Dear Festividder 2023

Thank you for making a vid for me!! As always everything in this letter is totally optional.

I love vids with a strong thesis or statement to make, character studies, worldbuilding and cool visuals, found family and femslash (among many other types of vids!) Any type of music is great as long as it fits your concept, but I’m less into very slow and angsty vids, especially if they’re shippy. I’m also not wild about source dialogue that goes directly over the lyrics of the song, but other uses of show audio are fine.

There are a lot of mystery & crime-related fandoms on this list so I feel like I should ask that you avoid very pro-cop/pro-law-enforcement narratives. I don’t really anticipate it coming up with these specific fandoms, though.

17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future - Jon Bois
I never thought I could get as invested in (very fictional) football as 17776 and its sequel made me. It’s such a cool and unusual storytelling format that gets you feeling things about the nature of humanity through some jpegs of satellites and google earth images. This definitely also makes it a challenge to vid (although I have actually done it, kind of) but I feel like there’s an opportunity there to get as weird and experimental with form as the comic(?) itself. You’re welcome to use outside footage if you’d like! Any focus is good—I’m very attached to the satellites but I also think it would be funny to try to make more of a straight-up sports vid.

Ace Attorney (2012) [SAFETY]
30k Ace Attorney works on AO3 and apparently no one’s tagged this movie even once…this is an injustice. This is a live action adaptation of the first Ace Attorney video game by director Takashi Miike, who is better known for his violent horror and crime movies. It combines faithful adaptation of a lot of the more cartoonish elements of the games with a really weird and dark visual style and vaguely dystopian worldbuilding. The plot might be incomprehensible if you haven’t played the game. Honestly it’s pretty incomprehensible if you have played the game. The perfect movie.

For vids: I’m absolutely here for narumitsu shipping, or Phoenix and Maya friendship, or Fey sisters, or Miles Edgeworth backstory, but more than anything I am here for the wild visual and worldbuilding choices. The confetti….the genuinely dark parrot backstory….THE BLUE BADGER. WHAT. I think you could go silly or lean into the thriller-ish aspects, just make it weird!

cw: suicide and note that this movie does fully spoil the first game

Bound (1996) [SAFETY]
Lesbian movie of all time!!! I love women, I love when women do crimes, I love when crimes spiral wildly out of control. Not much more to say about this one but it’s an all-time favorite for me and I really like the slight tension between the two central women and the way they engage with their own lesbianism (“You know what the difference is between you and me, Violet?.....me neither.”)

I’m open to any type of vid for this movie, but especially a ship vid for the main characters. I’m not actually sure if this type of request is legal in the era of umbrella fandoms but if you wanted to make some kind of f/f or generally queer multi-Wachowskis vid……that would be fun imo.

東京ゴッドファーザーズ | Tokyo Godfathers (2003) [SAFETY]
Three homeless people find an abandoned infant and embark on a quest to return it to its parents. A beautifully animated movie that’s sometimes silly, sometimes emotionally intense and ultimately heartwarming. It’s also (lightly) a Christmas movie.

I like all the major characters in this movie (especially Hana and Miyuki), and the dynamic between the three main characters is very sweet. I would love a vid about the three of them, a vid about Hana, a general found family vid, or a vid focusing specifically on the queer community depicted in the movie.

cw: attempted suicide, and the language used around Hana, the trans main character, varies depending on which audio/subtitles you get. The 2020 dub is a good choice which features a trans voice actress (and Kate Bornstein in a supporting role, which is wild.)

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
An incredibly charming little puzzle game, originally for the DS but rereleased in HD on Steam and Switch this year! You play as a ghost who solves mysteries and saves people using your “ghost tricks.” If you haven’t played it, I highly recommend going in blind—it’s a short game (maybe 10-12 hours) with some really delightful twists and turns. All the characters have super unique and fun animations, the puzzles are full of rube goldberg nonsense, and the ending is SO cute. The creator put his own real-life dog in the game. Go play it! You won’t regret it!

Vid-wise, I’d love something that focuses on Sissel and/or Missile (I’m also really fond of Cabanela), an ensemble vid, or something that plays heavily with the mechanics and worldbuilding. I’m a sucker for time loop vids so that’s always a fun angle too.

Rosemary and Thyme (TV)
Cozy British mystery series about two older women who are mainly gardeners, and also murders. My favorite thing about this show is that every episode they have to solve both a murder mystery and a garden mystery of some kind. The friendship between Rosemary and Laura is cute and the juxtaposition of gentle cottagecore gardening plotlines and murder is funny to me every time. There’s definite femslash potential if you’d like to go that direction.

沙海 | Tomb of the Sea (TV)
Throwing this particular tomb show out here again bc it’s so deeply weird and features so many minor/one-off characters who I would love to see vids for, including but not limited to: Su Nan, Liang Wan, all the teens, and (admittedly more of a major character) Hei Xiazi. Qin Hao!Wu Xie is such an interesting character too (the Wu Xie and Su Nan parallels…) and the Sha Hai-era Iron Triangle fucks me up!! You’re welcome to include other tombs but I am interested in this specific show and era.