case because there's no real framework for it within LJ-based fandom. I say that because there most definitely is a fan-editing culture for movies elsewhere on the net which I know a very little bit about, but more than that, I also come from Star Wars fandom which is what made fan editing famous, where the most ambitious fan edits exist, and also the only fandom that has an actual fan film subculture (as opposed to one or two fan films). SW also has an...interesting attitude towards canon from George Lucas.

So like, in general reaction to this project has been good, I think (I hope - I hope there aren't droves of people out there afraid I'm going to break into their house in the night and replace their 4.5 box sets!) so obviously I'm not coming at this from an indecipherable angle. But that may add to the fact it didn't occur to me that this would be seen as more inflammatory than simply declaring that I would be re-writing it.

It also makes me wonder if, when fan fiction was either new, or at least nowhere near as widely known and accepted, if people ever felt threatened by that? If it really is just the new issue?

I also think that the separation of media is a big deal. This feels more like watching an episode than either reading a story or watching a vid does. Which again, I think, adds to the feel that I'm making a bald-faced attempt to replace the real show. Which, like, okay I am. But at the same time, I can't enforce that on anyone, and it's no stronger or different a thing than when people write their own personal canons?

So anyway, yeah that's a long way of saying that whatever and whyever they are, the issues about Redactica raised here are not the issues of vidding, although there's crossover.

As to the issues of actual vidding, to stop this comment from becoming monolithic, I will head over and respond on your recent entry.

Though I will say that I think most of the BDVs left BSG fandom when I was a babyvidder and like, I had a really weird year and vidded a ridiculous amount, and became one of the most prolific BSG Vidders by...accidental default? Cus everyone else had left?

I also think that part of what you're experiencing here is the disconnect between vidding in a fandom and vidding as a fandom, but I will go into more detail over in your LJ in a minute.

[sabaceanbabe.livejournal.com]

This... strikes a chord with me. I don't know how strongly, but... Would you be at all upset if any of this wound up in my bsg_bigbang fic?

[frolicndetour.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking that someone should write this!

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

I would be nothing but awed, excited and honoured if any of this was included in absolutely any way at all in your fic!

Seriously, the idea that this is exciting and useful to anyone in any way is just amazing. MORE JOY.

So please, please, please feel free to use/not use any parts of it you like in any way you like. Go and make it yours too.

[cyborganize.livejournal.com]

just pulled quotes for my dissertation chapter -- I'm assuming you don't mind being linked. ;)

[beccatoria.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHA! No, of COURSE I don't mind being linked. ;)