VVC 08 Premiere Vid: BtVS

[hazelk]

Your faces, O my sisters! Your faces filled of light!


Title: Scarlet Ribbons
Artist: Sinead O’ Connor
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and a little Angel)
Characters/Pairings: Slayers
Format: DivX
Size: 44.8 MB

Download here (Right/control click and save target as)

Major thanks to elynross for betaing a very hungry caterpillar of semi-digested ideas into something like a butterfly.

Feedback shops and sneezes and makes ready to be strong


I’ve vaguely wanted to vid this song for a long time. It has a fairy-tale creepiness to it that’s very evocative. Scarlet ribbons, red shoes, little rivulets of blood trickling down a girl’s face. Just after Christmas I was paying attention to the full lyric for once and for about 5 minutes I thought it could be a Buffy/Joyce vid (no, not like that). But it needed something less literal so Joyce became the mother of all Slayers/Sineya/that girl whoever she was and Buffy became Buffy and Faith and Kendra and Nikki and Xin Rong and Dana and Kennedy and Rhona and Vi and countless, nameless girls around the world.

The tag-line is the title of an Alice B Sheldon/James Tiptree Jnr/Racoona Sheldon short story. I haven’t found an online version but it’s included in the collection “Her Smoke Rose up Forever.”



I peeked in to say goodnight
And I heard my child in prayer
"And for me some scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for my hair"

All the stores were closed and shuttered
All the streets were dark and bare
In our town, no scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair

Through the night my heart was aching
Just before the dawn was breaking
I peeped in and on her pillow
On her pillow lying there
Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair

If I live to be a hundred
I will never know from where
Came those ribbons, scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons for her hair

Comments

Re: I will never know from where

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

The oddity is all mine- I posted a first draft for about 7 hours on a Sunday night in March in a fit of social haploidy. Thank you for giving it a second chance:-)

Your comment about the stillness made me very happy, it was the pauses in the song that always got to me. And yes it's a vid of redness, blood and fire. And mythology but happening to actual people.

Re: I will never know from where

[kiki-miserychic.livejournal.com]

Ohh. That makes sense. I came back to add my comment and it was gone to my dismay. I liked it the first time as well. I can't pinpoint the differences, but the feeling is deep and powerful.