Gift Vid(s): Losing Our Religions - for Sanguinity

[chaila]

Title: Losing Our Religions
Recipient: Sanguinity
Vidder: ghost lingering
Music: Covers of "Losing My Religion" by Jacqui Naylor, The Huge, Anouk, Elin Swenson, Nina Persson, Tori Amos, Paola Lezzi, Elvis Jackson, Swandive, and YouTube user genper2009. Additional audio from The Conet Project, disc one. (For more information about The Conet Project, go here.)
Summary: Life is bigger. It's bigger than us.
Vidder Notes: Much thanks to the people who took a look at this as I was working on it. Couldn't have done it without your comments and cheerleading. (Leaving out names to preserve what anonynimity there may be.)

This series was inspired by something that Sanguinity wrote in her sign-up: "Stories, and faith in them, and the manufacture/manipulation of them". Because clearly the only response to that is to make a series of vids about the the stories we put faith in (the stories we tell ourselves), and how that faith can falter or strengthen through experience. In order of appearance the characters whose faiths the series explores are: Terissa Dyson, Andy Goode, Jesse Flores, Kacy Corbin, Lauren Fields, Riley Dawson, the unnamed Latina, Derek Reese, "Catherine Weaver", and James Ellison. Sarah and John Connor are not included in this series: they *are* a fucking religion.

Re: Lyrics. Each of the cover versions is slightly different, so I'm just going to link to the original REM lyrics for reference. If anyone would like lyrics for the individual vids, I can provide them upon request. Lyrics for REM's Losing My Religion

Finally, Sanguinity, I really hope you don't hate the song "Losing My Religion" because you just got ten vids using different versions of that song that, together, total just shy of 20 minutes. Here's to losing our religions.

Content Notes: Spoilers for the entire series. Character deaths, both on-screen and implied; dead bodies shown. Attempted suicide & suicidal ideation. Violence including guns, physical altercations, explosions, etc. Basically what you see on the show will, more or less, be what you see here. For the record, Sanguinity, brief sections of this do reference Christianity and use Christian imagery, but not in a way that would tweak you, I think, given what you said in your sign-up. (i.e. Ellison is Christian.)

Link: Link to signed vid post.

Comments

[sanguinity]

I ADORE that this is a collection of tight-pov vids. This thing that you have done here, pulling each of these characters out into their own tight-focus pov, putting all those povs back-to-back to each other, told to the same song and as a collection... *flails* I asked for how stories guide and change and shape what the characters do -- so much in this show is done on the basis of a story someone else tells! -- but when I asked, I had no idea how that might be done. And then you came back with this. :-D

(timestamps are mostly for my reference.)

Terissa I am so put in mind of Sarah's comment to Ellison, later: "That's a lot to you?" It *is* a lot to her! And for good reason! And she is in danger of losing so much more. Her kid opens the door to Cameron, and my heart clenches in fear. Both Terissa and Sarah are just mothers trying to keep their sons alive, and protect them from the coming future. But like Sarah, she steps up when she needs to. Because what else can she do? (So much stepping up when needed in this show!)

And ending her clip with Andy's murder is a brilliant opening to the series/collection. We the viewers know that Terissa is not implicated in Andy's death. Andy's death was between Andy and Derek, and what Terissa said to whom had no part in that causality chain whatsoever. None. But from Terissa's perspective? All she would know was that she fingered Andy to Sarah, and then there was a death notice in the newspaper. From her perspective, that death is on her.

This is not a series of vids about the Judgement Day narrative. This is about the tight-pov stories that the characters see and experience and believe. And ending Terissa's vid with Andy's death signals that as plain as day. (Oh, Terissa. Please be kind to yourself, if you can, when you discover that Andy is dead.)

Andy (1:05) Oh, Andy. I can't talk about Andy. "I've said too much" vs. "I've said it all," gah. ...I hope Derek's Andy found some peace. And I wish wish wish that Derek had done for Sarah's Andy what Sarah and John did for Miles Dyson. (However fucked the way they went about doing it, and however badly it worked out for Miles. And least he got to choose, and with the perspective of foresight, not hindsight.) But Derek has been thinking in terms of guns since he was fifteen and... Oh, Andy. Derek was a good friend to you. And yet Derek could have been a better friend to you. :-(

Jesse (2:19) I'm still mostly non-verbal about what you did with Jesse, I love it so much. Her shutting Queeg's eyes. Her protectiveness of her sailors: those are her people, and it is her responsibility to care for them. (That is so often overlooked/forgotten about her! She had a responsibility to Deets. That you pulled Deets into her final montage... *flails*) The juxtaposition between the bar-shots after Riley's death (cut and bruised) and actively betraying Riley (lipsticked and coiffed) while she doubts her ability to do this! And likewise, the juxtaposition in her mind between John and the sub-terminator that he had asked to join them! And she is SO FREAKING ALONE in this current mission -- "I am not you" is to herself in the mirror. (Or, alternatively, she is not Derek's Jesse! Even leaving aside that she is from a different timeline, things have happened to her since Derek left: she is not the Jesse that even her own Derek knew, let alone the one that this Derek knew.) And so very much Jesse/Derek passion and tenderness, contrasted with the distance between them. (Oh, goodness, I ship them so freaking hard.) And you used the sunbathing pool shots. That final shot of Derek, post-apocalyptic warrior with Death hanging from his very clothing, striding into that pool area, utterly out of place, is brilliant. I just. *flails* *flails some more* COMMANDER JESSE FLORES.

