Dear Festividder 2024

[absternr]

Hello! Thank you for making me a vid! I’m very excited to see what you create. This year I went hard in a “weird movie” direction (all but the last two of these are safeties) and I would love to see you as a vidder getting weird with it! I love vids with a strong thesis statement, bold editing choices, unique audio sources, etc. Other things I like include: character studies, action vids, strong visual themes, meta, femslash, polyamory, friendship. But of course first and foremost, make the vid you want to make.

All music/audio is great if it fits your vid concept but I’m not wild about show dialogue directly on top of song lyrics.

Kajillionaire (2020)
A movie about being disappointed in your con artist parents and how difficult it is to love and be loved. Upsetting! Also it’s queer! Marketed as a dark comedy bc it’s ~quirky but I found it pretty deeply sad (except the queer parts.) It’s got a fun color palette and visual style.

For vids, I’m interested in an Old Dolio/Melanie ship vid, or an Old Dolio character study. I’d also be interested in something a little more ensemble-y, maybe with a focus on the cons.

The People's Joker (2022)
I haven’t seen Joker (2019) so it took me a bit to realize how directly The People’s Joker is a parody of that movie, but as an (apparently autobiographical) trans coming out story. It has this really maximalist DIY approach that’s super enjoyable to watch, in terms of both visual effects and throwing in elements of DC canon wherever they serve the story. Also, amazing needle drops.

It’s not exactly a “fandom-y” type of transformative work but I feel like a canon that’s willing to violate DC’s copyright that hard deserves a vid that will do it even harder, so if you’re at all interested in incorporating other bat-media or anything else into your vid, go for it! Otherwise I’m just interested in seeing what a vid for this movie would even look like. Show me some visual nonsense!

Problemista (2023)
The directorial debut of Julio Torres (of Los Espookys and Wells for Boys) who has such an incredibly distinct style and is always very funny. His character is an aspiring toy designer who ends up working for an insufferable art critic with a cryogenically frozen husband. Truly captures the experience of being a millennial and having a job.

I’d love an Alejandro character study, something with him and his mom, or a more general “existing under capitalism” type vid. While I love to see Tilda Swinton in this I’d prefer not to get a vid focused exclusively on her character, or one that takes an overly positive tone towards her relationship with Alejandro.

ハウス | Hausu | House (1977)
A classic of the weird movie landscape! Any plot summary I could give would sound like a basic haunted house story which would absolutely not prepare you for whatever’s going on in there. Film-making choices like nothing else! Every frame makes me go yes. Hell yes. What if there was a house.

We are now just past the deadline where I can tell you that I made a House vid for the Fall Equinox exchange, and it was a blast. I think there should be more House vids! There are definitely angles you can take about women’s bodies and/or femslash and/or various other themes but I also just love to see that house do its thing.

逆転裁判 | Ace Attorney (2012)
I’m obsessed with the weird dark legal dystopia worldbuilding of this movie, especially in combination with the video-game-accurate cartoonish acting and hairstyles and goofy plot twists. Why did they do it like that? Why is the Blue Badger there? I saw a letterboxd review call it “the Speed Racer of courtroom dramas” and that feels basically accurate.

I’d like to see a lighthearted vid that plays with the legal antics and silliness, or maybe a slightly more feelingsy one focused on Phoenix & Maya (& Mia) and/or Edgeworth backstory, or anything at all that gets into the worldbuilding aspect. I don’t feel like this movie gives you a ton to work with shipping-wise but I’m here for narumitsu if you want to go that direction.

Challengers (Movie 2024)
Yayyyy fucked up sports polyamory!!! This movie has such an electric energy and I love how it inextricably ties the tennis to the relationships and vice versa. Tennis is a relationship! It’s about watching good tennis!

An ot3 vid feels like the obvious choice but I’d also be interested in a Tashi character study (her relationship to tennis?) or potentially a Patrick one, or really anything else you can think to do for this movie. I’d rather not get a vid that’s focused on shipping any two of the main characters without the third one. They’re all always part of it!

I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
Beautiful, intense, horrifying movie about ignoring parts of yourself. I love the ending with its unresolved tension and the difficulty of the metaphorical death that’s maybe also literal death.

You can’t go wrong leaning into the trans/queer reading here ofc. I also think it would be fun to explore the meta show-within-a-show aspect, or maybe even combine it with/compare it to shows of the type it’s referencing that have done similar “protagonist convinced it’s all a dream” plotlines from a different pov (Buffy comes to mind but there’s definitely others)

Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena theatrical adaptations [UMBRELLA]
There’s something very fun to me about making Utena into a play when the show already borrows so much from theater stylistically. I know there have been several different theatrical adaptations (here’s a rundown! I’m dying to see the one where Anthy has a machine gun), but the ones I know for sure are available online are these three musicals. I love the dramatic choreo, I love that there’s a Takarazuka-esque one with an all-female cast, I love when there’s shadow girls.

I don’t have specific ideas about vids for this one, but anything you come up with would be fun to see! My whole thought process was “it would be entertaining if this existed.” Always here for Utena/Anthy of course, and Wakaba and Nanami are very fun in these.

ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon (Manga)
Monsters! Dungeons! Delicious food! I requested the manga bc Kui’s art is extremely beautiful and I love comics vids, but also bc as a manga reader my requests probably get into spoilery territory for anime-only folks. So more details below the cut but above the cut I will say that I would never say no to a Farcille vid, and you’re welcome to combine the anime and manga if that seems fun to you.

maybe manga spoilers

I’m very into the parallels between the various dungeon lords and what drives someone to become one, and the connected cycle of life and food and death that is broken by the dungeon, where one can’t fully die, and I think there’s so many different vids you could do around those themes! I like Kabru/Mithrun and would enjoy a vid about their little journey together. Any kind of character study of Falin, Kabru, Mithrun, Marcille, Laios and/or the demon would be cool, really. Or Izutsumi. I could just keep adding characters here forever, follow your heart.