Snowflake Challenge: Day 2

[alasse_irena]

Day 2

In your own space, create a list of at least three fannish things you'd love to receive, something you've wanted but were afraid to ask for - a fannish wish-list of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your wish-list if you feel comfortable doing so. Maybe someone will grant a wish. Check out other people's posts. Maybe you will grant a wish. If any wishes are granted, we'd love it if you link them to this post.
 

 

I spent a while going, "But I don't really want anything?" before I read some other people's entries and realised that no, there are tonnes of fandom related things I'd like. So here goes: 

1. Recommendations of good software for vidding.

I have a lot of ideas for vids, and none of the skills or resources necessary to execute these ideas. I would really like to fix that, and recommendations for software, as well as tips and suggestions, would be greatly appreciated.

2. Some really excellent Wolfstar fic involving Sirius and Remus trying to rekindle the relationship they had before Sirius went to Azkaban, and realising that they are not the same people, and this is not going to be as easy as picking up right where they left off.

I am deeply into that ship, and I haven't really ever been able to find fic that addresses the difficulties they would've have had trying to mend their friendship after thirteen years. I mean, those are thirteen really traumatic years for both of them, and one of them believed the whole time that the other was responsible, and I just really want to see how they navigate that.

3. Friends (am I allowed to request friends on my wishlist?) in the SnK fandom.

I recently finished watching the anime, and I am deeply invested. Help!

4. Well-researched and unusual alternate universes.

There's a lot of coffeeshop and college AUs out there, for a lot of fandoms, which is fine. I enjoy those myself. But what I'd really love to see is some weird and wonderful historical AUs. The colonial era Australia AU? Age of Sail AU? Great Depression AU? 

Comments

[sharpiefan]

I use DVD Decrypter to rip DVDs (really easy to use; it automatically selects the longest thing on the disc to rip, which is generally the film - in the case of TV episodes on one disc, you'll see what to rip cause they're generally a similar length. You'll want to rename the resulting files though, just for ease of seeing what's what when you're working with them.)

For actual editing, I use AVS Video Editor which is pretty easy to figure out and use.

Hope that helps - and if you've got any questions, fire away! :D

[tenlittlebullets]

When I experimented with vidding a few years ago, I used VirtualDubMod to extract clips of the shots I wanted from the main video file, a pirated copy of Sony Vegas for editing (Vegas is pretty easy to use and has nice features, like really easy speeding up/slowing down of clips to fit a particular timeframe), and Avidemux to re-encode the final product into a compressed format. Also Audacity if I wanted to screw with the audio clip at all.

If you've got the hard disk space, I totally recommend extracting your clips in a lossless encoding like Lagarith. Multiple rounds of re-encoding in lossy formats can really chew through video quality, and I've had editors crash on me while I was trying to vid from a compressed avi of an entire episode/movie. For the final export, I usually got the best quality-to-file-size ratio with H.264 encoding. But feel free to ditch any of the above if it gets in the way of playing around with vidding.

And now I'm having horrible flashbacks to doing framerate conversions in my head before I figured out I could make Vegas switch from NTSC to PAL to match my footage. *g* So many fiddly pains in the ass. So addictive.

[sevilemar]

These are the historical AUs I enjoyed very much, in no particular order. I know other types of AU that isn't coffeshop or high school, too. Like space drama AUs, fantasy AUs, or Jotun!Loki AUs for Avengers, that kind of thing. Some of them got a really great worldbuilding, too, although it's not so much researched as made up. If you like, I can give you those, too. But first, the historical ones:

Pantheon by Yahtzee (X-Men, Charles/Erik). In the year 96 AD, all Rome is aware that their gods have begun to Mark certain people with their gifts -- the healing power of Apollo, the metal control of Vulcan, the deathly touch of Pluto, or the mental powers of Minerva. When those gifts fall to slaves or barbarians instead of the Romans themselves, strict control is necessary. Then a gladiator from Judea meets an enslaved scribe from Britannia, and the repercussions will shake the Empire itself.