Kacy (4:44) I ADORE THIS VIDLET. From the show's perspective, Kacy is there to be a foil to the (non)domestic life of the Connors, or as impetus for Sarah to contemplate motherhood, or to unknowingly relay important plot points to the Connors. But HER story? HAS NOT ONE GODDAMN THING TO DO WITH JUDGEMENT DAY. She is doing this huge scary terrifying important thing of her own, and that matters, too. I think I asked in my sign-up for something about the show's civilian casualties? This is better. (Because it's not a vid that's full of dead people!) I have said elsewhere that when the Connors and/or Weavers have saved the world, they will look up to discover that the world was worth saving because people like Felicia Burnett have been working just as hard as the Connors and Weavers. That is implicit in this vidlet about Kacy: Judgement Day is not the only important thing going on. Thank you so much for taking the time to make a vidlet about her, and for letting it be about her.

Lauren (5:27) ...three times now I've watched this, and three times I've found myself sobbing while watching Lauren's section. Lauren and her sister and her mother. If ever I can watch this with my higher brain functions intact, I might say something more but... (Nope, fourth time, still sobbing. Damn you, vidder.)

Riley (6:59) ...I had never before noticed that she, like Derek and Jesse (and Charles Fisher!), is absolutely DELIGHTED by fast food. :-D Obviously, if you want to spot post-apocalyptic time-travelers, the mall food court is THE PLACE TO BE.

"You are not me," she says to John, and then she goes to face Cromartie! (Yes, you are right, John is not you! But that doesn't mean what you think it means! Listen to me, Riley: you are not just another undifferentiated and unimportant fish in the salmon run! Salmon are sacred! Salmon are a gift! All salmon are sacred, including you.) Ellison and Riley, I tell you: each one every bit as brave as the other. (So much bravery on this show!)

Unnamed Latina (9:42) I love the don't-push-me attitude in the cover you selected for her, and as I said in the earlier comment, the "you are not me" line is JUST EXACTLY RIGHT. :-DDD \o/

Derek (10:49) .....aaaaaaaahhhh!! (I asked for Derek & Sarah & maybe Cameron & maybe Jesse! And got Derek & Sarah & Cameron & Jesse!) There is so much I love about this one. (That is a VERY Derek cover of the song, haha!) In most of these vids, when "I am not you" is to or about Sarah, it is in part an assertion that Sarah is tougher/scarier/harder than the pov-character; here, it is nearly the opposite, Sarah is more innocent, less hardened, less experienced, than he is. (She has not seen the future! She has not survived Judgement Day! She has not spent decades living in that post-apocolyptic world!) ("Your mother has never killed anyone, has she?") Also, Sarah Connor is Kyle's religion, not Derek's. (Ah, but the things he would do for Kyle! Including going to the Church of Sarah Connor every Sunday.) And everyone dies for John Connor -- Kyle and Martin! -- and yet John is insisting on fucking around with his pet killer robot instead of keeping his head in the game, and oh, Derek, no wonder you're so frustrated and short-tempered all the time. And yet he still dies for the Connors. Because that's what non-Connors do. And I know I keep saying that the ends of these vids are brilliant, but this one, too: the next little bit of footage after Derek is shot, oh, man. Even with his doubts, he died for. the. Connors. And in the end, they walk away. Because that's what Connors do.

And am I allowed to laugh at Jesse laughing at Derek's fly being open? I am laughing at Jesse laughing at Derek's fly. :-D (How the hell can you slip a moment like that in the middle of Derek murdering Jesse and get away with it, I will never know, and yet you did!)

Weaver (13:27) The opening montage still makes me bite my knuckles with joy. I just. Both the Urinal of Death and the Sexy Tongue of Death bother me in their original contexts -- such a pair of jarringly vagina dentata male fantasies, and they always felt hugely out of place in the show -- but here, there's something unfettered about it that changes those scenes entirely for me. And oh, of course Weaver's religion is John Henry. Of course it is. She is intending to place the entire world, the entire future, into his care: of course that's where her faith is. :-D

Ellison (16:18) I love this piano music for Ellison: Ellison of the elegant suits and ties! (And also, in case you were concerned after all, you're exactly right: the Christian imagery in this vid isn't tweaking me. When all that resurrection imagery around Cromartie and John Henry is Ellison's pov, I am okay with it. That is his lens through which he views the world; that is not an pseudo-objective assertion about the nature of reality itself.)