Patience, a Steady Hand by Helenish (Inception, Arthur/Eames). 821 A.D. Arthur is in the nightmare business. Eames is a thief, a liar, and versatile with a pen.

The Butcher of Lowtown; a Tale from the Early History of Adaptives by Pookaseraph (X-Men, Charles/Erik, Victorian AU). Erik Lehnsherr has been on the trail of Herr Doktor Klaus Schmidt his entire adult life. He thinks he has finally found a lead in the person of one Doctor Charles Xavier: man of business and science, airship mogul, and expert on the adaptives who have started to proliferate in the last few dozen years. What he never expected was to find Dr. Xavier is also a philanthropist and a mutant. Together they must confront Erik's past and also face whatever emotional entanglement has started to form between him and the good Doctor.

Chosen Man by Sineala (Eagle of the Ninth, Marcus/Esca, Roman AU). The son of the man who lost the Eagle of the Ninth would never be allowed a first command of his very own fort, would he? Marcus is posted not to Isca Dumnoniorum, but to a wretched and run-down garrison north of the Wall. There he finds that he is the new centurion of a group of scouts and spies, all of them British. He has few supplies and no experience. His men distrust him. His superiors despise him. His second-in-command is an incompetent drunkard. And the local tribes are determined to kill all of them. But the worst thing of all is one of Marcus' soldiers. He is an enigmatic, dangerous, and insubordinate man by the name of Esca, who makes Marcus yearn for terrifying things he has never before wanted and can never, ever let himself have...

The Age of Frost by BakerStreetMuse (Avengers, Tony/Loki). It's 1973. 19 year old Tony Stark, whose living on the road and out of his car with his best friend Pepper after a falling out with his father, falls into the glam rock scene courtesy of one beautiful and strange Loki Lauff, who lives dangerously and is more dangerous than Tony can even begin to imagine. Warnings for drugs, sex, violence, the slowest burn, & rock n roll.

An Assembly Such as This, written by lady_ragnell, read by exmanhater (Avengers, Tony/Steve; if you don't like podfic, ther is a link to the fanfic in the post). In which Miss Antonia Stark finds herself sponsor and mentor of Miss Lucy Banner at the behest of the Fury, meets a mysterious American officer, and the fortunes of the brothers Odinson are discussed extensively. A Regency romance AU.

[mctabby]

Ooh, you're the person who wrote that lovely Hannibal and Scipio fic! So glad to run into you again through Snowflake. :)

Can't think of any AUs for you, but permit me to rec a great author for really well-researched Age of Sail/Regency fics: Ione, ionescribens.

And I'll throw in another vidding software suggestion: MPEG Video Wizard from Womble Multimedia. I've found it easy to learn and light on computing power demands. - Still consider myself a beginner at vidding, but I used this program to make this Vanity Fair vid and it worked fine.

I love historical AU fics as well!

[inevitableentresol]

All of these are slash, but I'm guessing you're okay with that if you like Remus/Sirius.

- Thunderbirds and Cigarette Cases
Game of Thrones. This is a fantastic AU fic for it set as a fifties hard-boiled detective film noir. I read this before I knew the canon myself, so you can read it as original fic as I did, and still get a lot from it.


- Blue Eyes
An AU fic for the Ace Attorney fandom set in Edo-era Japan, in a tea house, with one of them a samurai, one of them a tea seller.


- Forever can never be long enough, or the Earl of Epsom takes a husband
Social network RPF, an AU set as a Regency romance. Again, I have no idea about these characters/people, so I read this like original fic.


- The Courtship of Mr Bond
James Bond, a Regency romance AU.


- Watcher at the Gate
BBC Sherlock, an AU set in a vaguely medieval historical period, with some really interesting vampire worldbuilding (I'm not usually a vampire fan either).


- Bel Canto
By the same author, a BBC Sherlock AU fic set in the world of Phantom of the Opera with amazing worldbuilding.


- Bumblebees and Blueprints
James Bond, steampunk AU



Hope you found something above to enjoy. Reply if you find any historical AUs you'd like to share my way. I read in most fandoms, including ones I have no idea about.