And oh, Ellison and his endless quest of faith! He has faith in the FBI, in the investigative work, in the nuts and bolts of bringing justice to bear. (The dead man is not Ellison! Because Ellison is the Man Who Lived!) Until his faith in the nuts and bolts of justice is shattered by Cromartie, and now he puts his faith in Sarah Connor: Sarah can and has witnessed for the truth. But there is no "next" in the Church of Sarah Connor: it is just this, only this, surviving until the next day. Weaver offers a next. ...and yet the answers he wants are not there, either. (Cromartie being resurrected as John Henry still leaves George Laszlo dead!) Oh, Ellison. He works so hard at figuring out where he should put his faith, and how he should behave once he has placed it. He really is the perfect capstone for this collection. :-D


Thank you anonymous vidder-person-or-persons!

<3 <3 <3 <3

[ghost_lingering]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BEING THE BEST RECIPIENT EVER!!! I am so relieved that you like this whole project, you have no idea.

And your readings of each of the different characters is lovely; you see things that I wanted people to see and other things that I didn't even see! For Terissa I definitely was thinking about Sarah's comment to Ellison ("That's a lot to you?") — I was thinking about that for several of the characters (Andy, the unnamed Latina, Jesse — since Jesse did lose her job, her relationship, and her child — and of course Ellison) so I'm so glad you made that connection too. TSCC is Sarah's story; TSCC is the story of how Sarah loses her religion, over and over and over again (the end of the show is her losing her religion — her son leaves, she loses her son, John is her religion and he is gone). These vids are the stories that TSCC uses as b-plots, remade into a-plots. These are the vids about the things that are a lot to the characters.

And it struck me so so so much when I rewatched TSCC for clipping when Terissa asks "What happens now? Does he die too?" that then Andy does die — that's it, that's her worst nightmare, more people dying, with no real clear sign of victory. The series was always going to start with either Terissa or Ellison, but Terissa is better: this is her fear, her fear is realized, her religion is lost, it's shot in the head, it's dead and buried and won't come back.

Jesse shutting Queeg's eyes (and later Sarah *not* shutting Derek's eyes) is one of the things that drove Jesse's vid for me, that drives *Jesse* for me. These are her people, even Queeg, who she shot, who is not a person. Jesse's vid basically arrived fully formed on the timeline; I think hers is perhaps the only vid that I didn't have multiple drafts of. This! This is Jesse! I'm so glad to hear that this worked for you, because, I just, this is her, this is how I see her, 100%.

Kacy's vidlet almost didn't make it into the series because I hadn't realized that, despite the fact she is in multiple episodes, there isn't that much useful footage for her. But I <3 Kacy and I'm so glad that I found a way to make the vidlet work well enough to include, even if I had to stop myself from putting the sonogram shot over the opening "life" like I did for Connection. (Kacy's vid was the vid where I realized that both Elephant Connection and Losing My Religion start with the word "life". Don't know yet what that means, but I think it means something.)

And Lauren! And Riley! I just. They are both so brave and young and old all at the same time and I'm pretty incoherent about both of them tbh. I just. Riley! Lauren! (Should team up and fight crime and have happy endings!) And, yes, salmon ARE sacred! Or, even, Riley COULD have been the bear, John/Skynet don't have to be the bear! Riley could be ANY ANIMAL SHE WANTS TO BE. But, but, but. D:

The unnamed Latina's vid ... I just love that cover and I have so many feelings about her and Cameron; Cameron totally isn't her! And yet there are ways in which I think she can out-Cameron Cameron, even though she's not Cameron either. (She's herself, thank you very much.) (I used to have a weird theory though that she was a terminator, though.)

I'm so glad you liked that Derek's vid went on after his death, because, yes, he dies for John Connor (he dies for the Resistance), but that doesn't mean that there isn't more to him, that doesn't mean that he didn't have a brother or a lover or doubts about his chosen course. But at the end he's still left dead on the ground, eyes open.

The only thing I have to say about Weaver is that John Henry is absolutely her religion, but she hasn't lost it yet. (That is my favorite bit of song editing in this whole thing.) Maybe in in season three she would have lost him, but not yet.

I am so glad that you don't mind the Christianity in Ellison's peice! I didn't think you would because (imo) the religion he looses is the law/justice, his life, his view of the world, and he goes searching — in Christianity, in Sarah, in Weaver, in John Henry — but I wasn't sure that I handled it in a way that you'd like, so I'm really happy that I apparently did. And the instrumental version took a long time to find, but I'm so glad that I didn't settle for another cover. Oh Ellison <3 may you someday find what you are looking for.